Development in Practice

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Civil society and reconciliation in Southern Africa

Christopher J. Colvin

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Development in Practice, 17:3, 322-337, DOI: 10.1080/09614520701336717

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Development in Practice, Volume 17, Number 3, June 2007

Civil society and reconciliation in

Southern Africa

Christopher J. Colvin

This article presents some of the key findings of the Southern African Reconciliation Project
(SARP). The SARP was a collaborative research project involving five Southern African
NGOs in Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. It examined how the
concept of reconciliation was understood in political and community contexts in Southern
Africa and investigated the ways in which national government policies and civil-society par-
ticipation in reconciliation initiatives have opened up and/or foreclosed on opportunities for
reconciliation, transitional justice, and the promotion of a culture of human rights. The
author summarises the historical context of reconciliation in Southern Africa, outlines the
reconciliation initiatives in each country, and identifies emerging debates around and prin-
ciples of reconciliation that have surfaced in the work of civil-society organisations (CSOs)
in the region.

KEY WORDS : Conflict and Reconstruction; Governance and Public Policy; Civil Society; Rights; Sub-
Saharan Africa

Introduction
In the past two decades, several Southern African countries have embraced democratic gov-
ernance, albeit in different ways, and have put in place national ‘reconciliation’ processes to
deal with human-rights abuses and address the deep ethnic, racial, political, and class-based
divisions of the past. These reconciliation initiatives have all entailed a relationship between
the state and civil society, a relationship that has been both co-operative and conflictual.1
The Southern African Reconciliation Project (SARP) was a collaborative research project
involving five non-government organisations (NGOs) in Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia,
South Africa, and Zimbabwe which investigated these reconciliation initiatives. It examined
how the concept of reconciliation is understood in political and community contexts in these
five countries, and studied the ways in which national government policies and civil-society
participation in these initiatives have opened up and/or foreclosed on opportunities for
reconciliation, transitional justice, and the promotion of a human-rights culture. This
article summarises the principal findings and conclusions of the SARP country and focus-
area reports.2

322 ISSN 0961-4524 Print/ISSN 1364-9213 Online 030322-16 # 2007 Oxfam GB

DOI: 10.1080/09614520701336717 Routledge Publishing
 Civil society and reconciliation in Southern Africa

In most Southern African countries, independence from colonial authority led to a combi-
nation of flourishing civil wars and low-level internal violent conflict, the establishment of
repressive one-party states, and the creation of structures of internal colonialism by white-
settler communities. As earlier colonial structures of power were transformed, fault lines
were reconfigured. Racial conflicts between settler and indigenous communities were overlain
with and intersected by ethnic conflicts between neighbouring communities; religious conflicts
between traditional religions, Christianity, and Islam; economic conflicts between elites—both
old and new—and non-elites; and wider geopolitical conflicts. Each of these countries has also
been affected in the post-colonial period by intersecting regional conflicts, as well as destabili-
sation by the apartheid South African government.
It is in the context of this recent violent past that a variety of reconciliation initiatives were
developed. The SARP documented a large number of organisational processes, both local and
national, which engaged community members (especially victims, ex-combatants, and perpe-
trators) in dialogue, in improving mutual understanding, in trust building, in modifying
enemy images, in building or realising common values, and in facilitating social reintegration.
The next section profiles the five countries under review and outlines the state-sponsored recon-
ciliation initiatives that were undertaken. The third section examines the corresponding recon-
ciliation work of civil-society organisations (CSOs) in these countries, followed by a section
listing a number of factors that have enabled and/or constrained reconciliation work in the
region. The concluding section identifies principles of reconciliation and emerging debates
that have surfaced in the work of CSOs in Southern Africa.3

Histories of conflict and state-sponsored efforts to promote

reconciliation
Despite their very different trajectories of colonial and post-colonial violence, the histories of
the five countries under review are also closely intertwined. During the past 30 years, the course
of political change in one country has often been taken as an index of, or test case for, the pos-
sibilities for change in neighbouring countries. As each country emerged from its particular
experiences of violence and social fracture, newly elected governments each developed their
own series of reconciliation policies and programmes. These policies and programmes were
diverse but reflected, at the same time, regional developments in the discourse and practice
of reconciliation. What follows is a brief summary of the political history of conflict in each
of these countries, together with an overview of the kinds of state reconciliation initiative
that have been undertaken in each.4

Malawi
Malawi was the first of the Southern Africa countries to find itself free of both its former colo-
nial masters and its small white-settler minority. Malawi’s early independence, however, came
at a price: the 30-year totalitarian rule of Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda. Banda was eventually
ousted peacefully in an election in 1994, under pressure from internal forces. Reconciliation
work in Malawi, therefore, relates more to the period of Banda’s rule between 1964 and
1994 than to the anti-colonial conflicts of the early 1960s. It is focused on the victims of
Banda’s regime, including those who lived in exile, those who suffered physically at the
hands of his security forces, and those who lost property and educational and employment
opportunities.

