Transitional justice, retributive justice and accountability for wrongdoing

This chapter considers how best to construe the essential nature of an attractive sort of national reconciliation. In advancing a theory of national reconciliation, chapter focuses strictly on that concept, considering related ideals such as restorative justice and transitional justice merely in passing. There are extant theories of national reconciliation in the literature, most of our which informed by Kantian, liberal-democratic and similar perspectives. By the Afro-communitarian conception, national reconciliation includes such conditions, but is far from exhausted by them; reconciliation merely as the achievement of institutional stability is too little. Central to most people’s thoughts about national reconciliation is the hearing out of victims. Another core element of national reconciliation is the attempt to help victims overcome their plight.