The Wilgespruit Fellowship Centre, where today’s politicians learned their negotiating skills, is once again involved in finding peaceful alternatives to violence. Jacqui Pile reports
While new gun legislation has met with fierce resistance, there is one way of disposing of illegal and excess weapons which is both novel and unlikely to inspire so much antagonism.
A massive peace angel, made from melted guns, will be constructed as part of a global peace project at the Wilgespruit Fellowship Centre in Roodepoort. The statue will stand more than 6m high, serving as a reminder of how South Africans have managed to build a peaceful nation out of violence.
While the angel will be the most conspicuous icon of peace, it will be just a small part of a larger peace project. The World Economic Forum has nominated South Africa as one of four regions to take part in their Transition to Peace Initiative.
Along with Northern Ireland, Bosnia- Herzegovina and the Palestine-Israel region, South Africa will receive concrete and moral support from the organisation to develop projects that help to foster peaceful relations globally.
One of the South African projects will be to transform Wilgespruit into a 32ha peace park, complete with a museum and peace academy to teach negotiation and mediation skills to leaders across the world. “Our history of non-violent resistance during the struggle can become an exportable commodity,” says Reverend Dale White, adviser for the project.
Wilgespruit played a prominent role in the fight against apartheid. “If Robben Island was the university of the struggle, then Wilgespruit was the technikon,” says Chris Ahrends of the Desmond Tutu Peace Foundation, which is also involved in the project.
Involved in the formation of the black consciousness movement, labour unions and civic organisations, the centre trained more than 600 activists in conflict resolution and community development.
Although promoting only non-violent tactics to fight the apartheid system, the government clearly saw the centre as a threat. “[HF] Verwoerd said we should stop hiding politics under the cloak of religion and tried to shut us down in 1962,” says White.
Luckily, prominent church leaders intervened and the centre survived, along with its principles.
When the political parties sat down to talk in 1991 at Codesa, they were armed with negotiation skills learned and practiced at Wilgespruit.
“Side-by-side, principled negotiation like that undertaken at Codesa needs to be learned and managed properly,” says White. “Position bargaining like we have seen in the recent public sector wage dispute, leads only to deeper conflict.”
The proposed peace academy will run courses in negotiation, conflict resolution and mediation for government, community and business leaders. A long- distance, interactive component is also in the pipeline, using Intavision, a locally based video-conferencing company.
“The programmes offered will not be merely transfer management skills, but will focus on value-based leadership,” says Ahrends.
While the credit for our peaceful transition has tended to be hijacked by the politicians, business and labour also played an important role in the process.
Corporations will be involved in the development of the peace park. “Butit is a move away from the NGO concept,” says Ahrends. “We want partners, not just funders.”
An important feature of the new park will be a peace museum. But in an attempt to move away from the violence that has become synonymous with apartheid, the peace museum will focus on the role of non-violent resistance.
“We’ve become saturated with violence,” says White. “It seems societies have developed infrastructures for war but not for peace. The museum will be an effort to change that.”
Using museums as agents of social change is part of an international trend. “In the past, museums have focused on keeping objects safe, rather than activating people’s imagination,” says Jo-Anne Duggan, a museum consultant. “Now there is a need for using artefacts to generate debate and take the message beyond the walls of the museum into the community.”
She says there is a need for museums that promote understanding and tolerance, but much will depend on which activities are linked to the museum. “Allowing people to express themselves and give suggestions will encourage communication between different groups and that in turn will help to maintain peace.”
Nation building may be another spin-off from the museum. White feels the Transition to Peace Project will help to build a sense of loyalty among South Africans.
But, he says, nation building needs to be seen within a wider global context. “We need to think globally, but act locally, ” says White, “otherwise we run into ethnic cul-de-sacs.”
Links between the Irish, Israelis and Palestinians have already been established at Wilgespruit, and exchange programmes with other countries have been in place for many years.
South Africa has much to learn from interacting with the four other regions. All the countries are suspended between the legacy of conflict and the prospects of peace. All share the common residuals of prolonged conflict and are fighting excessive unemployment, high debt, poverty and old prejudices.
Isaac Shongwe, a Global Leader of Tomorrow from the World Economic Forum, hopes that interaction between the regions will encourage collective problem solving and result in developing universal strategies for maintaining peace.
Drawing on the experience of the Middle East may help South Africa further its efforts at reconciliation.
“Community NGOs have been cross-cutting psychological barriers to build trust between acceptance among the Israeli and Palestinian people,” says White. “The people who participated in the conflict have helped resolve the conflict too.”
He says that Bosnia has been slow to recover from its civil war because little community participation was started in advance.
“South Africans can still be relied upon to resolve conflicts,” says White, “but we are only going to succeed if we put our problems in the middle of the table, instead of on different sides.”