Development in Practice, Volume 17, Number 3, June 2007 323

Christopher J. Colvin

Although calls for a truth commission have been rejected, the new government did undertake
a number of reforms to promote a more democratic form of governance and prevent the return
of autocracy and corruption. One of its first efforts was the brutal dismantling of the Malawi
Young Pioneers, a paramilitary force that was one of Banda’s principal means of enforcement.
The government also set up a Department of Relief and Rehabilitation and undertook a number
of institutional reforms, including the creation of the Ombudsman’s Office, the Human Rights
Commission, and the Anti-Corruption Bureau. Although there was no blanket amnesty for vio-
lators of human rights in Malawi, neither was there a reckoning or acknowledgment of these
violations. Nor were there any prosecutions of those associated with Banda’s violent reign.
After complaints about this weak response, the government set up the National Compensation
Tribunal (NCT), open to Malawians ‘who, on political grounds between 6 July 1964 and 17
May 1994, were wrongfully imprisoned, forced into exile, personally injured, lost property
or business, lost education opportunities, lost employment benefits and those who were born
in exile or detention’. Individuals were eligible for compensation in a variety of forms, includ-
ing ‘monetary, other material support, or symbolic acknowledgment of wrongdoing’ (cited in
Buford and Merwe 2003: 23).

Mozambique
Mozambique was the next country to achieve independence, ejecting its Portuguese rulers in
1975 after a long anti-colonial struggle. FRELIMO (Mozambique Liberation Front), formed
in 1962, led the campaign and instituted a series of social and economic policies in line with
a Marxist ideology of nationalisation and collectivisation. A resistance soon emerged and even-
tually crystallised in the shape of RENAMO (Mozambique National Resistance). RENAMO,
however, was as much a product of the settler governments of South Africa and the then Rho-
desia as it was a reflection of internal dissatisfaction with FRELIMO. The long civil war that
ensued was thus as much the product of the white, capitalist governments of South Africa
and Rhodesia—and the broader geopolitics of Cold War ‘alignment’—as it was of conflicts
internal to Mozambique. Intensive intervention from international NGOs and foreign govern-
ments forced RENAMO and FRELIMO to negotiate peace in 1992, and multi-party elections
were held in 1994. After almost two decades of civil war and economic malaise, most
Mozambicans had been victims of, or witnesses to, the looting and destruction of entire villages
as well as public executions and torture.
The Mozambican government’s response to the end of the civil war was, like Namibia’s
(described below), to focus on the demobilisation and reintegration of former combatants.
Unlike Namibia, however, their programmes for reintegration were well organised and well
funded, often by international organisations. A Commission for Reintegration (CORE) was
established, and many ex-combatants were offered skills training and other means of
support. Nevertheless, the government actively resisted calls for the memorialisation of those
who had fought against colonialism or in the civil war. While other countries in the area
were busy building monuments and establishing national holidays, the Mozambican govern-
ment avoided speaking publicly about the past. The government also provided no legal frame-
work for the concepts of ‘victim’ or ‘perpetrator’, and support services for victims have been
few and far between. More often than not, the needs of victims of political violence have
been subsumed under basic welfare services or ‘humanitarian assistance’, and most efforts to
deal with the problems of ordinary citizens have been co-ordinated by the Catholic Church
(Buford and Merwe 2003:62). Similarly, the government has developed no official reparations
policy, and its general attitude seems to be that the claims of both ex-combatants and of victims
are best left unaddressed.5

324 Development in Practice, Volume 17, Number 3, June 2007

 Civil society and reconciliation in Southern Africa

Namibia
Namibia’s long battle for independence from South African rule began around the same time as
Mozambique’s battle against the Portuguese. When the UN voted to end South Africa’s
mandate over the territory in 1966, South Africa refused, and SWAPO (South West Africa
People’s Organisation) began its armed campaign. SWAPO’s eventual victory against South
Africa in 1989 came at the same time as the South African government was negotiating its
own peace deal with the African National Congress (ANC). Elections were held in 1989,
and independence was declared in 1990 by the new SWAPO government. The victims of
political violence in Namibia include those who suffered directly at the hands of South
African and SWAPO forces, those who were victims of internal power struggles in SWAPO,
and those who were victims of earlier colonial-era violations of human rights.6
With the end of South African rule, the new government adopted a policy of ‘National
Reconciliation’. This policy, mostly unelaborated in legislation or regulation, has focused on
the release of political prisoners, the granting of amnesty on all sides of the conflict, and the
demobilisation and repatriation of ex-combatants. Programmes for ex-combatants, however,
did little in terms of social reintegration. The government later set up the ‘Socio-Economic
Integration Programme for Ex-Combatants’ (SIPE) to offer skills training to ex-combatants
and financial support for orphans. A number of national holidays and memorials have also
been created. More recently, the government passed the 1999 War Veteran’s Subvention Act
to provide further financial compensation to veterans and orphaned children. There is no repara-
tions programme on the table. The government has consistently agued that ‘unification’—a
term that connotes a form of ‘negative peace’—is more important than historical enquiry
into and redress of past injustices. Many argue that this approach reflects a fear, also found
in Mozambique, of a return to civil war. It may also reflect a fear among government officials
that they could be found guilty of many of the unacknowledged human-rights violations during
the past 30 years.

