So just in case any of you is sitting there thinking, “I wonder how Helena’s getting on with finishing her long-awaited (!) book on violence and conflict termination in Africa?”….
The answer today is “surely, but slowly.” Some days it’s “slowly, but surely.” Some days it’s just slowly. And then, some days it’s AAAAAAARGH!! Like the day back in– was it February?– when I realized that all the writing I’d done for the previous 5-6 weeks needed to be set aside.
So at least we haven’t had another of those recently. (She wipes metaphorical sweat off her brow, in relief.)
Actually, that was about three months ago. Those months have been, in general, pretty worthwhile for the project although the work has often felt like a hard slog… And meanwhile I’ve had to set so many other things aside!
But I do have a commitment to getting this book done in as timely a fashion as I can. I need to get this (pretty darn’ good) draft done before May 18, because that evening I’m heading over to Harrisonburg, VA, to spend ten days teaching a course at the Summer Peacebuilding Institute at Eastern Mennonite University.
This chapter I’ve been working on so hard all this year (also, last fall) is the one that draws together the lessons from all three of the “case-studies” that I have previously explained to the reader in such exquisite and compelling detail. That is: Rwanda, South Africa, and Mozambique. I have some really, really wonderful interview and other field-research material from all three countries. I really need to get the book out soon before it all becomes hopelessly out of date!
This present chapter is Chapter 11. So far, it’s already pretty long, at 11,600 or more words, and I’m probably around 70% of the way through it. That’s okay. Maybe once I’ve done a good draft of it I’ll find I can handily split it into two chapters. Or maybe it’ll just BE long. I think the longest single piece of sustained narrative I’ve ever written was my first draft of the first Rwanda piece I wrote for Boston Review. This one. I’m not sure how long the edited version of that turned out to be– it got quite majorly developed as a text along the way (cuttings, expansions, and revisions). Anyway, I think the first draft was 14,000 words and it was, imho, quite readable if not (perhaps) extraordinarily easily so.
Anyway, on the present draft of the present book, chapter 1-10 add up to 88,000 words. So I’m almost exactly at what I consider to be the ideal length for a book: 100,000 words.
Why am I putting all this on the blog? I don’t know. I just felt like doing something different here tonight; and worrying about finishing this book as well as I can is the main thing on my mind right now.
I also thought I’d share a little bit from near the top of Ch.11 with y’all. Feel free to comment or not on the following as you please:
- In the late 1990s, after the generally perceived success of South Africa’s amnesty-reliant TRC had posed a significant first challenge to those who advocated the “duty to prosecute”, there were many earnest discussions among (primarily) liberals and rights activists in western-cultured countries over how the possibly competing interests of “truth” and “justice” could somehow be reconciled. (“Justice”, in this context, was nearly always understood to denote only the narrow procedural issue of the pursuit of criminal prosecutions rather than anything broader such as, for example, distributive justice or the assurance of fundamental human rights and liberties.) What nearly all of those discussions failed to pay much heed to, however, were the interests of “peace”– that is, the interests of both peacemaking and longer-term peacebuilding— in situations of atrocity-wracked inter-group conflict. But the present work has amply illustrated the fact that the commission of all of the kinds of atrocities that are recognized in current international law (war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide) nearly always takes place in circumstances of deeply rooted inter-group conflict, whether at the international or intra-state level. Any strategy, therefore, that seeks to put in place a general political situation in which people can have some credible assurance that atrocities will no longer be committed must be based on successful strategies at the broader political level for both peacemaking and peacebuilding. By “peacemaking” I mean a policy that seeks explicitly to resolve the deep political differences that lie at the root of the conflict in question and puts in place a sustainable and fundamentally egalitarian political order in which those political differences that will inevitably remain, or will emerge over time, can be resolved through nonviolent, non-coercive means; and by “peacebuilding” I mean a set of policies in different spheres that aim at transforming public attitudes and social and economic relationships in ways that will sustain the non-coercive, post-conflict political order.
