Andries Odendaal

Centre for Conflict Resolution
June 1998

Introduction.

1. Ethnic conflict is a major and primary source of violence and instability in the world.

   Between 1900 and 1987 170 million human beings were murdered by their own governments world-wide ². These victims of internal conflicts by far outnumber those of wars between states for the same period. The post-Cold War world and Africa in particular is increasingly characterised by internal conflicts where ethnicity plays a vital role. Regehr ³ wrote in 1993 that almost two-thirds of political conflicts world-wide were ethnic conflicts.

   The prevalence of ethnic conflict and its consequences are particularly severe in Africa. Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations, has stated that since 1970 more than 30 wars have been fought in Africa, the vast majority of them intra-state in origin. In 1996 alone, 14 of the 53 countries of Africa were afflicted by armed conflicts, accounting for more than half of all war-related deaths world-wide and resulting in more than 8 million refugees, returnees and displaced persons. "The consequences of those conflicts have seriously undermined Africa's efforts to ensure long-term stability, prosperity and peace for its peoples." ⁴

   The causes of the above situation are obviously complex and varied and it would be a grave mistake to reduce them to only one factor, namely ethnicity. Ethnicity is seldom if ever the sole cause of conflict. However, conflicts increasingly present themselves as ethnic conflicts with ethnic identity serving as the rallying point or the mobilisation agent for the manifestation of the conflicts. The management of ethnicity and its related issues should therefore be a central part of processes to resolve these conflicts.

2. Ethnicity should be recognised as a natural social phenomenon.

   The theoretical debate on the nature of ethnicity has largely taken place within the parameters of the primordialist-instrumentalist spectrum ⁵. Primordialists argue that ethnicity is formed and shaped by deep historic, cultural, social, psychological and, some would say, biological ⁶ realities, and has an irrational and ineffable quality.⁷ Instrumentalists, on the other hand, emphasise the malleability of ethnic ties. Ethnicity is largely seen as a social construct, a political resource for competing interest groups ⁸ or as the consequence of the rational choice of individuals to pursue goals of wealth, prestige and power in a collective manner ⁹.

   There have been few attempts to synthesise the two approaches. Hutchinson and Smith have observed that the 'primordialists' fail to account for ethnic change, whereas 'instrumentalists' seem unable to cope with ethnic durability ¹⁰. The solution seems to lie in a both-and rather than an either-or position. Ethnicity is clearly a phenomenon with more staying power than other social formations such as social class or religious denomination ¹¹. At the same time it is subject to change, assimilation and manipulation.

   The association of ethnicity with sectarianism, parochialism, narrow-mindedness and chauvinist bigotry is not helpful ¹². Neither is the assumption that cultural assimilation and political integration are the only 'rational' strategies for dealing with ethnic diversity. Whether ethnicity has primordial roots or whether it is a convenient way for groups to mobilise politically, it is a fact of life that causes untold misery because its power is not appreciated and its management is neglected. The history of this century has demonstrated that it cannot be dealt with by either denying it or denigrating it (for example, declaring it to be a false consciousness or a function of underdevelopment). It is therefore only by recognising ethnicity as a normal social phenomenon that efforts to deal with it will become more rational and constructive.

3. The manifestation and functioning of ethnicity is decisively influenced by multi- layered perceptions.

   Whereas discussion of the essence of ethnicity is still a controversial matter, it is clear that its manifestation and functioning is determined by the impact of perceptions and belief systems. Consider the following:

