M.A. / none / Prof. D. J. Geldenhuys

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / Zimbabwe was beset by militarised politically-inspired violence between 2000 and 2008. How that violence has been imagined in terms of its causes, memorialisation and impact has been far from conclusive. As a derivative of this huge question that forms an important component of the framing for this dissertation, and to“visibilise” the subaltern, so to say, and to visualise “history from below”, I ask how the women of Shurugwi conceptualise it. This question has also polarised Zimbabweans into two, broadly the human rights and the redistributive, camps. But I ask, what do either of these frameworks enable or eclipse in the further understanding of the violence? Deploying genealogical and ethnographic approaches centred on the rural communities of Shurugwi that analyse the historical, socioeconomic and political factors that have engendered human rights abuses from pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial moments, the dissertation problematizes both discourses and invites a much more troubled analysis.As a way to complicate the reading and to attempt to open the analysis of the violence further, I draw on the theoretical insights from Michel Foucault’s theory on the relationship between power and war. Inverting Clausewitz’s aphorism of war as politics by other means, Foucault argues instead that politics is war by other means. This inversion allows for a nuancing of the connections between the violence and the Chimurenga trope in Zimbabwe. In this way, the labelling of farm takeovers and other force-driven indigenisation modes in the new millennium as the Third Chimurenga, I demonstrate, was not a mere emotive evocation, but was meant to situate the violence as the final stage in a sequence with, and in the same category of importance as, the earlier zvimurenga, that is the First and Second Chimurenga that targeted to uproot the colonial project. I thus argue that the violence represented, in a significant way, the continuation of war for ZANU-PF to retain power amid dwindling electoral returns. This mode further illuminates the deployment of the spectacles of punishment for the public disciplining of citizens to achieve their passivity. Throughout the dissertation the central and animating question is to what extent were women the invisible victims of the violence? This question attempts to interrogate the political role of women in the violence. I attend to this question by privileging the narratives of women. Also, by articulating an Africanist feminist discourse that contests the dominant western one which atemporalises, universalises and fixes victimhood with females, this dissertation invites a re-looking of the violence in a way that locates agency at the site of performance. In this way I show that women were not perpetual victims, but were also important political actors whose actions, however small, greatly extended the violence. To conclude, I propose the adoption of the “traditional” Shona practice of kuripa ngozi as a transitional justice mechanism to help stamp out the culture and cycles of violence and impunity that have scarred Zimbabwe especially from the late colonial to the post-colonial eras.

The principal of this thesis is to show how the Church can use the shepherding model of pastoral care as a method to address victims of the 2008 political violence in Zimbabwe. The model is biblically sound and is quite challenging to an African Christian practicing pastoral care. The Palestinian shepherds when herding the flock they are in front while in Africa, Zimbabwe in particular, we herd from behind. The Palestinian model is important for the Church to emulate. Could the African – Zimbabwean model be the one that the Churches in Zimbabwe have employed? The Church has been reacting when things are happening. The church has not been helpful by prophetically confronting the evil of political violence. The shepherding model of pastoral care calls the church take a risk, trusting God for providence. The church can not afford to be silent when people are being traumatized by political violence. Remaining silent will be regarded as siding with the evil that traumatize people. It is the church that can only be a vehicle of hope, healing and reconciliation. The three stories shared in chapter four is a clear testimony that the church has a lot to do in terms of creating safe environment, rehabilitation and even integrations. / Dissertation (MA(Theol))--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Practical Theology / unrestricted

Submitted to the FACULTY OF ARTS in fulfillment of the requirements for MASTERS DEGREE IN SOCIAL WORK In the Department of Social Work, University of Zululand, 1999. / The purpose of the study was to investigate the impact of political violence on the lives of children in Mandini. The motivation for the study came from the number of people who came to the social worker's office reporting children who were having problems after being exposed to violence. The researcher used the exploratory research design. The sample consisted of thirty five (35) children who were affected by political violence in Mandini between 1994 - 1996. The population consisted of children between nine (9) years and eighteen (18) years. The sample which "consisted of children was taken from schools, case files in the welfare office, Psychologist's office and in their homes. The interviews were conducted between August 1998 and September 1998. The interview schedule was used. The study was limited to the impact of political violence on the lives of children. Future studies could focus on the prevention of violence. There is a need for social workers to use the developmental approach to be able to deal with violence. The study found that violence had an impact on the lives of children in Mandini. The study found that violence was caused by politics and it affected the children in that they witnessed the fighting and killings. The study found that the children were personally affected by violence in that they were injured and their relatives were injured and some were killed. The study showed that the children lost their homes during violence. It came to light that children experienced problems during violence in 1994 - 1996. The children suffered long-term disabling effects of violence. The study showed that the children need help to cope with the after effects of violence.

