Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation

Between a Rock and a Hard Place:
Violence, transition and democratisation

A consolidated review of the Violence and Transition Project

by
Bronwyn Harris

Violence and Transition Series, December 2005.

Bronwyn Harris is a former Project Manager at the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation.

Acknowledgements

This report is based on seven years of research at CSVR. A number of people have contributed to the theory, methodology and analytical framework of the VTP series.

Special thanks to Graeme Simpson. The VTP project as a whole reflects his vision, direction and conceptual understanding of violence in transition. This report is underpinned and driven by a framework of understanding, as well as specific theoretical discussions, insights and inputs, offered by Graeme over the last seven years.

Thanks also to:
Gerd Schonwalder of the IDRC for always supporting the project.
Piers Pigou, who has contributed enormously to the VTP series and who has maintained a consistent interest in the project over the years.
Shelley van der Merwe for facilitating and supporting the development of the consolidated report, as well as her editorial input.
Nahla Valji for her enthusiasm, support, analytical insights and editing skills way beyond the call of duty.
Polly Dewhirst for her support, care and compassion.
Sasha Gear, the co-last man standing!
Louis Greenberg for being there!
Ahmed Motala and the CSVR management team for supporting the project and contributing to this report through the strategic planning and individual programme work.
David Bruce, Lucy Collins, Alice Koopedi, Malose Langa, Oupa Makhalemele, Mpho Matlhakola, Kindiza Ngubeni, Xoliswa Ntintili, Ingrid Palmary, Richard Smith, Ephrem Tadesse, Hugo van der Merwe for your varied and valuable contributions.
The VTP research teams and report authors.
Everyone who chose to tell us their stories. Thank you!

This work was carried out with the aid of a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Ottawa, Canada. Thank you for generously funding the Violence and Transition Project.

Contents

Introduction
   Background and Context
   Evolution of the Violence and Transition Project: An iterative process
      A More Focused Approach
      Democracy as a Dangerous Opportunity
      Faultlines of Conflict: Identifying factors that separate people and entrench division
      An Integrated Approach
Consolidating Violence: Key lessons and themes
   Continuity and Change
   Politics and Crime in Transition
   The Politics and Economics of Exile
   The Gender of Violence
   The Politics of Atrocity
   Rising Criminal Violence
   The Legitimacy of Violence: Political and socio-economic change
      A Critical Mass of Violence
Swinging the Scales of Justice
   Institutional Continuities and Changes: The case of the criminal justice system
   Everyday Violence: A missed opportunity for the TRC
Violence, Reconciliation and Peacebuilding: Approaches to understanding and dealing with violence
   Remembering Violence: Memory as peace builder or conflict sower?
   Lessening the Likelihood of Violent Conflict During Reconstruction and Transformation Processes
   Demilitarising Security: Human security and demilitarisation
   Demilitarisation: The need to harness the experience of conflict in a way that actively promotes peace
Identities of Exclusion
   Militarised Masculinity
   Identities of Trauma and Suffering
   Victims and Perpetrators: Revisiting the third hypothesis
   Outsiders and Newcomers: Opportunities for violent identities
Integrating Violence
   Reconciliation: The rebuilding of relationships
   Institutional Transformation
   Social Justice
Consolidating Violence: A way forward
References
Glossary

Introduction

Violence is an ongoing and prominent feature within South Africa and other countries emerging from violent, authoritarian regimes. As such, it constantly undermines and prevents efforts at reconciliation, healing and building sustainable peace. Violence also illuminates the limitations of, and obstacles facing, a new democracy. Traditionally there has been little research into, and consequently limited appreciation of, the factors that influence the relationship between violence and transition and their significance for processes of democratisation.1 This has had implications for the ways in which violence is addressed (systems of justice) and how society understands democracy and reconciliation. While the past still impacts on present forms of violence, new trends, targets and perpetrators have also emerged within South Africa's democratic-era (some in direct response to democratisation itself).

South Africa's current experience of violence is not unique. Indeed, violence is a feature of most transitioning states. This is borne out by CSVR's regional peacebuilding work, (focused on building sustainable peace within Africa, especially Southern Africa, the Great Lakes region, Sudan and Sierra Leone); our Transitional Justice Programme, which has undertaken comparative studies with other countries emerging from transition (e.g. Guatemala, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Rwanda and the DRC) as well as an evaluation of transitional justice mechanisms within South Africa; our victim empowerment emphasis on working with marginalised groups, such as ex-combatants and refugees (informed initially by the VTP 1 research); and our focus on criminal justice and institutional transformation. Violence, in countries emerging from authoritarian regimes and armed conflicts, undermines the tangible benefits of democracy and constantly threatens the process of transition itself.

Over the last seven years, the Violence and Transition Project (VTP) at the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR) has examined different faultlines and factors of violence in a trajectory over time. This, in order to better address the democratic deficits inherited from previous governance and to understand the changing relationship between political and criminal violence as part of a violence prevention agenda. Key to our analysis has been an engagement with violence in relation to the fields of transitional justice, criminal justice, peacebuilding and reconciliation. By bringing together these different areas of study (intended to grapple with violence in different ways), and by exploring how violence intersects with, and is shaped by, them VTP offers a unique multi-disciplinary analysis of violence in transition, one that tackles and conceptualises violence from a range of diverse perspectives.

Through this multi-layered analysis of the causes and consequences of violence, the project as a whole therefore contains key conceptual lessons about violence, lessons that this report seeks to extract and highlight. As South Africa continues to be a model for countries undergoing transition, and with regional and global conflicts impacting on national democracy-projects, it is vital to lift the VTP focus to an international, comparative level, so that lessons can be learned and shared with other societies facing similar circumstances. This report will thus simultaneously identify gaps in the project, as well as possible avenues for future study. It does so in the recognition that VTP also plays a central role within CSVR. This is an integrating project that draws on and feeds into other projects and programmes. These lessons will therefore expand on and reflect a wider CSVR experience (locally and internationally).

Background and Context

In September 1998, the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR) submitted a proposal to the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) entitled: Transition, Violence and Reconciliation in South Africa. The funding was approved and - in early-1999 - the project, known as the Violence and Transition Project (VTP 1), started. Initially run over the three-year period 1999-2001, a second phase of the project (VTP 2), conceptualized in the proposal: Obstacles to and Opportunities for Democracy (2002), was heralded in 2003. As this phase nears completion (in December 2005) we have been afforded an opportunity to embark on a learning review of the project. This is an occasion to:

This review starts from the premise that the VTP project itself has evolved over time. As such, it is a project in transition, much like its subject matter. In order to consolidate seven years of dedicated research, thirteen core reports, hundreds of primary interviews and focus groups, and a large archive of background and unpublished material into a meaningful set of lessons, this report will focus on the changes and continuities within the project as a whole. It will look for common threads and themes running across the different subject areas as another step within the iterative learning process that has marked the project overtime [iterative is used here to mean a process of learning and organic growth, achieved through building-on previous knowledge in a self-aware and consciously critical manner]. Through this process, this report will also identify key thematic gaps and set out possible areas for further research.

Given the huge volume of information and material collected, this review will not focus in detail on the individual sub-projects produced through VTP 1 and VTP 2. An overview of the VTP 2 sub-projects (their objectives, and variances between planned and actual activities) can be found in the report, Violence and Transition 2: Obstacles to and Opportunities for Democracy, Final report to the IDRC (December 2005). A similar overview of VTP 1 can be found in the earlier narrative report, Violence in Transition: South Africa's Journey towards a post-conflict society? Final report to the IDRC (April 2002).

The different constituencies examined through these sub-projects include:

Evolution of the Violence and Transition Project: An iterative process

In the past seven years, the Violence and Transition Project has moved through two phases: VTP 1 and VTP 2. These phases can be distinguished from each other through rationales, foci, budgets, funding cycles, staffing, and, in some ways, the theory underpinning and driving each. But, although they are distinct phases, it is artificial to treat them separately. Rather, it is important to acknowledge that VTP 1 has fed into and informed VTP 2, which, in turn, has built on and expanded VTP 1; the phases are clearly related to each other. It is this relationship that reflects the evolution of the project in terms of the activities and premises upon which it is built. This is a relationship of sequence, best seen in:

A More Focused Approach

VTP 1 set out to test three key hypotheses:

  1. The nature and form of violence changes during transitions from authoritarian to democratic rule, although due to the legacy of the past political violence, the extent of the violence does not change.
  2. Reconciliation strategies like Truth Commissions may have an impact on future violence prevention, but unless these approaches recognise the changing nature of violence, their impact on violence prevention is dramatically reduced.
  3. There is a significant relationship between victimistion and violent offending; these are not separate social categories in historically violent societies (VTP 1 Proposal, 1998, p. 8).

These three hypotheses, although over-simplified representations of violence, have proved useful starting points against which to problematise and explore the complex nature of violence. They are critically examined through the discussion below. Instead of speaking about violence in the general, sweeping terms of the hypotheses, the first round of research pointed to a more targeted set of 'thematic indicators' through which to examine conflict and transition. These are described in the VTP 2 proposal as:

In planning the second phase of the project, the focus was also directed away from a general scan of violence within the different constituencies to very specific communities and processes. This, it was proposed, would allow for a more focused, nuanced understanding of violence within the project. These nuances, the 'thematic indicators' and hypotheses will be explored and re-examined through the discussion below with a view towards better understanding their relationship to patterns, trends and targets of violence in transition.

Democracy as a Dangerous Opportunity

The proposal for VTP 2 also brought to the fore the idea of democratisation in relation to violence. Although democracy2 was an implicit aspect of the original proposal, VTP 1 research highlighted the extent to which violence and conflict threaten its consolidation. At the same time, VTP 1 revealed the ways in which processes of democratisation in South Africa are themselves impacting on and shaping patterns of violence. It is within this articulation of violence as key to our understanding of democracy (and not just reconciliation), that a project shift can be detected between the two phases, a shift that is reflected in the titles of the VTP 1 and 2 proposals: from Transition, Violence and Reconciliation in South Africa to Obstacles to and Opportunities for Democracy.

The increasingly overt articulation of violence in relation to democracy across the development of VTP is not surprising. This reflects the lifespan of the project and the society itself: over the last seven years South Africa has moved further and further from the old apartheid order, at least at the levels of legislation and formal processes of democracy, as well as popular discourse.3 This was clearly illustrated with the rhetoric surrounding the third set of national elections in April 2004 and an accompanying '10 years of democracy' retrospective within state institutions and civil society bodies. In this way, VTP represents a violence and democratisation project, as much as it reflects on violence and transition.

