Editorial

The Case of Mozambique" by Professor Jon Unruh, an anthropologist from McGill University, implicitly challenges legal professionals and other practitioners to be more attentive to important property rights issues in contemporary post-conflict situations.For curiously, the place of property in a post-conflict dispensation, especially land ownership, restitution and expropriation which often form part of the litany of individual and group grievances that escalate social tension or lead to war in the first place, are largely ignored in the literature on post-conflict societies.For instance, in Zimbabwe, the thorny issue of land redistribution did not receive much attention in the immediate post-independence period, but has resurfaced as one of the outstanding questions in that country.It is perhaps crucial for countries with similar historic trajectory in the region such as South Africa and Namibia to take cue from the inherent challenges of failing to deal with land restitution in a timely fashion; since it would remain a potential minefield that could implode at a time when these countries are least prepared for the consequences.To date, the issue of land redistribution has not gained prominence in the literature on post-conflict societies.This may partly be because it is now fashionable for scholars to engage in largely intractable moral and philosophical debates about justice versus peace, or peace versus justice, understood in the narrow sense of truth commissions versus individual criminal accountability mechanisms.It appears as though both or either of these institutions are now mandatory on any credible postconflict peace physician's prescription.Indeed, relatively few writers appear to be interested in mundane questions about social injustice, or social justice, in respect of property rights and their possible implications for the cessation of hostilities and solidification of the often fragile peace in post-war environments.Yet, as Unruh ably demonstrates through his Mozambique case study, the restoration and durability of peace and economic growth in the painful aftermath of conflict and mass atrocity may well depend upon how successfully governments and the international community factor in the social context when establishing restitution regimes to redress actual or perceived historic wrongs regarding property rights.

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