Journal of Peacebuilding & Development

Since culture is deeply rooted in human beings of all groups, its role in both causing conflict and resolving conflict can be quite dynamic. Through time-proven traditions of dealing with conflict, culture can function constructively and meaningfully. Culture can also harbour divisive elements, however, which lead to discrimination against people of other cultures, and to conflict. When a breakthrough to mutual cultural understanding and respect has taken place, however, much more than an ad hoc peace agreement can be reached. A transformed and coexistential situation can become a reality. Both traditional and contemporary methods of dealing with conflict should be explored and utilised as necessary. Appropriate development, of which the people concerned can take ownership and to which they can commit themselves, should be supported. A climate of harmonious but realistic and natural coexistence should be promoted.

In many parts of the world, theatre has been used to educate, socialise, indoctrinate and raise consciousness. In contemporary Africa, theatre practitioners have lamented the fragmentation of human life and the erosion of peace as a result of human rights abuses, income inequality, poverty, lack of access to services, crime and wars. The aim of this paper is to examine how African theatre practitioners have used theatre as a cultural tool to create awareness and educate their audiences about the need for peaceful co-existence in their communities. The discussions examine selected plays and applied theatre projects from West and southern Africa. They conclude in the finding that the applied theatre form is more effective than conventional literary theatre in promoting peace education and local development initiatives in Africa.

African popular theatre has emerged as an alternative strategy through which the oppressed can discard the culture of silence and assert their desire for peace, justice and freedom. Taking cognisance of the belief that violence only begets violence, such theatre employs meta-communicative devices, like play, as non-violent means of protest against forces that have militated against the people's welfare. This article uses the case study of a popular theatre performance carried out in Zimbabwe to explore how the culture of violence has become a cyclical phenomenon that began with colonialism and extended through the time of the liberation struggle to the post-colonial period. The article focuses on how the cycle of violence can be understood in order to chart the way forward for peacebuilding and development in Africa.

This paper asserts that stories as a cultural heritage contribute to the promotion of the universal values of a culture of peace: respect for life, liberty and justice, solidarity, tolerance, and gender equality. One of the ways in which literature in general contributes to the creation of a culture of peace is found in how stories become repositories of indigenous insights and wisdom about the root causes of conflict and about how to address them in peacebuilding that includes economic and social dimensions The paper presents three stories and reads them as artefacts of African cultural heritage. In the context of a vibrant literary culture they not only yield indigenous insights into peacebuilding, but could also be the basis of a reading and discussion culture that would promote awareness-raising, intercultural dialogue and understanding. Since literary texts, including stories, are the means by which society imagines itself, the cultivation of a dynamic literature must be fostered as a valuable peacebuilding action tool.

This article purports to study the peace project in Africa, using African social formations and traditional knowledge systems, by taking Botswana as a case study. It focuses on three aspects of Botswana culture: bogosi (chieftainship), ethnicity and botho (humility). Although the concepts are interrogated from a Botswana perspective, they have wider applicability in sub-Saharan Africa. This article will first explain these concepts, and then discuss their relationship to peacebuilding and development. Africans need to appreciate the endurance of traditional systems of governance despite the application of modern political institutions and processes. The article concludes that building a culture of peace should be filtered through social values that are culturally embedded. As Africans engage with culture and ascribe it a role in peacebuilding, they must take cognisance of its limitations and shed the negative aspects of African culture. More profoundly, building a culture of peace should be based on a recognition and tolerance of other people's cultural heritage.

This article examines a number of assumptions made in the early 1990s regarding the potential influence and power of South Africa and its subsequent (in)ability to sustain a peacemaking role in Africa. Competing interpretations are reviewed in the light of the South African government's post-apartheid policy objectives and experience regarding Africa. It also examines its more recent behaviour as Africa's ‘premier peacemaker’. The key argument is that the South African government, under former President Thabo Mbeki, adopted an ‘emerging middle power’ role, and that its foreign policy strategies were marked by the exercise of ‘soft power’, understood as the ability to set political agendas in a way that shapes the preferences of others. Co-optive and collaborative strategies rather than coercion characterised Pretoria's Africa agenda, expressed through the continent's multilateral institutions and development plans. The article notes that despite several successful interventions, the South African government's ambitious continental role as peacemaker and post-conflict reconstruction and development agent is constrained by global political agendas and domestic challenges. It identifies a number of factors with the potential to influence the international orientation of a new administration, but concludes that until the ruling party clarifies its ideological orientation, the Mbeki template will remain.