07th September 2021
By Rev Abel Waziweyi
At least fifteen participants from across the country last week attended a five - day Insider Mediation for Sustainable Transformation of Conflict workshop organized by the Institute of Peace Leadership and Governance at the United Methodist Church - run Africa University.
The aim of the program is to develop a critical mass of human resources that will a play a pivotal role in mediation.
The world and Zimbabwe are faced with many challenges which need mediation.
Zimbabwe has come up with the NPRC and Afrika university has signed an MOU.
Presenting on the topic 'The Cost of Not Talking'
Dr Solomon Mungure said well knit communities are benefits of talking.
"Failure to talk is costly and many countries give their biggest budget to defence because of failure to talk. Talking reduces transaction costs. Talking is a unifying agent. We are all beneficiaries of talking." said Dr. Solomon Mungure.
"Conflict mapping includes defining conflict which is an expressed struggle between two or more interdependent parties over scarce resources or incompatible goals.
"Conflict maybe a result of power dynamics or attitudinal. Conflict maybe a result of opinion, attitude, beliefs, needs, values, perceptions. We need to be conflict sensetive, how does the other person feel. We need to provide a baseline analysis to evaluate the impact of interventions.
"Conflict mapping is important because it gives both the mediator and parties understanding of the origins and nature of conflict, history of the conflict who are the main actors, context and dynamics and the need the qualitative analysis of the relationships. Mapping include needs based conflict, relational conflict, political conflict, transformative conflict among others." Professor Pamela Machakanja said.
Rev Chembeza shared his personal experience in mediating between Renamo and the Mozambique government.
Said Rev Chembeza: "Trust from both parties to the conflict is very important. This means that the mediator has to be impartial. Preparation of the mediators is important. There is need for a plan, understanding the parties point of view, proposing, bargaining, agreeing, understanding personality traits is important for better negotiations."
Speaking on negotiations that led to the GNU in Zimbabwe in 2008, Dr. Isaac Maposa from the Zimbabwe Institute said
mediators should not be driven from their goals by actors who may want to derail the process.
"The mediator may be closer to one of the parties and this may be good in that it he or she may exert pressure on the side he or she is close to like Thabo Mbeki was to the late president of Zimbabwe." said Dr. Isaac Maposa.
More trainings will be carried out in the future.
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