Weaving Peace: Essays on Peace, Governance and Conflict Transformation in the Great Lakes Region of Africa provides a unique and interdisciplinary perspective on issues of peace, governance, and conflict transformation by academics and practitioners from eight partner institutions of the United Nations Mandated-University for Peace in the Great Lakes region of Africa. It is an essential tool for scholars and policymakers seeking contextual clarity behind the headlines about the nature and extent of conflicts in the region and how to go about transforming the region. It provides a rather nuanced perspective of the complexity of the peace/conflict dynamics of the region and underscores the inescapable truth of the need for a more indigenous and context-based approach to understanding the Great Lakes region of Africa.

WEAVING PEACE

Essays on Peace, Governance and Conflict Transformation in the Great Lakes Region of Africa

Trafford Publishing

Copyright © 2012 Samuel Kale Ewusi
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4669-5419-9

Contents

Acknowledgment........................................................................................................................................................................................ixDedication............................................................................................................................................................................................xiContributors..........................................................................................................................................................................................xiiiPreface: By Jean Bosco Butera.........................................................................................................................................................................xixPart 1: Defining the Region...........................................................................................................................................................................1Chapter 1: Achieving Peace, Promoting Good Governance, and Transforming Conflicts in the Great Lakes of Africa: A Contextual Introduction Samuel Kale Ewusi and Jean-Bosco Butera.....................3Chapter 2: The Great Lakes Region after Five Decades of Political Independence: Challenges and Future Prospects Mathew Banda..........................................................................28Chapter 3: Memory and Historical Realities in Shaping Politics and Armed Conflicts in Rwanda Maximiano Ngabirano and David Tsimbi.....................................................................45Part 2: Peace Education...............................................................................................................................................................................73Chapter 4: Educating for the Twenty-First Century: Peace Education for the Postgenocide Rwanda Jean Bosco Habyarimana.................................................................................75Chapter 5: Fundamental Pillars of Culture of Peace in the Great Lakes Region: A Case Study of the Democratic Republic of Congo Vincent Muderhwa.......................................................93Part 3: Conflict Resolution and Transformation........................................................................................................................................................119Chapter 6: Rwanda's Social Transformation Process: Leader or Leadership Ruzidana Eugene Methode.......................................................................................................121Chapter 7: Traditional Mechanisms of Conflict Resolution in the Great Lakes Region Ignatius Mukunto, Jean-Bosco Habyarimana, and Jacob Mwitwa.........................................................146Chapter 8: Temporality and Timescale in Dialogue Discourse: A Discursive Reconstruction of Conventional Frame of Dialogue Komakech Daniel and Otim Denis Barnabas.....................................166Chapter 9: Postconflict Gender Challenges and Implications in the Great Lake Regions: Case Study of Northern Uganda Stella Layolo Omona...............................................................189Part 4: Governance....................................................................................................................................................................................209Chapter 10: Governing Conflict: The Case of the Right to Asylum and Security Concerns of Uganda in the Wake of Global Terrorism Esibo Simon Omaada....................................................211

Chapter One

Achieving Peace, Promoting Good Governance, and Transforming Conflicts in the Great Lakes of Africa: A Contextual Introduction

Samuel Kale Ewusi and Jean-Bosco Butera

If you are a leader of peace, listen to the discourse of the petitioner. Be not abrupt with him; that would trouble him. —Egyptian Proverb

Intractable conflicts have had the people of the Great Lakes region in its grasp for many decades. This situation came to its apogee when photographs of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda appeared on our television screens. Against the backdrop of macabre terms such as genocide, ethnic cleansing, rape, exploitation, corruption, etc. used in describing the events that have characterized the Great Lakes region, two overriding questions come to mind. First is whether peace can be achieved in the region and, second, why peace has been so elusive in the region. In attempting to respond to the first question, we are reminded of Barash's mathematical analogy of peace being an asymptote. That is something that can be approached but not quite reached. Although this could be a pessimistic view, one can afford to be optimistic with the second question through the lenses of theologian and antiwar activist A. J. Muste when he wrote, "There is no way to peace. Peace is the way." The reason for this optimistic view resides in the fact that the Great Lakes region, after so many decades of intractable conflicts, does not have the luxury of bemoaning a near miss by regretting that, although through countless initiatives and interventions, they have come close to achieving peace, but it continues to elude the people of the region.

Achieving peace, promoting good governance, and transforming conflicts in the Great Lakes region requires an understanding of the myriad causes of the widespread conflicts that have engulfed the region and the propensity of the people in the region to resort to violence as a means of settling disputes from the spectacles of people of the region. The preponderant narratives regarding the causes, which have gained traction over the years, have mostly emanated from outside the region. In fact, literature on the conflicts in the region has often fallen short of the contextual flavor required for a deeper understanding of the ingredients required for achieving long-lasting peace.

An example of this lack of context is strongly highlighted in the preface to Phil Clark and Zachary Kaufman (editor) where President Paul Kagame of Rwanda testily takes on René Lemarchand's contention that the Hutu/ Tutsi terminologies form the basis of the problem of ethnicity in Rwanda. President Kagame does not only dispute Lemarchand's premise but also advocates the criminalization of the philosophy of denial and revisionism, which have typically stereotyped some postgenocide narratives. His central argument remains that if denial of the Holocaust can be criminalized, denial of the genocide should also be criminalized. There is abundant literature on revisionists and denialists of the genocide in Rwanda in spite of the international political and judicial recognition. This reflects Francois Mitterrand's assertion that "in such countries [Rwanda], genocide is not too important." A further justification for the critical need for context in literature on the situation in the Great Lakes region is contained in Severine Autesserre's piece in African Affairs on the international community's response to the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He argues that the narratives that have driven the action of the international community in Congo and, of course, the Great Lakes region have focused on the primary causes of violence, the illegal exploitation of mineral resources with the consequential human rights abuses, and a central solution of extending the...