One of the novel contributions of the project has been its ability to look at current expressions of violence through the lens of time and social change. A related strength of VTP has been to examine violence within the context of change itself; looking for its roots and continuities, as well as shifts, across the past-present period of transition, in order to better understand, predict and prevent future violence. Thus, through reflecting on VTP as a whole, it is possible to interpret violence as a threat to democracy and a symptom of the process of democratisation itself. This dual role – threat and symptom - can be glimpsed in the faultlines that reflect old and new social divisions within a transitioning society.

Articulating violence with reference to social faultlines represents a third shift in the project, an evolution that builds on and rearticulates the earlier phases, from broad hypotheses and thematic indicators towards a faultline analysis.

Faultlines of Conflict: Identifying factors that separate people and entrench division

Common to all of the VTP reports, although expressed in different ways, it the issue of division. Whether between individuals, communities, political parties, institutions, citizens and non-citizens, citizens and the state, or nation states, division is often a key feature of violence. How divisions are created and maintained, whether and how they mutate, what defines these dividing lines, how they intersect with each other, and what insulates or dissolves them – these are key questions that are implicitly raised and examined by VTP. Through this report, they are made explicit as faultlines, factors that separate people and entrench division.

It is difficult to neatly define or categorise social divisions and it is important to challenge assumptions of static or linear boundaries. At the same time, VTP research alerts us to entrenched, deep divisions, which can mutate into new rifts or re-divide social groups. Faultlines emerging from the VTP research include nationalism, race, ethnicity, gender, age, ex-combatants and masculinity, militarized civil society, the family, socio-economic conditions, land, justice and vigilantism, and development. These divisions, or faultlines, must be seen as flexible and fairly fluid. They are open to change and reinterpretation within different contexts and overtime. Rather than prescribing or curtailing our understanding of violence, they should be used as markers to show how far we have/have not come in the transition and consequently how violence threatens the very democracy of which it is also symptomatic.

Related to many of the faultlines, and division in general, is the theme of exclusion. A dividing line finds partial definition through who is included or excluded ('us versus them') and marginalisation can itself pose a fault-line for conflict. Many of the faultlines identified in this report intersect at the point of identity, which itself is multiple and subject to change (e.g. the identity of being an 'ex combatant' overlaps with a militarised society, where weapons are easily accessible). Other faultlines are defined with reference to structural, institutional and socio-economic factors. These also interconnect and cannot be looked at in isolation from each other or the related thematic indicators and assumptions about violence. As VTP has unfolded over time, the need for an integrated approach to understanding and tackling violence has emerged – one that links economic reconstruction to political inclusion, the politics of identity and human empowerment and security, as well as the impact of the approach itself.

An Integrated Approach

An important trend emerging from the VTP series is that of an increasingly complex understanding of violence in transition. The initial hypotheses (VTP 1), while helpful (and stepping stones for the later research), presented violence as fairly uncomplicated and simplified. As the research has evolved, so has our understanding of violence, which acknowledges that it is the intersection and combination of factors, as well as the individual thematic indicators and faultlines, which impact on violence patterns, trends and targets. Violence is related to and intertwined with these issues.

What does this mean for our understanding of violence? How has the evolution of VTP and the ongoing assumptions about violence taught us lessons that are applicable beyond the South African context and useful in building sustainable peace? Through this research, we have begun to extract common themes, differences and gaps in our understanding and analysis of violence. In our framework, we have compared violence with violence by looking at its different expressions on various levels, for example:

We have also looked at violence in relation to other points of social reference and faultlines, for example:

Instead of keeping these reference points separate, or in binary opposition from violence, our research has shown that it is important to consider them as deeply intertwined. These reference points, together with the changing nature of violence and the faultlines along which it finds expression, form the basis of our analysis of violence. This is because they represent sites and relationships susceptible to violence within an already damaged social fabric, itself vulnerable to conflict (in the past, present and potentially, the future).

In this evolution, and as the project has unfolded, we have challenged our thinking about violence. Now that VTP 2 is complete, we can extract further lessons about violence in relation to the hypotheses, thematic indicators, various violence faultlines and the different sites of conflict that have made up the study as a whole. The project, through its scope and range, suggests multiple entry points into not only understanding violence but also building durable peace. These entry points need to be defined and prioritised on the ground and in relation to specific conflicts. However, conceptually, it is in understanding their possible connections and configurations, as well as each factor individually, that we can contribute to the transformation of conflict generally. For these reasons, we believe that VTP is uniquely placed (organisationally within CSVR, and through CSVR within the world) to connect the local to the global. We consequently believe that we have a growing role in contributing to reciprocal learning and strategic partnerships in our region, on our continent and in the global context. To this end, and as part of our bigger mission and broader programme work, the violence and transition project is key to linking us to the international stage – not as an international NGO, but as an NGO rooted in the South (with the unique insights this gives us) yet capable of operating in an international context.

Consolidating Violence: Key lessons and themes

Continuity and Change

There are a number of ways to explore and understand violence. VTP has approached violence as an object that is itself changing (violence in transition) in a society undergoing change (violence through transition). It is therefore important to clarify what we mean by transition:

Transition is defined as "a passage or change from one state or action or subject or set of circumstances to another." (Oxford English Dictionary) Consequently, it could be argued that as a result of evolving circumstances we [as a society] are in a permanent state of transition. Likewise, it may be argued that the process of deepening democracy will necessarily remain a 'work in progress'. (VTP 2 proposal, p. 11)

In this report, transition is used to denote an ongoing process of change. As such, it allows us to examine violence in relation to what has and has not changed, and what is changing, both within the society and the nature of violence itself. It is the continuities as much as the changes that are key to the VTP approach to violence. The following lessons about violence are therefore underpinned by a dual-sense of continuity and change. Indeed, this is the first lesson: violence in and through transition displays continuities and changes with its past expression, patterns and forms. A word of warning though: within the VTP set of reports, as well as this analysis, there is a tendency to highlight the continuities, even when looking at the changes. This is largely a response to popular discourse and social policy, which tend to conceptualise violence as discrete and isolated from its pre-democratic form. Viewing contemporary violence devoid of its past trajectory(ies) can have dangerous consequences for how it is treated and addressed (for example, it will be difficult to treat violence rooted in the past through the criminal justice system alone, because it goes beyond the experiences of individual perpetrators and victims to the level of historical and social violent identities and forms of injustice). At the same time, however, it is important analytically to allow that certain forms of violence may erupt in complete disjuncture from the earlier order, or at least to ask whether this is possible and how it might come about? Whether it can display a complete break with the past or not, we must acknowledge that violence does change (for example, the emergence of xenophobia in relation to the nation-building rhetoric of post-apartheid South Africa), alongside continuities and overlaps with the past (e.g. previous patterns of racism), and this similarly has consequences for policy and redress.

Politics and Crime in Transition4

Lesson: A formal end to armed conflict, along with a negotiated political settlement, does not mean the end of violence within a 'post-conflict' society.

Lesson: Political and criminal violence are not mutually separate from each other but can be complexly inter-related, both in the past and through a period of transition.

Lesson: Categorising past violence as political, and new order violence as criminal, minimises the criminal nature of earlier violence, which itself may have been less visible during the earlier order for various reasons, including inefficiencies in the criminal justice system at the time.

Lesson: How a transitioning society chooses to define, view and address the violence of a) the conflict itself and b) the past in general, will have implications for the present and future manifestations of violence.

One key and consistent lesson emerging from VTP is that a political settlement is not a comprehensive or self-contained solution to violence. This is for a number of complex and inter-related reasons, some of which refer to the nature of violence during the pre-transition period while others illustrate the impact of a changing (political and social) context on the shape of violence through the shift to democracy. There are two separable issues at stake here: i) assumptions (implicit to political settlements) about violence before, during and after transition and ii) the impact that these assumptions have on how violence is itself treated in societies emerging from armed conflict (most commonly seen in remedies of transitional justice (such as Truth Commissions); reforms to the criminal justice system; and peacebuilding and development initiatives).

In South Africa's negotiated settlement, violence was treated in a fairly linear and specific way, as either something that was a cause, response and symptom of the political context and therefore, something to end through bringing about the political cessation of conflict, or as something that was completely unrelated to political motivation, as pure crime, to be treated through the criminal justice system (Simpson, 2004). A result of splitting past violence into these two neat categories of either political or criminal, has been that of keeping, indeed relegating, political violence to the past with the logic that a political settlement + new political order = end to political conflict. With this is a sense that it is only criminal violence, itself unrelated to past politics, that pervades the new political order. In this way, a trajectory is created between past and present criminal violence but this is a subtle and often overlooked relationship, one that is overwhelmed by the social, political and institutional prominence given to examining the past with reference to political conflict. This has the consequence of minimising or downplaying the criminal nature of earlier violence, which itself may have been less visible during the earlier order for various reasons, including inefficiencies in the criminal justice system at the time. As Injobo Nebandla (2005a) note,

In a number of areas in [KwaZulu Natal], particularly in densely populated townships like KwaMashu the levels of crime were relatively high prior to the 1980s, even before political violence erupted in the province. To a large extent, however, much of this crime went unrecorded and consequently, unseen (Shaw, 2002) (p. 66).

A further consequence has been to create yet another layer of dichotomy, namely to see past violence as mostly (if not all) political, with present-day violence being framed as criminal (alone).5 This dichotomy between past-political violence and present-criminal violence has a number of consequences for how violence is understood and labeled. For example, Simpson (2004) notes that,

… such a clear distinction between political and criminal violence was only sustainable by constructing a somewhat sanitised version of the past. And this in turn was often heavily dependent on accepting the existence of a deep chronological divide – drawn along the line of South Africa's first democratic elections in April 1994 – separating an era of brutal political conflict from a new age in which political strife had all but ceased, only to be replaced by equally pervasive violence of a strictly anti-social and criminal nature (p. 2).

VTP research illustrates that the neat separation between then and now, political and criminal violence, is more complex than the division suggests. This 'blurred line' transcends and pervades different social layers and groups, ranging from individual identities through intimate sexual and domestic relationships to the transitioning state within a national and global economy. For example, writing about witchcraft killings during the apartheid-era, Simpson (2004) comes to the conclusion that,

… on occasion, these culturally specific practices were manipulated for political purposes. In other cases, a political veneer was used creatively to rationalise killings that actually had their origins in much more local, or even intimate, social and domestic conflicts (p. 12).

