This thesis considers the question of how, in practice, a regional organization comes to take the leading role in managing a peacemaking intervention. More specifically, it considers which criteria, if any, are used in the choice of a lead actor in peacemaking efforts, and how the principles of 'subsidiarity, complementarity and comparative advantage,' as laid out in the Memorandum of Understanding between the AU and the subregional organizations, are being applied in this decision making. The recent example cases of Zimbabwe, Kenya and Cote d'Ivoire are specifically analyzed to show the reality of the working relationship in the present.

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The concept of 'restorative justice' has in recent years been widely invoked in the transitional justice literature. The term is however often used loosely, inconsistently and in apparently different senses. This minor dissertation addresses this dilemma by bringing together three influential bodies of work on restorative justice and exploring what each body of work means by the term 'restorative justice'. The three bodies of work are that of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, criminal justice theorists and accounts of African Traditional Justice Mechanisms. With a clearer picture of what these respective sources mean when referring to restorative justice, the discussion then turns to the potential relevance and significance of these conceptions of restorative justice for transitional justice. The three bodies of work on restorative justice, while distinct in their own right, are brought into conversation through applying a uniform methodology. This methodology draws on John Rawls' distinction between concept and conception. Given that restorative justice is not concerned with the rules of ordinary language usage a conceptual analysis is not possible. What is possible is to follow a route of enquiry that explores the different conceptions of restorative justice reflected in each body of work. These conceptions are discussed against the backdrop of a transitional justice framework. This minor dissertation does not make any claims regarding the concept of restorative justice. Rather what are delivered are some findings about the conceptions of restorative justice that feature within the three bodies of work under discussion. The conceptions of 3 restorative justice differ in certain respects but also overlap in others. The crucial point of overlap concerns a sociological or relational approach to crime and wrongdoing which requires that all parties to a conflict are involved in its resolution. Herein lies the chief contribution of restorative justice to transitional justice, namely that restorative justice embodies what Jon Elster deems to be the task of transitional justice - that a society judge itself.

Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references.

This dissertation provides a critical gender analysis of the Kenyan Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission's (TJRC) recommendations for reparations. While 'gender' describes the form of analysis undertaken, this dissertation is focused on how gender has interacted with other factors to influence women and girls' experiences of violence and harm during the TJRC's post-independence mandate period (1963 to early 2008) and whether or not the TJRC's proposed reparations program offers gender-sensitive remedies. Therefore, the main question this dissertation seeks to determine is: to what extent does the TJRC's Reparations Framework a) address the types of violence and harm commonly experienced by women, b) encourage their participation in developing the framework, c) promote a change to female victims and survivors' lived realities and d) address the root causes of this violence? This question is explored through an examination of primary and secondary sources such as empirical research on violence against women in Kenya, academic theory on gender-sensitive reparations programs, reports and literature produced by civil society institutions and the TJRC's Final Report. The dissertation's analysis draws on normative theory regarding reparations from scholars such as de Greiff (2006) and Hamber (2009) among others. The civil society document, The Nairobi Declaration (2007) and the literature on gender sensitive reparations, specifically that of Rubio-Marin (2009), Manjoo (2010), Duggan and Jacobson (2009), Durbach and Chappell (2014) act as guideposts for this analysis. This literature establishes the basic elements of any gender-sensitive reparations framework, namely: participation, rehabilitation and transformation. Overall, the TJRC was dedicated to understanding women's experiences of human rights violations and recommending remedy to women acutely impacted by violence. However, due to limited funds, controversies over the suitability of its Chairman, Bethuel Kiplagat, a poor relationship with civil society and oversights of its own, the Commission faced difficulty in securing meaningful participation of women in the development of its recommendations for reparations. However, notwithstanding a few oversights, it is argued that the content of the TJRC's recommendations for reparations are gender sensitive. Given the gravity of violence and the massive numbers of victims in need of redress, the recommendations for reparations separate victims in terms of violations endured and their level of vulnerability. Overall, this eligibility criterion is responsive to the types of violence and harm commonly endured by women. The TJRC's proposed reparations include elements of acknowledgement, rehabilitation, prevention and transformation. With the Commission's recommendations to provide medical and psychosocial vouchers, pensions as well as collective reparations in the form of official acknowledgment, institutional reforms and gender violence recovery centers, the reparations program has the potential to impact both the lived experiences of victims and survivors as well as in a small way, subvert Kenya's deeply entrenched gender hierarchy. With a combination of individual and collective reparations, the TJRC's recommendations for reparations, if implemented, could play a role in combating the micro and macro impact of gendered violence in Kenyan society.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 122-131).

