Fifteen - Popular Justice in Cape Verde

Summary

This chapter analyses a different type of the popular justice with reference to Cape Verde Islands after their independence from Portuguese colonialism (1975). It is a form of institutionalised justice, officially recognised as such, incorporated in one way or another into the general justice administration system (which is sometimes broadly described as popular justice in light of its local normative, institutional, cultural, and discursive nature, accessibility and deprofessionalised personnel. The Cape Verde local or people’s courts were founded as an extension of indigenous forms of justice administration created as alternatives to colonial law and justice in the liberated zones in Guinea‑Bissau. They were initially adopted informally, then made official in 1979. Through the local courts, the state aimed to encourage popular participation and create spaces in which community culture could flourish, while the values and actions which they stimulated were defined in terms of political criteria directed towards achieving a higher purpose, namely building socialism. I begin with a close-up of a local court at work on the island of São Vicente, before analysing in detail the interfaces and contradictions between the political and judicial legitimacy of the people’s courts, ending with the conclusions of the research and a postscript written forty years later.