Dr Francis Onditi, UN Women ESARO Programme Analyst, Leadership and Governance took Zimbabwean women parliamentarians through a highly participatory and informative session on Principles of Conflict Resolution in non-armed conflict

On Wednesday 16 September 2015, Dr Francis Onditi, UN Women ESARO Programme Analyst, Leadership and Governance took Zimbabwean women parliamentarians through a highly participatory and informative session on Principles of Conflict Resolution in non-armed conflict. The objective of the session was to equip participants with skills on positive engagement with fellow parliamentarians inter-party and intra-party in the August House, and also on how to prepare, move and present bills and motions positively without causing chaos and commotion. In his own words, conflict and chaos in conflict parliament that is not based on development issues but on personality issues may be an indicator of incapacity, and is often driven by political partisanship and other personal differences rather than on national development.

The presentation was highly creative, resourceful and innovative, taking the participants through two simulation exercises that were performed by young students from Kenyatta University. The students had gone through a serious coaching exercise with Dr Onditi before coming to this simulation exercise.

The presentation derived from various theories of conflict, and some of them are that conflict is a normal, inescapable, inevitable and unavoidable part of life, a periodic occurrence in any relationship and an opportunity to understand opposing preferences and values. Conflict has possibility to lead to gainful resolutions for citizens as well as to political, social and economic processes. It is in human nature to quarrel because people have different beliefs, and also because people are usually faced with difficult physical environments, pressure from fellow members’ expectations, as well as personal pressure one may exret upon themselves in trying to ensure that they remain in tandem with all other expectations. All this together can lead to a conflicting space individually and with others.

The presentation also demonstrated that human beings are heterogeneous subjectivities who must always check their personalities and how they affect and are affected by various political and other processes.

Dr Onditi highlighted three categories of leaders – assertive leaders, aggressive leaders and submissive leaders. Despite these differences, leaders must still work together and be able to manage the energy of conflict positively to the benefit of development processes. He also highlighted that it is wrong perception to think that submissive people cannot be leaders, and that only assertive people can be leaders. Leadership qualities depend highly on how one leverages themselves in the face of harsh environments and also how they manage to make strategic coalitions with assertive people to achieve expected results.

He also highlighted that leaders, because they are human, are likely to behave in a manner that will either facilitate or de-facilitate policy and legislation. To demonstrate this point, two simulation exercises acted out by local Kenyatta students were enacted.

The first simulation demonstrated the use of cognitive conflict in parliament, and cognitive conflict was defined as disagreement between two people from different ideological stand-points - and in this case it was two parliamentarians from different political parties, based on ideas, approaches and focused on specific development issues, as opposed to conflict focused on personalities.

The scenario was a bill presentation session in parliament, and actors were two young legislators in their late twenties, a woman and a man, representing parliamentarians from opposite political parties, arguing over the value of devolution in the imagined state of Karana.

The young energetic actors demonstrated both the process and the benefit of keeping conflict cognitive in politics. Step by step the young actors illustrated the method and importance of making the approach or introducing the issue; sharing perspectives – always giving each other a chance to articulate their contribution to the end without unnecessary interjections, and using the expected and appropriate parliamentary language for interjection, ‘Point of order’; agreeing on solutions and planning the next steps together. This exercise demonstrated the need for members of parliament to have the requisite legislative language, to have full knowledge of processes in the country, full knowledge of the Constitution and other laws and policies, and always quote appropriate sections and articles of the law or the Constitution to drive their arguments as opposed to basing arguments on personal opinion and emotions.

The actors also gave each other time to articulate without heckling, respecting each other’s time limits and needs, which proved to be both time saving and progressive in terms of reaching an amicable resolution and adopting future plans. In the arguments, the two shadow parliamentarians demonstrated that all decisions suggested and adopted in parliament should aim at furthering citizens and national development, as opposed to benefiting the individual parliamentarians. The language of parliament was also demonstrated, legal-based, fact-based and respectful language as the young actors left no room to abusive language, always referring to statistics, sections of the law and sections of the Constitution. In other words, parliamentarians may allow themselves to be abusive hecklers if they do not invest in reading and analysing facts on the ground. Analysing facts and reading, as well as engaging with the people in their Constituencies will give parliamentarians ability to effectively represent the needs of their followers as well as of their country. It will also continuously develop them as individuals, and as colleagues in politics, because they learn how to collaborate and strategize to push for each other’s causes in parliament, in turn affecting the behaviour of their counterparts who will also learn from them.

But Dr Onditi did not end here. After the simulation, he took participants through an imagined question and answer session in which the two parliamentarians from the simulation were grilled on the process, and this session had the aim of bringing issues closer to home and benefiting the participants from the qualified explanations of the two actors, who were by design, knowledgeable law makers drawn from Kenyatta University. In the question and answer session, the lawyers took turns to explained the process of the bill presentation by the two shadow parliamentarians in the simulation.

