The Zwelethemba Model is a model for deepening democracy and advancing local justice for poor people living in townships in South Africa. At the core of the model is a community-based conflict resolution process based around the use of Peace Committees. The Peace Committees comprise local township residents engaged in two activities: peacemaking and peacebuilding. We argue that the interaction between societies in transition and the difficulties in restoring the Rule of Law, often leads to the emergence of forms of non-state justice. Although a lot of these structures declined to vigilantism or use brutal and violent techniques to resolve conflicts, the Community Peace Programme claims to offer township residents with a better experience of non-state justice. On the one hand this thesis focuses on the Zwelethemba Model and is a modest attempt of connecting the principles and values underpinning this model to the restorative justice ideas. We argue that the Zwelethemba Model can be viewed as a restorative justice model, in which the peace gathering can be considered as a variant of restorative conferencing and takes the role of problem-solving forum. We focus our attention on similarities and differences with restorative justice. We conclude that the Peace Committees are committed to both a restorative process and restorative values. The peacemaking process – despite its distinct features – can be regarded as a restorative process and so does the peacebuilding process. Through a restorative process the Peace Committees seem to succeed in their efforts to build, empower and transform communities, build social capital and establish a culture of problem-solving. On the other hand this thesis tries to identify strengths and weaknesses of the Peace Committees by means of an attitude – and opinion study. It explores some of the aspects of the Zwelethemba Model and their relevance for the restorative character of the model.
