I keep going on and on about colonial systems of discipline and punishment because that is LITERALLY what is in our law books.

Look at the dates most laws punishing Kenyans were enacted. Look at the date of the penal code.

We are still deeply within those structures.

What might looking at African practices of justice teach us? Were they perfect? Nope. Nothing is. That's a silly question.

*only 7 things are perfect, and my thieving ancestors stole 4 of them, and they didn't tell us where they put them, fuckers

My brief scan through African ideas of justice is that many were focused on repairing harm.

Who was injured?
Who was harmed?
What relations were harmed?
Could they be repaired?
How?

Who was accountable?

And I think it's very significant that accountability was understood as something held in common.

If I harmed you in a way that could be repaired, my kin helped to pay a fine or perform the labour required to repair.

How would our Kenyan ideas of justice shift if they focused on repair? If they understood accountability as a collective process whose main goal was to remain in relation with each other?

And before team "that could never happen here" start, there's a reason I said these are practices drawn from African traditions.

This was the case slightly over a hundred years ago. And had been for a long, long, long time before colonialism brought its laws.

Stuff can be changed. And we have models AND resources.