Reflections on Peacebuilding Constructs in Seke District, Zimbabwe

Since 2004, the formation of informal peace committees in Zimbabwe has signaled a change in the dynamics of local peace initiatives away from external elite top-down donor-driven interventions and toward a greater understanding of the potential of localized indigenous village and community informed solution-focused perspectives and initiatives. Despite the fact that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) aided in the facilitation, promotion, and enhancement of what was already in place, local peacebuilding efforts in Zimbabwe are not new, nor did they begin in 2004. Many Zimbabwean villages have had local peacebuilding initiatives such as customary courts for several decades prior to colonialism, but their notion of peacebuilding remain overlooked and under-appreciated. This study focuses on the peacebuilding constructs that have prompted ordinary people in the Seke district of Mashonaland East province, Zimbabwe, to create ward-level and village peace committees. The results of an action research method involving a 15-member ward peace committee (WPC) and 27 male and female respondents are discussed in this study. One of the main constructs was that peacebuilding is a collaborative mechanism (with no end-point) with the primary goal of preventing violence through conflict transformation rather than eradicating conflict. Peacebuilding was further interpreted as everyone’s occupation, regardless of social or political standing, since conflict knows no bounds. This study contends that elites can collaborate through a hybridized mechanism with local actors and informal institutions to promote community empowerment capacity for local peace and development initiatives in Zimbabwe.