Review by Ampie Muller
(Durban: Accord, 1997)
“This article originally appeared in Track Two (Vol. 7 No. 1 April 1998) , a quarterly publication of the Centre for Conflict Resolution and the Media Peace Centre (South Africa).”
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.
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