Diana Kavedza-Mochache, the Kenyan High Court judge who sentenced Pastor Paul Mackenzie to 200 years in prison, has delivered one of the most euphonious judicial sentences of our time. Her description of the fate that befell the victims of the Shakahola tragedy revealed her excellent mastery of the art of painting pain on paper.
She emphasised that the court sentence must match the darkness of the criminal deeds of Mackenzie and co-accused. She contended that an appropriate sentence should be the maximum penalty of the law, one which would strip them of their liberty, a confinement for life which would also remove them from the light of human breath.
While she intended to give Mackenzie and the majority of the co-accused persons a death sentence, she observed that for persons who regard death as deliverance, a death sentence may be perceived not as punishment but as triumph and a form of martyrdom. She thus handed down several other sentences, including 160, 140, 100 and 10 years’ imprisonment to the accused.
While the families and friends of the Shakahola victims welcomed the judgement, they remained dissatisfied that the sentencing was not punitive enough. One wonders what a more satisfying sentencing would look like. It makes more sense today that when the Biblical King David was given an option between receiving punishment for his sin from either men or God, he chose to fall into the hands of God rather than men.
No punishment seems to ever fully satisfy the human search for justice. Indeed, many other relatives of the Shakahola victims argued that justice should have involved tasking the local state agencies to explain how they failed in their security mandate of protecting the people. For others, justice meant knowing exactly where their relatives disappeared and compensation for their loss.
With teary eyes, many others expressed frustration at the fact that the sentence would still not bring their children back. Similar frustrations also emerged in Uganda this year after Christopher Okello Onyum was sentenced to death by hanging for the foul murder of four nursery school children. The fate of many public interest cases involving aggravated wrongs to society is that, in the rush to showcase the idea that justice must not only be done but also be seen to be done, the court becomes performative.
The absurdity of the Shakahola criminal case is more so that the sentencing of Mackenzie and co-accused is for 191 counts of murder yet over 400 people perished in the Shakahola tragedy. The victims for whom Mackenzie and co-accused are not yet charged are more than those they have been charged for. Mackenzie still faces six other court cases. However, the hope that the courts shall satisfy the human search for justice stands far away from reach.
What is to be done when the courts cannot satisfy our search for justice? We need to rethink the modern idea of justice as punishment. When King David chose to fall in the hands of God rather than men, his argument was that God is greatly merciful (2 Samuel 24: 14). Mercy is not necessarily a substitute for punishment, but it embodies the promise of understanding the circumstances of the perpetrator. Understanding the circumstances of the perpetrator aids not only the process of finding closure for the survivors but also imagining state reforms to safeguard the future of humanity against recurrences of particular tragedies.
Survivors often find closure in understanding the mind of the perpetrator, whether excusable or not. The success of the truth and reconciliation commissions on African soil was this possibility of the perpetrators and survivors of violence to take each other through their respective emotions and perspectives.
#URL0023https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/oped/commentary/can-justice-of-our-courts-satisfy-the-human-soul–5670232