   • Culture is more than just a set of customs and rituals. It is also a collective world-view, a manner of understanding historical and environmental realities forged through centuries of interaction. It impacts on the basic understanding of and attitude towards matters such as responsibility, individuality, communality, authority and causality. Culture therefore impacts on the way one understands one's environment, one's own role and responsibility within it, and one's interpretation of the role of other groups within the same environment.
   • The self-esteem of individuals is deeply connected to the esteem of the ethnic group. Given the need for a positive self-esteem, ethnic groups reveal a fundamental drive towards establishing a favourable self-esteem vis-à-vis other groups through processes of intergroup comparison and the subconscious filtering and censoring of information concerning other groups. Perceptions about other groups are therefore negatively influenced by a group's need to establish its own self-worth and to favour itself ¹³.
   • Groups make an assessment of their well-being in the first place not through an analysis of their objective conditions, but rather through comparisons with other groups. They will determine their status of deprivation by establishing the discrepancy between what they have and what they feel entitled to. What they feel entitled to is determined by their perceptions of relative status. This dynamic of relative deprivation has been indicated as an important contributor to social conflict ¹⁴.
   • Ethnic groups who find themselves in conflict may employ various psychological mechanisms leading to exaggerated perceptions of the justifiability and moral superiority of their own position and the basic evil of 'the other' ¹⁵. The creation and nurturing of an 'enemy image' is an important mechanism to lessen the emotional and moral stress of conflict, but also to maintain a sense of the 'good' self.
   • An important part of the process of maintaining ethnic identity is the continuous interpretation of historical events. This interpretation is invariably selective and aimed at enhancing the self-esteem of the group (the glorious past) and/or its sense of victimhood (the evilness of the enemy). By attaching religious or ideological meaning to such selective interpretations, they are strengthened to the point of acquiring the status of absolute truth. Of particular importance is the fact that new generations are socialised into a selective understanding of the past and thus internalise these perceptions ¹⁶.
   • Under conditions of great insecurity and uncertainty (as prevail within a weak state ¹⁷) an ethnic group might tend to exaggerate the potential threat of other ethnic groups to its own security and consequently adopt a worst-case scenario of the threat posed by opposing groups ¹⁸.

   Each ethnic group therefore lives within an 'imagined reality' concerning its own worth relative to other groups, its own sense of entitlement and the threat posed to its well-being by other groups. The fact that this 'reality' is imagined does not imply that it is therefore ineffective and meaningless. Perceptions and belief systems often have a greater impact on the course of events than objective realities.

4. The manifestation of ethnic conflict in Africa today is exacerbated by the nature of the state, its borders, policies and effectiveness.

   Ethnic conflict is, however, not purely a matter of perception. The nature and intensity of ethnic conflict is also determined by the material conditions of the context within which it is taking place. The objective reality that has the greatest impact on the manifestation of ethnic conflict in Africa today is that of the weak state ¹⁹. 'Weak states' are weak in terms of their institutional capacity to govern effectively and in terms of their level of inner cohesion and legitimacy.

   The modern, bureaucratic state has been the Western colonial powers' most successful export product. It is the one element from the Western experience that has become universalised ²⁰. This means that during the twentieth century the modern state has become the principal arena of competition for access to and control over the scarce resources for which members of society compete.

   The manner in which the boundaries for Africa's modern states were drawn is well-known. The result of that process was that most of the new states had to function with multi-ethnic compositions that in some cases reached bewildering proportions ²¹. Amongst citizens levels of internal cohesion and of identification with the new state were very low or non-existent. In effect decolonization gave formal sovereignty or juridical independence to states that had very little in terms of substantial statehood. Sørenson ²² has pointed out that the states of Africa found themselves in the dilemma that on the one hand juridical survival was guaranteed by the international community (whereas in Europe the process of the formation of strong states involved a decrease in the number of political units). On the other hand this guarantee prevented the demise of even the most unviable of these states and thus perpetuated a situation of extreme insecurity (e.g. Somalia, Sudan).

   One of the consequences of this situation was a fairly cynical and desperate competition for control of state power. The general condition of poverty that prevailed throughout the continent and the fact that the state became by far the most important provider of employment and other forms of economic opportunity, increased the stakes for the control of state power. It became almost literally a matter of life and death ²³. It was to be expected that in Africa the competition for state power would not happen on the basis of atomised individuals or as members of social classes or ideological associations, but as ethnic communities. Ironically the fear of ethnic contests for state power became the pretext for many a one-party dictatorship or military rule.

