The 2001 Quaker Peace Roundtable:
Workshop Number 14: African Great Lakes Initiative – David Zarembka – April 7, 2001
Additional Notes by Marjorie Ramphal
(Some of this is copied from a draft speech by David, but it was presented in this
workshop, as well.)
When he first went to Tanzania many years ago, David taught school children Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. When he told his mother this after he went home, she wondered if children from a different culture would value this.
Actually, they ate it up. This tale of a coup and counter-coup was very like current affairs in African states and, since they didn't know the outcome of Julius Caesar, they found it exciting.
The relevance of this anecdote is that David is sometimes asked whether the Alternatives to Violence Program (AVP) has relevance to African cultures. He finds this condescending, perhaps racist, because it seems to imply that Great Lakes peoples don't know what is appropriate to ask for.
Why does AVP appeal to this population? Previously Europeans have been highly authoritarian in their interactions with Africans. AVP strikes at the roots of genocide which occurred in a hierarchical society and was planned by about 200 people. It was relatively easy to implement with a people used to obeying commands. AVP destroys the concept of authoritarianism. In a violent society, thugs rise to the top.
Steve Angell brought AVP workshops to Uganda and Kenya a number of years ago. In Uganda, a British Quaker living in Uganda was so enthusiastic about this training that she arranged for three Ugandans to attend courses in all three levels of AVP training at Woodbrooke College, Quaker study center in England. They returned to Uganda to initiate training programs. One of the three was non-productive and one was spectacular. They were supported by Mennonites and British Quaker Peace and Service. At the invitation of Grace Kiconco, one of the three trainees, now administrator of AVP-Uganda, in January,1999, the African Great Lakes Initiative sent two Canadians to Uganda to co-facilitate two workshop with Ugandan facilitators. They recommended more extensive involvement.
In February, 2000 AGLI sent a team of four international facilitators--two Americans, one British, and one South African--to co-facilitate eight AVP workshops, two of which were in men's prisons, one in a women's prison, and one with former soldiers. These workshops were extremely successful. There are now eight trainers doing workshops in different areas of Uganda. Two of these are ex-soldiers who are doing AVP workshops with the Masai's who, in recent years, have traded tin their spears for AK 47's.
Three Rwandans were among those trained in Uganda. Subsequently AGLI in partnership with Rwanda Yearly Meeting sponsored twelve AVP workshops in Rwanda in five weeks with 168 participants with three American, one British, and three Ugandan facilitators. Participants were quite varied--Hutus, Tutsis who survived, Tutsis who came back. Bob Barns got acquainted with the Lutheran bishop of Rwanda who became interested in AVP and arranged to have a workshop in the area which is mostly Lutheran. There were no drop-outs in these workshops. In fact, participants brought friends. These workshops were arranged without a hitch by David B., of Rwanda Yearly Meeting.
Eight people from different parts of Rwanda hope to organize 10 or perhaps 25 workshops in the next year after international team members return. The goal is to do AVP workshops for the 112,000 people in Rwanda prisons. Some day they will be released and they will have a high potential for violence.
The Kamenge Reconciliation and Reconstruction Project in Burundi involved seven foreigners--one British, one Tanzanian, one Canadian, and four Americans--who joined with seven members of Burundi Yearly Meeting to rebuild the guest house/residence at Kamenge Friends Church in Bujumbura. Now AGLI's major program partnership with Burundi Yearly Meeting is the Burundi Trauma Healing and Reconciliation Center, originally conceived by David Niyonzima, who said that if healing has not occurred, conflict will recycle in the future. Two Burundians and two Americans have completed six months of training in Burundi and in South Africa. The actual beginning of the center is just now going on.
Questions/Comments
Q. What language is used in the workshops.
A.David said three languages are used, two African and English. But in the AVP format, interpreters work quite well.
Steve Angell added that when he is asked about AVP training in different cultures, he explains that the exercises in AVP can be built into their own cultures.
Q. Was there a negative response from the government?
A. David said that in Uganda the government sent a spy who became enthusiastic about the program.
Q. Are women included in the training?
A. Of the four U.S. facilitators, two were women. 80% of the participants are men. The Rwanda yearly meeting is male dominated. David B. and other leaders are aware of the feminine deficit.
Q. Are the prisons filled with men and women?
A. In Uganda, both. Mostly men in Rwanda and Burundi.
Q. Have any of the commanders in the genocide participated in a workshop?
A. David said not yet.
David recommended a book, Let None Live to Tell the Tale by Alison Des Gorges(?) .
Comment by Charles "Chick" Nelson: The crisis started in Burundi when the president was assassinated and the country "blew up." 30,000 to 50,000 were killed. Rwandans saw that genocide went unnoticed. There were warnings of impending genocide in Rwanda all along. Weapons were stored, but the UN couldn't confiscate them. When10 Belgians wee killed, the Belgian troops were withdrawn. Alison, of Human Rights Watch, tried unsuccessfully to get new I.D.'s issued to prevent identification as a Hutu or Tutsi. When the Hutu controlled radio began to foment massacres ("kill the cockroaches") she tried unsuccessfully to get the radio shut down. Kofi Annan, in charge for this area at the UN, limited the authority of the peacekeepers. There was a French Canadian commander for Bangladeshi, Ghanaian, and Zambian peacekeeping troops.
Q. Does AVP training "work" for non-Quakers, non-Christians?
A. Yes.
Q. Question about 'ethnic hatred.'
A. David said there really is no ethnicity. It's more like class hatred, introduced by the Belgians. In Rwanda, the Tutsis were at the absolute bottom of the class structure. Uganda is very different with many ethnic groups, religious, political groups, also clans. When groups experience enough killing it becomes a non-option.
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