The Development of Restorative Justice in Lesotho.

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Nts’ikeng Theresa Qhubu is the Director of Probation in the Ministry of Justice, Human Rights and Rehabilitation, in Lesotho. In this paper, with an emphasis more on the practical than the theoretical, she describes the development of restorative justice in her country. Indeed, she characterizes it as a revival of restorative justice, for she argues that only the name is new. Traditional justice in Lesotho, before British colonialism in the nineteenth century, was in practice restorative justice. To substantiate this perspective on traditional justice and restorative justice in Lesotho, Qhubu sketches the pre-colonial era in Lesotho, characteristics of traditional Basotho (pre-colonial Lesotho) justice, criminal justice under British colonialism, the development of modern restorative justice in Lesotho, and lessons learned from all of this.