A BBC report on a form of indigenous jurisprudence:
Rwanda gave us the "gacaca" courts, which, after many false endings, wound up their business this week.More here
The numbers for the genocide were staggering, and it came as no surprise to learn that up to two million people had been tried in these "lawn" courts that made the law accessible to every villager without resource to the formal judiciary.
In any case, that formal judiciary had been decimated by the conflict.
Lawyers and judges had either fled or been killed and the new rulers needed to do something to stem the anguish and to return the country to normality.
Given the number of deaths, the accused were clogging up the cells as well as the court system.
Not only were the gacaca courts a novel solution to fast-track justice in a country where so much killing had occurred, they were also an ancient African solution.
Self-reflection
For the airing of grievances on the open grass - without the lawyers in wigs, the judges in cloaks now common in most African judiciary systems - has precedence in most African villages.