Commentary (by Buri Edward) - Spread mediation spirit beyond the Serena

Ref: http://www.nationmedia.com/dailynation/nmgcontententry.asp?category_id=25&newsid=117583

Story by BURI EDWARD
Publication Date: 2/24/2008

Should mediation be a singular event or a philosophy allowed to actively percolate into all layers of our nationhood? This question is important because the status of the current mediation as a singular event held behind closed doors in Nairobi, and recently at a secluded lodge, has left every Kenyan craning his or her neck for glimpse of the small but important team at the Serena. This has relegated everyone else to a passive status.

Kenyans have put so much faith in this team that they have become unaware of both their responsibility and capacity as peacemakers. There is an unspoken expression of delegation of the task to the select team.

This is a dangerous position. It is dangerous because the continuity of peace hinges heavily, if not entirely, on the outcome of the talks as conducted by the select team.

THIS LEAVES A DANGEROUS WINDOW through which, in the event that agreement is not reached, the country could see the return of the distress that, in only four weeks, reversed the significant progress our country had made with so much labour.

For any reasonable person, such a relapse must never be an option. Calls to reinstate the paralysis can only come from blind guides.

There is an urgent need to publicly and actively expand the concept of mediation beyond its restricted meaning of the ongoing negotiations.

Instead, mediation should be disseminated as a spirit of the season, rallying leaders and the citizenry to initiate processes of recreating unity at every level of society.

With a localised appreciation of the mediation spirit, communities that tore into each other during the post-election violence can dare to seize the opportunity to converse with one another.

This possibility of dialogue, say at village level, would deliver its share of positive participation to the national process.

This could accelerate the resettlement agenda since the government would have a clearer picture of whom to resettle and who can directly and safely return to the land from which they were uprooted.

In the same mediation spirit, corporate, religious and social institutions, which by virtue of their composition host a myriad of political perspectives, should hold bridge-gap forums with the purpose of creating an environment suitable for reconciliation.

Such an encouragement of decentralisation would see new mediation leadership emerge at various levels of our society. Even at present, no one has been denied the chance to effect reconciliation in communities, institutions and neighbourhoods.

It is only that such a decentralised view of mediation has not been preached. This approach is credible because the violence at the grassroots, sponsors aside, was perpetrated by local people.

But with the glaring statistics of loss on every side of the conflict, and with a returning conscience that begins to see and perceive the vanity and the evil of the wanton destruction, there is the possibility that local people will be capable of rebuilding their relationships, albeit slowly.

Mediation initiatives at the grassroots level stand a chance of unbundling the “national” elements in the ongoing talks, reducing them to a forum for discussing party relationships, the place of executive power in our government and the settlement of personal differences among national leaders.

If the people on the ground started reconciliation, sponsors of violence can only be greeted by a rude shock when attempting to rally their people for mischievous action.

These sponsors would realise that the people have since solidified a pro-peace stance that empowers them to reject any initiatives that threaten their new-found unity.

GRASSROOTS SOLUTIONS BY LOCALS have the potential to put down firm roots where national formulations by imported negotiators become as brittle as glass.

Unlike the pre-election season where locals waited for instructions from their political sponsors, in this reconciliation season, locals need not wait for word from those same sponsors.

They need not spend one more day without peace if they can make local steps towards it. Any leader who discourages or disarranges such healing would be clearly championing another agenda and not reconciliation.

Together with letting this mediation spirit actively permeate all levels of our society, there is need to support such percolation with peace education.

Inescapable is the reality that the ethnic hatred witnessed before and after the elections was actively and systematically taught, learnt and enacted.

If people and institutions generously invested time, money, personnel and such other resources to teach this hatred, then it would be naïve to sit back and imagine that peace will make a natural return.

There is no easy road home. There must be an informed, strategic and generous investment of resources to help people unlearn hatred by teaching them the way of peace.

And shame on anyone who hastily fabricates a peace education initiative with a money-making motive. Such a person or entity is comparable to one who would display victims of the violence for money. The peace-building initiatives must be drafted and enacted with full respect for the victims – both dead and alive.

In our present circumstances, peace must not only be an end. It must also be a means. A reintroduction of violence in the pursuit of truth is both unwise and also limits the degree of the peace achievable.

As Martin Luther King Jr said, “the end pre-exists in the means.” Going by this wisdom, this season in our country demands that the chief quality of an acceptable leader be authentic teaching of peace, with a believable track record to fit the claim.

And peace being a spiritual attainment on the most part, we expect to see great and urgent leadership from the religious sector. But it is expected, then, that the recently repentant religious fraternity, in the noble excitement of forgiveness, will now wear its mediation boots and use its extensive national network to start clearing the murk at the grassroots.

Buri Edward is a Nairobi theologian and a religious minister.