Another important element to emerge throughout the Lifeline Media programme is the vital importance of the basic journalistic skill of storytelling and the rich variety of ways in which this can be done to promote peace-building. One graphic example is Ubuntu Productions of South Africa's producer Mark Kaplan's disturbing documentary focusing on the Truth and Reconciliation process in South Africa. His film presented the on-going dialogue between a South African police colonel and the parents of one of his murdered victims. A surprise ending, unintended on the part of the producers, left the audience pondering the traditional concepts of justice and forgiveness. At the other end of the scale was the Cape Town local radio broadcast of a story on gang warfare, left unfinished to stimulate the listeners' imaginations as to how it should end.
Success is very difficult to determine in the peace-building business.
Conflict resolution expert Dudley Weeks illustrates this neatly with his example of the conflict mediation between Sikhs and Muslims in Southall, London. The only indicator of success he could point to was that his trainees formed a conflict resolution organisation of their own, which is still operating. A more fundamental difference is that, if asked, the parties in a successful conflict resolution intervention would not acknowledge that outside forces were responsible for improving the situation. The mark of success is that the facilitation should not be seen as media or conflict-resolver led, but as emerging from within. Evaluation is clearly one challenge on which further work needs to be done.