Are women a missing link in Africa’s peace process? Interrogating women’s involvement in peacebuilding and conflict resolution in precolonial, colonial and postcolonial Africa

Abstract

This paper locates peacebuilding within the context of selected African countries with a focus
on Zimbabwe; highlighting the intersection between gender and peacebuilding. The central
argument in this paper is that gender relations and its relationship to peacebuilding in Africa must
be understood within the context of the disruptions brought by European colonialism, struggles
for self-determination and independence and post-independence struggles to construct new
nation-states. The paper provides a sociohistorical analysis of gender relations in pre-colonial and
colonial Africa and attempts to draw parallels with the postcolonial African state. It argues that a
complex combination of these processes gave rise to exclusive, androcentric and elite driven peace
processes in the postcolonial state. In examining women’s struggles for equality and social justice
in the postcolonial state, the paper highlights how civic society and the civic space has come to
be synonymous with women and women’s struggles to influence the peace process. Building on
indigenous models of conflict resolution, the paper critically engages the concept of Ubuntu and
appraises how it can be appropriated to re-insert women’s peace agency in postcolonial Africa. The
paper concludes by examining options for increasing women’s involvement in conflict resolution
and peacebuilding in postcolonial Africa.