Our work with ex-combatants similarly highlights a complex relationship between political and criminal violence. Gear (2002) notes that in the past, certain ex-combatant practices moved fluidly between criminal and political motives. For example, she points out that often '[c]rime was the methodology employed to gain food, guns and bullets' for members of the Self Defence Units (SDUs) operating in the Kathorus area in the early-1990s (p. 67). Various amnesty applicants who went before the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) similarly spoke of their involvement in 'crime' as a means to fund their political activities (cf. Saino, 1998).6 In a less 'noble' way, this dual characteristic of crime and politics was embodied in individuals known as 'comtsotsis', who used the political context to commit crimes for personal gain.7 Even the label 'comtsotsi' itself 'explicitly acknowledged the relationship between 'tsotsi' (i.e. criminal) elements and 'coms' (i.e. political comrades)' (Injobo Nebandla, 2005a, p.67). Gear (2002) argues that past labeling and categorising of criminal behaviour underneath a political mantle continues to shape present manifestations of violence:

The blurring between purely criminal and purely political activity makes distinctions difficult and has … impacted on current crime trends. Because of the merging of different scenarios under the label of political activity, many 'ex-combatants' who should have been sentenced have escaped conviction, and continue with their illegal activities instead (Gear, 2002).

Relatedly, but operating at a different level of political control and criminal activity, were the 'political entrepreneurs' who benefited (and, in some places, continue to benefit) directly from the economics of the conflict,

… political control was a crucial enabler for social and economic control, as well as the establishment of protection rackets, extortion and other criminal endeavours … [R]eferred to … as 'political entrepreneurs' … for some it was evident that conflict was 'good for business' and given the levels of conflict 'business was good' (NIM 1997). Complicating matters further, these political entrepreneurs were often protected from prosecution because of the close relationship they enjoyed with elements within the security forces and the apartheid state (Injobo Nebandla, 2005a)

Similarly complex relationships between politics and crime can be seen in South Africa's taxi industry (cf. Dugard, 2001), relationships that took on an increasingly violent nature as the period of transition itself opened up spaces for power and control. Writing about the period 1987-2000, Dugard (2001) points out that, '[a]s the state's control over the economy and society has weakened in the course of South Africa's transition, taxi associations … developed as informal agents of regulation, protection and extortion' (p. 5).8 Injobo Nebandla (2005a) note a similar trend at the local level in KwaZulu Natal:

… shortly after the decline in [political] violence between the ANC and IFP in KwaMashu, reports began to surface that heavily armed residents of the hostel were hiring themselves out as assassins to taxi bosses who were caught in the internecine taxi violence plaguing KwaZulu Natal (p. 55).

In an interesting aside, the following respondent (speaking about youth experiences in present-day Kathorus) reapplies the notion of 'political entrepreneur' to the democratic state itself:

You need to understand that violent crime is a multi-billion rand industry. Violent crime is employing so many people that if it stops and there's no formal jobs out there, if it stops like, just phew, so many families, the gross reality is that even the government wouldn't want to accept, would actually suffer, if crime just one day stopped. (unpublished interview, Kathorus, 2005)
The Politics and Economics of Exile

Lesson: political and criminal violence crosses national borders along with people who are forcibly displaced.

Lesson: political conflict at a regional level, or from another country, may directly penetrate and interrupt a host-society that is seeking to relegate its own political conflict to the past.

At a broader, regional level, Harris (2001a) identifies what can be called an 'economy of movement' (p. 60) surrounding forced displacement. Within this economy it is difficult to separate politics from crime. Driven in large part by political conflict, the displacement of people, especially across national borders, opens up opportunities for economic benefit and criminal activity by those who are 'agents of movement' (the agents, institutional representatives, and others who 'assist' (legally and illegally) refugees to move into South Africa)

… there is exploitation within this economy of movement … on two levels. On the first level, it denotes the intrinsic imbalance of power between travelers and local agents; the travelers who are both unfamiliar with the region and who want to reach South Africa, are in a weaker bargaining position than the agents of movement. On the second level, exploitation exists in the system over and beyond the negotiated rate of movement. It exists as crime, and sometimes violence, en route (Harris, 2001a)

Harris's (2001a) work also shows how political conflict, and sometimes violence, can move with people through forced displacement and exile. '[I]n certain situations, home-nation conflict is transposed onto the South African landscape by asylum-seekers and refugees' (p. 72). This can take the form of verbal abuse, threats, kidnappings, rapes, torture and sometimes murder, all related back to the politics and faultlines of the original home-based conflict. In this way, political violence can transcend political and national borders. At CSVR we have experienced this in various ways, for example, through the kidnapping of one of our refugee translators (working on the VTP xenophobia report), for his 'home politics' and, more recently, through the death threats, beatings and rape of Zimbabwean clients, who have been coming to the CSVR trauma clinic for counseling related to their torture in Zimbabwe. One result is the movement of violence from a conflict-based/pre-transition society to, in the South African case, a country that is in the process of transition.9 From the perspective of the 'host' nation, a key lesson is that political conflict may directly penetrate and interrupt a society that is seeking to relegate its own political conflict to the past. A related question is how much has the transitioning country's own political past impacted on forced displacement and regional conflict in the present? This is a particularly pertinent question for South Africa, given the apartheid state's 'total strategy' of regional destabilisation, but it may well have application in other contexts.10

The Gender of Violence

Lesson: Women experience war and peace differently to men and this has consequences for how a society addresses the past violence.

Lesson: violations of war (political conflict) are commonly interpreted as personal and domestic for and by women. Thus the discursive shift between political and criminal violence over a period of transition keeps war violence consigned to the realm of the private for many women.

Lesson: Because their own experience of the past is not politicised or understood as political for women, politically-based processes intended to address past-political conflict often exclude their experiences and thereby serve to reinforce uneven gendered relationships within post-conflict contexts.

Lesson: DDR processes – as political strategies - do not engage with violent war identities. One consequence is the displacement of violence, rather than its end, into the less visible realm of domesiticity.

Another way of critically examining the divisions between politics and crime is through the lens of gender. Palmary's (2005a) report on the gendered experience of war, forced displacement and exile reflects on ways in which the line between political and domestic violence is blurred, unclear and easily transgressed. Linked to this, is the complex relationship between the public (aligned to political) and the private (aligned to personal); spheres kept strictly separate from each other in the ways that the refugee women participants in her study relate their experiences of violence. While the women themselves kept these spheres separate, Palmary (2005a) shows that the relationship is more fluid, moving between a complex set of related factors, including access to resources, ethnic and nationalist discourses and expectations that the women themselves had of 'being good wives and mothers'. She explains that,

… gender roles shaped these women's access to resources. This was continuous from times of peace although it often took on new forms during the war. For example, women spoke about how their inability to inherit after the deaths of their husbands rendered them particularly vulnerable to the violence of war and shaped their decisions about whether or not to return home. Similarly, women's inability to own land meant that they were easy targets for militia groups who were dispossessing people of land when their husbands were away or killed. In this way women's social position that denies them access to resources both in war and peace shaped the nature of their violations and meant that they often were focused on economic resources (Palmary, 2005b).

She also considers how the women understood these kinds of violations based on economic resources but used as active political strategies in the genocide:

What was clear was that they considered the … violence to be personal and to fall outside of the conflict. This suggests significant opportunities for intervention both with the women in the study but also with service providers who also often work with an artificial division between domestic or personal violence and political violence. The kind of experiences that the women had fundamentally undermined these kinds of divisions and suggest a need to reconceptualise a range of peace building and other interventions (2005b).

A related lesson emerging from Palmary's (2005a) gender-reading of conflict reveals that the common discursive shift between political and criminal violence over a period of transition serves to reinforce uneven gendered relationships within post-conflict contexts, by consigning war violence to the realm of the private for many women and thereby keeping them distanced from politically-based processes intended to address past-political conflict.

Similarly, Gear's (2002) analysis of demobilisation, demilitarisation and reintegration (DDR) processes – when they do occur in post-conflict settings – shows that they do not take into consideration the impact of militarised and violent identities taught through conflict. One consequence is that these identities often continue to play out in the domestic sphere, translating into high levels of violence against wives, partners and children. Here, violence is displaced and rendered less visible but it is not stopped through these formal political remedies.

The Politics of Atrocity

Lesson: Transition can bring an intensified, excessive and atrocious form of violence, with vulnerable targets. Although complex, such atrocity is linked to the formation of a nation state.

Barolsky (2005) sidesteps the politics versus crime division in her attempt 'to establish a new interpretive framework for the violence of the pre-1994 period' (p. 45). This she does by situating violence within a 'politics of atrocity' (p. 45). Building on Humphrey (2002), she notes that atrocity, visibly displayed in South Africa's conflict on the East Rand/Kathorus in the run-up to the first democratic elections, includes excessive, transgressive, horrifying and spectacular acts of violence. These use and produce the individual body as a 'political sign', resulting in both 'subjective and social' effects (p. 46).

In South Africa during the pre-1994 period, much of the violence was profoundly transgressive in character. It directly, purposively and extensively violated categories of people who had remained largely 'protected' in preceding political conflict: the 'non-combatants' – the very young, women, the very old. The targets of violence were frequently the most vulnerable in society … generally unarmed. The violence violated boundaries between public and private spaces, invading the 'private' realm of home, the assumed zones of normalcy … The violence perpetrated was often extreme in the bodily mutilations it delivered, babies were hacked to death on their mother's backs, pregnant women were disemboweled, and skulls were crushed. (Barolsky, 2005)

The cause of this extreme, atrocious form of violence, for Barolsky, is embedded in the very process of transition, a period in which South Africa 'was irrefutably a nation state in formation. In this context, social and political membership is contested and diffuse, and forms of belonging and social identity are complex and ambiguous' (p. 46). She ties this to ethnic identity ('the monolithic collectivities of 'Zulu' and 'Xhosa') in particular and notes that,

Unlike conflicts between nation states, in which states often attempt to conceal the 'body horror' of war, in the internalized conflicts where 'ethnic cleansing' takes place, the bodies of the ritually violated are purposively and spectacularly displayed as part of a political strategy of horror. In a context of internalized conflict, this violence is profoundly concerned with boundaries and the constitution of new unambiguous social identities, 'purified' of the contamination of social ambiguity. It thus intends social separation, a rendering of complete homogeneity of identity (p. 50)

It is beyond the scope of this report to fully explore Barolsky's (2005) assertions, which are complex and need further examination within the context of peace as well as transition. For example, while she links excessive violence directly to transition, it is important to acknowledge that atrocity and sheer gratuitous violence are often a feature of conflict in general, both during armed struggle and into new political orders (cutting off of ears and noses in Sierra Leone, the brutality of the violence in Rwanda's genocide).

Although clearly highly complex, for the purposes of this discussion, there are two key lessons in Barolsky's (2005) analysis, Firstly, an acknowledgement that transition can bring an intensified, excessive and atrocious form of violence, with vulnerable targets and secondly, that such atrocity is linked to the formation of a nation state. While it is thus 'political', its diffuse and diverse form suggests a much more complex understanding of 'political violence' in and of itself, as well as its relationship with individual and group identity. Additionally, a politics of atrocity and the process of nation state formation allow us to grapple with what has appeared as a contradiction for many commentators, namely, as South Africa was moving towards democracy away from the repression of apartheid, violence intensified, rather than diminished (although, as Pigou (in personal communication) points out, 'this was not necessarily an organic development – indeed the hard evidence on how external elements stimulated and fanned the violence is still contested'). The idea of nation state formation as a future-looking political process therefore problematises the sterile division that has presented past political violence as giving way to rising crime in the present.

