3.2 Conflict Transformation Theories
3.2.1 Paul Lederach’s Peace-building Model
According to Miall (2004) and Paffenholz (2013), Lederach is the founding theorist of peace- building model for conflict transformation. According to Ncube (2014), peace-building can be understood as
a set of long-term initiatives undertaken perpetually through various stages of conflict be it before, during or after and involving working together at several levels of society.
It emphasizes transformative social change that is accomplished both at the process- oriented level, and through tools such like negotiation, mediation, and reconciliation, and on structural level, through the development of resilient institutions and social process that facilitate conflict to be resolved through political, rather than violent approaches.
Paffenholz (2013) proposed that the theory of peace-building places reconciliation at the centre of developing long-term infrastructures to bridge destroyed relationships within societies. In
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view of MCZ’s intervention programmes its reconciliatory approach towards political conflicts and violence permeated all structural levels of society through perspectives of negotiations and mediation between political parties such as ZANU-PF and MDC-T. Lederach (2001) contributes the idea of conflict transformation through peace-building in a model with a pyramid (see Figure 3.1 below).
Figure 3.1: Actors and approaches to peace-building (Lederach, 1999: 39)
According to Lederach (1997), conflict transformation as a peace-building initiative, segments conflicted society into three levels. The top level is composed of national military, political and religious leaders responsible for negotiations to end the conflict. In this case MCZ through its
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leaders- ministers of the religion inclusive of bishops of the districts and the head of church as well as lay-leaders were involved in engaging politicians visiting or inviting them and also met them collectively with HOCD at symposium meetings in Victoria falls, Kariba and in South Africa. This is a top-down approach to peace-building through mediators supported by external powers such as SADC, AU or UN to reach a political conflict settlement and bring in a political transition framework from war to peace. Paffenholz (2013) added that in the theory of peace- building, the role of external peace builders in a top-down approach is limited in supporting internal actors, co-ordinating external peace efforts, engaging in a context-sensitive way, respecting local culture and applying a long-term approach, though Lederach (1997) stressed that the potential to achieve peace is in the hands of top political leaders which moves down to the rest of the population. For Lefranc (2011), top-down is initiated from the international community focusing on the political elites and institutional reforms. Campbell (2011) argued that for it to be effective, it should not bypass the local authorities as in the case of Afghanistan which failed dismally. Top-down has to ensure that dissemination of information has reached all levels of community before implementation of peace-building strategies. Ncube (2014) also confirmed that the trickle-down/top-down system is coupled with multiple challenges that can undermine the effectiveness of peace-building. This elite-driven reconciliation process can be affected by lack of an empowering constitutional/legal policy framework for peace-building activities and lack of a clear peace-building mandate.
The middle level (Figure 3.1) Lederach (1997) proposed is constituted by leaders from various sectors such as ethnic/religious, academic/intellectuals and humanitarian NGOs tackling problem-solving workshops training in conflict resolution, peace commissions through insider partial teams. Problem-solving workshops offer an informal setting to develop answers for the problem and this category of leadership influences positive opinions. The workshops provide for convening of parties, facilitating meetings and expertise on the scrutiny of conflict and processes of conflict resolutions. With regards to problem-solving workshop training, the MCZ was seen participating through conducting peace and justice awareness workshop training.
Lederach (1997) also suggested that conflict resolution training is essential for awareness.
People need to be educated about conflict and equipped with skills for handling conflict in the form of analytical, communication, negotiation or mediation skills and this can be applied across all levels of society. The peace commission developed an infrastructural framework to deal with past wrong behaviours such as the TRC in Rwanda or South Africa, which has the potential to sustain the trend of general peace.
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Lederach (1997) observed that the third level in Figure 3.1 is the grassroots level composed of local leadership, indigenous NGOs, community developers, health officials and refugee camps.