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts, Clinical Psychology. Johannesburg 1991. / The study focused on the perceptions and' experiences of youtlidn relation to patticip~fion in political violence. ;It examined the .relatierrship between exposure to state violence, expo§ure to domestic violence,. ideological support for violence and participation in poMticaLviolence;and explored the extcat to .which 'g~nder, age and socio-econemic status inf1u~nced,paiticip~at1o~ in political violence.' , \\ II The traditiL\nal an~ contextual theories of violence th~tTorward explanations for participa~()n in political. violence lwere reviewed and their merit relative to viqfence participation. critically examined. o , U .!,} _ " . . " Ojl,.i \ \r)' '~;;" , /.) ,. " } A structured self questionnaire was developed after an initial pool of item J pertaining to violence were generated, their psychometric properties.ofmtemal consistency ass(jssedand these clustered into the. various violence; scales. The revised questionnaire was adnlinistered to first entry undergraduate students (n= 1902, N:.:2677) at the Universityofthe Western Cape. The datawas analysed using quantitative methods, such as chi-square analyses, t-tests and cortelation ryatdces. Data that showed a high degree' of self-reported~ untruthfulness was discarded frorii further analysis. The level of statistical Significance was set at p< Oj0001. (I The results reveal that the majority of respondents were victims of state violence. Participation' in political violence is significantly related to exposure to state violence, an '~deological support of violence, as well as to being male and older. Gender and age differences were noted for participation in political violence with older males being politically violent. 1~lere wag, no significant difference for socio-economic status and participation ill political violence. The variable that showed the strongest relationship to participation in political violence was exposure to state violence (r=0,77), followed by ideological supportof violence (r=O,;2). The relationship of participation in political violence to exposure to domestic violence though significant was poor.(r=Oj08). Thus the study found that participation in political violence is mainly a function of exposure to state violence and is context specific. The youth had not learnt to be politically violent by being involved in domestic violence. Contextual theories seemed to offer a better explanation for participation in political violence for youth in South Africa. Future research should focus on the interrelationships between 1~6litica1 violence and interpersonal violence.

Analyzing the political, legal, and cultural outcomes of the protests against the 2017 G20 Summit in Hamburg (the NoG20 protests), this thesis departs from the observation that violent protests may produce outcomes that seem counterintuitive at first sight. After the NoG20 protests, Hamburg’s government introduced a police identification statute that required officers to wear individually assigned codes during riot police operations. This was intended to make police more accountable to the public by allowing recognition of specific officers in cases of alleged misbehavior. This policy change seemed surprising, given that the heavy escalations of violence that characterized the protests were primarily attributed to the NoG20 activists, rather than to police. This thesis examines this seeming paradox from three different perspectives: first, from a policy-process perspective that reconstructs the decision in its temporal context; second, from a legal perspective that focuses on the interplay of political decision-making and judicial review of the occurrences; and third, from a discourse-oriented perspective that analyzes changes in the discursive opportunity structure associated with the NoG20 protests. The overall analysis indicates that protests may have multiple outcomes that a) may be interlinked, b) may both constrain and enable collective and legislative action, c) may be unintended by both collective and institutional actors, and d) should be analyzed in their historical context, as they may be the result of processes that began well before a given protest. This thesis finds that the decision to introduce a police identification statute was the outcome of a complex meaning-making process—a series of “struggles over credibility” between state authorities and NoG20 activists as well as their supporters that were played out in various arenas, including parliament, the media, and the courts. The findings suggest that rather than “triggering” change or adding entirely new topics to decision-makers’ agendas, the NoG20 protests functioned as a “focusing event,” a “catalyst” for change, intervening in ongoing, long-term processes. In terms of methodology, this thesis contributes to the literature by demonstrating that a processual approach that pays particular attention to temporal sequence and the dynamic interactions among collective actors and other actors can help to address one of the major challenges of outcome research—to establish a link between collective action and an observed outcome. On the conceptual level, the thesis contributes to the literature in several ways. First, it demonstrates that moving beyond the “success” or “failure” understanding that is particularly dominant in policy-related outcome research can help overcome some of the field’s shortcomings and broaden its analytical scope as it draws our attention to potentially new phenomena, including the unintended effects of collective action. Second, it benefits our understanding of the outcomes of both collective action—violent or not—and repression by viewing outcomes as “snapshots” (i.e., intermediate results of a process in which change is still underway). Finally, it potentially helps to resolve some of the inconsistencies inherent in particular research on the effects of repression by promoting understanding of the temporality inherent in state responses to collective action, whether they are legal or political.