South Africa
After a decade of protests during the 1950s ended in the banning of anti-apartheid organisations,
the ANC and other groups embarked on an armed campaign against the South Africa state. It
was only 30 years later, with the end of the Cold War and movements towards peace in Namibia
and Mozambique, that this struggle ended with multi-party elections in 1994. The end of apart-
heid left South Africa more dramatically divided along racial and economic lines than any of the
other four countries. Five decades of repressive apartheid rule had left most of its citizens the
victims of systematic abuse and discrimination. Victims of gross human-rights violations
included intended and unintended victims of both state and anti-apartheid violence, as well
as victims of intra-community and inter-ethnic violence in many of the black townships.
South Africa’s official reconciliation policies and programmes have been noteworthy for
their embrace of truth telling, (limited) accountability, and victim support. Despite the many
justified criticisms of these programmes and policies, South Africa’s approach does stand out
in the Southern African region as an exception to the rule of blanket amnesty and national for-
getting in the name of a ‘quiet’ unification. The most prominent component of the reconciliation
effort was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).7 Besides the work of the TRC
committees who were responsible for amnesty and victims’ testimony, the recommendations
of the Committee on Reparations and Rehabilitation (CRR) are perhaps the most important,
and most controversial, aspects of the Commission’s work. The CRR recommended that a com-
prehensive reparations programme should be implemented by the government, to include direct

Development in Practice, Volume 17, Number 3, June 2007 325

Christopher J. Colvin

financial compensation to victims, as well as symbolic, community-based, and institutional

forms of reparation. It would easily have been the most ambitious reparations programme in
the Southern African region. After a long and acrimonious political and legal battle with
civil society, however, the government decided to implement only a very reduced version of
the original recommendations (Colvin 2005).

Zimbabwe
In 1965, after 90 years of colonial rule, and a year after Malawi gained its independence,
Zimbabwe found itself under the rule of Ian Smith and a white-settler government. Internal
resistance against settler rule led to a brief period of negotiation and power sharing, and the
eventual election in 1980 of Robert Mugabe as Zimbabwe’s first democratically elected presi-
dent. Although the ‘War of Liberation’ of the 1960s and 1970s produced many victims of
political violence, Mugabe’s increasingly repressive regime has been another important
engine of political violence. The Matabeleland and Midlands Uprisings in the mid-1980s
ended with Mugabe’s vicious suppression of the political opposition. Food riots in 1998 and
election protests in 2000 were also brutally repressed.
Despite its proclamation of an official ‘policy of reconciliation’ in 1980, Zimbabwe
pursued policies similar to those of Mozambique and Namibia. After independence, this
policy consisted of the 1980 War Victim’s Compensation Act, the Amnesty (General
Pardon) Act, and a deal with white residents that included a guaranteed proportion (20 per
cent) of seats in the first Parliament and the protection of property rights. A Demobilisation
Directorate was set up for ex-combatants and operated for a brief time. There were com-
plaints that these few programmes for compensation and support were too narrow and
vague, too prone to corruption, and too poorly funded. Critics also argued that they were
essentially the same as social-welfare programmes and thus did not constitute adequate
reconciliatory measures for victims. Another Act of Parliament ten years later provided
limited skills training and support for war orphans, but still failed adequately to address
the needs of victims of human-rights violations.

Civil-society strategies and interventions

Southern African governments have been, on the whole, less than enthusiastic in driving
these reconciliation initiatives. Government programmes have by far the biggest political,
legal, social, and economic impacts, but these programmes have often been criticised for
being significantly under-funded and badly managed. Consequently, many CSOs have
argued that civil society has a vital dual role to play in reconciliation. CSOs, frustrated
with the failure of states to implement sustained, integrated, widely accepted, and effective
reconciliation programmes, have spent a great deal of energy pressuring the state to
engage more fully with the work of reconciliation. They have also argued that only their
active participation in reconciliation will bridge the gap, often wide, between national
elite-level political discourses of reconciliation and local understandings of reconciliation.
They function, thus, as both ‘pressure groups’ and ‘service providers’ for reconciliation
work. The next section considers the practice of reconciliation ‘on the ground’ in Southern
Africa by these CSOs. It describes the interventions of the organisations, individuals, and
communities in terms of SARP’s five focus areas: trauma counselling, victim-support ser-
vices, demobilisation, memorialisation, and reparations.

326 Development in Practice, Volume 17, Number 3, June 2007

 Civil society and reconciliation in Southern Africa

Trauma counselling
Trauma counselling has been a feature of many post-conflict reconciliation initiatives. This
particular brand of mental-health care is often offered not only as an individual medical inter-
vention, but also as an important component of broader processes of social reconciliation.
Despite the many models available for trauma counselling, ‘they all have the same objec-
tives: to change the way people think of, and experience, their problematic situation, and
to act upon their new understanding’ (Muinjangue 2003: 6). Most Southern African states,
however, have failed to support this component of reconciliation. South Africa is probably
the one exception to this rule. But despite its general support at the state level for trauma
therapy (in particular through the TRC), trauma counselling in South Africa has been the
near-exclusive province of NGOs. These organisations face a range of difficulties. Most
clients, for example, come to trauma clinics not for counselling but for other types of aid:
medical attention, employment, food, and shelter. Victims’ desperate material circumstances
make it very difficult to develop sustained and productive therapeutic relationships. There
have also been complaints that counselling is an inappropriately ‘Western’ form of
healing. Some have criticised counselling for its apolitical approach to social suffering,
which offers ‘coping strategies’ instead of progressive political frameworks for removing the
sources of suffering. Finally, counselling programmes in all of these countries are almost all
funded by overseas aid organisations, human-rights organisations, trauma-counselling NGOs,
foreign governments, and church groups. These programmes are thus vulnerable both to
shifts in funding priorities and to non-local agendas and perspectives. Although many of
those interviewed by the SARP agreed that work on emotions alone is unable to create a
lasting reconciliation, there was also consensus that without sufficient attention to the emotional
dimensions of suffering, reconciliation will be undermined.

