10 Abstract This Study Examines the Social World of Reconciliation And
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The monkey's sworn oath : Cultures of engagement for reconciliation and healing in the aftermath of the civil war in Mozambique Igreja, V. Citation Igreja, V. (2007, June 5). The monkey's sworn oath : Cultures of engagement for reconciliation and healing in the aftermath of the civil war in Mozambique. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/1887/12089 Version: Corrected Publisher’s Version Licence agreement concerning inclusion of doctoral thesis in the License: Institutional Repository of the University of Leiden Downloaded from: https://hdl.handle.net/1887/12089 Note: To cite this publication please use the final published version (if applicable). Abstract This study examines the social world of reconciliation and healing in the aftermath of the protracted Mozambican civil war. Using a multidisciplinary approach (sociology, history, legal and medical anthropology, and international law) this research explores how reconciliation and healing unfold contributing to the repair of a devastated social world. It examines the war survivors’ judgments regarding the potential roles of various forms of transitional justice in redressing the abuses and crimes of the past, the contributions of the agricultural cycle and customary justice to reconciliation, and those of healing practices in addressing ill-health problems. The overall goal is to elucidate how the various social practices invested in reconciliation and healing contribute to rebuilding the shattered social world, to peace and to social stability. The study demonstrates that amidst the indescribable and appalling human disruption and material destruction coupled with the officially orchestrated post-war cultures of denial, war survivors in Gorongosa have laboured to create and maintain peace and social stability by breaking the cycles of injustice and unaccountability, reconciling with former enemies and healing the wounds of war. The study starts out from a comprehensive revision of other studies in that it addresses the existing scholarly literature on transitional justice and its contribution to reconciliation and on the healing of war-related suffering among individuals, families and communities. This revision leads to the formulation of questions for empirical investigation of the transitional justice process in Mozambique as it unfolds at grassroots level. A careful analysis of the local dynamics of war demonstrates a clear collapse of the notions of “war front” and “home front”. The extreme abuses and crimes perpetrated by soldiers against civilian individuals and families living within the war zones went far beyond the limits of what is endurable. The reverse dynamic, that is the process of reconstituting the social world, indicates the presence of both pernicious long-term legacies and an extraordinary capacity in the communities to overcome their plight. This capacity is referred to here as cultures of engagement. It is empirically observable in the processes of reconciliation and healing. Cultures of engagement consist in war survivors being actively involved in accessing and utilizing the available endogenous resources for the purpose of reconciling alienated people and healing the wounds of war. These 10 endogenous resources are embodied both in the geographic environment that gives rise to a specific type of economy and in the socio-cultural, politico-legal practices that constitute reservoirs of social capital. The key features of these resources indicate how people in Gorongosa live in an ecological system of mutual relationships and interdependencies, which can represent either a constraint or the potential for full usage of these available resources. It is this striking combination of availability and accessibility of resources with the contingencies - such as establishment of relationships, family and community participation - attached to their exploration that creates the possibility of a functioning society. Viewed from this perspective, the Gorongosa case stretches to the limit contemporary understandings of the human capacity for reconciliation and healing in the aftermath of brutal civil wars. In conclusion, theoretical and practical implications are drawn from these results. 11 PART I Getting Acquainted with the Topics Chapter 1: Introduction This doctoral thesis is about the disturbances and vicissitudes of a post-war society and the processes of repairing its devastated social world. It addresses the strategies deployed by the survivors of war violence to overcome their post-war plight amidst shattered families and communities in central Mozambique. To serve as a point of entry to the main topic, a short story is presented here. It is a story about different types of animals trying to make sense of a disturbance in their social world. 1.1. “Swear, monkeys, swear!” Justice in the animal kingdom In a tiny village, the different creatures were peacefully living together until one day a serious problem erupted. The village was composed of trees, flowers, bees and other animals. One day, the bees went away on a far-off and complicated mission. On their return home they found something strange in the tops of their home trees: the honey was missing from their hives. Someone had stolen their property. They felt outraged; but instead of retaliating by biting every habitant in the nation, they thought, "There is still hope". The bees kept cool and on the following day they flew to the local court to report their case. After a preliminary enquiry, the judges indicted the monkeys with stealing the honey from the beehives in the tops of the trees. On the day of the trial, one judge raised his voice to speak. There was complete silence, "You may all sit down", he said. The female judge standing in the far corner of the gathering echoed her colleague's voice, "garane pance", and the word went back to the central space of the gathering. The reverent silence prevailed. The judge said, "We are here today because the honey was stolen from the bees. To steal is wrong. The monkeys stole the honey from the beehives, and it is our responsibility to right wrong. Who among you dares to present evidence to the contrary beyond reasonable doubt?" Then it was the defendants’ turn to speak. One elder monkey stood up and said, "In the name of all monkeys like me who are present at this judgment, I swear that we did not steal the honey from the beehives". There was a tense silence, but the judges were not impressed. They kept listening very carefully. "You may proceed with your defence in the attempt to honour your descendant", one of them said. The elder monkey proceeded, "We have four legs, and two of these we use equally as hands. And we can easily climb trees; 12 that is true. We can run and jump from one tree to another, and we like honey; that is true as well. But I swear, I repeat, I swear: we did not steal the honey from the beehives". After hours of questioning and hearing the defendants, the judges kept insisting, “Swear, monkeys, swear; swear so that this problem can be brought to an end”. The audience started to become very concerned about whether or not it was really going to be possible to convict the monkeys based on the evidence that had been presented. Some members of the community members felt that there was serious doubt. When the bees left on a mission, they did not usually leave their beehives unprotected but left their children behind to guard them. This time had been different. They had mobilized all bees together, because their mission was very complicated. At the time of the theft there were no bees around, so no one had actually witnessed the monkeys climbing the trees to steal the honey from the hives. The evidence presented against the monkeys was too weak to stand up in a serious court. With the exception of the judges, who were not uttering their fomenting thoughts to anyone, everyone in the village was pondering over whether a possible condemnation and punishment of the monkeys might not bring confusion into the village. For the first time in the history of this village, the judges had the great responsibility to be careful not to condemn the innocent and let the wrongdoers go free. The judges had to seriously consider the credibility of the justice system for restoring social harmony in the village. About one thing the judges were clear: “To steal is wrong, and our laws condemn it”. Apparently everyone in the village agreed upon this rule. Yet the question was whether the monkeys had really committed the offence, and here there was no general agreement. Since the monkeys were doing upoca (persistently denying), the judges were in a very difficult position. The question that was seething in the judges' minds was: "What is the best way to reach a verdict contrary to the monkeys’ testimony while at the same time inspiring silence in everyone?" While they were ruminating and staring towards different corners of their village in search of an answer, one judge said to the others, “Sometimes bringing about justice is not like cultivating the land”. Another judge added, “Yes, that is true; my grandfather used to say that ‘the banana tree dies because of the bananas it delivers’”. One judge asked what the allegory of the bananas had to do with finding a solution to the case of the bees and the monkeys. The other answered, “We have to be careful in this case, because the same animals that we are trying to help could turn against us and even kill us”. The judges gained illumination from this rapid conversation and they realized that the initial question had not been well formulated. There was a word that needed to be replaced or transmuted in order to facilitate the reasoning that would lead to a fair 13 sentence. It was the word "best". They replaced it with the word, "pragmatic", and the question was reformulated as "what is the most pragmatic way to shake the system while at the same time inspiring silence in everyone?" By "inspiring silence" they meant, "forging a consensus".