Restitution cannot stand as an independent idea on its own. It belongs together with other words like justice, reconciliation, transformational development and peace building. It has a personal, communal, institutional and national component to it.

Restitution can offer a strategy as to how we can reduce the structural harms of our past. ...

An illustration that may help us better understand restitution is that of a stolen bicycle. Imagine that a man’s bicycle is stolen, which means he now has no transport and cannot get to work, and he loses his job. Without his job, he cannot educate his children or support his family. Perhaps he used that bicycle to run errands for the homebound elderly ...