Victim-support services
Victim-support services include the work of victim-support and advocacy groups, legal-advice
centres, skills training and economic empowerment, social-work services, providers of mental
and physical health care, and conflict-resolution organisations. Government support for these
services has been far less than adequate and, in most cases, CSOs have been active in filling
some of the many gaps. These organisations, however, have limited resources, and are
unable to fully respond to the many—and the many kinds of—victims in this region.
In Namibia, there is no official state support for victims. Many of the CSOs that have offered
some of these missing services are victim-founded support groups like Breaking the Wall of
Silence and the National Society for Human Rights. In Mozambique, there has been a
similar lack of state support, and international NGOs and church groups have taken on some
of the responsibility, as have many communities themselves. The situation in Zimbabwe
resembles that in Namibia and Mozambique. Again, local NGOs and church groups have led
the effort to fill some of the gaps left by the state.
Victim support in Malawi and South Africa has been slightly better. In Malawi, victims had
access to a very limited form of support through the Department of Relief and Rehabilitation
and the National Compensation Tribunal. South Africa has developed the most comprehensive
set of victim-support services. The TRC, in particular, collaborated with a wide range of South
African NGOs and government departments to provide services to victims. In addition to these
NGO service providers, victim-support groups have been a prominent part of South African
civil society’s response to victims’ needs.

Development in Practice, Volume 17, Number 3, June 2007 327

Christopher J. Colvin

Demobilisation and reintegration programmes

In contrast to the scant attention paid to trauma counselling and other forms of victim support,
ex-combatants have received much more attention. In all five countries, ex-combatants were
seen, to varying degrees, to be threats to the fragile new peace. Many were having a hard
time reintegrating into their home communities, because of difficulty in adjusting to peacetime
life and hostility from family and community members. Governments—as well as civil
society—in these five countries have worked, with mixed success, to demobilise ex-combatants
and reintegrate them into their communities. Namibia, with the help of the UN, repatriated and
demobilised many soldiers from groups opposing SWAPO, although they initially had offered
no meaningful social-reintegration programmes for soldiers. South Africa also implemented a
demobilisation programme without providing adequately for the social reintegration of these
soldiers. It did, however, incorporate some ex-combatants into its new armed forces. Zimbabwe
established a demobilisation directorate in 1981. This directorate, which operated for only two
years, offered a small pension and skills-training package to former combatants.
Mozambique developed the most comprehensive and sustained demobilisation and reinte-
gration programmes in the region. Much of its focus is on income-generating and skill-training
programmes. It has also developed family- and community-level interventions that facilitate the
acceptance and reintegration of individual soldiers. Traditional healers, unions, and church
organisations have also contributed their own particular perspectives and programmes.
Former combatants themselves have set up their own organisations to pursue income gener-
ation, skill training, or psychological healing.
All of these groups face a number of challenges. Ex-combatants are by no means
homogeneous, and the needs of different subgroups—women, child soldiers, members of differ-
ent ethnic or political groups—often differ radically. Many of the organisations representing
demobilised soldiers have also developed a ‘culture of protest as a strategy to gain access to
more resources from government as well as from non-governmental organisations’ (Igreja
2003: 33). Veiled (or sometimes not-so-veiled) threats of violence become negotiating
tactics, making the relationship between these ex-combatants and the state, as well as civil
society, all the more strained.

Memorialisation
After demobilisation, memorialisation has probably been the second most common form of
state-sponsored reconciliation work in Southern Africa. Unfortunately, however, most memor-
ialisation efforts have been elite-driven, national programmes that have honoured a narrow
range of politically connected individuals (Werbner 1995). The Heroes’ Acres in Zimbabwe
and Namibia—national memorial complexes for individuals aligned to the ruling party in
each instance—are good case studies of the centralisation and hierarchisation of memory in
post-conflict Southern Africa.
South Africa is, again, a partial exception to this rule. The degree to which South Africa
promoted a variety of memorial strategies (including smaller memorials, exhumations and
reburials, and national holidays) puts it in a different league. The TRC solicited memories of
apartheid from both its victims and its perpetrators. The (often grudging) willingness of the
ANC to submit its own past violations to review is similarly unique. Mozambique, however,
provides the counter-example to South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Namibia in its careful avoidance
of any memorialisation efforts that might be seen to exacerbate tensions in the country.
Families and communities in all of these countries have also undertaken their own memor-
ialisation at the local level. In many cases, memorialisation is incorporated into long-standing

328 Development in Practice, Volume 17, Number 3, June 2007

 Civil society and reconciliation in Southern Africa

traditional rituals of communication with ancestors. Many felt that the state memorials like
Heroes’ Acre—with its vast graveyards of unrelated individuals in distant cities—made these
important traditional forms of veneration impossible. Besides, without a sense of real partici-
pation and ownership in the construction of these larger memorials, communities have fre-
quently dismissed them as cynical political manipulations of tragedy. Memorialisation
continues to be an active and controversial area of the reconciliation process.

