10th U6+ Consortium of African Universities International Conference

Using Liberian novelist Elma Shaw’s Redemption Road as a stepping-stone, this paper sets out to delve into the vexed issue of justice in the aftermath of war. The article argues that the advent of a lasting peace in war-torn countries oftentimes hinges on how powers that be elect to handle past wrongs and injustices. Contentious debates play out as to what to give precedence over: restorative justice or retributive justice. The latter emphasizes infliction of just deserts on perpetrators of crimes as a pathway to peace whilst the former is forward-looking in that it favours mending fences between erstwhile foes through inclusion and negotiation. Interestingly, Bendu Marie Lewis, Elma Shaw’s lead character cum female narrator, has no qualms about sticking her neck out in her all-out drive to get justice for victims of crimes and human rights violations during the civil war in the West-African state of Liberia. Bendu’s adamant refusal to cave in to many war survivors’ insistence that she should “forget, let it go,” or “let bygones be bygones” (9) carries the heavy burden of searing traumatic memories that can only be alleviated by dint of bringing her former torturers to book. Her creation of a non-governmental organization gone by the name of Peace in Practice (PIP) to help women’s war-victims find closure is aligned with a frantic search for full-blown prosecution of wartime criminals. Bendu’s chance encounter in downtown Monrovia with Commander Cobra or Moses Varney – a one-time notorious rebel commander – turns out to be a game changer as it twists the knife in the wound, and fuels her desire for peace and healing by having criminals punished to the full force of the law. From a methodological approach, this paper taps into an array of perspectives drawn inter alia from the social sciences, psychocriticism, and the humanities.