How we respond to legacies of past violence cannot be separated from the narratives we hold about that violence. When the state fails, for whatever reason, to take the lead in dealing with past violence and the development of a public narrative about conflict, various groups may seek to fill that space based on different agendas. The way individuals and organisations outside the state interpret and engage with processes of dealing with the past is influenced by the narratives they hold and are exposed to, and this can have positive or negative implications for long-term peace. This thesis seeks to interrogate how civil society narratives of electoral violence have shaped the transitional justice agenda in Zimbabwe, as drawn from the way they report and depict understandings of this violence, through written texts as well as the way they speak about violence in various public forums. This investigation is done through a qualitative interpretivist approach to understand the kinds of narratives of violence espoused by four civil society organisations through a categorical content analysis of their reports and in-depth interviews with four key stakeholders. The thesis concludes that while the understandings of violence are key to how we deal with the violence, these understandings have to be drawn genuinely from the experiences of those that have lived the violence, and not from agendas that seek certain ends, whether political or economic. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2020. / Social Science Research Council’s Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa Fellowship, with funds provided by Carnegie Corporation of New York SSRC and the University of Pretoria Postgraduate Research Support Grant. / Political Sciences / PhD / Unrestricted
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:up/oai:repository.up.ac.za:2263/76013 |
| Date | January 2020 |
| Creators | Munyaka, Chenai Gillian |
| Contributors | Wielenga, Cori, cgmatshaka@yahoo.com, Nshimbi, Christopher Changwe |
| Publisher | University of Pretoria |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Rights | © 2019 University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria. |
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