In both Mozambique and South Africa, the requirements of peacemaking were addressed, clearly identified, negotiated, and then agreed upon during the course of the four-year-long peace talks that preceded, and brought about, those two countries’ signal “conflict termination events”. (For Mozambique, that event was the conclusion of the General Peace Agreement [that ended the 15-year civil war] in October 1992; and for South Africa it was the holding of the April 1994 democratic elections.) Beyond peacemaking, each of those relatively lengthy negotiations also gave the leaders of the conflicting parties a good opportunity to address many key items in the longer-term peacebuilding agenda. Crucially, it gave the negotiators themselves
I wonder what you think of the May 10 article on “Counterpunch” by Michael Neumann called ‘Ain’t But One Way Out – Naomi Klein’s “Courage”‘.
I suppose what I am suggesting is that the balance between goody-two-shoes sweetness and all-out rage is not a constant one.
The same is true in SA. The TRC, Tutu, and Madiba-ism are history for us. They belong to another century. By the way, there has just been a successful prosecution of a person who declined to apply for amnesty those days. He was convicted of murder.
The rage and the righteousness are still with us. The modus vivendi is not a compromise, it is more like a fudge. It is the same sickly spread that exudes from Bliar, Bush, Bildergerg, Davos, and all the rest of it. It is liberal imperialism, of which Naomi Klein’s is only one small variety.
I think if your book is going to stand out from the liberal crowd it must at least show knowledge of what you might call the bankruptcy of liberalism. There are a lot of people who are sick to the guts like Michael Neumann is, of pious platitudes of the Naomi Klein variety.
Anyway, good luck with the book, Helena.
By the way, there has just been a successful prosecution of a person who declined to apply for amnesty those days. He was convicted of murder.
Dominic, hi. I feel so out of touch w/ SA these days. Could you give me a link to a good solid report of the above or of other ap[artheid-era prosecutions that are underway?
That wd be really great to help me understand how credible the threat of prosecutions was when it was used as a way of trying to corral former perps into the TRC’s Amnesty Cttee. I guess my general impression was that after the collapse of the Malan case the threat lost nearly all its credibility…
On broader questions of “liberalism” per se, I guess I feel I critique it fairly strongly, probably not in the same way you would but because of its strong emphasis on individualism (as in various individualized ‘accountability’ projects, the possibility of providing reparations to ‘victims’ on an individualized basis, etc etc). I think I wd describe myself now as a liberal communitarian in terms of social/political philosophy. But I also have a strong commitment to “that of God in everyone”.
The book aspires to be strongly empirically grounded and committed to a deep vision of human equality. (Like me, I guess.)
For those interested, here are the links to
Naomi Klein’s article and
Michael Neuman’s pamphlet
Well, I’ve read both and think that Neuman from Counterpunch is making the wrong trial to the wrong person. In many former reports Naomi Klein has made it clear what the peace movement should ask :
1) An immediate withdrawal of the US and coalition troops;
2) Compensation and reconstruction money for the Iraqis;
3) That one can’t both be anti-war and support the troops.
In her last report (see above link), she is not addressing what should be done by the Iraqis, but which strategy the peace movement should adopt in the US in order to get its message through and to mobilize the US citizen against the war and to put pressure on the Bush government. Neumann has a point that many US citizen are probably not buying Bush’s lies, nor his ideology concerning the development of “freedom and democracy” in Iraq, that they just don’t care. But what else is Neuman proposing, which Naomi Klein doens’t ? OK.. he is fed up with analysis, but how can the peace movement achieve a larger mobilization against the war, if not through argumentation ?
Although many don’t buy the Bush’s “freedom and democracy” ideology, because they don’t care, this is still dangerous : Goering already stated it, a lie repeated many times ends up accepted as a truth. Plus putting up a hypocrite face on is an easy way to avoid/discard that uneasy guilty feeling creeping under. Bush and neocons lies ought to be denounced. OK, Naomi Klein doesn’t come out with miracle receipes concerning how to mobilize against the prolungation of occupation, but neither does Neuman, whose grip with Naomi Klein I don’t understand.
Hi Helena,
I’ve looked, but I can’t find the article now. I didn’t give it much thought at the time, only when I saw your post.
There is an opinion piece on the general subject by Jovial Rantao at http://www.thestar.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=225&fArticleId=2451807
In the case that I read about it was an ANC comrade who was convicted. He left the country after the deed, and didn’t bother to apply for amnesty when he got back.