Reparations
The argument that reparations are a key part of reconciliation has been made on a number of
fronts. The SARP identified five main justifications:
1. Reparations are a firmly established right in international law.
2. They are a moral necessity for victims suffering from physical and psychological injury.
3. They give victims a role and a stake in the transition process.
4. They contribute to the political transition’s projects of crafting a new political identity and
culture of human rights and the rule of law.
5. They are needed to counterbalance the amnesty that is often granted to perpetrators of
human-rights violations in post-conflict contexts. (Buford and Merwe 2003: 13– 14)
Reparations, however, require both the commitment and funding of the state. Only three of the
five Southern African countries have developed reparations policies, and none has proved
broadly satisfactory to victims. Malawi’s National Compensation Tribunal (NCT) was sup-
posed to serve as a form of reparation, but under-funding, inefficiency, corruption, and lack
of public awareness have hampered the success of this programme. Zimbabwe’s War
Victims Compensation Act, a similar attempt to provide reparative measures, has suffered
from the same range of criticism aimed at the NCT. In South Africa, despite the TRC’s com-
prehensive, multi-faceted recommendations, the government decided to implement only a
limited reparations programme, consisting of one-off direct financial payments and a yet-to-
be determined community reparations programme. Mozambique and Namibia have no repara-
tions policies at all, and no plans to develop any.
The role of civil society in reparations has largely been to lobby for and provide input in the
development of government reparation policies and to offer skills, infrastructure, and resources
for the implementation of certain kinds of reparation. A number of difficulties have been
encountered. Governments have complained of insufficient resources for proper reparations.
Both governments and CSOs have struggled with how to define eligible victims. Victims
rarely comprise an easily definable class of persons, especially in these Southern African
cases. There are also complaints that reparations, especially in the form of direct financial pay-
ments, constitute a form of ‘blood money’ that governments might use to absolve themselves of
full culpability for the past.

Enabling and constraining factors

The SARP also worked to identify internal and external factors that both constrained and
enabled reconciliation work. This section outlines a number of these factors. It provides a poten-
tially useful list of variables that any organisation involved—or thinking about becoming
involved—in reconciliation work should be aware of.

Development in Practice, Volume 17, Number 3, June 2007 329

Christopher J. Colvin

Socio-economic status of victims

Civilians living in rural and urban poverty have been the most severely affected by the violence
of social conflict during the past 30 years. With the end of hostilities, these victims have very
little power in post-conflict decision making. The relatively weak political position of victims
has less impact, however, on whether or not reconciliation programmes are created than on who
gets to be recognised as a victim (Buford and Merwe 2003). Indeed, with the exception of
Malawi, whose NCT was empowered to address a wide range of victims, the category of
‘victim’ has been strictly circumscribed in all of these countries. Even the TRC, whose
definition of victim included many rural and urban poor, instituted fairly narrow legal criteria
that focused on victims of ‘gross human rights violations’. Other victims—of harassment, dis-
crimination, detention, physical and sexual assault—are typically not included in the legislative
and memorial complex of victimhood.
The active engagement of victim groups and other CSOs with the state can be an important
part of developing and promoting reconciliation among those with the least socio-economic
power. Strong and active alliances between victims and other parts of civil society have been
important in pushing for programmes that have only weak government support. In theory,
the greater the involvement of civil society, the more victim-centred and holistic reconciliation
policies should be, although this is probably true only at the policy level. Victims have been less
successful in maintaining political pressure at the level of implementation. South Africa has
probably had the strongest and most effectively engaged civil society, but even there, the
relationship with the state has often been frustrating and ineffective.

Political and legal contexts during and after transition

Political and legal contexts during and after transition also affect the ability of a state or civil
society to develop and implement effective reconciliation policies and programmes. Political
transitions in Southern Africa have been characterised by negotiated settlements between
two or more conflicting parties, often facilitated by foreign governments, international govern-
ment organisations (IGOs), and church groups, and they have inevitably involved a host of
uncomfortable social and legal compromises, especially in relation to reconciliation. If these
compromises contribute to a fuller, more participatory, democratic culture, some of the pain
of deal-making might, in the long run, be assuaged. If, however, these compromises enable
the consolidation of a dominant one-party state, then the prospects for long-term reconciliation
are even more damaged. The SARP consistently found that the dominance of one political
party, even within the context of multi-party elections, generally had a damaging effect on
reconciliation process.
Most political transitions in Southern Africa have also involved the substitution of one set of
political and economic elites by another. In these cases, the new political masters largely repro-
duce the class and political power structures already at work in the country. Such transitions do
not make it any easier for those at the other end of the socio-economic and political spectrum to
participate meaningfully in reconciliation initiatives. These new elites’ interests in protecting
their newfound privileges also militate against the kinds of broad-scale reform called for by
grassroots reconciliation initiatives.
Legal decisions about transitional justice form another important context for reconciliation.
When political compromises are encoded in law, they become less mutable. Amnesty laws, the
most prominent and controversial legal instruments of transitions, tend to alienate victims of
political violence. The challenge of reconciliation in the context of amnesty is to ensure that
other measures are put in place to attend to the needs of victims. In most cases, amnesty

330 Development in Practice, Volume 17, Number 3, June 2007

 Civil society and reconciliation in Southern Africa

laws cannot easily be reversed, but there are often alternative legal routes for addressing the
victims’ needs. There are hopes in South Africa, for example, that international lawsuits for
reparations being brought against international corporations will force the government to
reconsider its own reparation policies.

