Understanding youth involved violence

27 Jan, 2019 - 00:01 0 Views
Understanding youth involved violence Some of the scenes of the stay away in Makokoba surbub in Bulawayo

The Sunday News

Micheal Mhlanga

Over 800 people have been arrested and at least 90 percent of them are between the ages of 15 and 28.

Sadly, some who have died are youths, whose potential had not been exploited and we shall never know what they could have done for this country. The spiralling statistics of the 14 January 2019 related crimes present young people as merchants of violence and victims of conflict, more than any other social group and it remains unanswered: Why are young people, with all the education they have, been constantly found in both the inflicting and inflicted positions of gruelling conflict?

In this article I argue that to move past 14 January and never allow it to repeat, a sober and honest analysis of the youth character in Zimbabwe and historical Africa is imperative.

In many African societies, young people have been victims of policy neglect and excluded from decision-making processes. When patriarchal power structures exclude young people, violence can often be a way of venting frustration, seizing control and making an impact.

Unfortunately, the prevailing stereotype of youth involvement in Zimbabwean politics is that of the party-political thug and violent acolyte who may be mobilised during and post-election periods to intimidate political opponents and voters. Analyses of recent episodes of political violence in Zimbabwe show that youths are manipulated and mobilised when needed, but otherwise marginalised and ignored by the political elite, especially when it comes to addressing the root causes of their social exclusion, in particular the systemic failures in educational and economic development.

Be it in time of independence or rebellion, young people invariably play a role in perpetrating acts of violence. In 2013, writing for Beyond The Hague, Paul Bradfield argued that in weak and emerging societies, political leaders sometimes play a subversive role in manipulating and mobilising young people to violently realise and further their own political objectives. He argued that mobilising youth to commit political violence is not an inherently Zimbabwean problem, but is common in many societies around the world.

Explaining a horrendous phenomena
There is what is often referred to in conflict studies within the economic arguments framework as “greed” theory which is defined as an individual or group’s calculated decisions about what actions are more beneficial and rewarding. In more academic sanitised spaces they call it ethical egoism. In this context, group violence reflects competition over valuable resources and a desire to gain control of these resources.

From these theories, it could better explain the character of violent actions by young people. The work of Paul Collier in 1999 had a significant influence on advancing the greed theories as economic arguments in explaining causes of violence more broadly.

In contrast to these economic arguments, there are grievance theories which emphasise unmet basic needs, relative deprivation, or the desire for recognition and identity as motivations for violence. While the greed versus grievance debate may perhaps explain causes of violence of 14 January and any other recent past, socio-political and psycho-social approaches also point to the importance of social interactions, networks, and social structures in shaping one’s behaviour. Focus on age-related psycho-social development peculiarities draw attention to youth-specific characteristics and factors that may drive young people to violence. Arguably, a society’s demographic composition also has some bearing on social cohesion and potential for violence.

The “youth bulge” theory, for example, states that a disproportionately large youth cohort, and particularly a large concentration of young men, increases the risks of violence in a given community or country as argued in 1994 by the American author, Robert David Kaplan in his seminal work The Coming Anarchy. In his seminal work, in 2004 the young political scientist Henrik Urdal refined the “youth bulge” argument by emphasising that a large youth population coupled with economic stagnation and lack of opportunities for migration make a country prone to violence.

Young men and women in Zimbabwe get involved in violence for diverse and context-specific reasons. The prevailing theme in the commentary on youth and violence is that exclusion and lack of opportunities faced by young people leads to disillusionment and, in some cases, their participation in violence. Unemployment, insufficient educational opportunities, poor governance and social marginalisation can lead to the deep disaffection of youth in society, increasing the likelihood of them resorting to anti-social activity and engagement in violence.

However, it is important to recognise that there are many contexts where youth suffer from high levels of exclusion but do not participate in violence. One may ask, what distinguishes those who are mobilised from those who remain on the periphery?

Analysing other African contexts of political violence
From which Zimbabwe may learn: There are a number of discernible factors that taking into account the above-mentioned underlying conditions of social exclusion, can lead to youth being mobilised to engage in violence. Of the many reasons on why 14 January is an element of a growing culture of violence is that there is forced recruitment into the abominable actions.

Many young people participate in violence because they are forced to, through techniques including abduction and indoctrination. Like many institutions in Africa perpetuating violence, young people in Zimbabwe, both in the city and rural areas find themselves as students of political party indoctrination and abduction, where they are threatened or disincentivised if they do not participate in violence. As I argued above, youth involvement in violence is not peculiar to Zimbabwe, it’s a continental scourge.

The decades-long civil war in northern Uganda was artificially prolonged through the incessant abduction of children who were forced to fight in the Lord’s Resistance Army.

Similarly, in the conflict in eastern DRC, the use of child soldiers remains an essential military stratagem by rebel groups such as March 23 (M-23) and the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR).

Another reason is identity politics. Young people may be drawn to defend their own ethnic base or political ideologies through the use of violence. In Rwanda, thousands of disaffected Hutu youth, known as interhamwe, were infamously mobilised through the use of political propaganda and hate-inspiring media during the 1994 genocide, to catastrophic effect.

Not to be outdone, elections and political events may trigger acts of violence, particularly when underlying ethnic and social tensions are already extant. In early 2008, the disputed election results in Kenya led to running battles between the tribal support bases of the opposing political blocs, the Party of National Unity (PNU) and the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) resulting in over a thousand deaths.

The Mungiki, a notorious gang which draws its members largely from the Kikuyu ethnic group, were responsible for orchestrating widespread violence during the post-election period, mobilising unemployed and disaffected youth from impoverished areas to carry out acts of violence, in retaliation for violent acts committed by pro-ODM youth, largely comprised of the Kalenjin. That the two previously warring ethnic blocs in 2008; the Kikuyu and the Kalenjin now share executive power in Kenya following the 2013 election shows how malleable political and tribal differences can be in African societies.

What the streets call ‘kuitiswa’
January 14 2019, presents an interesting dimension in understanding the extensive involvement of youths in violence in Zimbabwe’s backyard. What Paul Bradfield in 2013 referred to as organisational dynamics in crafting conflict, appears to exist within the realm of instances where in order to maintain existing power structures, political bodies employ strategies of recruiting marginalised young people and socialising them in norms of violence, incentivising them by appealing to their desire for status, identity and group cohesion. On January 14, those who were actively violent and convicted were mostly unemployed and idle youths.

While social exclusion of young people has undoubtedly been a factor in Zimbabwe’s experience of youth in political violence, the principal driver has been the degree to which their engagement in violence has been actively promoted and sanctioned by political institutions. Clearly, youths are seen as crucial actors in realising political goals. If political leaders can rapidly and effectively mobilise youths to become violent agents of political change on a widespread scale, then equally it should follow that youths can be mobilised to become peaceful participants in political processes, the legitimacy of which are irreversibly tainted when violence informs the ultimate result.

Phambili ngeZimbabwe

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