Strengthening civil society organisations in peacebuilding in Zimbabwe : an action research project
Authors:   , Murwira Ashton 
Published: June 2022

The peacebuilding space in Zimbabwe has been contested by a plethora of actors, which include Civil Society Organisations (CSOs). This thesis focuses on civil groups that engaged in peacebuilding in post-independent Zimbabwe. Despite their presence, the country remains in a negative peace mode with continued resurgence of structural-related conflicts. This points to the weaknesses of CSOs’ modus operandi of building peace. To address this, the study sought to develop, implement and evaluate a peacebuilding strategy that strengthens community-based CSOs in building positive peace in Zimbabwe through the use of indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) and political intelligence1. The research design of the study was two-tier, combining explanatory and action research approaches. The qualitative data methods collection used include documentary review, in-depth interviews and focus group discussions (FGD)s. A total of 43 participants were involved in the interviews and FGDs. Findings from the baseline data indicate that CSOs have failed to translate the prevailing negative peace into positive peace because they follow elitist or liberal peacebuilding models. To address this problem, I carried out inclusive knowledge gathering with an action research team. From the team’s responses, I designed a training manual to enhance CSOs’ peacebuilding activities through IKS and political intelligence. The concept of IKS is embedded in sustainable peacebuilding and a development approach. The training was conducted with members of a CSO2 based in Harare but engaged with grassroots in rural parts of Zimbabwe. The findings in the first evaluation showed that the training was successful, and participants learnt a great deal on how they can best build peace using IKS and political intelligence skills. The participants noted that working with local people generates context-specific solutions that are demand- driven and attractive to the beneficiaries. In the second evaluation participants in the training and local people interviewed highlighted that there was a great change in the manner in which CSO(A) was conducting its peacebuilding campaign. There was great involvement of the local people, use of proverbs and adoption of a stakeholder mapping. This approach led to the generation of legitimacy and local ownership of the peacebuilding programme. The ultimate result was that a culture of tolerance, respect and unity was created in the rural community. The study concludes that sustainable peace and development can be realised when CSOs build peace using IKS and political intelligence skills. I recommend that CSOs should continuously be trained and conduct peacebuilding using IKS and political intelligence in other parts of the country. The study is significant in that it combines theory and practice of building durable peace with CSO(A) through action research. The theory of sustainable peacebuilding was realised through training and implementation of building peace through the use of IKS and political intelligence skills.