International dynamics
International dynamics—political, legal, and economic—can also enable or constrain reconci-
liation initiatives. Most efforts to promote reparations, for example, are grounded in inter-
national legal principles and commitments that many Southern Africa governments are
obliged, in principle, to uphold (Rwelamira and Werle 1996). Similarly, the ability of
victims to pursue claims against states or individuals in domestic or international judicial
forums like the International Criminal Court (ICC) could affect the political decision making
within states.
Some foreign governments have applied political and economic pressure to influence the
direction of political transitions. International NGOs and church groups also command con-
siderable influence through the substantial amount of aid that they provide. The involvement
of these actors, however, can make reconciliation work vulnerable to external priorities and
approaches, political in-fighting, and sudden shifts in funding streams. Nor do foreign gov-
ernments and international NGOs have the best track record in facilitating strong local par-
ticipation in decision making and planning. Their involvement can thus both help and hinder
the work of reconciliation, sometimes simultaneously (White 2000).

Victims, communities, NGOs

Any process as broad and multi-faceted as reconciliation will be engaged in for a variety of
often conflicting reasons. National governments want to consolidate their popular legitimacy.
Victim groups want recognition of their experiences and reparation for their suffering.
Labour unions want economic changes that will benefit their members, while large corpor-
ations—and small businesses—want the same. International organisations and foreign govern-
ments engage with post-conflict reconstruction for an equally wide variety of reasons. The
possible points of divergence among these various actors are many: race, ethnicity, gender,
class, institutional priorities, and political or religious ideology.
One important and insufficiently recognised area of potential divergence can be found in the
relationships between victims, communities, and NGOs. These three groups are often united in
pressuring reluctant post-conflict governments for more rights, recognition, and resources.
Often, these three groups appear interchangeable and even claim to speak for one another.
However, their voices—and their interests—are anything but unified. Among NGOs, a
strong dynamic of self-preservation often guides their work, making them less than fully
accountable to or representative of the communities with whom they work. Similarly, those
community members who claim to ‘speak for’ the community do not always fully represent
the range of perspectives in a community. Finally, victims do not share a single perspective
on reconciliation, and the many differences in their experiences and in their social, political,
and economic positions are seldom recognised. These differences of opinion, approach, per-
spective, and goals are part and parcel of the broader social conflicts that need to be negotiated
within the reconciliation process.

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Christopher J. Colvin

Cultural models of reconciliation

SARP research has also highlighted the importance of integrating national and NGO-driven
reconciliation processes with local cultural contexts and traditions. Concepts like ubuntu, for
example, a presumably ‘African’ form of community-focused humanism, have been used to
describe common local understandings in Africa—and elsewhere—of the importance of com-
munity and the need to restore and maintain social order in ways that are not simply punitive.8
Other examples of cultural models of reconciliation included ‘condolence’ and kupupesa, in
Zimbabwe and Malawi respectively. In Mozambique, much of the reintegration of former sol-
diers has been facilitated by traditional healers who have made use of local cleansing rituals to
‘purify’ these ‘polluted’ ex-combatants, enabling them to rejoin their communities (Honwana
2005).
In many cases, these cultural models reflect an approach to criminality and violence that
observers have termed ‘restorative justice’, as opposed to the logic of ‘retributive justice’
embedded in Western legal culture (Maepa 2005). The case can, however, be overstated.
African communities—like communities everywhere—also employ punitive and retributive
forms of justice. Respect for cultural practices and contexts should not ignore these equally
important traditions.

Conclusion
Despite the many challenges posed by reconciliation endeavours, civil society throughout
Southern Africa has nonetheless been busy pursuing this elusive goal. A number of principles
of reconciliation in Southern Africa have emerged from this work and are discussed below.

Reconciliation as a victim-centred, victim-friendly (and victim-driven?) process

Most of the individuals, organisations, and communities involved in reconciliation work agree
that it should be victim-centred and victim-friendly. There is agreement, even from most gov-
ernment officials, that top – down, bureaucratic processes of reconciliation are not likely to
prove meaningful or sustainable. Reconciliation programmes must also take into account the
poverty, lack of education, and ill health that affect many victims of political violence. Mean-
ingful and appropriate symbolism is another important dimension of reconciliation. Too many
memorialisation programmes fail to use symbolism that speaks directly and powerfully to local
traditions and experiences. Finally, there is a general consensus that reconciliation processes
should be ‘driven’ by victims as well. On the ground, however, this rarely happens. Although
victims have been effective in pushing governments for particular programmes and policies,
especially reparations, once these initiatives are underway, victims are typically unable to
guide the process meaningfully. This is largely a reflection of the disempowered position
that most victims hold in relation to government. Old political divisions and persisting class div-
isions are two of the major sources of this disempowerment.

A holistic and integrated approach to reconciliation

Another broad area of agreement is that reconciliation initiatives should integrate a range of
reparative and restorative measures in different domains (legal, financial, material, medical,
educational, institutional, and legislative reforms) and on different levels (individual, commu-
nity, national). The ideal approach to reconciliation is, thus, holistic and integrated. It not only
comprises multiple dimensions, but connects them to one another as well. Integration also

332 Development in Practice, Volume 17, Number 3, June 2007

 Civil society and reconciliation in Southern Africa

means the co-ordination of the overall reconciliation programme both with other transitional
justice processes and with other state programmes more generally. Many government
ministries—especially social welfare, health, education, and justice—contribute to both recon-
ciliation and broader socio-economic justice, and the relationship between transitional justice
programmes and the rest of government is an important, but under-examined, dimension of
reconciliation initiatives.

