The Sunday Mail
Dr Norman Chivasa
Within the last three decades or so, efforts have been directed at building formal and informal peace committees in conflict-ridden and conflict-prone communities in many parts of the world.
These structures are formed either as a reaction to a particular conflict, in which case their main purpose is to contribute to the management of the conflict and to post-conflict peace-building, or as a precautionary measure, in which case their main purpose is to prevent the eruption or escalation of nascent micro-level disputes into violent and more widespread conflicts.
Formal peace committees (FPCs) are structures whose members are official representatives of sides to the conflict, with official mandate from a piece of legislation.
In contrast, informal peace committees (IPCs) are a replica, but whose members are volunteers from all walks of life in the community in question and with no official mandate from a piece of legislation.
In Zimbabwe, both types of structures have been set up in diverse communities at varying times over the last decade and a half.
Since independence in 1980, Zimbabwe has instituted three major infrastructures for peace, (I4P) namely: the national reconciliation policy of 1980; the Organ on National Healing, Reconciliation and Integration (ONHRI) of 2009; and the current National Peace and Reconciliation Commission (NPRC) of 2013.
NPRC
The NPRC is established by the Constitution of Zimbabwe (Amendment No. 20 of 2013) through Section 251 to address the legacy of post-independence violence and to achieve healing, reconciliation and cohesion.
Through NPRC, Government has demonstrated its broad goal to restore a functioning society.
Theoretically, the NPRC is intended to carry on with the work of its forerunner, ONHRI.
NPRC recently established FPCs dubbed provincial peace committees across the country’s 10 provinces between May and June 2019, and there are plans to cascade these structures to village levels across the country.
In many parts of the world, FPCs have been created and most, if not all, have followed the route that the NPRC has taken.
In South Africa, for example, FPCs were established under the aegis of the National Peace Accord of 1994.
In Serbia, FPCs were established through the Committee on Inter-Community Relations of 2002.
Also, in Sierra Leone, they were established through the District Code of Conduct Monitoring Committees, to mention but a few examples.
Ironically, although these peace initiatives were noble, evidence has shown that top-down peace initiatives are driven by the trickle-down approach to peace, which has not worked till now.
The failure to produce the intended results by these top-down approaches is partly because peace does not follow the trickle-down trend; it is the other way round.
Peace enforced or prescribed from outside community traditions and social systems is not peace.
Community-driven initiatives
However, for provincial peace committees to work, there are lessons that should be drawn from community-driven peace initiatives.
There is also need to strategically devise a way to engage or ride on community initiatives to achieve sustainable peace.
Clearly, informal peace committees need to be brought into mainstream peace-building efforts using local community-driven initiatives as a vehicle to create a greater impact in addressing peace challenges in Zimbabwe.
History of IPCs in Zimbabwe
The first appearance of peace committees in Zimbabwe is attributed to Zimbabwe Civic Education Trust (ZIMCET), a grassroots organisation founded in 2000 following electoral- and farm invasion-related violence.
Using the workshop model, ZIMCET has facilitated the creation of peace committees throughout the 10 provinces.
Another civic organisation that is also on record for setting up peace committees is the Ecumenical Church Leaders’ Forum (ECLF) founded in 2008.
It was ostensibly created in response to the upsurge of electoral violence in 2008.
Using a peace-building programme called conflict prevention, management, resolution and transformation (CPMRT), ECLF also facilitated the creation of IPCs in both rural and urban communities across Zimbabwe.
Other civic organisations that have also advanced the peace committee framework in Zimbabwe are Heal Zimbabwe Trust, Southern Institute of Peace-Building and Development and Envision Zimbabwe, to mention but a few.
IPCs are created through a procedure called self-selection.
It is a method used by local people in the community to create a structure in which people volunteer themselves into the committee.
But the community approves individuals that meet culture-specific qualities such as faithfulness, honesty and trustworthiness.
They also should be respectable and demonstrate the ability to resolve conflict.
Overall, IPCs are set up by the community to advance their common interests.
