As regards pre-transition justice mechanisms, it can be seen in Table 10 that there were not many meaningful differences between Africa and the World, with both amnesties and domestic criminal prosecutions dominating. Table 10: Pre-transition justice mechanisms, Africa compared to the rest Amnesty Truth Commission Domestic Criminal Prosecutions Civil Trials Foreign criminal prosecutions Reparations Vettings World 89.3% 10.7% 71.4% 3.6% 7.1% 0.0 7.1% Africa 84.2% 5.3% 73.7% 0 10.5% 0 5.3% Here the point made earlier stands: that amnesties were aimed at securing the transition and domestic criminal prosecutions were dealing with threats to the state and not transitional justice issues. Table 11: Post-transition justice mechanisms, Africa compared to the rest Amnesty Truth Commission Domestic Criminal Prosecutions Civil Trials Foreign criminal prosecutions Reparations Vettings Customary justice World 75% 28.6% 89.3% 3.6% 14.3% 14.3% 35.7% 7.1% Africa 78.9% 36.8% 89.5% 10.5% 21.1% 36.8% 36.8% 5.3% Again there were few meaningful differences between the two groups in respect of post-transitional justice mechanisms, apart from a greater frequency of both reparations and foreign criminal prosecutions for the countries in the African sample. Here the prosecutions of Charles Taylor, President Omar al-Bashir, and, most recently, Hissène Habre. Thus, overall there are virtually no differences in transitional justice mechanisms between the two groups compared here. The differences are rather in the political domain. African countries in this sample were more likely to have emerged from an authoritarian regime based on a single individual, the “big man” of common political discourse on Africa, for this person to have negotiated a transition, and ensuring amnesty, but very few have reached the status of Free on Freedom House‟s Democracy Index. This would suggest for African countries that factors other than transitional justice processes need to be addressed in order for full democracy to be attained after authoritarian rule. Here it may be speculated that the growing literature on the persistence of liberation movements may be helpful (Southhall. 2013), as well as more careful attention to the nature of the political settlements that accompanied the transition (Bratton. 2014; Menocal. 2015). It seems probable that both these sets of factors are highly interactive, and that liberation movements tend not to create the kinds of inclusive governance processes needed for a developmental and democratic state. Given these findings, it seems that examining states according to their freedom status might give a better understanding about the contribution of transitional justice mechanisms. 18

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