Local leadership has the responsibility to develop local peace commissions, grassroots training, prejudice reduction and psychosocial work in post-war trauma. According to Figure 3.1 above, in this case, the church as a religious institution is positioned at the top and middle levels of actors, but mainly at the middle level where it connects the grassroots and the top level in peace-building processes. The grassroots (where massive numbers of people are) need strategies to meet human basic needs of food, shelter, safety, health and counselling for the traumatised. Hence provision of humanitarian needs to victims of violence was extended by MCZ through its structures in partnership with civil society and the government. These strategies need to be facilitated by peace-building actors like civic societies including the church with the help of UNICEF. This is a bottom-up approach which succeeded in various settings such as in Somalia, Mozambique, Liberia and other conflict infested communities.
Negotiations over access to resources and compensation need to take place as well. Ncube (2014) contended that local civil society has a critical role in peace-building because it is always in touch with the grassroots in contexts of socio-political conflict and has the potential to facilitate conflict transformation. On that note, civil society’s democratisation agenda involves protection, monitoring, advocacy, participation, socialisation, building social capital, mediation as well as service delivery which is a holistic approach to peace-building initiatives.
Paffenholz (2013) asserted that the recurrence and emergency of armed conflict in Angola and Somalia, Yugoslavia and Rwanda confirmed limitations of external driven peace-building approaches (top-bottom), thus Lederach emphasised the bottom-up/internal approach to peace- building in conflict-centred communities. Paffenholz (2013) observed the recurrence of armed conflict in Somaliland which exposed limits to externally driven peace-building, while local bottom-up peace-building where Paul Lederach was actively involved led to successful reconciliation. Campbell (2011) concurred with other scholars that a participatory bottom-up approach is vital for strengthening capacities of societies to peacefully resolve disputes, develop trust, safety and social cohesion within and between communities while promoting inter-ethnic and inter-group dialogue. While a bottom-up approach to peace initiative processes is popular, it is unfortunate that bottom-up approaches can have problems if the government lacks political will and undermines effective conflict transformation processes. Ncube (2014) stressed that bottom-up peace-building initiatives by civil society are effective.
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In the views of Mani (2005) and Ncube (2014), peace-building must deal with positive and negative peace, whereby the latter represents an absence of direct violence like cessation of hostilities. The task of negative peace-building is to prevent a relapse into overt violence.
Positive peace involves the removal of structural and cultural violence through various approaches for recovery and expediting the removal of the underlying causes of internal war.
Furthermore, Ncube (2014) pointed out that the function of peace-building can be dichotomized as political peace-building which embraces activities that discourage perpetual conflict, structural peace-building so that state institutions have both legitimacy and responsiveness to provide public goods, as well as social peace-building through activities that re-establish broken relationships and the transformation of perceptions and attitudes at the root cause of conflict or violence. In view of the said activities, MCZ embraced forgiveness teachings, peace and prayer rallies characterized with lessons calling for reconciliation and healing. This analysis is congruent with Lederach’s conflict transformation and peace-building in the sense that Lederach (1997) stressed that peace initiatives must be holistic reconciliatory focused processes that reconstruct infringed relationships and bring about spaces of encounter between victims and perpetrators through values of mercy, justice, truth and peace. Botes (2003) and Paffenholz (2013) conceded that peace-building in chaotic environments requires change in personal, structural, relational and cultural aspects.
Lederach’s peace-building model “addresses and coordinates change at all three levels of society. It recognises the potential, importance, legitimacy, uniqueness, and interdependency of the needs and resources of civil society in their own peace-building processes, and promotes coordination across all levels and activities” (Shulika, 2013). Lederach (1997) reflected that it focuses on foundation establishment of multiple actors and activities aimed at achieving and sustaining reconciliation which is “rebuilding broken relationships” (Ministry of Home Affairs, 2012:14). According to Fransson (2008), all theorists argue that contemporary conflicts need involvement of the entire society in peace-building processes, mediation is indispensable, change is gradually attained and should end in win-win situations. Above all, theorists agree that this conflict transformation is centred on engagement to bring positive change rather to remain with conflict among relationships. Hence, constructive conflict brings change and the opposite is true of destructive conflict. Lederach’s approach to conflict transformation is useful for this study in the sense of being focused on what to transform as well as the goal. The process is clear in promoting multi peace-building actors, approaches, activities and had been tried and tested and which are applicable to this study.
41 3.2.2 Other conflict transformation theorists