Interrogating a Postcolonial Ethics of Peaceful Coexistence from African Literature

The aftermath of colonial violence, civil war, ethnic conflict, and systemic gendered oppression has left postcolonial African communities confronting a profound moral paradox. While healing requires honest remembrance of past injustices, such remembrance can also sustain grievance and resentment, thereby complicating the possibility of genuine peaceful coexistence.
This paper argues that existing Western frameworks of transitional justice and reconciliation, despite their normative ambition, often lack philosophical adequacy in addressing this paradox. It contends that these frameworks insufficiently engage the moral traditions, communal obligations, and narrative resources through which postcolonial African communities negotiate the relationship between memory, justice, and coexistence.
The study advances the claim that postcolonial African literature constitutes a philosophically distinctive site of moral memory and reconciliatory imagination. Through narrative engagements with conflict, remembrance, and coexistence, such literature both exemplifies and critically interrogates prevailing philosophical approaches.
Focusing on Travellers (2019), Tremor (2023), and Rape: A South African Nightmare (2015), the paper develops an original framework termed postcolonial reconciliation ethics. This framework is grounded in three interrelated principles: obligatory memory, relational moral repair, and coexistence across difference.
The paper contributes to moral philosophy, postcolonial ethics, and memory studies, while also engaging the philosophical foundations of the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly those concerned with peace, justice, and strong institutions, as well as partnerships for sustainable development.