The international criminal court (ICC) was set up in 2002 to prosecute individuals for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Some feared that its western-inspired, universalist idea of justice might come into conflict with local forms of law, jeopardising the process of reconciliation. Now that the court has started to flex its muscles—issuing its first warrants, in October 2005, against five leaders of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, and more recently making an arrest in the Democratic Republic of Congo and identifying suspects in Sudan—there are signs that these fears may turn out to have been justified.
In recent times, almost all of Africa’s nastiest wars have ended in local deals. Victors have showed a reluctance to punish. Losers have not been excluded, but given places in government, binding them into the system to prevent future rebellion. Only in a few cases has a rebel or deposed head of state been punished.
Take Mozambique. In the late 1970s, Renamo, a bunch of murderers set up by the Rhodesians, was let loose on Mozambique to punish the government for supporting Rhodesia’s guerrillas. Renamo’s gangs killed, raped, maimed and looted, leaving fear and horror in their wake. Peace only became possible when the South Africans decided to stop supporting Renamo. After months of negotiation with the Mozambique government, these war criminals were given mansions, salaries and cars, and became the official opposition. In elections today, they win some 30 per cent of the vote and you can have lunch with them any day in Maputo.
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