Beyond human rights – confronting atrocity with healing and reconciliation: Merging African perspectives in a globalising world

There has been the usual period within social change where, to establish recognition and strength (prerequisites for an effective presence in dialogue and discourse) there is a polarisation or overreaction against the incumbent (i.e., defining oneself as ‘different from’ them). The force it takes against established and resistant hegemony to create this space is reflective of an exaggerated and confrontational antithesis – each spawning an equally distorted backlash (Fatnonwa and Pickett 2002; Odora Hoppers 2002). By scrutinising the concept of ‘values’, the ‘human rights’ framework and discourse, and setting them against the backdrop of the historical violences and atrocities Africa has suffered, this article calls for more than social change: it calls for a maturity of dialogue (epistemologically) with the excised, which should set the stage for an inclusive global order. There is a need to highlight and honestly recognise the existence of African perspectives that have accompanied successive global policies and international imperatives. This article argues that from African knowledge systems, clues and tools can be found epistemologically, conceptually and methodologically, to take us where contemporary academic and policy imperatives rooted in Western canons cannot or do not allow. The article takes human rights as a case in point.