Abstract:
This article captures the politics of documenting trauma for transitional justice,
particularly in contexts where transitional justice is contested in its norms and
practices. The paper unpacks how documenting trauma by civil society becomes
political, yet provides key references for transitional justice processes in the
future. These nuances were captured through semi-structured, in-depth
interviews with field officers from five civil society organisations who
documented the 2008 electoral violence in Zimbabwe. The paper shows how
documented violence and human rights violations have been used towards
advocating for transitional justice and educating communities and other
stakeholders of obligations emanating from domestic and international laws
while impacting on ongoing violence. The article argues that while creating
critical dossiers of violence and trauma for the future, documentation by civil
society can also play a key role where violence is ongoing by creating awareness
of what is happening and can be used to shift prevailing conflict dynamics.
Etched in the theory and practice of transitional justice as a tool towards
sustainable peace for post-conflict societies, the research used an interpretivist
qualitative research methodology. This paper captures the reflections of those
who have studied the norms of transitional justice and experienced the realities
of practicing them in a contested field, thereby providing a nuanced
contribution to the study of peace and conflict in which theory and practice
converge.
