Integrating Customary Courts into the National Peace and Reconciliation Commission in Zimbabwe

Abstract

An elitist peace architecture in Zimbabwe called the National Peace and Reconciliation Commission (NPRC) frowns upon and ignores an established system of customary courts which for several decades has been playing a significant role in facilitating reconciliation in local communities. The tension between these two architectures lies in the fact that the NPRC was constructed from a liberal peacebuilding tradition, which is both elitist and alien to local African reconciliation traditions. This chapter argues that the two architectures may need to be hybridized as reconciliation is constructed from various traditions with approaches determined by distinct cultural beliefs, practices, and social systems. Peace enforced/prescribed from outside community traditions and social systems is not durable. As such, while government policy on reconciliation in Zimbabwe is noble and timely, approaches to reconciliation should be open to accommodate the interaction between endogenous institutions and liberal peacebuilding traditions in order to realize the interests and reconciliation aspirations of local people.