   The condition of being a weak state has therefore contributed to the extent and intensity of ethnic conflict. Since the weakness of the state also refers to the lack of affinity between the state and its constituent ethnic or social groups, it implies that the weaker the state the more likely that the regime has to rule by coercion rather than by consent ²⁴.

   Being a victim of state discrimination or oppression is in itself a cause for serious conflict. Gurr ²⁵ identified 233 politicised ethnic groups in the world during the 1980s. Sixty-three per cent of these experienced historical or contemporary economic discrimination and 72% political discrimination. In many cases these inequalities were perpetuated by policies and practices that violated widely-recognised standards of human rights. An indication of the resentment that ethnic groups feel in the face of perceived unequal treatment is the fact that more than 85% of these groups organised politically at some time to defend or promote their collective interests against governments and other groups. These protests usually started out peacefully, but in the face of continued denial or repression escalated into violence and eventually into protracted violent conflicts (21%).

   In summary, the fact that the greater majority of states in Africa are weak states increases the prospects for ethnic conflict. Yet, the state remains the single most important institution to deal with and to manage ethnic conflict ²⁶. The challenge therefore is to strengthen the state's capacity to face and manage these realities.

   PROPOSITIONS CONCERNING THE MANAGEMENT OF ETHNIC CONFLICT

5. It is the responsibility of political leaders and leaders of civil society to manage ethnic conflict and to devise appropriate constitutional, political and socio-economic measures to do so.

   Numerous historical examples exist of successful and mostly unsuccessful attempts to manage multi-ethnic states ²⁷. It is a great temptation to deduce a constitutional model with the greatest potential for ethnic conflict resolution from such historical experiences and to sell that to the various governments and policy makers in Africa. Two factors should restrain us from falling in this temptation:

   1. There is no existing constitutional model that can claim to be successful under all conditions. In fact, judged from a historical perspective, the prognosis for multi-ethnic states succeeding in solving ethnic conflict in a non-violent manner is rather poor ²⁸. While it is certainly useful and necessary to learn from historical examples, the immense difficulty of finding a workable formula has to be acknowledged, as well as the fact that the search for such a formula is still ongoing. This situation makes it imperative that political and social leaders should engage in their own struggle to find solutions that will fit their conditions. Their solutions have to be discovered and forged by themselves because they have to implement and maintain it.
   2. Imposed models fail precisely because they are imposed and because they invariably ignore aspects of the local condition. The fashionable notion, for example, that the holding of majoritarian elections is the first necessary step towards solving ethnic conflict shows no regard for the effect of such elections on marginalised and threatened minority groups (e.g. Rwanda, Angola). The value of democracy is not disputed. However, through the insistence of the international community on a specific formula (the holding of elections to establish rule by the majority), local leaders have been deprived of their responsibility to find their own unique solutions that would bring peace and stability to their communities ²⁹.

   Whereas the uncritical prescription of a specific model is not helpful, there is use for taking note of historical examples. It is particularly useful to point to examples of the successful structural accommodation of diversity. The value of noting such examples is that they may provide useful lessons (that may find their own unique applications in diverse situations), stimulate the creative investigation of alternative options, and keep the hope alive that solutions are possible. The South African experience (inter alia) may serve as such an example, both in terms of the process that was followed to achieve political accommodation and the constitution that was the outcome of that process. Some of the more salient aspects of the South African example are:

   • the quest for the greatest level of inclusivity in the preliminary process of setting the stage for negotiations and at the negotiating table itself;
   • the encouragement of inclusive and constructive conflict resolution procedures at all levels of the society during the transition phase;
   • concerted efforts to ensure significant multi-ethnic and multi-party representation within significant governmental institutions;
   • the institution of a Government of National Unity;
   • proportional representation of political parties in Parliament;
   • the integration of all armed forces;
   • recognition of group rights by establishing the rights of individuals to associate freely on political, cultural or religious grounds;
   • the recognition of the languages of all ethnic groups as official languages;
   • the constitutional prohibition of unfair discrimination;
   • the establishment of the Rule of Law and the Constitutional Court, as well as the creation of independent institutions to protect civil liberties such as the Public Protector and the Human Rights Commission;
   • an ongoing emphasis in government on inclusive decision-making.