Rising Criminal Violence

Lesson: The intersection of a violent culture with the appropriation of a human rights discourse frames criminals as having more rights than victims and thereby sanctions and supports institutional and individual practices that have not, in essence, transformed.

Lesson: contemporary violence has come to be represented as not just criminal in nature but as something on the increase, a rise in violent crime. This reframing does not take into account the complexities of violence historically or its links with the present. Instead, it simply blames the state and democracy for high levels of violent crime.

Lesson: a discourse of rising crime fuels social fear of 'the other' and with this creates new, yet racialised, barriers to reconciliation.

Just as much of the past is simplistically described, understood and re-written in uncomplex political terms alone, so today, in post-apartheid South Africa, there is generally an uncritical description of violence with reference to crime. One consequence of this has been a new discourse that allows for the proliferation and continuation of violent practice. This is a discourse that surrounds the rights of criminals, who are seen to 'have too many rights, more rights than the victim'. This discourse allows for/lends justification to violent vigilantism in the name of 'fighting crime' and 'protecting ourselves', as well as the continuation of certain forms of police abuse of power (Harris, 2001b). In 2004, there were over 700 deaths in police custody (Hoskens, 2004). Of these almost half were a consequence of initial vigilante action at the hands of the public (Hoskens, 2004). This suggests ongoing police abuse of power within the democracy, as well as violent actions by the public. As Pigou (in personal communication) notes, the political/criminal dichotomy also relates to abuses of criminal suspects (both then and now). 'Criminals' have been effectively 'ring-fenced' from the discussion about state and police violence and criminality during the apartheid era and this allows for these practices to continue, unexamined and often undetected today.

The intersection of a violent culture with the appropriation of a human rights discourse frames criminals as having more rights than victims and thereby sanctions and supports institutional and individual practices that have not, in essence, transformed. This lack of institutional transformation is allowed to go unnoticed and neglected in many cases. In others, practices of torture and abuse are actively rendered invisible, supported by popular anti-criminal sentiment. Violence is the extreme thread that unites these practices across time. Accompanying such violent expression (and extending beyond violence itself) are acts of impunity and accountability, which, in many ways, represent the flip-side of the violence coin in this context.

In addition, another lesson is that contemporary violence has come to be represented as not just criminal in nature but as something on the increase, a rise in violent crime. At this point of social representation, the discourse surrounding crime does re-introduce a politicised, yet simplistic understanding of violence, where current manifestations of violent crime are related back to the new government and seen as symptomatic of democracy and a new political order11 but often without the sophisticated linkages with the past. This reframing does not take into account the complexities of violence historically or its links with the present. Instead, it simply blames the state and democracy for high levels of violent crime. In South Africa, this is commonly accompanied with reactionary racist rhetoric that allocates blame to a 'black government' and thereby shows continuity with apartheid attitudes of prejudice (cf. Gear, 2002 for insights into the complex ways that former white conscripts and members of the South African Defence Force understand their role in past conflict and the current context of violent crime). It also 'demonstrates how removed/insulated white people were (in general) from the terrifying violence (highlighted by Barolsky, 2005) that engulfed many black communities in the late 1980s and especially in the early 1990s: a reflection of how successful apartheid really was?' (Pigou, in personal communication).

Valji, Harris and Simpson (2004) link the discourse of rising crime to social fear of the other and with this new, yet racialised, barriers to reconciliation

A further consequence of the fear of crime has been an accelerating retreat of middleclass communities behind high walls and private security, prompting a withdrawal from public space and precluding the possibility of relationship-building. Although there is a growing Black elite who can now afford to join the 'laager', a recent survey reveals that only 2% of Blacks have a private security or an armed response system – in contrast to 45% of Whites – demonstrating that the preoccupation with criminal violence and victimisation plays out in racially, as well as economically, defined ways. Viewing the new South Africa through a prism of fear creates an identity of victimhood that is linked to race; reinforcing the divided and racialised identities of the past. Ironically, the construction of high walls, intended to protect, tends to fuel the cycle of fear and crime. Walls and fences have become the visible face of exclusion; a barrier between the haves and the have-nots (p. 3).
The Legitimacy of Violence: Political and socio-economic change

Lesson: Questions of legitimacy, of who commits, defines and speaks about violence, feed directly into the ways that we understand and redress it. This has direct implications for development and reconciliation strategies, as well as systems of justice.

Lesson: violence finds meaning in a neoliberal global economy. In this context, democratisation can take on a specific, narrow form and this contains the kernel for new forms of conflict. Although such conflict will find expression in a seemingly bilateral way between the state and local communities, it is important that big business, multinational corporations and 'the market' are considered as part of a larger triangle of conflict agents (state, communities and the global order).

While public discourse may draw on political language to talk about violent crime as symptomatic of democratic failure in South Africa, at times, the state uses the language of crime to talk about and tackle new forms of political conflict. This is markedly clear in its reaction to the new social movements concerned with (poor) service delivery and (in)access to water, electricity, housing and basic socio-economic rights. McKinley and Veriava (2005) show how the present-day state has actively criminalised and thereby isolated these social movements from mainstream political and social life,

… the immediate response of the ANC [African National Congress] state to the emergence and activities of the new social movements was to portray the movements and their activists as 'criminals' and 'anarchists' rather than as concerned/frustrated citizens making use of the only avenues left for their grievances to be heard (p. 64).

This has allowed the state to,

… launch a co-ordinated 'law and order' crackdown … backed up by a concerted campaign aimed at caricaturing the emergent and collective voices of poor communities and delegitimising the right to utilize hard-won democratic space to engage in peaceful oppositional activities centred on basic socio-economic grievances (p. 64)

At the heart of this response, which has included violence at the hands of the state and community members, is the state's ability to present itself as political and legitimate, and community protest as criminal and illegitimate. Questions of legitimacy, of who defines and speaks about violence, feed directly into the ways that we understand and redress it (lesson).12 As Barolsky (2005) observes,

What we do and don't understand as violence, or more specifically, violation, is constructed and bound up with questions of legitimacy. A complex process of interaction between protagonists, antagonists, the state, intellectuals and others defines and redefines the fact of violence, its meaning, its legitimacy. (Barolsky, 2005, p. 37, emphasis original)

In the relationship of 'legitimacy' between the state and the new social movements, McKinley and Veriava (2005) explain that the state has shut down all space for communication and peaceful dialogue. This, they suggest, links directly to the new state's economic policy and the creation of a false disjuncture between socio-economic reform and political processes.

[O]nce negotiations had begun in the early 1990s, the ANC used its position to manage (including the suspension of) bread and butter struggles. The effect of this process was to institutionalise a narrow post-apartheid vision of the ANC and a negotiations-centric polity … The context of the economy would also see the ANC's commitment to the abandonment of an anti-capitalist front codified in the formal unveiling of the overtly neoliberal Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) macroeconomic programme in 1996, reinforcing class inequalities and social unevenness. Anticipating massive opposition to the policy within its own ranks the policy was dubbed 'non-negotiable' (McKinley and Veriava, 2005).

McKinley and Veriava (2005) also suggest that the trajectory between past and present, politics, economics and crime, goes beyond the boundaries of the transitioning state itself, through the emergence of a specific form of democracy within a neoliberal global economy.

The first phase of South Africa's 'transition' has witnessed the ANC's political and ideological acceptance of the broad framework of a globally dominant, neoliberal political and economic orthodoxy. In turn, this has led to the institutionalised (and false) separation between political and socio-economic change, such that democracy has come to be seen as synonymous with the capitalist market. The result has been a perpetual 'crisis of democracy' wherein institutionalised practices of representative democracy such as elections make little difference since the key societal decisions are taken by the 'market'. In this context the emergence of new social movements is a contestation of this narrow vision of democracy. (McKinley and Veriava, 2005)

McKinley and Veriava's (2005) analysis of the false separation between political and socio-economic change, along with the space for conflict that such a division introduces, holds a valuable lesson for other countries moving through political transition: violence finds meaning in a neoliberal global economy. In this context, democratisation can take on a specific, narrow form and this contains the kernel for new forms of conflict. Although such conflict will find expression in a seemingly bilateral way between the state and local communities, it is important that big business, multinational corporations and 'the market' are considered as part of a larger triangle of conflict agents (state, communities and the global order).

A Critical Mass of Violence

The nature and form of violence changes during transitions from authoritarian to democratic rule, although due to the legacy of the past political violence, the extent of the violence does not change (Hypothesis 1, VTP 1 proposal, 1998).

Although there are multiple ways to interpret past and present violence, the general trend to assign political violence to the past and criminal violence to the present, suggests that during South Africa's transition, the society has unwittingly and tacitly developed what might be termed a 'finite amount/critical mass of violence' type explanation, one that suggests a certain amount of violence inherent to society, to be shared between the criminal and political realms. If this is initially weighted in favour of political violence (as South Africa's past has come to be represented), then, the equation suggests, it must automatically increase in the criminal sphere when its political expression declines (as the present explanations for violence propose). In essence, this framing supports Hypothesis 1 originally proposed in the VTP 1 proposal that the form of violence changes with transition but not its extent. However, in the absence of statistical evidence and clear definitions, it is very difficult to know whether violence has changed in its extent. How can this phenomenon be measured in its totality? What constitutes violence? The lack of quantitative analysis is a shortcoming of the VTP process to date (not that the comparison between past and present manifestations would necessarily show whether violence in its totality is on the increase or not). For a range of reasons, it would be very useful to complement the huge body of qualitative information already collected within the project with quantitative information (especially at the level of economic indicators and a survey of 'ordinary' attitudes to, and experiences of, violence – and this is an avenue to discuss for the anticipated VTP 3 research). But, although it would be useful to explore whether violence has increased, decreased or merely shifted beyond its original 'quantity', in the absence of clear measures to do so, and even if it were possible, it is also important to consider what this framing of violence means, i.e. the consequences of the language and social understandings of violence in this dichotomised framework.

Swinging the Scales of Justice

Lesson: The tendency to assign past conflict to the field of transitional justice and present, future-looking conflict to the criminal justice is an artificial separation; transitional and criminal justice processes are intertwined despite the ways in which they operate separately.

