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Okay on diagnosis, now the treatment
2008-04-21 10:28:09
By Editor
Dar es Salaam has recently hosted two international forums on conflict prevention and resolution in Africa. The first, the Second East African Media Summit on April 11 and 12, was essentially a workshop on ``The role of the media in addressing conflict and instability and their prevention: The East African dimension``.
East African Community Secretary General Juma Mwapachu explained that the forum was meant to evaluate the impact of the involvement of the media in the bloc\'s five partner states in promoting peace, security and stability in the region.
He called on the media to work beyond their traditional watchdog or gatekeeper role by monitoring and analysing the root causes of conflict and instability.
There was concern that the media were generally weak on the ``early warning`` front and that some had tolerated, applauded, precipitated, aggravated or actually fomented conflict and violence.
Frantic efforts were made to shoot down the accusations and it was ultimately agreed that the media were an integral part of society and could hardly behave much differently from the way the rest of society did.
But a highly rated media guru noted that it was not part of the business of the media to subscribe so much to the ``man bites dog`` definition of NEWS as to begin encouraging people to bite dogs just to succeed in business.
The second forum was the just-ended (April 18 to 19) regional conference on ``Understanding obstacles to peace in the Great Lakes Region: Actors, interests and strategies``. It discussed research findings by eminent academicians on the conflicts in Burundi, DR Congo, Kenya, Sudan, Uganda and Zanzibar.
A common indictment of the forums has been that both were more of belated postmortem examinations than reliable forecasts about molehills of differences threatening to graduate into Mount Kilimanjaros of bloody conflict.
Conflicts in the region have been blamed on factors like inequitable access to resources and wealth, failure by governments or state organs to deliver, flagrant misuses of power, blatant violations of the law, corruption in business and the public service, and gross human rights abuses.
Manifestations of the iniquities include systematic pillaging of humanitarian aid, nepotism, sexual exploitation and the plunder of public resources by cliques of indigenous elements or foreigners at the sadistic expense of the indigenous population.
Other players in these games of death are unscrupulous multinational corporations - the so-called globalisers.
As the presenter of the research findings on DRC so powerfully put it, many of these disruptive elements capitalise on anarchy, preying on weak states in collaboration with imperialists, drug barons, gun runners, mercenaries, warlords, and money launderers.
Excellent research findings. Wonderful observations.
Fantastic conclusions and resolutions. But as a participant noted at one of the forums: ``What next - because Africa continues to bleed like mad? Why is no one belling these gluttonous cats?``
It may be a rhetorical question, all right, but attempts to answer it could see us act more responsively and responsibly and help make Tanzania, East Africa and the world safer and more stable.
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