Decolonization of Postcolonial Africa: A Structural Justice Project More Radical than Transitional Justice

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article seeks to contribute to the debate as to whether the field of transitional justice can or should take on decolonization as one of its desired goals. I argue that efforts to incorporate decolonization within the normative and functional remit of the field are politically, practically and conceptually untenable. In addition to the high implausibility of the field undertaking self-radicalization within the existing (neo)liberal Euro-American order, transitional justice is based on principles of responsibility and accountability that are fundamentally different from decolonization construed as structural justice. In particular, whereas transitional justice is essentially an intervention to restore the integrity of the existing normative and social order, the decolonization project seeks to interrogate and dismantle some parts of the system being legitimated, if not the entire system. Therefore, framing such a project as transitional justice risks depoliticizing and minimizing its socially transformative essence which is long established in the history of political liberation movements of the postcolony. Although this is a case study of Sierra Leone’s almost 20-year experience of transitional justice, I aim to connect the field with the recent critical turn to the decolonization of postcolonial Africa.