Again, the simulation did not end at just showing parliamentary process and benefit, it also scored on other fronts viz:

It was the presenter’s tactical way of introducing the topic of devolution, what it is, and its value to the Zimbabwean women parliamentarians without saying to them, “Please go and push for devolution in your country.”

Parliamentary debate should not be perceived as conflict, and this can only be achieved it the arguments pushed are based on realistic issues and also on the politician’s positive passion to push development issues through.

During the debate, the issue of gender, together with its value, was brought to the fore with ease, and finding justification in the need for women to be leaders in the Constituencies so that they can manage women’s processes and the women’s fund. More importantly, the simulation brought out tactfully, the issue of the women’s fund and the need for parliamentarians to push for it in the August House back home. The simulation also worked well in revealing the gender gaps in representation in the Constituencies, and the need for women parliamentarians to push for affirmative action using factual issues on the ground, like demonstrating the need to have women professionals in the Constituencies so that they can manage women specific projects and funds, as opposed to empty arguments of having women representation based only on biological reasons. This however is not to override the fact that it is a human right for women to be parliamentarians, but rather to buttress the need for strong and effective women’s leadership as a way of avoiding backlash, especially in patriarchal societies where some male leaders may still be struggling with understanding that women are able leaders. Again, calling for women’s representation is not calling for mediocre and mass representation, but for quality and substantive representation. Demonstrated issues of confidence, and the need for increasing women’s quotas as well as budgets for women to campaign on their own so that in each constituency there are enough female eladers, in the end also justifying the need to revise laws and align them to the needs of women.

The issue of role models was also brought in, in a very subtle and diplomatic manner, without saying the aged should give way to the young in parliamentary positions. The young woman and young man were role models, and a clear demonstration that parliament is also space for the young, and that given the chance, they can indeed bring in new knowledge and new energies based on fact, qualitative and quantitative scientific research, and also suitable to a constantly changing world we live in. The simulation demonstrated the need for a coalition of the young and the old and also the importance of building effective institutions for peacebuilding in pushing for positive political processes. Instead of bringing in two professors to act, Dr Onditi deliberately chose two knowledgeable young persons to provide role models and inspire the Zimbabwean team on the need to include the young in political processes as a way of linking the past to the present, and of mapping out the way forward. At the level of ACTIL, the goodness of building peacebuilding institutions that integrate various training courses was demonstrated. I could not help imagining a women’s peace and security training institution within the Zimbabwe Government Staff College or any other related security sector institution back home, and two young soldiers, male and female, being drawn into the training room to demonstrate a point five years on from now back in my beloved country, Zimbabwe.

The second simulation, deliberately performed for comparative purposes, was on affective conflict, and it demonstrated conflict not based on issues but on personalities, personal partisan based antagonism fuelled by differences of opinion and unfounded emotions – and how destructive this can be to group performance and to building a peace and national cohesion. Affective conflict is also caused by lack of knowledge on the part of parliamentarians, hence the need for them to read and research. Participants went into stitches as the hecklers verbally abused and walked out on each other and the parliament session was truncated prematurely.

In the question and answer session, part B of this second simulation, the young lady explained that when legislation process degenerates into partisan politics rather than development politics, there will be chaos and heckling, and instead of dealing with real issues people start dealing with issues not related to the purpose of their being in parliament, and all this comes from a place of misunderstanding, selfishness and ignorance, leading to chaos and rebellion as people continuously refuse to embrace change. Members of the August House were advised that it is important to look at alternatives instead of just arguing for arguing’s sake. There is always need to reach the middle ground for the sake of progress in the end. Personalising issues, and agreeing to be hired for heckling will not move issues. There is need for parliamentarians to improve in the area of integrity as legislators and public servants, live up to the values and hold one’s self accountable as representatives of the people. Participants were also coached on language and other tools, as well as to always employ strategy when dealing with the issues.

Most of all, Dr Onditi's presentation says a lot about adult education training methodologies. Most women aprliamentarians in Africa, and more so from Zimbabwe have gained parliamentary seats through their political aprties, and based more on merit in terms of serving the political party as opposed to academic merit. As such, as development programme designers and trainers we need to constantly reflect on our training and methodologies. I have sat in many conflict resolution training workshops for women aprliamentarians, and have seen these elderly women struggling to memorise theories of conflict and the many associated conflict trees and diagrams, which I doubt they have been able to utilise in their day to day work. Yet conflict remains an everyday occurance during our daily lives, and how it occurs and requires mitigation may not necessarily require a memorisaiton of diagrams, but a grasp of theory through practice. Well done Dr Onditi, it was a process well thought out.