those countries, Russia excepted, to the West. Neither of these factors is seen in the African countries in this sample. Additionally, the persistence of the ideology behind armed liberation struggle seems to be a factor inhibiting the progress to democracy (Way. 2011). Thus, it seems fair to conclude that transitional justice mechanisms as a whole are possibly a necessary but not sufficient condition in the movement from authoritarian to democratic governance. 4.6 Qualitative Findings Using the findings from the quantitative analysis and the literature, brief descriptions of each transitional justice mechanism and their use are provided in the sections that follow. 4.6.1 Amnesties As was noted in the above analysis, and was well-described by Olsen et al (Olsen, Payne & Reiter. (2010), amnesty is by far the most common form of the transitional justice mechanisms applied across the world. Generally, in transitional justice amnesties play two unrelated roles. As Stan and Nedelsky noted: “On the one hand, amnesty may be understood as a legal mechanism providing redress to victims of repressive regimes and human rights violations by releasing them from prison, cancelling the charges brought against them, and even annulling their court sentences”, and, “On the other hand amnesties are more commonly understood as an instrument for granting immunity and/or pardon to perpetrators of crimes under repressive regimes” (2013:109). Hence, amnesties in pre-transitional states are different especially from other accountability mechanisms such as truth enquiries, documentation and prosecutions that can be applied where the end to conflict is nowhere in sight. Some amnesties are a sine qua non (condition) that triggers transition and that enables political transition to happen. As a result most pretransition states are tempted to dice amnesties to enable other transitional justice processes. By way of illustration, successful pre-transition amnesties includes the famous amnesty in South Africa, “resulting from a gentleman‘s agreement between Nelson Mandela and de Klerk, later confirmed in the postamble of the interim constitution, not to prosecute those responsible for the crime against humanity of apartheid.”(Schabas. 2012:180) Another apt example is Sierra Leone, in August 2003, with Charles Taylor agreed to leave power on condition of an amnesty and seeking asylum ending the bloody war. But a caveat is important at this stage. Amnesties can also be abused or used as a means to frustrate accountability. Although amnesty serves the important transitional justice goal of reconciliation, it may clash with other goals such as adjudicating on retributive justice or truth seeking. Hence, granting amnesties is a transitional justice approach that should be carefully balanced against other transitional justice goals and accompanied by a range of other methods (for instance, truth commissions) that may address the many shortcomings of amnesties. However, as accountability mechanisms, amnesties can be problematic and are often challenged. There is no consensus among academics on the validity of amnesties in 24