By Mwalimu George Ngwane
Being a keynote presentation at The Rotary Club President's Night, Limbe, Cameroon, 22 March 2024.
We seem to be now be living comfortably in a world of war to the point where the question that preoccupies us is “Where next?” with all the instruments of peace at our disposal, all the peace institutes and institutions growing by leaps and bounds, we still have made peace an elusive item on our daily agenda..
Problem
Every peace process must begin with identifying the problem. Most problems unfortunately carry the ‘elephant metaphor’. The problem can be the ‘elephant in the room’, we know the problem but we do not want to discuss it; the problem can be linked to the parable of ‘the elephant and the six blind men’ where each of them touches the same animal but their interpretation is based only on what they perceive. So we see the problem only through our individual judgement rather than the whole picture. Having a whole picture or a consensus on what the problem is constitutes the fundamental recipe in any pathway to peace. And that’s why Chinua Achebe says ‘A man who doesn’t know where the rain began to beat him cannot say where he dried his body’.
Conflict
Once a problem is ignored it festers into a conflict. A conflict is described as an interaction of friction and discord resulting from diverging and sometimes incompatible interests. Conflict is often manifest in structural nonviolent strategies (peaceful demonstrations, boycotts, call for dialogue etc). This stage is a red flag, an early warning signal, an alarm bell by the aggrieved party to the state power on the need to address the problem or what is termed the root causes. So some may think it is a stage of confrontation but it is actually a stage of invitation for discussions. In fact not all conflicts are negative because it is at this stage that parties are beginning to see the need for dialogue.
Crisis
Crisis can be described as the apex of a conflict. It is an escalation of a mismanaged conflict and is often linked to armed confrontation. Once the corridors of discussion provided for by in the conflict stage are ignored we enter into a stage where there is a serious and sometimes prolonged threat to the basic structures or fundamental values of human and environmental affairs. One of the reasons a crisis prolongs or becomes protracted is the tendency for policy makers to focus more on the crisis instead of the problem that gave brought about the conflict which further escalated into a crisis. It is always advisable to use the problem stage as a point of entry or intervention for dialogue. Be it as it may wherever the belligerents decide as their entry points it is important that they all agree on what is called the models of Dialogue Assembly.
Models of Dialogue Assembly
A Dialogue Assembly is basically what Africans call the palava tradition or palava theory. It refers to where the village sits under a tree to agree or disagree until there is a consensus. In modern terms there are many models of Dialogue Assemblies but lets us just examine three.
The first is called the National model. A National model can be referred to as an inclusive national dialogue, a broad-based dialogue or simply a National Conference. This model seeks to debate issues on a national scale. It often occurs when a country is in the throes of a national crisis (power vacuum, military intervention, pre and post-election agitations, national insurgence or civil war) and is in need of a national restructuring. This same National model could be ON a SPECIFIC problem or ON MANY problems.
The second model is called the constitutional model. This model is born out of the need to engineer or negotiate a constitution that would bring back aggrieved parties within the mainstream of the body-politic. Such a Dialogue Assembly is often linked to a governance or constitutional grievance whose solution can only be found in fashioning a win-win constitution
The last is the holistic model. This is a combination of the national and the constitutional models. It aims at seeking solutions to a national crisis in tandem with constitutional grievances in the hope that justice, good governance and peace shall be restored.
Finally whatever model we choose, we should recognise that dialogue is a process not an event and so we can have Dialogue 1, Dialogue 2, Dialogue 3 etc. A dialogue is aimed at giving the conflicting parties a forum to talk to each other and not to talk past each other. It is an opportunity to silence the guns and to summon the peace. Whether at the stage of problems, of conflict or of crisis we should never forget the power of prayers. Prayers with Action.
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