A transition that never ends
Malawi emerged from dictatorship 20 years ago, yet recent events indicate that there are certain aspects of our transition to democracy that continue to haunt us to date. The events in mind are the demand for apologies for pre-democratic era atrocities from some sectors and the demand for outstanding pensions by the former Malawi Young Pioneers (MYP).
In this piece I argue that the transitional justice mechanism that Malawi resorted to, left out some issues unresolved which continue to haunt us. I also argue that there should be a policy direction to resolve outstanding issues of our transition in order to avoid perpetually burdening our lean economy with liabilities from our transition.
There are various transitional justice mechanisms that States adopt in dealing with their past, and examples are: prosecutions, truth commissions, amnesties, reparations, or traditional mechanisms. Finding an appropriate mechanism to deal with the past can pose some complex legal as well as practical problems. The legal problem may be the duty to prosecute in the case of gross violations of human rights. Sometimes in the interest of peace, States opt for non-prosecution. In certain cases, they may even grant amnesties to perpetrators in order to achieve peace or for negative reasons such as self-protection especially in cases where those taking over power had also committed atrocities.
Traditional mechanisms have been applied in Rwanda after the genocide through the gacaca courts. They are dubbed an ‘African Solution’ to the issue of accountability. They were there to complement the formal court system.
A popular example of truth commissions as a transitional justice mechanism was in South Africa. Truth commissions are fact finding bodies set up for the purposes of investigating serious violations of human rights and humanitarian law committed in a country during a specific period of time, usually during an internal armed conflict or a particularly repressive regime. They are not judicial bodies but depending on the instrument establishing them they can have some judicial powers, such as the power to subpoena. They aim at gathering ‘truth’ of whatever happened during the regime in question.
In 1994, Malawi opted for reparations as a transition justice mechanism. A compensation tribunal established by the Constitution was constituted to compensate for civil and criminal liability that was suffered during the Kamuzu Banda era. The policy maker settled for the ‘money way’ instead of the ‘truth way’.
The idea of having a truth commission was put on the table and literature shows that a truth commission was viewed to be expensive and so were the trials. It was argued that public hearings would have created hatred and an atmosphere of witch-hunting instead of reconciliation (Meinhardt & Patel:2003). A policy decision was made 20 years ago to put the issues under the carpet and move on.
If, 20 years down the line, people are still looking for answers and apologies, then maybe we could have done better. If we still do not have a detailed historical account of what happened, then maybe we could have done better. Malawi is not alone in choosing the ‘let the sleeping dogs lie approach’. Mozambique took a similar approach after its civil war. However, if recent events are anything to go by, one can safely say sometimes the sleeping dogs actually do wake up.
Finally, there is need to come up with a policy direction on compensations and dues from our transition period. An example is the former MYPs demanding their pensions from Government that were due 20 years ago.
There should be a cut-off point to some of these things otherwise our economy will be perpetually burdened with liabilities from our transition. After a transition there is a nation to build!
The author likes to comment on social issues.
