Justice in History: An Examination of ‘African Restorative Traditions’ and the Emerging ‘Restorative Justice’ Paradigm.

Source: (2006) African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies. 2(2): 33-63.

The internationalisation of restorative justice is a welcomed development. But restorative justice literature would be incomplete if the contribution of African restorative traditions to the emerging restorative justice paradigm is obscured or continued to be ignored. Some western criminologists and authors write about restorative justice history obscuring Afro- historical evidence. Others have even written that ‘when race are classified by colour, the only one of the primary races which has not made a creative contribution to any of the twenty-one civilisation is the black race’ (see Dalgleish, 2005:57). This paper argues that such assertion was perhaps wrongly and erroneously made due to the obscurity of Afro-centric evidence in most comparative criminology literature. The author thus reviews the ‘African restorative traditions’ and how it might have contributed and/or could contribute to the emerging ‘restorative justice’ paradigm. This paper is to advance the cause of restorative justice as a global paradigm and to comparative criminology because knowledge in restorative justice and perhaps comparative criminology would be incomplete if ‘Afro-centric’ contributions continued to be ignored.(author’s abstract)