The Marikana Massacre of 16th August 2012 was a watershed moment for post- Apartheid South African politics. News headlines and images depicting an ANC-led South African police killing 44 unarmed miners, striking for a wage increase, ruptured the TRC's official narrative that state violence of this proportion belonged to a bygone colonial, or Apartheid past. Following the massacre, the Marikana Commission of Inquiry was launched as an official inquiry into what was referred to as the 'tragic incidents at Marikana'. However, as the Commission conducted its work its actual role became increasingly ambivalent and ambiguous to the public, as well as to witnesses who testified. Legally, it was a judicial commission of inquiry with a strict fact-finding mandate, yet the official discourse invoked suggests it had additional distinctive aims to achieve 'truth, restoration, and justice', which are functions traditionally associated with Truth Commissions, in the field of Transitional Justice, and more particularly with South Africa's TRC. This ambiguity in the Marikana Commission's function points to the larger issue that this thesis addresses – the ambiguity in the exact role and function of, as well as the relationship between, generic commissions of inquiry and Truth Commissions. The functions are interrogated using the concept of 'tumult commissions', introduced by Adam Sitze-- a subtype of commission of inquiry used by colonial administrations in lieu of criminal tribunals, to investigate political violence following the State's violent suppression of some major insurgency. Over and above 'fact-finding', Sitze claims that 'tumult commissions' were political tools deployed to 'whitewash' and justify State killings as unfortunate necessities in order to restore peace and order, and to legitimate the authority of the state. I anchor the current ambiguity in the role of the Marikana Commission, both in legal capacity, its method and official discourse, in a longer historical trajectory that extends from the Jamaica Royal Commission (1866) to the Sharpeville Commission (1960) and the TRC (1996-1998). The notion of official truth-seeking is problematised using an analytical framework that distinguishes between objective 'fact-finding', 'truthseeking' and the various associated narrative genres of 'tumult commissions' and 'truth commissions'. Through a critical analysis of canonic academic literature, official commission reports and legislation, the thesis highlights glaring contradictions and inconsistencies in claims to official 'truth-seeking' when combined with quasi-judicial aims to achieve accountability and 'justice'. It concludes that the 'truth' of 'official' truth-seeking commissions is always constrained by the overall objectives of the government of the day. Although the TRC was able to promote a more open and inclusive institution to deal with the intractable issues of 'truth' and 'accountability' following state-sanctioned violence, the cases show that when broader social and economic issues are excluded from the 'regime of truth' of official commissions, it only creates fertile soil in which similar tragedies may reoccur in a post-colonial, and post- TRC South Africa.

Bibliography: leaves 113-118. / This research project comes out of my own 7-year engagement with the Zimbabwe women's movement. It reconstructs a herstory of Zimbabwe Women's organising with the aim of reinstating a herstory in order to challenge malestream narratives that seem intent on disappearing women. In doing this it seeks to examine the nature of women's movement in Zimbabwe during the period 1995 - 2000, which facilitates a deeper exploration of women's collective action in a challenging national context.

Bibliography: leaves 76-90. / A total of 813 male and female high school students in the Western Cape between grades 10 and 12 completed a questionnaire survey on their eating attitudes and behaviours. The mean age for the sample was 16.77 years. The survey included a Demographic Questionnaire, the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-26), the Bulimic Investigatory Test, Edinburgh (BITE), the Questionnaire of Eating and Weight Patterns Revised (QEWP-R) and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale.

Local ownership is a major component of what is considered best practice in contemporary peacebuilding. It seeks to reallocate authority between local and international actors in peacebuilding contexts. In its purest form, it requires that the design, implementation and evaluation of reform should be led by local actors. Therefore, under local ownership, external actors are circumscribed to a supporting role in post-conflict reconstruction. Local ownership is thus a critique of the tendency towards top-down internationally led peacebuilding reform. The primacy of local ownership is evident in its endorsement in both academic literature and policy documents. Underpinning the importance of local ownership is a set of normative claims. It is argued that local ownership produces reform that is more legitimate and sustainable, in addition to developing democratic governance as the foundation to a post-war regime. Subsequently, what scholarship on local ownership has sought to clarify is conceptual content, including the complex question of who is local. Furthermore, there have been different suggestions on how to operationalise local ownership, and more broadly how to bridge the prevailing gap between rhetoric and practice. What has not been sufficiently done is an empirical defence of these normative claims. For example, does the process of ownership actually result in the development of democratic governance? More importantly, are the outcomes of local ownership consistent with the broader liberal peacebuilding paradigm, especially the latter's democratic disposition? This gap in the literature, is the research problem driving this dissertation. This dissertation seeks to understand whether there is evidence of a positive relationship between local ownership and democratic governance within the broader liberal peacebuilding project. My guiding research question involves determining how essential local ownership is to the development of democratic governance. This relationship is explored though the lens of SSR as one of the pillars of peacebuilding. This is because the literature on local ownership has been developed most in this area. The relationship between democratic governance and SSR, specifically within the military, can be understood in terms of democratic control of the military. Democratic control is operationalised in this thesis as civilian control and oversight (executive, legislative and broader civil society). Taking this into consideration, there are two paths of investigation. Does the absence of ownership undermine democratic control of the military and does its presence develop it? Liberia and Sierra Leone are the case studies through which this question is explored. Comparatively, Liberia is meant to represent the absence of ownership while Sierra Leone demonstrates more substantive attempts at local ownership. Focusing on the reform of the military, I argue that the absence of local ownership undermined democratic governance in terms of civilian control and oversight in Liberia. The opposite is true in Sierra Leone. However, there is evidence that outcomes which develop democratic control and oversight of the military can result from activities were ownership is both present and absent. As such, local ownership of SSR is sufficient, but not necessary for the development of democratic governance within the military. That notwithstanding, local ownership is still of immense importance. Its importance resides in the production of reform that is more context specific and thus contextually relevant. Local ownership produces reform which the host country can understand and sustain, a claim that the existing literature attests to. In this way, local ownership is important in bridging the gap between the beneficiaries of security and the broader security architecture. While gains in democratic control of the military can be achieved where ownership is present or absent, the sustainability of these gains is intricately linked to local ownership. Local ownership may not be necessary for democratic governance in the military, but it is necessary for sustainable democratic governance, as well as reform rooted in contextual realities and the needs of the country undergoing reform.