Evaporating Indigenous Knowledge Based Justice System Among the Maasai Pastoralists of Kenya
摘要
Kenya is a heterogeneous society that comprises over forty ethnic groups. The diversity validates the need for recognition of rationalized individual community’s justice dispensation arrangements by the country’s judicial system. This Chapter shares on how changes in the country’s governance has affected acknowledgement of participation of the informal justice indulgences to assure equity. The conversation is based on experiences among the Maasai pastoralists community of Kajiado County that inhabit the South of Kenya to explore the implications of the presence or absence of appreciation and housing of the peoples’ justice system and the resultant consequences. The study is also informed by literature review, official reports and structured questionnaires administered to key opinion leaders and selected household heads. A conclusion is that while the indigenous justice system is remedial and restorative of wrongdoers into the community, the formal one is bent on punishments which place corporeal and psychological strains on reprobates. Illuminated is that although the indigenous ways of bestowing justice is marginalized by the conventional one, its approval has received heightened attractiveness among the Maasai pastoral community as an alternative legal pathway, principally driven by the distress arising out of the complications experienced in the government courts. Outcomes present the indigenous justice system as viable and relevant for the pastoral community, justifying its place in the national legal framework. The study vouches for supporting the indigenous legal institutions their justice mandates, building their capacity and, linking them to the formal justice system can improve access to reasonableness in arriving at palpable justice.