Mediation practice : perceptions of practitioners from the African insider mediators platform

• Main Author: Smith, Richard
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University 2013
• Subjects: Mediation; Mediators (Persons); Social conflict
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/d1020909

In African countries emerging from periods of violent crisis a layer of civil society practitioners and peacebuilders appear to play a critical role in mediating the inevitable disputes and tensions that arise. This treatise focuses on a sample of these mediating practitioners who perceive themselves in a variety of different ways, as peacebuilders, as conflict managers, as conflict resolution practitioners and as conflict transformation practitioners. The practitioners who participated in this study work at multiple levels to support the mediative processes that are needed in contexts of crisis and transition. They form part of a wider group of practitioners who have taken the initiative to organise insider mediators into a learning community of practitioners, under the auspices of the African Insider Mediators Platform (AIMP). This platform provides scholars with a useful research opportunity. The overall aim of this study is to explore the relationship between conflict transformation theory and the establishment of the AIMP as perceived by AIMP practitioners. It captures the perceptions that mediators have of the nature of the conflicts in which they are engaged and the influence of theoretical approaches on their practice. The treatise focuses on the perceptions of selected mediation practitioners associated with the AIMP. It draws out the conceptual lenses that are used to inform perceptions of effective mediation practice and that connect the perceptions of practitioners with the concepts contained within the conflict transformation theory. In so doing it describes the perceptions of practitioners and discusses the extent to which these perceptions resonate or deviate from theoretical conceptualisations of conflict in Africa and the theoretical frameworks that outline what constitutes an effective mediative response to this conflict. The insights into effectiveness that emerge from this approach are outlined in the treatise, drawing from background research that has informed the formation of the AIMP as well as from interviews carried out with selected mediation practitioners. The research findings suggest that there are several perceived connections between the theoretical underpinnings of conflict transformation approaches and the practice of the insider mediators involved in this study. The discussion of the data puts forward the proposition that the conceptual perceptions of the insider mediators involved in the study, in their description of elements of mediation practice and the nature of conflict, resonate strongly with the theories associated with conflict transformation thinking. In addition several additional theoretical influences appear to have been incorporated into an overall approach to discrete and collaborative mediation efforts that reinforce a strong connection between conflict transformation thinking and the practice of insider mediators. These relational connections between theory and practice are outlined in some detail in the description of the study that follows.