6. Interventions in ethnic conflict by the international community and NGOs should serve to support the struggle of local leaders to find workable and realistic solutions.

   Conflict resolution intervention by a third party should be governed by the following fundamental principles ³⁰:

   1. Conflict is not inherently destructive, but a normal aspect of any vibrant community. The danger of viewing ethnic conflict as inherently negative is that attempts to avoid or suppress it at all costs are being justified.
   2. A thorough and comprehensive analysis of the causes and conditions of the conflict taking all the different perceptions seriously should inform conflict resolution activities. Superficial and one-sided assumptions invariably lead to counter-productive interventions.
   3. Conflict resolution processes should be inclusive of all parties that are involved.
   4. Conflict resolution activities should take place with the consent of and preferably at the invitation of the various role-players.
   5. The third-party interveners should be non-partisan in their relationship with the disputing parties. The roles of conflict resolution and that of advocacy should be distinguished and preferably not be performed by the same bodies.

   Conflict resolution interventions are in essence about empowering disputants to deal more creatively with their conflict. In this light NGOs that specialise in conflict resolution have the following legitimate options for intervention available to them:

   • The facilitation of communication between parties in conflict when levels of antagonism make normal communication difficult or impossible.
   • The facilitation of an analysis of the causes of conflict, preferably as a joint effort involving all the relevant role-players ³¹.
   • The creation of a safe environment (politically and psychologically) in a workshop setting that will enable participants to test their own assumptions and explore different options.
   • The broadening of the range of options available to participants by facilitating the exploration of existing constitutional models and historical experience of the resolution of ethnic conflict.
   • The provision of training in conflict resolution skills, including skills to deal with deeply ingrained perceptions.
   • The facilitation of opportunities to reflect on participants' experiences in the past and to draw lessons from that.

7. Workshops and other forms of training or facilitation should adopt an elicitive approach.

   Elicitive training refers to an approach developed by Lederach ³² that seeks to avoid the danger of cultural imperialism. The training process is designed and facilitated in such a way that participants reflect on situations familiar to them, apply their existing knowledge in discussing those situations, improve their knowledge through critical reflection on their past experience and enhance their skills through practical experimentation. Participants should discover essential insights on the basis of their own experiences within their particular contexts rather than to have them prescribed. Elicitive training therefore makes the minimum use of lectures and the maximum use of active participation and structured reflection on own experiences. Training should preferably also happen intermittently over an extended period of time so that participants can put some of their new ideas into practice and have the opportunity to come back to a training workshop to reflect on the results.

    

