Conflict Resolution Wisdom from Africa
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Review by Ampie Muller July 1998 |
Since the advent of conflict and peace studies, practitioners have been trying to find local, or indigenous, remedies for conflict ailments. Current research indicates that many factors play into conflict and its resolution, including factors such as culture, personality, and others difficult to classify. It would therefore be foolish to overlook any contributions that may help us to understand the phenomena surrounding conflict, its origins and its transformation.
Taking Africa as his source, Malan makes his objective clear: "In all settings there are cultural and contextual perspectives that must self-evidently be included. This is one, quite obvious reason for studying the cultural context of our closer and wider environment. A second and more pressing reason is that the insights that have developed and are still developing in Africa deserve to be studied for their own sake" (p. 7).
What he wants to do is "to share ACCORD's enthusiasm about Africa's expertise in the dimension of human relations. Our conviction is that Africa's practical and relational wisdom, both in its tremendous diversity and its elemental commonality, deserves to be taken seriously" (p. 8).
Malan starts by writing a conflict-history of Africa by conjecture, trying to fill the gaps in historical information by "thinking himself into what could have been". He comes up with a more or less universal history that is probably not far off the mark.
He postulates "a significant frame of reference" - namely that there are two factors that seem to dominate conflict resolution activities in Africa, worthy of the world's note: firstly, the tradition of family or neighbourhood negotiation facilitated by elders, and secondly, the attitude of togetherness in the spirit of humanhood (ubuntu).
Malan comes with an imprimatur against the Western scientific ardour for analysing and classifying and wants us to rather synthesise and integrate - to use not our Western left brain but to revert to the more primitive and direct right brain experience. We must add to this the observation that "Theoretical approaches seem to be out of place on African soil." Fortunately, Malan adds that abstract ideas "may be harboured and explored, but preferably not in life-estranged ways."
I mention this not to suggest that what he is doing is less than scientific, as I am personally also strongly aware of the dangers of a "scientist" approach, especially in human affairs. But one cannot get the full benefit of Malan's thinking, so eager is he for us to become one with Africa, to understand the degree to which Western individualism is not yet everywhere the acceptable coinage and embrace Africa's beliefs and values. He explores these in a wide range of subjects: the Africanisation of democracy; the role of elders in the mediation process; economics; ethnicity; religious fundamentalism; education and a host of other elements.
In spite of being a difficult - and often confusing - book, Conflict Resolution Wisdom from Africa contains a lot that is valuable and meaningful. For me, the most important contribution is the stating of core principles, or "manifestations of African wisdom" (pp. 92-96). I believe they should be taken seriously, and measured against the practicalities of resolving Africa's enormous problems.
But the wisdom of Africa, as described, is not unadulterated, for instance, the wisdom and the role of elders in African society. In a world that has moved through Margaret Mead's pre-figurative phase (where the elders knew and understood the world and therefore could give authoritative advice), through a co-figurative phase (where old and young had to learn to understand the new world side by side and where authority was divided equally), to a post-figurative phase (where the young understand the world better than the old and the authority has, in many cases, shifted from the elder to the younger), the authority of the elders is no longer taken for granted.
This, then, is my dilemma:
this is a very optimistic work, also politically very correct,
that wants to take from Africa's past all that is beautiful and
worthwhile and build a future on it. Yet it seems as if that
Africa has disappeared into a global village that is selfish,
egotistical, and full of greed, where cooperation has changed
into serious contention for scarce resources - and where many
researchers believe that Africa's apparent inability to contend
on an even footing may stem from just those qualities being
lauded.
Biography
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