No description available.

The aim of the thesis is to examine discourses about political violence categorised as “ethnic” in academic literature and the media. Employing the method of discourse analysis, the study analyses news coverage of the wars in former Yugoslavia 1991-1995. The theory applied is based on Michel Foucault’s theory of the relationship between power and discourse in the constitution of knowledge, and the main arguments are supported by the work of the political scientist V. P Gagnon Jr. and the social anthropologist Stef Jansen. The empirical material consists of 60 articles from three Swedish newspapers; Svenska Dagbladet, Sydsvenska Dagbladet and Arbetet. Three types of representations of the war in former Yugoslavia are identified in the analysis; primordialism and “ethnic hatred”, neoprimordialism and ethnic mobilisation, as well as the Balkan perceived as a primitive “other”. It is argued that journalistic stories in the news coverage are imbedded in dominant discourses that produce knowledge and “truths” about so-called “ethnic conflicts”, assuming that ethnicity is the cause of violence. Therefore, the thesis shows the need for anthropological knowledge about the process of ethnic identification during conflict.

This dissertation contributes to the ongoing analysis of art during the anni di piombo (1969-1983) by revisiting and challenging the well-established charge that artists failed to create meaningful reflections on terrorism during the years of lead. I analyze a select number of literary and filmic fictional representations of terrorists and their victims produced in Italy during the first half of the anni di piombo, up to Aldo Moro’s death. Reading these narratives in a comparative perspective, I argue that their symbolic reflection on terrorism becomes particularly evident in the representation of the body of the terrorist. Through my analysis I find that—despite the differences in medium, genre, intended audience, and kinds of political terrorism these narratives respectively explore—a similar fundamental criticism of terrorism as an essentially anti-political practice emerges. In this way, I show, these narratives can be read as contributions to the democratic debate on violence and the principle of civility in politics produced already during that period of great socio-political crisis.

The conclusion of the Cold War has had contradictory effects on on-going conflicts in the former superpower client states of Ethiopia, Somalia and Angola. The argument proposed in this dissertation seeks to explain these variations in conflict. Two conditions, distribution of power and governing agreement, are considered to be fundamental to this explanation. In many cases, disputants have had access to arms in the past and their ability to pursue violent means to their objectives in the future is contingent on their continued access to weapons or other resources. These patterns are reflected in the distribution of power. The second condition, governing agreement, reflects the fact that in the immediate post-Cold War era, disputants have frequently sought to resolve their differences through negotiations. What is relevant here is whether any subsequent political pact exists between disputants and whether it involves power-sharing or a winner-take-all process. These two conditions, military viability and governing agreement, are combined in a matrix to suggest how their interaction leads to divergent outcomes. Depending on the mix of conditions, the outcomes range from "stable peace" to "tense peace or low-level conflict" to "civil war." The argument is applied to the three cases from 1985 to 1995. The author concludes that winner-take-all elections, though often the preference of African leaders, can be a recipe for disaster in tightly contested states with a history of violent conflict. On the other hand, while power-sharing agreements are difficult to arrive at (and even more difficult to implement), agreements leading to governments which are inclusive of the main disputants are an important step in the mitigation of conflict. By building security and creating the sense that both parties have a stake in the continued functioning of a political system, armed movements may be more willing to relinquish their weapons and embrace peace.