Submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Management Science: Public Management (Peacebuilding), Durban University of Technology, Durban, South Africa, 2017. / This thesis sought to answer the research question: How can youth programmes in South Africa contribute more effectively to peacebuilding? South Africa is a country suffering from major inequality and violence. The mark left by the previous disempowering system is still affecting South African people and there is a clear need for justice and healing from all forms of violence and inequality. The existing inequalities are largely racial and economic and those under 25 years of age constitute a large percentage of both perpetrators and victims of violent crime (Clark 2012: 78). This study focused on youth in the Durban area who are South Africans of mostly Zulu heritage. The youth are surrounded by violence caused by disadvantaged circumstances, which include economic, racial and emotional damage inherited from the apartheid system. This group is referred to as ‘youth’ throughout this study as it examines the issues of violence in South Africa and how some young people are exploring solutions. Through an examination of literature and action research (AR) with participants from various programmes, this thesis investigates methods for improving the ability of Durban-based youth programmes to respond efficiently to the needs of youth as they endeavour to transform their communities. Following the identification of methods through focus group discussions, interviews and a review of literature, an action team was formed. This team consulted on which methods they wished to use for a collaborative peace project. They took what they learned from this process forward by sharing their experience with their respective empowerment programmes and by continuing to work together on an ongoing basis to bring their peace project to various other groups of children and youth throughout communities in Durban. The study concluded that when youth projects and programmes allow for youth to play a significant role in planning, action and reflection, whilst also receiving sufficient support from a mentor, they are empowered and the programmes are effective. The youth in this study began by discussing the issues surrounding them, brainstorming possible solutions and then designing a peace intervention in the form of a peace promotion performance. The performance was well received and the participants were empowered from the proactive roles they each played in preparing and delivering the performance. Through this transformational learning and service to the community, opportunities for youth to grow, mature and attain self-efficacy were nurtured. This process resulted in the further development of essential life-skills and positive values, and the youth participants learned to identify themselves with positive peers, mentors and purposeful activity. The action research also improved participants’ confidence, their desire to serve others and helped them to achieve a strong sense of positive endurance and strength to overcome the violence and negative influences around them. This peace project allowed the team members to make meaningful contributions to their community and inspired other youth by modelling peace in action. / M

This paper examines the relationship between Track I Diplomacy and Civil Society in Cyprus. Cyprus has been a divided island for over 45 years despite numerous attempts at reconciliation on the societal level and ongoing negotiations on the diplomatic level. It was the aim of this study to examine the ways in which both civil societies and their leaders do or have worked together, if at all, to negotiate a political solution or reconciliation between the two communities. Interviews were conducted on both sides of the cultural divide and within both political and civil society sectors. Those interviews were coded, categorized, and then thematically analyzed. Findings explicate three themes that challenge the relationship and cooperation between Track I and Track II; Structural Elements, Nationalism, and International Support. Furthermore, it is proposed that the leaders must lead and support their citizens in reconciliation and peacebuilding efforts while continuing to negotiate a solution to the Cyprus problem as civil society organizations continue to support negotiation efforts.

This thesis critiques liberal peacebuilding in Africa, with a particular focus on Sierra Leone. In particular, it examines the interface between the liberal peace and the “local”, the forms of agency that various local actors are expressing in response to the liberal peace and the hybrid forms of peace that are emerging in Sierra Leone. The thesis is built from an emerging critical literature that has argued for the need to shift from merely criticising liberal peacebuilding to examining local and contextual responses to it. Such contextualisation is crucial mainly because it helps us to develop a better understanding of the complex dynamics on the ground. The aim of this thesis is not to provide a new theory but to attempt to use the emerging insights from the critical scholarship through adopting the concept of hybridity in order to gain an understanding of the forms of peace that are emerging in post-conflict zones in Africa. This has not been comprehensively addressed in the context of post-conflict societies in Africa. Yet, much contemporary peace support operations are taking place in these societies that are characterised by multiple sources of legitimacy, authority and sovereignty. The thesis shows that in Sierra Leone local actors – from state elites to chiefs to civil society to ordinary people on the “margins of the state” – are not passive recipients of the liberal peace. It sheds new light on how hybridity can be created “from below” as citizens do not engage in outright resistance, but express various forms of agency including partial acceptance and internalisation of some elements of the liberal peace that they find useful to them; and use them to make demands for reforms against state elites who they do not trust and often criticise for their pre-occupation with political survival and consolidation of power. Further, it notes that in Sierra Leone a “post-liberal peace” that is locally-oriented might emerge on the “margins of the state” where culture, custom and tradition are predominant, and where neo-traditional civil society organisations act as vehicles for both the liberal peace and customary peacebuilding while allowing locals to lead the peacebuilding process. In Sierra Leone, there are also peace processes that are based on custom that are operating in parallel to the liberal peace, particularly in remote parts of the country.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This paper examines an international SDP NGO in relation to the most challenging limitations facing the current Sport for Development and Peace sector. Employing an existing academic framework of the contemporary SDP sector, this case study explores under what conditions an SDP organization might begin to emancipate themselves from such limitations.