A simplistic, if crude, result of the dichotomy between political violence and violent crime can be seen in two separate approaches to dealing with violence: i) the development of a political remedy for (past) politically-motivated violence, and ii) for the category of 'pure crime' to be treated as anti-social and a-political, and therefore something to defer to the criminal justice system, which itself is kept separate from the remedies for past 'political violence' (Simpson, 2004). At the heart of this division is the tendency to assign past conflict to the field of transitional justice and present, future-looking conflict to the criminal justice realm. This highlights and reinforces an already-existing separation between the fields of transitional justice and criminal justice – both institutionally and through their approaches to dealing with violence. Simpson (2004) explains that,

It is not merely on the basis that one is seen as retrospective and the other as forward looking that the priorities of transitional justice and criminal justice reform have been dealt with as if they were entirely detached from each other. It is perhaps more significant that this detachment is also based on the implicit assumption that, while one is concerned with dealing with past violence of a political nature, the other is viewed as the solution to current problems of crime in general, and criminal violence in particular (p. 3).

This separation is artificial and dangerous. Simpson (2004) highlights this through his critical examination of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) as an instrument of transitional justice and a mechanism intended to foster reconciliation.

In its attempts to separate politics and crime for the purposes of building reconciliation at a political level, one of the greatest flaws of the TRC was its failure to properly engage with the complex nature of criminality. Not only did the amnesty process ignore many of the complexities consequent upon the historical criminalisation of political amnesty, but it was also incapable of accommodating the extent to which the politicisation of crime represented the other side of the same coin (pp. 2-3).

Simultaneously, Simpson (2004) argues, the conventional criminal justice approach to violence is narrow and restricting. In the South African context, this is for two reasons. Firstly, the new democratic state inherited the institutions, including those of the criminal justice system, that were directly and widely complicit in the past conflict. Secondly, it is important to understand that violence reaches beyond individual victims and the institutions intended to serve them (Simpson, 2004). Therefore, it is not enough to only locate violence-remedies at an institutional level. This report now turns to each of these reasons in some detail because, although they are interrelated, they contain separate key lessons for how we understand and respond to violence in transition. They also show how closely transitional and criminal justice processes are intertwined despite the ways in which they operate separately.

Institutional Continuities and Changes: The case of the criminal justice system13

Lesson: The legacy of public mistrust, suspicion and fear of the past criminal justice system continues to impact on its efficacy today and is an obstacle to dealing with violence.

Lesson: Violent victimisation must be understood as a societal problem rather than a purely individual experience. It is not solely the product of institutional failings and cannot, therefore, be remedied by institutional transformation or formal political processes alone.

Lesson: justice as a whole must be understood as itself in transition and this must translate into a more complex approach to both past and present conflict.

Understanding why violent crime remains so significant during South Africa's transition is further complicated by issues relating to police legitimacy, integrity and broader concerns about a fundamental lack of accountability. Despite significant shifts in terms of policy and procedure, any agencies of law enforcement have to prove their legitimacy through effective operation. There is no clear case of any society in transition being able to successfully build a legitimate policing agency in a post-conflict phase (Shaw, 2001) …. Furthermore, communities struggle to hold public officials accountable and appear unable to root out crime and violence, often appearing under virtual "siege" from criminal elements. The police service lacks capacity and credibility and –rightly or wrongly – is regarded in many communities as an integral part of the problem. Community policing initiatives in many areas have failed to realise their local level objectives and as a result have been largely abandoned by government. As VTP research on vigilantism and revenge violence has illustrated, in a vacuum of meaningful alternatives, violence has come to be regarded by many as an acceptable and legitimate means of 'problem-solving' (VTP 2 proposal, 2002, pp. 10-12).

In order to understand some of the present-day weaknesses in the criminal justice system (and by extension, its inability to fully grapple with and solve the full ambit of present-day violence), it is important to acknowledge that the previous criminal justice system was a primary instrument of the apartheid regime (cf. Rauch, 2004). Used to perpetrate, promote, administer and support the injustices of the past, the system, along with the individuals embedded in it, was discredited as illegitimate and generally regarded with mistrust and fear during the old order. This has resulted in high levels of public mistrust and lack of confidence in the rule of law, perceptions and experiences that have not necessarily changed with the transition (cf. Harris, 2001b for an overview of vigilante action in relation to the criminal justice system). These stand as central obstacles to dealing with violent victimisation. Inefficiencies and inherited weaknesses within the criminal justice system link back to the compromises attached to South Africa's negotiated political settlement, which included a sunset clause that protected the jobs of all incumbent civil servants for at least the first five years of democratic rule.

Initially at least, the state inherited a set of old order institutions and bureaucrats, and this essentially allowed the criminal justice system to remain untransformed during the first vital years of the democracy (something that further affected public perceptions and experiences). Valji and Harris (forthcoming) note that,

An important component of reestablishing a relationship between state and citizen, and rebuilding a foundation of credibility in the institutions of the state, should be to remove from positions of authority and power those who were complicit in the oppression and human rights violations of the past. The practice of vetting - scrutinizing the individual role played by various state personnel in order to determine whether they should be removed from public service – or that of lustration – a wholesale purge of the civil service of the old regime - are options that have been employed by transitioning states in the past. Vetting which employs individualised scrutiny and due process may further the aims of institutional reform in some situations. Lustration or purging however without due process threatens to build reform on the foundations of injustice.

South Africa did not choose either of these paths. This was seen as a necessary compromise as to threaten lustration or prosecution of the civil service could potentially destabilise the negotiations process, threaten the transformation to democracy, and launch the country into chaos through the massive loss of skills this would entail.

There is no doubt that members of the security establishment would have scuppered the negotiated settlement, had they thought they were going to run the gauntlet of trials for their involvement in past violations (TRC Final report, 1998, Vol 1, Ch 1, para 22).

While the immediate trade-off may have been a less chaotic, more stable transition, countries looking to the South African model need to consider the longer-term impact of such a course of action. When it comes to patterns of violence and the complex ways that institutions (in this case, particularly the criminal justice sector) contribute to sustaining and directing these, it is important to recognise that,

Research in transitioning states in Latin America demonstrates that there is a direct relationship between belief and trust in the judiciary and belief in the success or utility of democracy itself; making the reform of the legal sector a vital element of long-term democratisation and stability (Valji and Harris, forthcoming).
Everyday Violence: A missed opportunity for the TRC

Lesson: It is crucial to avoid duplication between the different mechanisms intended to address past abuses and transform institutions. This is a key area where there is scope for integration between transitional and criminal justice processes and, the absence of such complementary work at research and policy levels, severely weakens the impact of both.

Another reason for ongoing public mistrust and certain other weaknesses within the criminal justice system rests with the ways in which past violence has been dealt with, most noteably through the TRC process itself. It goes beyond the scope of this report to engage in a detailed critique of the TRC. Rather, the following areas are signposts, simply marking a few aspects of the relationship between the TRC and the complex ways that it has affected violence in the realm of institutional transformation.

The TRC has been criticised for missing an opportunity to acknowledge and expose the extent to which apartheid was a systematic, bureaucratised, institutionalised experience, operating through the day-to-day racialisation, dehumanisation and control of people via the pass laws, forced removals, mixed marriages legislation, Bantu Education system etc. (cf. Mamdani, 1996; 2000; Fullard, 2004). This missed opportunity, it is argued, was largely a consequence of the TRC's restrictive mandate, which saw the Commission focusing on the 'excesses' of the apartheid order (the gross human rights violations) and deciding amnesty on the grounds of whether or not acts were politically motivated (Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act 34 of 1995). In this way, the TRC failed to comment on the endemic and institutionalised nature of racism, oppression and 'everyday' violence, instead feeding into the perception that the past conflict was political, high profile and removed from everyday life; something to therefore address at a political level through the amnesty process or, if this failed, to follow the criminal justice route by prosecuting the few 'bad apples' who refused to cooperate. This also had the consequence of allowing (mostly white) beneficiaries to distance their daily privileges and expressions of racism from the ways in which apartheid was represented by the human rights violation and amnesty hearings and in this process, to continue these very practices and attitudes (some culminating in violent hate crimes – cf. Harris (2004) for an overview of racist hate crime in post-apartheid South Africa) in an unexamined way within the new order.

Not only did the TRC miss a chance to make the links between institutions and the daily violations that were the apartheid system, it also missed the opportunity to intersect with related policy debates and changes that were being implemented in the field of criminal justice to bring about sector reform (cf. Rauch, 2004 for an overview of institutional transformation within the police). In this way, the Commission did not dovetail with, or complement, related processes in the criminal justice sector. Valji and Harris (forthcoming) recommend that,

Given the limited time and mandate available to truth commissions, the specifics of reform should be left to the experts in each field, with the commission making more general recommendations and setting strategic goals. Keeping recommendations at a more general level will also ensure that time is not wasted on areas where there should already be initiatives aimed at transformation taking place during the lifespan of the commission. In the South African experience for example, policy recommendations made by the TRC, particularly in the policing sector, were hastily compiled and out of sync with initiatives already taking place in that sector. Targeted recommendations should be made around embracing specific human rights principles, the concern here however is that a truth commission not become ineffective through a mandate that stretches it beyond its capacity.

It is crucial to avoid duplication between the different mechanisms intended to address past abuses and transform institutions. This is a key area where there is scope for integration between transitional and criminal justice processes and, the absence of such complementary work at research and policy levels, severely weakens the impact of both (lesson).

Another common critique of the TRC is that it has fed into and sustained a culture of impunity.14 Set up to address past violations through granting amnesty on condition of full disclosure, the real experience for victims at the TRC has been one of feeling unheard and marginalised in relation to perpetrators, who often 'got off scott free', often without bringing any further knowledge to victims and their families. Through the amnesty process, perpetrators were literally seen to 'get away with murder'. That is, those perpetrators who even applied for amnesty. Rauch (2004) reports that,

In an attempt to evade the amnesty process, former members of the [South African Police] SAP Security Branch put together a 'collective application' for amnesty, on behalf of the entire group of Security Branch personnel … Few police officials voluntarily came forward to seek amnesty … of approximately 1500 individuals who applied, approximately 300 applicants came from the security forces (a term denoting both the police and defence forces). (pp. 33-34)

At the same time, because the TRC located past policing within political extremes, the 'ordinary', non-political practices, for example the torture of criminals (as opposed to political activists), went unacknowledged and unexamined (Pigou, in personal communication). Consequently, little is known about such past police crimes and the ways in which these may reflect continuity with present abuses of power. This is a gap within the field, one that raises key questions about accountability, impunity, torture and legitimacy.