‘Critical’ relationships between civil society and government

The importance of ‘critical’ relationships between civil society and governments engages two
senses of the word ‘critical’. On one hand, there is an emerging consensus that civil society
should always be able to criticise state programmes and policies constructively and vigorously.
On the other hand, there is also a sense that it is ‘critical’ to engage and work with government
on reconciliation initiatives. Partnerships between the state and civil society are increasingly
seen as vital to the success of reconciliation. In all of the countries under review here, the
relationship between the state and civil society has often been tense, ambivalent, and uncertain.
Nonetheless, many CSOs do, and indeed have to, work with government. Given that civil
society in Southern Africa is still relatively weak, unco-ordinated, and significantly under-
funded, most victims, communities, and NGOs in fact seem to want more—and better—govern-
ment involvement, not less. In most cases, this relationship will probably continue to be one of
struggle rather than of co-operation, but it is not a relationship that either side can avoid.

Reconciliation and respect for local culture

Another emerging principle of reconciliation in Southern Africa is the importance of under-
standing, respecting, and integrating local culture into reconciliation initiatives. This is
especially true in the areas of traditional healing, religion, and local forms of political and
legal dispute-resolution. Being attentive to local culture may also mean paying attention to
the informal and inventive ways that people find to cope with their daily lives. In practice,
however, few reconciliation initiatives are meaningfully integrated with local contexts, con-
cerns, and cultural practices (Shaw 2005).
In addition, the reified notions of ‘culture’ at work in many NGOs and government offices
simplify what is in fact a very complex cultural and political terrain. Christianity, for
example, is widespread in Southern Africa, and is just as deeply ‘cultural’ as any other part
of Southern Africa life. Many Christians in Southern Africa, however, reject the widespread
practice of ‘superstitious’ rituals at the graves of ancestors, preferring instead to pray for the
fate of departed souls in the Christian afterlife (Bischoff 2003: 51). Culture is not a homo-
geneous set of concepts and actions within a particular place and time; more often than not,
it is composed of competing, complementary, conflicting, and/or contradictory notions and
imperatives.

Prioritising women and children

In most Southern Africa countries, women and children have suffered disproportionately as
victims, both direct and indirect, of gross human-rights violations. The forced recruitment of
child soldiers has also meant that many children have perpetrated similar forms of violation
themselves (Honwana 2005). The needs of women and children often go unrecognised, and
their general marginalisation means that their resources for coping are also severely limited.
Women bear the burden for most aspects of social reproduction: childbirth and rearing,

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Christopher J. Colvin

maintaining households, agricultural labour, etc. Attending to their needs is, therefore, import-
ant for re-establishing normal and stable social structures after violence. Finally, since women
are often the most active and productive members of CSOs, their energy and skills, and those of
their children, can be invaluable in promoting reconciliation. Prioritising women and children
in the aftermath of conflict has, therefore, become an important principle of reconciliation work.

Reconciliation as process and practice

Although the rhetoric of reconciliation often paints it as an end state to be achieved in the
future—rather than a process to be pursued in the present—much of the actual work of recon-
ciliation revolves around process-oriented interventions. Both state and civil-society actors
inevitably describe their work as part of a larger, long-term process that necessarily involves
many others and will take a very long time to come to fruition.
A related perspective sees reconciliation as a practice as much as a process. Here, reconcilia-
tion develops through changes in action as much as through changes in thoughts or attitudes. A
Mozambican newspaper editor argued, for example, as follows:
I think there are two ways to heal the wounds. One is. . .whereby people. . .talk openly
[about] what individually they did, people they killed. . . . This is the way that was very
useful in [South Africa]. But here in Mozambique this was avoided, nobody wanted to
talk about the past. . . . Thus, the better way to ensure the forgiveness of wrongdoings of
the past . . . is . . . to include all people in the economic, political and social participation
in the society. I think this is a unique way of healing the wounds of the past. . .I think this
way, more or less, we can heal the wounds of the past. . .To participate means to feel
owners of the country, . . . in [the] economic sphere, . . . in [the] social sphere, . . . in all
spheres of the country. (Bischoff 2003: 8)
Undine Kayser (2005) has argued similarly that the opportunity to practise new forms of inter-
action—the chance to touch people from another group, to spend time with them, to work on
projects together, and live and eat in the same small space—enables people to understand, in
a small way, what reconciliation might feel like. She argues that this is just as important a com-
ponent of reconciliation as is the ability to change one’s ideas and perspectives.

Law and reconciliation

While it is generally accepted that legal solutions to reconciliation are always inadequate in and
of themselves, law has been increasingly recognised as an important means of forcing the state,
perpetrators, and beneficiaries to participate in reconciliation measures. There is a sense, at least
in civil society, that law and reconciliation have a close, if always ambivalent, relationship.
Legal approaches, especially if actively supported by the government, can be an important
index of a state’s commitment both to reconciliation and to principles of accountability and
the rule of law. This is not to suggest that law can serve as an adequate substitute for other
forms and modes of reconciliation. Law can, however, sometimes achieve in quicker
measure what politics and pressure from civil society cannot.

