ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a critique of the scope of existing models of transitional justice (i.e. truth commissions, amnesties and prosecutions). Transitional justice mechanisms have largely focused upon individual violations of a narrow set of civil and political rights and the provision of legal and quasi-legal remedies. In contrast, this chapter highlights the significance of structural violence in producing and reproducing violations of human rights, particularly of socioeconomic rights. There is a need to utilise a different toolkit, and a different understanding of human rights, from that typically employed in transitional justice in order to remedy structural violations of human rights (i.e. those which do not constitute direct interpersonal violence). In this context, the potential for transformative (rather than transitional) justice in post-apartheid South Africa and other post-authoritarian contexts is discussed with particular reference to land inequalities and related socioeconomic rights issues. The chapter outlines a definition of transformative justice, relevant actors and relationships for such an agenda, and discusses the kinds of strategies that promise a more transformative approach.