   NOTES

   1. Ted Robert Gurr and Barbara Harff 1994: Ethnic conflicts in world politics, p.190; Gerhard Maré 1993: Ethnicity and politics in South Africa, p. 23; Simon Bekker 1996: Conflict, ethnicity and democratisation in contemporary South Africa, in Simon Bekker and David Carlton (eds.) 1996: Racism, xenophobia and ethnic conflict, p. 79-82.
   2. The calculations were made by RJ Rummel and quoted in Theo Tshuy 1997, Ethnic conflict and religion: challenge to the churches, p. ix, xv.
   3. Ernest Regehr, quoted in John Paul Lederach 1995: Building peace: sustainable reconciliation in divided societies, p. 7. Regehr refers to identity conflicts, but it can safely be assumed that the majority of these involve ethnicity.
   4. Kofi Annan 1998: The causes of conflict and the promotion of durable peace and sustainable development in Africa. Report of the Secretary-General to the UN Security Council. http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/sgreport, paragraph 4. For additional statistics on the occurrence of ethnic conflict in Africa see also Peter Wallensteen and Margareta Sollenberg 1995, "After the cold war: emerging patterns of armed conflict 1989-94", Journal of Peace Research, 32:3, p. 346; Edmond J. Keller and Donald Rothchild 1996, Africa in the new international order, p. 3; Georg Sørenson 1996, "Individual security and national security: the state remains the principal problem", Security Dialogue, 27:4, p. 376.
   5. See Gurr and Harff 1994, op. cit., p. 77 - 95; John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith (eds.) 1996, Ethnicity, p. 32 - 104; Pierre L van den Berghe 1987, The ethnic phenomenon, p. 1-5.
   6. Van den Berghe associates the irrational aspect of ethnicity with the fact that humans are biologically selected to be nepotistic because by favouring kin (the ethnic group is an extension of kin) they maximise their reproductive fitness. See Van den Berghe 1987, op. cit., p. 27, 35.
   7. Walker Conner feels that rational explanations of ethnicity failed to account for the emotional depth of ethnic identity. "Men don't allow themselves to be killed for their interests; they allow themselves to be killed for their passions." See Walker Conner , "Beyond reason: the nature of the ethnonational bond", in Hutchinson and Smith 1996, op. cit., p. 69-75. Clifford Geertz states that the "congruities of blood, speech, custom, and so on" which are "givens of social existence" have an "ineffable, and at times overpowering, coerciveness in and of themselves." Clifford Geertz, "Primordial ties", in Hutchinson and Smith 1996, op. cit., p. 41-42.
   8. "It is only when, within the formal framework of a national state or of any formal organisation, an ethnic group informally organizes itself for political action, that we can say that we are dealing with ethnicity." Abner Cohen, "The informal nature of political ethnicity", in Hutchinson and Smith, op. cit., p. 84.
   9. Michael Hechter, "Ethnicity and Rational Choice Theory" in Hutchinson and Smith 1996, op. cit., p 90 - 98; Michael Banton, "The actor's model of ethnic relations" in Hutchinson and Smith 1996, op. cit., p. 98 - 104.
   10. Hutchinson and Smith, op. cit., p. 34.
   11. For example, the assumption that, when the majority of citizens confess to an identical religion, ethnicity would lose saliency (an assumption on which modern Israel and Pakistan are based) has proved to be incorrect. See Cynthia Enloe, "Religion and ethnicity" in Hutchinson and Smith 1996, op. cit., p. 201.
   12. See John McGarry and Brendan O'Leary 1993, The politics of ethnic conflict regulation, p. 17.
   13. Tajfel, Turner and others developed the 'social identity theory'. See Henri Tajfel 1982, "Social psychology of intergroup relations", Annual Review of Psychology, 33, p. 1-39. See also Rupert Brown in Miles Hewstone et al (eds.) 1988, Introduction to social psychology, p. 400-404.
   14. Brown in Hewstone et al 1988, op. cit., p. 407.
   15. Chris Mitchell 1981, The structure of international conflict, p. 99-117; VD Volkan 1989, "Psychoanalytic aspects of ethnic conflicts", in Joseph V. Montville (ed.) 1989, Conflict and peacemaking in multiethnic societies, p.81-91. Volkan describes, for example, the effect of projection: it is when "unacceptable unconscious impulses, attachments, and thoughts - after undergoing a certain degree of distortion - enter an individual's consciousness in the form of external perceptions. Another person or group ... is then perceived as the 'container' of the individual's previously unconscious unacceptable psychic content"
   16. See Gerhard Maré 1993, Ethnicity and politics in South Africa, p. 27.
   17. For a definition and description of a 'weak state', see paragraph 4 below.
