Restorative Justice
Ubuntu justice aims to restore harmony rather than punish. When wrong is done, the goal is healing relationships and reintegrating offenders into community.
Ubuntu justice aims to restore harmony rather than punish. When wrong is done, the goal is healing relationships and reintegrating offenders into community.
We believe in restorative justice. The wrongdoer must be helped to become whole again.
African Justice Systems
Written about in
- What Ubuntu means: I am because we are
The aim after a wrong is to repair the relationship and bring the offender back in, not simply to punish. It follows from the rest: if a person is a person through others, exclusion is the real harm.
- What African wisdom says about forgiveness
The aim is not to make the offender suffer in proportion but to make him whole and put him back into the community. South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission drew on this Ubuntu principle — which shows how far the tradition is willing to go: the wrongdoer must be helped to become whole again, and the helping is owed by the very community he wronged.