Formal versus informal interventions

Building on the idea that reconciliation should be seen as a holistic and integrated process that
respects local culture, proponents of reconciliation have also argued that reconciliation pro-
cesses need to happen both formally—in larger-scale, institution-oriented and/or state-driven

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contexts—and informally, in less planned, more local, and non-state contexts. Formal processes
usually employ an explicit framework with a set of operating procedures and ways of measuring
outcomes. Informal processes are more open-ended and more open to negotiation and are often
difficult to assess in terms of outcome. State programmes are sometimes criticised for their
formalism and are accused of being elitist or of ostracising those on the margins. While
often true, it is also the case that informal CSO programmes can just as easily be accused of
running slipshod and inefficient programmes that are neither accountable nor representative.
Whatever their respective weaknesses, however, it is clear from the experiences in Southern
Africa that sustainable, meaningful, and effective reconciliation initiatives require the strengths
of both formal and informal processes.
All organisations involved in reconciliation work in Southern Africa—governments, aid
agencies, CSOs, religious organisations, and international NGOs—soon come to appreciate
the enormous challenges confronting them as they seek to address the impact of centuries of
violent conflict in the region. One clear lesson of the Southern African Reconciliation
Project (SARP) is that a durable reconciliation requires the support and active input of civil
society. This does not mean, however, that civil society can or should go it alone. Appropriate
government policies and interventions are also vital for the promotion of national reconcilia-
tion, transitional justice, and a culture of human rights. But the active participation of civil
society, broadly conceived, in reconciliation work is the best hope for achieving a lasting
peace in the region. The SARP has documented a number of civil-society processes that
engaged community members in dialogue, in improving mutual understanding, in trust build-
ing, in modifying enemy images, in building or realising common values, and in facilitating
social reintegration. In the process, a number of enabling and constraining factors for successful
reconciliation were identified, and a number of emerging debates and principles of reconcilia-
tion were described. As the Southern African region becomes increasingly integrated, economi-
cally and politically, the SARP hopes that civil-society organisations in these countries will also
be able more effectively and sustainably to co-ordinate with and learn lessons from each other.
The challenges for reconciliation in the region are substantial, but so are the possibilities.
Understanding the lessons of past experience will make future efforts at reconciliation more
lasting and effective.

Acknowledgements
The article is based on the research conducted by the five NGOs involved in the South African Reconcilia-
tion Project (SARP). It has also benefited from editorial advice from Hugo van der Merwe.

Notes
1. See the papers from a Symposium ‘Building Bridges in Southern Africa: Conflict, Reconstruction, and
Reconciliation in Times of Change’, published in Development in Practice, Volume 7, Number 4
(1997) for an overview of many of these issues.
2. NGOs in each of the five Southern Africa countries were approached, and one from each country was
selected to participate in the research. Each NGO was then responsible for collecting data in its particu-
lar country for a ‘country report’. In addition, each NGO was responsible for writing a report on one of
the five ‘focus areas’—trauma counselling, victim-support services, demobilisation and reintegration,
memorialisation, and reparations—by integrating the findings from the other four countries. These
focus area and country reports and other reports are available through the Centre for the Study of Vio-
lence and Reconciliation (CSVR). The findings of these reports comprise the bulk of the material for
this article.

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Christopher J. Colvin

3. The terms ‘CSO’ and ‘NGO’ will both be used here. ‘CSO’ refers to the broad range of possible civil-
society organisations, while ‘NGO’ will be used to refer to a narrower range of more formal institutions
that often have their own staff, funding, and infrastructure.
4. For more on recent events in these five countries, see Saul 1999; Melber 2002; Crais 2003.
5. Mozambique is often mentioned as an example of a post-conflict society that has chosen the path of
‘silence’—or, at the very least, other, less verbal forms of social reconstruction—rather than the
more public and confessional forms of addressing the past that have been adopted in countries such
as South Africa. The government’s ‘silence’ on these issues may therefore reflect not only political cal-
culation, but a certain underlying resonance with local cultural precepts. Many NGOs, however, chal-
lenge the idea that the government’s silence on the past reflects cultural rather than purely political
motivations.
6. The Herero and Nama, for example, are pursuing lawsuits for damages for atrocities committed
between 1907 and 1915 by German colonial forces.
7. The Land Commission was another major effort on the part of the South African government to address
one of the key issues likely to undermine long-term reconciliation in the country: the violent and inequi-
table (re-)distribution of residential and agricultural land during apartheid.
8. There have been debates about exactly how ‘African’ this concept is, with some arguing that the term is
simply a way to ‘Africanise’ political compromises and make things like amnesty and victim testimony
look more ‘cultural’ than political.

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The author
Christopher Colvin is an anthropologist working in South Africa on several aspects of socio-political
reconstruction in post-conflict societies. He also conducts research on HIV/AIDS, masculinity, and the
global politics of public-health science. He works with the Transition and Reconciliation Programme of
the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation and in the School of Public Health and Family
Medicine at the University of Cape Town. Contact details: 21 Duke St., Observatory 7925, Cape Town,
South Africa. ,[email protected].

Development in Practice, Volume 17, Number 3, June 2007 337