   18. Paul Roe 1997, "The intra-state security dilemma: ethnic conflict as a 'tragedy'", COPRI Working Papers 18, p.21. Roe discusses the possibility of an intra-state security dilemma. The condition of anarchy (which exists in international relationships and which is a precondition for the applicability of the 'security dilemma') is approximated in weak states, with the consequence that ethnic groups perceive themselves to be responsible for their own security. In this context it becomes conceivable that one ethnic group may eventually engage in violent conflict with another, not because it had the original intention to do so, but because the high level of uncertainty induced perceptions about the intentions of the other and the acceptance of worst-case scenarios. Thus the conflict acquires the nature of a tragedy.
   19. Collier states that poverty and the absence of democracy are the greatest determinants of civil war in Africa. The two factors are inter-connected because, he says, democracy has a direct positive bearing on economic growth. See Paul Collier 1998, "The political economy of ethnicity", Paper read at the Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics, Washington D.C., April 1998. The concept of the 'weak state', however, provides a more comprehensive framework for understanding the dilemma in Africa while it does not ignore the salience of the lack of democracy and poverty.
   20. Milton Esman, "Political and psychological factors in ethnic conflict", in Montville 1989, op. cit., p. 58.
   21. "The mismatch between cultures and boundaries is the single biggest factor contributing to instability, civil war and acts of genocide in Africa." Richard Griggs 1997, "Boundaries for an African Renaissance", Track Two, 6:2, p. 23. Contrary to this view Collier argues that the high level of diversity in African states actually is a source of strength because it raises 'coordination costs' for rebellion. "Africa's high ethnic density has made it less at risk from violent conflict than had it had the lower ethnic diversity found on average in societies." The critical factor is democracy, and not diversity. Collier 1998, op. cit., p. 6 - 13.
   22. Georg Sørenson 1996, op. cit., p. 377.
   23. See Kofi Annan 1998, op. cit., paragraph 12. He states: "The nature of political power in many African States, together with the real and perceived consequences of capturing and maintaining power, is a key source of conflict around the continent. It is frequently the case that political victory assumes a "winner-takes-all" form with respect to wealth and resources, patronage, and the prestige and prerogatives of office. A communal sense of advantage or disadvantage is often closely linked to this phenomenon .…"
   24. Paul Roe 1997, op. cit., p.21.
   25. Gurr and Harff, op. cit., p. 5-7.
   26. Sørenson, op. cit., p.374-376.
   27. For a discussion of the various historical models for dealing with ethnic conflict see Johan Galtung 1996, Peace by peaceful means, p. 61 - 68; McGarry and O'Leary 1993, op. cit., p. 4 - 38, Smooha and Hanf, "Conflict-regulation in deeply divided societies", in Hutchinson and Smith 1996, op. cit., p 326 - 332; Van den Berghe 1987, op. cit., p. 83 - 236.
   28. Edward D Mansfield and Jack Snyder state: "Democratizing states were about two-thirds more likely to go to war (including domestic war) than were states that did not experience a regime change." Quoted by Sørenson 1997, op. cit., p. 379. See also Uri Ra'anan, "The nation-state fallacy", in Montville 1989, op. cit., p. 5 - 20; Van den Berghe 1987, op. cit. p. 213, p. 218-224.
   29. See McGarry and O'Leary 1993, op. cit. p. 25: "The normative lesson is obvious: a majoritarian system of liberal democratic government, designed to create strong powers for the governing party, is no guarantee of liberty for ethnic minorities. A 'winner takes all' system in the presence of ethnic parties ensures that ethnic competition will be regarded as a zero-sum conflict."
   30. See the following articles by Laurie Nathan:
       1996, "Analyse, empower, accommodate. A constructive challenge to conflict resolution", Track Two, 5:3, p. 4-6.
       1997, "Strategic interventions", Track Two, 6:1, p. 2-3.
       1998, "At the core. Six strategic principles of mediation", Track Two, 7:1, p. 8-10.
   31. John Burton has developed detailed rules for the facilitation of joint sessions where the parties in conflict focus on an analysis of the causes of the conflict. JW Burton 1987, Resolving deep-rooted conflict. A handbook.
   32. John Paul Lederach 1992: Beyond prescription: new lenses for conflict resolution training across cultures. See also James Taylor, Dirk Marais and Allan Kaplan 1997. Action learning for development. Use your experience to improve your effectiveness.

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