The literature on transitional justice tends to conceive of transition as a bounded process that takes place immediately following a conflict. There is broad agreement on the key elements of transition, including the re/building of democratic systems of governance, the re/development of independent judicial systems, and an emphasis on modes of history and truth telling intended to deal with past human rights violations through both retributive and restorative justice mechanisms. The goal is generally understood as entailing the re/creation of the social and political institutions required to enable and sustain a political transformation in newly peaceful societies.
Significantly, however, this literature tends to separate historical conflict and contemporary transition. While the similarities between historical and recent conflict are often acknowledged, the remedies available under the transitional justice framework are not applied to the violence and historical injustice that are inherent to settler colonialism. This deliberate omission creates some troubling silences in the transitional justice literature, which this paper seeks to address.
This paper maps the similarities across historical and contemporary conflicts, specifically comparing Australia and South Africa. It considers what might be learned about the processes and challenges of transition if an historical approach is taken to transitional justice. By expanding the temporal frame, the paper suggests that transition may in fact be a far lengthier, more complex, and more challenging process than the literature generally concedes.