For a range of complex reasons, public mistrust and weaknesses – perceived and real – in the criminal justice system stand as obstacles to democracy and sustainable peace. 'Considering the magnitude of the task of transforming and rebuilding popular confidence in inherited criminal justice institutions, it is particularly clear that strategies to deal with violent victimisation cannot operate exclusively within the sphere of criminal justice' (Simpson, 2004, p. 5). Additionally, and regardless of these challenges, it is not enough to simply locate solutions to violence within the criminal justice system alone. This is because violence must also be understood at a social-level, one that moves beyond individual experience (Simpson, 2004). Remedial mechanisms thus need to go beyond the institutions aimed at assisting individual victims:

In South Africa, attempts to address the experiences of violent victimisation are conventionally framed by reference to the extent to which the existing criminal justice process either fails or alienates those victims who encounter it. This is usually understood in terms of the experiences of people inside the criminal justice process, rather than by reference to the wider impact of unresolved residual trauma, ongoing cyclical patterns of violence, shifting patterns of social conflict and the embedding of identities in which violence is a way of life. The more expansive popular perceptions of the role of institutions of criminal justice must be situated in this wider context … violent victimisation must be understood as a societal problem rather than a purely individual experience. It is not solely the product of institutional failings and cannot, therefore, be remedied by institutional transformation or formal political processes alone (Simpson, 2004, p. 5).

The examples listed above do not comprehensively illustrate the full range of ways in which crime and politics are intertwined historically and through the process of transition. Similarly, they are not exclusively about the relationship between politics and crime. But they do show that a mutually exclusive dichotomy between politics and crime is artificial. They also suggest that this division is dangerous because it can prescribe different, sometimes competing, remedies. However, once the division has been created, it is equally dangerous to ignore it by simply promoting a 'blurred lines argument' (cf. Simpson (2004) for a critical engagement with Stanley Cohen's (1996) contention that 'the remote prospect of democracy lies in a radical separation between crime and politics' (cited in Simpson, 2004, p. 22, emphasis original)15). Similarly, it would be dangerous to collapse all remedies into the same basket. Although there are continuities between past and present violence, the changes and differences point out the need for a multi-pronged strategy in addressing it.

A key lesson from the VTP body of work is that just as violence cannot and should not be neatly divided, so too, justice is not as easily separated. Indeed, to compartmentalise justice into different categories and institutions can result in competing and contradictory approaches. Instead, justice as a whole must be understood as itself in transition and this must translate into a more complex approach to both past and present conflict (lesson). This approach must not be restricted to the positioning and dilemmas of the criminal justice system, or to that of the transitional justice field. The VTP research, by exploring violence at different levels, sets the groundwork for introducing a methodology that goes beyond both criminal and transitional justice systems, to include reconciliation and peacebuilding as 'thematic indicators' against which to measure violence and violence prevention.

Violence, Reconciliation and Peacebuilding: Approaches to understanding and dealing with violence

Lesson: the apparent upsurge in violent crime, so common in transitioning countries, suggests that dealing with political conflict through a truth commission will leave most violence un-addressed and therefore un-prevented.

Lesson: Reconciliation strategies need to carefully define the faultlines of division that they are seeking to reconcile, in order to ensure that these are actually addressed.

Lesson: Reconciliation as a vehicle for mending old divisions can create new divisions and, as VTP research suggests, these strategies can themselves fuel discontent and conflict.

Lesson: The starkly uneven benefits of economic citizenship post-conflict contribute to the experience of sustained social and economic injustice which underpin high levels of frustration. This presents a risk for both violent politics and crime. When initiated from the margins within these unchanged circumstances, violence can be interpreted as a coping strategy and a source of resilience, albeit negative in form.

Lesson: Reconciliation strategies must take on board issues of justice, instead of being seen as 'softer alternatives,' if they are to have a chance of successfully tackling the faultlines of earlier conflict and producing meaningful reconciliation and healing.

Lesson: At a broader level, links must be made between reconciliation and restoration, reparation, and social redress. The concept of reconciliation needs to expand beyond Truth Commissions to include an armory of institutions.

Lesson: Frustrations surrounding lack of access to water, housing, electricity and the 'lack of state service delivery' point to a new site of political violence in South Africa (and many countries undergoing change).

Reconciliation strategies like Truth Commissions may have an impact on future violence prevention, but unless these approaches recognise the changing nature of violence, their impact on violence prevention is dramatically reduced. (Hypothesis 2, VTP 1 proposal, 1998)

This hypothesis, initially suggested in the VTP 1 proposal, assumes that reconciliation is a conduit for violence prevention. However, this assumption needs careful interrogation and examination. Firstly, it begs the questions, 'Is violence prevention articulated within Truth Commission agendas? And if so, how?' In the South African case, reconciliation was implicitly held up as antithetical to violence. Fostering reconciliation seemed to be the level at which violence prevention was assumed. However, no clear strategy was articulated or set out beyond the general truth commission dictum of 'never again'. 'Never again', while intended to include the gamut of past atrocities, is usually addressed through the narrow confines of a political settlement and therefore involves narrow political remedies. So focused on one form of conflict (the political form), it is easy for truth commissions to lose sight of the violence itself (Valji, in personal communication). As discussed in the crime and politics section above, the focus of Truth Commissions on political conflict also means that violence prevention will be targeting violence in political terms, with the aim of entrenching a political settlement and ceasefire. Additionally, the apparent upsurge in violent crime, so common in transitioning countries, suggests that dealing with political conflict through a truth commission will leave most violence unaddressed and therefore un-prevented (lesson).

Secondly, in examining this hypothesis, it is important to raises questions about the level of reconciliation that strategies such as truth commissions can and do address (and relatedly, the level of violence that can be addressed). It is generally accepted that the South African TRC brought about national, political-level reconciliation, seen in the relatively stable political climate of post-apartheid South Africa (Harris, Valji, Hamber and Ernest, 2004). At the community and individual levels, however, reconciliation is much more complex and largely incomplete. This is evidenced by the VTP body of research, which points to the layers of conflict and division between different groups (e.g. South Africans and foreigners, racially segregated neighbourhoods, political and ethnic divisions between ANC and IFP supporters, intergenerational conflict, unintegrated and marginalised ex-combatants) and the sense of exclusion by individual victims, coupled with a de facto amnesty for many perpetrators, all embedded in a context of highly unequal socio-economic circumstances.

Indeed, such strategies need to carefully define the faultlines of division that they are seeking to reconcile (lesson), for example, in South Africa, reconciliation is commonly understood to mean racial reconciliation although the institution of reconciliation (the TRC) did not directly tackle racism but rather focused on political divisions, motives and the narrow category of gross human rights violations. As a (partial) consequence, racial divisions remain largely intact and unaddressed, with racial reconciliation operating superficially, if at all, easily disturbed by a single inflammatory incident. Additionally, the interface of racial and ethnic identities with that of a national identity carefully crafted through the Mandela-Tutu era of rainbow nationalism, has also translated into high levels of xenophobic hostility, primarily expressed towards African refugees and asylum seekers.

Reconciliation as a vehicle for mending old divisions can create new divisions and, as VTP research suggests, these strategies can themselves fuel discontent and conflict (lesson). For example, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) unintentionally resulted in:

More generally, South Africa's national reconciliation enterprise has failed to permeate divisions between people (lesson). Rather, it has been a fairly superficial and problematic process. This has not been assisted by the ANC government's own actions, for example, its 2004 courting of the new National Party (the ANC's morally and politically corrupt predecessor) seemingly in favour of promoting real reconciliation through embracing credible organisations and social movements with the interests of the black working class at heart. Additionally, the state's 'trickle down' economic policies, which prioritse the 'accumulative 'needs' of corporate capital (the first economy) [in order to] provide the means to address the needs of the poor (the second economy)' (McKinley and Veriava, 2005), indicates that socio-economic divisions, as well as (unholy) political alliances, are being firmly entrenched. Indeed, as Harris et al. (2004) point out,

… for some, despite the merits of the TRC, 'reconciliation' is merely a euphemism for the compromises made during political negotiations – compromises that ensured continued white control of the economy. From this perspective, reconciliation is meaningless without structural change. A related, more cynical view is that the rapproachment between the old and new regimes was a strategy to consolidate a new black elite under the banner of reconciliation. (p.vii)

The benefits of economic citizenship have yet to reach those most in need. In the context of a Black Economic Empowerment discourse and strategy that services a small elite (without 'trickling down' to the poor) the experience of sustained social and economic injustice continues to underpin high levels of frustration. This presents a risk for both violent politics and crime (lesson). CSVR's work with young gangsters and certain former combatants (cf. Segal, Pelo and Rampa, 2001; Gear, 2002; Barolsky, 2005) reflects this complex relationship between sustained injustice, frustration and the concomitant risks for violence (whether political or criminal): past violence conducted by young, largely male, individuals was labeled as 'political' and therefore justified and accepted in many communities; now, such violence committed by young, largely male, individuals (some the very same people as before) is termed 'deviant' and criminal by the same communities and nation at large.16 Although the discourse, and in certain cases, the target, has changed there has been no change to the economic and educational opportunities available to many young people. When initiated from the margins within these unchanged circumstances, violence can be interpreted as a coping strategy and a source of resilience, albeit negative in form (lesson).

Alongside the older manifestations of violence in these re-labeled expressions of marginalisation, new forms of conflict also exist at the margins, centred on the new social movements (cf. McKinley and Veriava, 2005). Based around socio-economic and health rights, these movements are comprised of various civil society groupings, some more and others less organised. Since the release of McKinley and Veriava's (2005) report early this year, there have been an increasing number of violent incidents, spread across the country, between community members, the police and private security companies. Based on frustrations surrounding lack of access to water, housing, electricity and the 'lack of state service delivery', this form of conflict points to a new site of political violence in South Africa (and many countries undergoing change) (lesson). What gives McKinley and Veriava's (2005) work a cutting edge is their exploration of the links between conflict, politics and socio-economics; links that others in the field are not making. Even if they perhaps overstate the case in terms of current manifestation of state repression, all indications are that this will remain and grow as an area of conflict and contestation. At the same time, it is important to acknowledge the complexity of these social movements and groups. They are not homogenous and require further study. For example, it is difficult to compare the actions of a dissatisfied white right bombing campaign with the labeling of long-time activist, Fathima Meer as a 'trouble-maker' by the state for her involvement with the Concerned Citizens Committee on water issues. However, these actions do point out new spaces of political conflict.

Reconciliation must be justice-driven (lesson): strategies must take on board issues of justice, instead of being seen as 'softer alternatives'. As the Truth Commission example illustrates, in the absence of a link between justice and reconciliation (and when reconciliation is consequently prioritised over justice) impunity is entrenched (and with this, the assumption is, violence in entrenched – whether changing or not17). At a broader level, links must be made between reconciliation and restoration, reparation, and social redress. The concept of reconciliation needs to expand beyond Truth Commissions to include an armory of institutions (lesson) – such as the Land Commission, Gender Commission etc. The links must be made between reconciliation, violence and social justice. As discussed above, reconciliation strategies like truth commissions must incorporate the need for institutional transformation (they cannot just be located at either national or victim-perpetrator levels of change). At the same time, these strategies themselves should not just be located at the level of Truth Commissions and (where possible) related institutions. Just as violence permeates all layers of South African society, so too, reconciliation strategies need to intersect with the spaces of division and hostility, if they are to feed into a violence prevention process. This does not mean that society should ignore or sidestep the TRC or institutionally-based reconciliation.18 Rather, it is an opportunity to integrate the issues of the TRC into mainstream society, to show that reconciliation did not end with the Commission but rather just began.

