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In many authoritarian African regimes, justice no longer only protects the legal order: it becomes an instrument of political neutralization, used against opponents, journalists, activists and citizens whose words disturb power.
Justice should be the citizen's last refuge from arbitrary detention. It should guarantee equality before the law, protect fundamental freedoms and prevent political power from turning its particular will into a general rule. Yet, in many African States, this protective function is deeply weakened.
In authoritarian regimes, frontal democracies and systems resulting from military coups d'état, courts are frequently mobilized to remove opponents, intimidate journalists, silence whistleblowers and punish citizens expressing opinions that are deemed hostile to power.
The criminal qualifications used are often sufficiently broad and imprecise to permit all interpretations: breach of state security, dissemination of false news, offence against the head of State, disorder of public order, damage to the morale of the armed forces, call for insurrection or discredit of institutions.
Behind their legal appearance, these incriminations make it possible to turn a political criticism, a journalistic investigation or a mere publication on social networks into a threat against the nation. Disagreement then ceases to be treated as a normal element of democratic debate and becomes criminally suspicious behaviour.
The instrumentalization of justice does not always imply the existence of an explicit order addressed to the judiciary. In an environment where careers, assignments, promotions and material resources depend largely on the executive branch, some prosecutors and judges can anticipate political expectations.
Subordination then becomes systemic. The magistrate does not necessarily need direct investigation: he can intuitively understand which cases should be prosecuted, who should be detained and which decisions are likely to satisfy the power.
The parquet floor occupies a central place in this mechanics. Supervision of prosecutions, frequent use of pre-trial detention, increased counts of charges and the choice of heavily punished offences can sometimes punish even before trial. Deprivation of liberty becomes an early penalty.
In these circumstances, the trial is no longer necessarily used to establish the truth or determine individual responsibility. It can become an institutional setting designed to give an appearance of legality to a political decision already taken.
This drift has a considerable impact on society as a whole. It creates fear, encourages self-censorship, weakens the press, drys up public debate and transforms political engagement into high-risk activity. The citizen no longer knows whether the law protects him or whether he can be turned against him.
When courts are perceived as auxiliaries of power, judicial decisions gradually lose their moral authority. Even legally founded judgements become suspicious, as institutional confidence has been destroyed by the accumulation of selective prosecutions and disproportionate convictions.
This episode analyses the sources of this justice transformed into a weapon: dependence of the judiciary, domination of the prosecutor's office, misuse of security laws, punitive pretrial detention, weakness of counter-powers and internalisation of political expectations by the judiciary.
Finally, it raises an essential question: what remains of the rule of law when the one who should protect the citizen becomes the instrument of its neutralisation? Restoring justice then requires much more than reform of legislation. The institutional independence of the judiciary must be guaranteed, the executive must be limited, the prosecution must be regulated, public freedoms must be protected and a genuine culture of judicial responsibility must be restored.
