54

Colonisation which turned upside down social structures in Black French-speaking Africa couldn’t spare judicial institutions. Colonial power had progressively put into place a so called “indigenous justice” attending to superior colonial interests. It was based on an ambiguous system which would respect traditional institutions in the name of public order and integrate in an authoritarian way indigenous people into an imported judicial order. Of foreign origin, this colonial justice was imposed, authoritarian, organised into a centralised hierarchy and based on inequality. But how to get rid of what has become with the passing of history a common legacy for Africans? Clarity of Justice in Africa and therefore its effectiveness necessarily involves the breaking away from institutional colonial logic.