Remembering Violence: Memory as peace builder or conflict sower?

Lesson: Memorialisation can be used as a tool of reconciliation and peacebuilding but it can also sow the seeds for further conflict. Who is remembered, how the past is recalled, what constitutes local history – these are all difficult processes that can lead to community division and exclusion, often along the original lines of the conflict.

Lesson: It is usually the male combatant who is heroised and remembered. This exclusion reflects both the act of marginalision within conflict and the ongoing exclusion of women and non-combatants from the post-conflict context.

Memory and memorialisation initiatives transcend institutions and can create 'living spaces' and 'sites of conscience' where reconciliation, violence and justice intersect. It goes beyond the scope of this report to evaluate the many initiatives that have been put in place in post-apartheid South Africa (for a comprehensive engagement with memorialisation, see Naidu, 2004a; 2004b). What is important here is that while such sites are intended to remember the past (including past violence) and thereby create social healing, they can themselves become points of contestation. In other words, memorialisation can be used as a tool of reconciliation and peacebuilding but it can also sow the seeds for further conflict. Who is remembered, how the past is recalled, what constitutes local history – these are all difficult processes that can lead to community division and exclusion, often along the original lines of the conflict (lesson). For example, respondents in the Kathorus youth project explained that the Thokoza monument excluded their experience because of their political involvement (either as SPUs, or as low-profile SDUs, or as residents of Katlehong (on the one side of Khumalo Street), as opposed to Thokoza (on the other side of the street), etc.

The divisions of memory can also reinforce broader social faultlines. As Nieftagodien (2005a) points out, women are marginalised from history, from how a society remembers and memorialises its past. This is similarly borne out in how we remember past violence. It is the male combatant who is heroised and remembered.19 This exclusion reflects both the act of marginalision within conflict and the ongoing exclusion of women from the post-conflict context. A similar critique could be made of the VTP research process, where a large part of the focus has been on the male soldier.20 This does not mean that a male perspective is unimportant though. Nieftagodien's objection is less directed at the voices that are included in the national history project than the narrowness of this focus and its intersection with a nationalist discourse that further reduces the representation of history to a set of different stories that tell the same Story – one that valourises a liberation struggle in a very particular, prescriptive way and which, as a consequence, has an impact on the current processes within society now.

CSVR's work on memorialisation also raises the difficulties and complexities of development with its potential to fuel conflict. For example, the process of determining a memory site raises difficult questions about not just who qualifies as a victim and whose story is remembered but how the site will be used, what the accompanying resources will be and how any benefits (including jobs and money through, for example, the tourism that might surround a site) will be shared. In thrashing out these questions, the potential for conflict and division within the very group intended as beneficiaries is real, warning of the dangers of an unexamined development approach.

Lessening the Likelihood of Violent Conflict During Reconstruction and Transformation Processes

Lesson: conflict over development and reconciliation initiatives is closely related to the lack of consultation with, and exclusion of, key stakeholders at a local level.

Over the last decade, there has been an internationally growing awareness of the relationship between development and conflict, along with the recognition of the need for a conflict sensitive development agenda. In South Africa, we too are recognising that development can be as much a destructive process as it is a creative one, particularly when coupled with the dynamics of transition. The VTP research highlights that old patterns and relationships of privilege, often sustained by violence, are unsettled with development. Similarly, development can bring new beneficiaries and privileges. This can destabilise the pecking orders, sub-economies, relationships and individual identities of war resulting in tension and sometimes violence. For example, within the housing sector, there has been resistance on the part of single-sex male hostel residents to the introduction of family-unit housing because of their reluctance to relinquish the dual identities that they have forged through their migration between rural and urban areas, often with accompanying families in each location. Similarly, slumlords with vested interests in renting out living space by the metre are resistant to more equitable housing programmes. Development, particularly uneven development (in one area and not another, or, in the case of underdevelopment, at the expense of another) can also create conflict between community members and reinforce not only socio-economic inequalities but social faultlines such as race or ethnicity. For example, in Kathorus we were told by many individuals (from across the political spectrum) that a certain housing project 'favoured Xhosas' and that other 'ethnicities' could not access houses there. In a context emerging from a form of conflict based strongly on ethnic and political divisions, this perception is inflammatory and dangerous.

In KwaZulu Natal, Injobo Nebandla (2005a) note that,

A key-determining factor in the peace process has been the evolving shift in competition between the ANC and IFP from the politics of violence and confrontation, to competition around the politics of development and service delivery. (p. 37)

This shift from the 'politics of violence' to the 'politics of development' has impacted in varied and localised ways on peace and violence within the region. In some areas, such as the "A" Section Hostel in Kwamashu, it has translated into an uneasy 'peace', one that is still fraught with political mistrust and tension. Development, or rather attempts at development, have reinforced old allegiances and undermined plans to upgrade the hostel. In turn, the lack of development has fed into resentment and political mudslinging over already-poor facilities and high levels of crime within the area, leaving residents feeling increasingly marginalised and further exposed to violent crime. In contrast, violent conflict in KwaMashu's "L" Section (between different factions within the ANC, exacerbated by inadequate housing and limited services) is finally being resolved now that,

the ANC, together with local and provincial government departments, [has] embarked on a two-pronged strategy, the first of which [has] entailed intensifying peace talks between the warring factions, and the second focusing on a development programme to address inadequate housing and overcrowding. A large-scale housing programme was subsequently introduced with considerable success, and a number of "L" Section residents have been relocated to new sites and houses at Mount Royal, Duffs road near KwaMashu. This process is ongoing (p. 54).

What seems crucial in this example is the 'two-pronged' nature of the strategy, which has included both peace talks and development. Consultation and community buy-in are central to the success of development projects. Indeed, from across the range of VTP reports, conflict over development and reconciliation initiatives is closely related to the lack of consultation with, and exclusion of, key stakeholders at a local level (lesson). For example, in Kathorus, SDU and SPU ex-combatants felt that the failure of early demilitarisation initiatives (such as the Community Constable Programme) was related to top-down, imposed processes in which they were not consulted or given an opportunity to shape the outcome. This has created a sense of bitterness and resentment for many who feel a double-layer of betrayal by the state, politicians and democratisation in general: 'first they used us to protect and fight for them, then they used us to stop the violence and when it was over, they simply threw us away' (cf. Gear, 2002; Barolsky, 2005). The relationship between a lack of consultation; development, democracy and demilitarisation; and feelings of exclusion and betrayal is highly complex and cannot be fully explored within this report. However, it is important to note that there is a relationship and this layered interaction contains the kernel for new expressions of conflict. The concept of 'human security' is useful for highlighting some of these links, particularly in relation to demilitarisation, which is one of the key indicators posed in the VTP 2 proposal.

Demilitarising Security: Human security and demilitarisation21

Lesson: frustration with a lack of participation in, and exclusion from, the processes of democracy can result in conflict, with people falling back on alternative, sometimes violent, methods to (re)assert a sense of power, while simultaneously signaling their discontent with the new order and 'democracy' itself.

In recent years, the peacebuilding field has redirected our understanding of security from a state-owned, militaristic concept to one that focuses on human security. Although human security does not preclude state security, it offers us an expanded, more holistic way to engage with security as both protection for, and empowerment of, individuals (Tadesse and Smith, 2005). The Commission on Human Security defines human security as a process,

… to protect the vital core of all human lives in ways that enhance human freedoms and human fulfillment. Human security means protecting fundamental freedoms—freedoms that are the essence of life. It means protecting people from critical (severe) and pervasive (widespread) threats and situations. It means using processes that build in people's strengths and aspirations. It means creating political, social, environmental, economic, military and cultural systems that together give people the building blocks of survival, livelihood and dignity. The vital core of life is a set of elementary rights and freedoms people enjoy. What people consider to be "vital"—what they consider to be "of the essence of life" and "crucially important"— varies across individuals and societies. That is why any concept of human security must be dynamic.' (Ogata and Sen, 2003, p. 4).

And with this, the concept of reconciliation needs to be seen as an inter-personal, participative process. As, Archbishop Tutu, in his Foreword to the Human Security Centre's (2005) Human Security Report explains, '[h]uman security privileges people over states, reconciliation over revenge, diplomacy over deterrence, and multi-lateral engagement over coercive unilateralism' (p.III).

The VTP research illustrates that frustration with a lack of participation in, and exclusion from, the processes of democracy can result in conflict, with people falling back on alternative, sometimes violent, methods to (re)assert a sense of power, while simultaneously signaling their discontent with the new order and 'democracy' itself (lesson). This is clearly highlighted in McKinley and Veriava's (2005) report on the state's relationship with, and response to, social movements,

The fact that most social movements are presently outside the mainstream of South Africa's institutional framework indicates that an increasing number of poor South Africans no longer see active participation in the present institutional set-up of representative democracy as being in their political or socio-economic interests (p. 4).

It is not just the 'increasing number of poor South Africans' who feel marginalised and deliberately excluded from representative democracy. Other social faultlines, for example gender, race and ethnicity, also mark spaces for exclusion, disempowerment and therefore human insecurity:

Development theorists argue that if a gender dimension in development practice is not included the consequence will be to increase gender inequalities. The DAC (1998) guidelines for gender equality and women's empowerment in terms of development co-operation make plain that promotion of gender equality is a broad societal issue that women and men need to address in partnership. With respect to women and armed conflict, it has been accepted by international practitioners, most notably the United Nations in its adoption of Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security in 2000, that gender equality is central to peace building and reconstruction. (Hillyard and Ward, 2004, pp. 2-3).