These type of structures were created in Wajir district of Kenya, South Kordofan in Sudan, Colombia, in some districts in DRC, Burundi, Uganda and Afghanistan, to mention a few examples.
IPCs are made of up of individuals representing different constituencies at community level.
These constituencies may include civil servants, church leaders, traditional leaders, state security sector actors, political party leaders, women, youth and other stakeholders such as organisations operating at community level.
In other words, IPCs comprise of different social groups that include youth, women, men, elderly people, people living with disabilities and religious groups.
These social groups represent different cultural, ethnic, political, religious, economic status and power dynamics existing in communities.
The inclusive nature of IPCs make them more empowering in that both men and women occupy strategic positions and participate in decision-making processes equally.
However, although IPCs embrace inclusivity in their composition, which represents multi-perspectives, they have some challenges.
They often do not have the capacity to deal directly with political-level conflict.
This limitation is especially noticeable during election time when political polarisation in communities takes centre stage.
Even formal peace committees formed mainly by members of different political parties are often found wanting during these times.
This paralysis is mainly due to the fact that these types of conflicts are usually instigated from outside the community by people at a higher level within the political formations involved, such that the local political functionaries merely follow orders.
Yet the lower-level social conflicts that the IPCs often deal with contribute to the political stability or otherwise of the community, as they are the fodder on which political polarisation feeds.
Thus, the more effective they are at the lower levels of social interaction and relationships, the more relevant their work becomes at higher levels in the community.
Reach and scope
Informal peace committees can reach a lot more people than other FPCs in the communities in which they operate, because the latter’s intervention is planned and implemented from outside.
Because IPCs are based in the community and, therefore, are there most, if not all, the time, members of the community have access to such interventions almost as and when a need arises.
This applies whether the people concerned are the victims and/or perpetrators to tell their stories, neutrals to contribute ideas to the resolution of the conflict, or the general population to input ideas into a long-term peace-building strategy.
And because members of the IPCs are ordinary local people, they have access to people and situations in the community that outsiders would not have.
For example, they can link the process with a cross-section of the community, both vertically to include the top echelons, ordinary residents and everybody in between, and horizontally across all social divisions.
This gives IPCs access to information and opportunities to resolve conflicts or build peace, which information is not always readily available to outsiders such as formal peace committees.
By the same token, IPCs know the history of the area and the conflict in question, and have an in-depth (albeit) instinctive understanding of the collective mentality of the community, factors that play a subliminal yet crucial role in the nature and progression of the conflict.
However, for these things to happen as intended, much depends on a number of factors relating to the composition and internal dynamics of the IPC.
Way Forward
NPRC is currently forming FPCs.
Some important points to note are: the most important factor with respect to composition of peace committees is the calibre of people that make up the IPC; this relates to issues of personality, status in the community, level of education and degree of maturity, among others.
Naturally, people are more prepared to heed the advice and censure of those that they look up to or respect in some way.
The internal dynamics of the IPC hinge on the extent to which members are prepared to work together, to which the FPC/IPC itself is at peace with itself.
This often emanates from a clash of personalities or divergence in understanding the vision and mission of the peace committee and the host community.
Thus, at the formation stage of the FPC/IPC, a lot of attention and effort must be expended in selecting the right calibre of would-be members of the peace committee and educating them on the vision and mission of the IPC and the nature of its work before taking them in.
For example, the members recruited must have the ability to perform the vertical link role, to work with all manner of people in the community, to function as a cohesive unit and, perhaps above all, to stay on course as the work ahead is not an overnight event.
Overall, peace enforced/prescribed from outside community traditions and social systems is not peace.
As such, while Government policy on national reconciliation in Zimbabwe is a requirement, approaches to reconciliation should be open to accommodate existing institutions, in particular the traditional customary court system and IPCS, which represent the peace and reconciliation interests and aspirations of local people, if social reconciliation is to be realised.
Dr Norman Chivasa is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Durban University of Technology, South Africa. His research focuses on community peace-building and informal infrastructures for peace. Email: [email protected]
