JCTR Bulletin 4th Quarter 2011
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Date
2011Author
Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection
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Abstract
We have come to the end of 2011! This has been an eventful as well as a defining year for Africa’s political
landscape. The innate yearn for justice by peoples in their respective countries manifested itself in gallant feats
of revolutionary activity that were before inconceivable. Three dictatorial regimes were overthrown in North
Africa; in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Many innocent lives were lost in this significant period of North Africa’s
political transition, especially in Libya were the fighting was more intense and more protracted. Many people put
their lives on the line in the quest for justice. One truth that this experience has revealed to us is that sometimes
the love and longing and hope for eternal justice surmounts the fear of suffering immediate injustice. And one
lesson that this experience teaches to leaders is that those who resist progress will always find themselves on
the wrong side of history.
A similar situation ensued in Ivory Coast, were a civil war broke out as a result of the failure of an electoral
system that was perceived to be unjust. Opponents of the incumbent resolved to bring about and dispense
justice through pulling the trigger. Without setting to justify what occurred in Ivory Coast or indeed the similar
occurrences in some countries, such situations often lead us to grapple with the old but pertinent question of
the necessity of violence in the realisation of justice by a people trapped in an unjust political system that seems
to offer no other way of escape. I leave the reader to tread on their own on this volatile moral and political path
and hopefully arrive at a tenable conviction.