At the same time, development and human security are not just about the relationships between (gendered, racialised, ethnicised, class-based, etc.) citizens, and citizens and states. In the context of a neoliberal global order, where the weakened nation state is driven in response to and by the market (cf. McKinley and Veriawa, 2005), multinational corporations (MNCs) also pose a number of challenges to a peacebuilding agenda. Their actions and policies, like conflict itself (as discussed in the politics of exile section above), transcend national borders. It is beyond the parameters of this report to engage with the complex intersection of MNCs, regional and collective state bodies, states, citizens, development, human rights (including socio-economic rights) and peacebuilding, but it is important to flag these concepts here, as areas for future exploration within the VTP process, because of their links to violence and violence prevention.22

Regional inter-state bodies, such as the African Union, SADC and NEPAD also complicate the relationship between human security and violence. On the one hand, they are important vehicles and spaces for peacebuilding at a regional level and, in certain cases, South Africa has played a significant peacebuilding/keeping role through these bodies. Their potential to transcend national divisions is particularly important because conflict can traverse national boundaries and thereby threaten human security across these borders too. Conflict in this form demands a consolidated, regional remedy. However, on the other hand, these bodies are limited in their ability to tackle regional conflict as the South African government's position of silence in relation to the serious human rights violations taking place in Zimbabwe illustrates. This 'national-level' response, one that has coincidentally unfolded alongside South Africa's internal celebration of democracy, threatens the integrity of these very organisations, as well as durable peace within the region and South Africa's democracy itself.23 The regional movement of conflict similarly has implications for demilitarisation and human security strategies across borders, as well as within them.

Demilitarisation: The need to harness the experience of conflict in a way that actively promotes peace

Lesson: Narrow institutional understandings of DDR are frequently pursued due to pressures of political settlement, and tend to focus solely on formal armed conflict at the point of transition. Informal and paramilitary forces are usually excluded, creating an additional faultline for future violence. In this sense, the threat of violence is located less within the armed forces themselves, and more within militarized civilians.

Lesson: It is important that any peacebuilding strategy does not unwittingly alienate ex-combatants further by only seeing them as a 'potential threat for violence'. Instead, former combatants can often come to occupy significant peacebuilding roles within the post-conflict context – either within the formal structures of the new democratic government/state security forces or, at more local, immediate levels, within their particular communities.

Lesson: It is important for development and reintegration strategies to assist ex-combatants with identifying their transferable skills as often they feel that they only 'know war' and therefore do not look beyond the security and arms sectors for employment (which can itself fuel a cycle of violence).

Demilitarisation is conventionally understood as one component of the demobilisation demilitarisation and reintegration (DDR) triangle implemented with negotiated settlements as part of the formal processes for moving from armed conflict to peace. However, Gear's (2002) research with South African ex-combatants holds two additional lessons: i) it is crucial not to adopt a narrow, institutionalised understanding of DDR, although this often happens with the pressures of a political settlement and the related focus on formal armed conflict at the point of transition; and ii) to acknowledge the informal and paramilitary forces within armed combat, forces that are not conventionally included in DDR processes. Relatedly, it is important to look at the ways in which weapons continue to circulate within society in the shift from politics to crime (cf. Injobo Nebandla, 2005b for an analysis of gun control through transition).

Gear (2002) points out that there are many challenges for integrating former combatants into a singular army and/or back into civilian life. These challenges, if not properly understood or dealt with, can produce conflict and violence. Challenges to creating a unified, integrated armed force include: structural problems with the process, inflexible methods of training and lack of mechanisms to 'facilitate the delicate process of integrating diverse armed forces' (p. 29), different levels of experience and expectations about the rigidity of 'army life' (particularly for members of less formal structures, such as the South African SDUs who did not receive the same levels of training as their 'army' counterparts and who were unfamiliar with the formal structure of living in the military), lack of discipline, and racist attitudes and prejudice (with former enemies having to work together in the very institutions (the army and police) historically designed to kill each other). Challenges for integrating into civilian life are vast and include facing community stereotypes and prejudices about 'ex-combatants', loss of social status, difficulties in personal relationships, anger, depression, a loss of identity and purpose, loss of income and difficulties in finding employment, particularly beyond the private security sector,24 and feelings of abandonment and betrayal (cf. Gear, 2002, Barolsky, 2005).

More generally, military training – both during the earlier conflict and through the integration process itself – can create a faultline for future violence (lesson). This is a complex assertion, one that needs to take into account a range of different aspects. For example, integration offers combatants insights into the functioning of the new military and police forces and this has the potential to leave them even more militarised than previously (Gear, 2002). The risk presented by 'hyper militarised' (largely) men in transition can be compounded through badly planned and un-consultative processes of integration: integration does not guarantee secure employment or a long-term future for members (due to a range of reasons for example, retrenchments, medical discharges, dismissals) but when badly planned and un-consultative (for example the Community Constable Project in Kathorus), integration/de-integration can result in skilled men unwillingly having to leave the formal security sector. If coupled with high levels of betrayal, abandonment etc. (see Gear (2002) for a range of emotions and experiences, mostly negative, related to the transition from military to civilian life), moving into civilian life can be traumatic, difficult and dangerous for former combatants. In this sense, the threat of violence is located less within the armed forces themselves and more within militarised civilians (lesson).

At the same time, perceptions and stereotypes about what it means to have been a combatant, and simultaneously, an ex-combatant, 'impact fundamentally on the nature and experience of their attempts to reintegrate into their communities' (Gear, 2002). It is important that any peacebuilding strategy does not unwittingly alienate ex-combatants further by only seeing them as a 'potential threat for violence' (lesson). Instead, former combatants can often come to occupy significant roles within the post-conflict context – either within the formal structures of the new democratic government/state security forces or, at more local, immediate levels, within their particular communities. For example, Thokoza SDU members point out that they 'continue to represent substantial political capital in the community' and are called on to occupy leadership positions, commonly centred on peacekeeping and conflict resolution, e.g. mediating domestic conflict (Gear, 2002). While this might be because of the qualities that they possessed prior to engaging in conflict (qualities that prompted them to take up arms initially), leadership qualities could also develop through the process of combat. It is thus important to find ways to tap into and harness the leadership skills of individuals post-conflict. Linked to this, a way must be found to harness the experience of conflict in a way that actively promotes peace.

Of course, the range of ex-combatants, drawn from different forces and backgrounds, means that developing former soldiers as community peacebuilders and leaders is not a uniform solution or necessarily one that communities will understand, appreciate or accept. For example many of Gear's (2002) white conscripted respondents point out that there was a culture of secrecy and denial on the part of the apartheid state regarding their active involvement in conflict, and this has ensured that their communities were not very aware of their actions or experiences 'on the border'. Rather than being welcomed as heroes on their return, many felt alienated and distanced from the very people they were seeking to protect. In the absence of any community appreciation for their skills (and therefore no opportunity to distinguish themselves as leaders or peacebuilders), their reception has not allowed for any leadership role to emerge in the post-conflict context.

More generally, the development and emergence of certain skills in combat should not be restricted in their application to conflict resolution/knowledge skills in a post-conflict society. Rather, the challenge is how to apply and transfer these skills to a range of careers and activities in a context of peace. It is important for development and reintegration strategies to assist ex-combatants with identifying their transferable skills as often they feel that they only 'know war' and therefore do not look beyond the security and arms sectors for employment (which can itself fuel a cycle of violence) (lesson) (Gear, in personal communication). This process would also ease the transition into civilian life by giving ex-combatants a source of identity that extends beyond that of war and would form part of a strategy to demilitarise masculinity in a post-conflict society (lesson).

Within the overarching identity of ex-combatant, more specific identities exist; this is not a uniform or homogenous group and this has consequences for how former soldiers reintegrate into civilian life. Those who take on high profile, or well-paid jobs and who feel a sense of social acknowledgement for their involvement in the past conflict generally seem to have a very different experience as 'ex-combatants' to those who can't find employment and feel betrayed, angry and unacknowledged by society and the political system (cf. Gear, 2002). It is the marginalised, excluded, yet militarised forms of masculinity that present a risk for future violence. The challenge is how to demilitarise masculinity by providing alternative, positive role models for men in peace-time (lesson) (Gear, in personal communication).

Identities of Exclusion

Militarised Masculinity

Lesson: It is the marginalised, excluded, yet militarised forms of masculinity that present a risk for future violence. The challenge is how to demilitarise masculinity by providing alternative, positive role models for men in peace-time.

Lesson: Many identities are primarily shaped in war and these impact on identities of peace, often through the expression of violence. Identities of exclusion, common in so many DDR processes, can feed into violence.

Lesson: Identities of exclusion can feed into violence, which is a means to power and status.

Lesson: Identity feeds into and shapes the experience of particular types of violence during and after the war. This has implications for the ways that trauma is processed, expressed and experienced by people, which can in turn affect the way that identity itself develops.

One lesson emerging from the VTP research is that many identities are primarily shaped in war and these impact on identities of peace, often through the expression of violence. Another lesson is that identities of exclusion can feed into violence. This is most visibly seen in the case of young men who identified themselves as 'soldiers' and 'combatants' during the past violence and who today still define themselves with reference to that war-time identity, as 'ex-combatants' (cf. Gear, 2002; Barolsky, 2005). Moving from combatant to ex-combatant has not been an easy process. The change in identity has meant a loss of social status and purpose. Once respected and/or feared as fighters, protectors and 'men with guns', today many former soldiers feel that they are the 'laughing stock' of their neighbourhood, family, or nation.25 This is for various reasons, including their inability to find employment and the means to lead a 'fancy' lifestyle with fast cars and designer clothes. This sense of displacement and loss of social status and power in the transition from soldier to ex-combatant can create the grounds for violent crime perpetration. For example, some feel that it is the 'fancy' lifestyle that will allow them to recapture the 'hero' status and power they once held within communities. With this, comes the risk that they will become involved in crime. Gear (2002) explains that for certain ex-combatants,

Moves into crime cannot therefore simply be reduced to unmet needs. The immense power of the materialist youth culture in which these youth find themselves also feeds criminal involvement today. This culture effects youth more generally and is not restricted to militarised youth. It is also not a new phenomenon … Crime [including violent crime] pays for status and respect and not only material goods: it is the means to a powerful identity (lesson) (Gear, 2002, emphasis added).

For others, there is a tendency to romanticise the violence of the past and to resort to such violence in new circumstances. This can be seen in the consistency of violent vigilante methods over time (cf. Harris, 2001b). 'Ironically, some [ex-combatants] look back at the apartheid era as 'better times' for dealing with crime and criminals' (Gear, 2002). This can translate into harsh violence against suspected criminals. Vigilante and criminal violence are not unique to ex-combatants. However their overtly militarised backgrounds clearly reflect the range of violent possibilities for post-conflict identity and the changes and continuities that shape and channel this. This can be a subtle process. For example, although the SDU and SPU units have been officially disbanded, interviewees told us that there are still clear allegiances, networks and a sense of brotherhood amongst former members (This cohesion is similarly borne out by the special forces interviewed by Gear (2002)). At any sign of 'trouble' (e.g. a bar-brawl or criminal incident), the Units quickly re-band and work together, often in violent ways, to 'protect each other' and the related identity of being an old 'comrade'.26 In other situations, admitting to a war-identity can be dangerous, especially when moving through spaces that were once those of the 'enemy'. Old identities can feed into violent acts of revenge and the settling of personal scores linked to the past conflict.27

Gear (2002) explains that violent masculinity can trans