adminChristopher Farai Charamba: Correspondent
It has been 59 years since the first African country, Ghana, gained independence and 22 years since South Africa overcame the Apartheid regime and held its first democratic elections in 1994.
Between those two historic occasions, other African countries overcame colonialism, some by way of negotiation and others by way of the gun. An independent Africa was the dream of many of the nationalists who embarked on the liberation journey; more than that however, was the desire for a united African continent.
On May 25, 1963 the Organisation of African Unity was founded, the cause led by the likes of Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Toure, Julius Nyerere and Haile Selassie. The OAU was meant to be the foundation on which a unified Africa was to be achieved. One of the founding principles of the OAU was to support the efforts of other African countries to attain independence.
From 1963 leaders of independent African countries had seen the need for Africans to assist and support each other. The brutality of the colonial period had awakened in them the fact that African development was only possible through African will and hands and not through false mercies of foreign nationals.
Ghana’s first President Kwame Nkrumah said at the OAU Summit in Cairo in 1964, “By far the greatest wrong which the departing colonialists inflicted on us, and which we now continue to inflict on ourselves in our present state of disunity, was to leave us divided into economically unviable States which bear no possibility of real development . . .
“ . . . We must unite for economic viability, first of all, and then to recover our mineral wealth in Southern Africa, so that our vast resources and capacity for development will bring prosperity for us and additional benefits for the rest of the world.”
Unity was seen as the cornerstone to African development. It was the basis on which African solutions to African problems would be founded, and for a while this proved successful.
The OAU played a pivotal role in eradicating colonialism and white minority rule in Africa. It gave weapons, training and military bases to liberation forces fighting white minority and colonial rule.
Groups such as the ANC and PAC, fighting apartheid, and ZANU and ZAPU, fighting to topple the government of Rhodesia, were aided in their endeavours by the OAU. Countries such as Tanzania which were part of the founding of the OAU believed in this ethos to the point of housing liberation movements such as ZANU, the ANC and SWAPO.
The phrase African solutions to African problems has certainly been a popular mantra for the continental body, the African Union, and individual African countries. With the West seen as a neo-colonialist and the East viewed no better by many Africans, the idea of an Africa that is solely responsible for its own affairs is a popular one.
This, however, has not been as successful as the AU would like it to be. With a far from homogeneous continent comprising 54 countries and over a billion people, navigating the difficulties of language, religion and culture for example is a mammoth task.
Add to that political and economic differences, remnants of colonialism as well as the onslaught of neo-colonialism and one is left with a cocktail of complexities and complications that African countries are forced to resolve. A major problem that African countries face is trying to deal with their problems using colonial systems that were designed to exploit the African and enrich the colonialists.
Integral to the African solutions to African problems mantra should be a utilisation of African systems and principles in solving these problems. Traditional African ideas such as ubuntu should be at the fore in guiding Africans in how to move forward as a continent.
Following the 1994 genocide in Rwanda where close to a million Tutsi and Hutu moderates were killed by Hutu Rwandese, the international community felt that the perpetrators should be brought before the International Criminal Court.
The Rwandese, however, chose another form of justice, one that was familiar to them and their way of life. According to Phil Clark of the Africa Research Institute, “Since 2001, the gacaca community courts have been the centrepiece of Rwanda’s justice and reconciliation process.”
Clarks writes, “Broadly speaking, the dual aims of gacaca were to prosecute every individual genocide suspect regardless of seniority or social standing, and to begin the reconstruction and rehabilitation of Rwandan society. The process was intended to involve the people who experienced the genocide first-hand at every stage.”
The word gacaca is derived from the Kinyarwanda word meaning “the lawn” or “the grass” — a reference to conducting the hearings in open spaces in full view of the community.
The accused is brought before nine “judges” and the rest of the community. The president of the judges explains to the crowd that the accused has confessed to killing people during the genocide and that anyone who has additional information to share about the accused should say so. After all the people share what they know the judges take about a week to deliberate on what they have heard about the accused.
There are no lawyers present and everyone who takes place in the proceedings is familiar with one another. A truer jury of one’s peers than the American justice system. Rwanda has moved on from the terrible events of April 1994. The country now boasts one the fastest growing economies in the world.
In contrast, South Africa which gained majority rule in the same year as the Rwandese genocide, chose the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) as a means of restorative justice at the end of apartheid.
This, however, was flawed and this is evident from the racial divide that exists in South Africa today.
Criticism of the TRC process was that it failed to achieve reconciliation between black and white communities. Justice was a prerequisite for reconciliation rather than an alternative to it, and that the TRC had been weighted in favour of the perpetrators of abuse.
According to William Kentridge, another dilemma facing the TRC was how to do justice to the testimonials of those witnesses for whom translation was necessary. There was a great discrepancy between the emotions of the witnesses and those translating them; much of the impact was lost in interlingual rendition.
The TRCs were a foreign concept to those that were seeking justice and reconciliation from them. As such the remnants of the apartheid regime exist in South Africa, particularly in its institutions and every so often racism rears its ugly head. Gacaca is only one example where traditional systems were preferred to the modern means of justice. The Rwandese chose systems they understood not only as a means of delivering justice, but also as a form of national healing and reconciliation and to their credit this worked.
There certainly is no set formula of how to solve problems on the African continent. However, what is clear is that should Africans choose to do so themselves then it should be done using systems they understand.
From uniting to end colonialism to indigenous methods of restorative justice, Africans have shown that they have the capacity to deal with their crises. What is necessary is the political and social will to develop systems that are founded on principles and philosophies integral to African life.
Online Reporter