South Africa's history of colonization, expressed particularly through the violent system of apartheid, calls for participatory approaches to research and practice that aim to decolonize knowledge construction, transform modes of community engagement, and address dominant power relations. This article reflects on how these challenges are addressed in the Spiritual Capacity and Religious Assets for Transforming Community Health through mobilising Males for Peace and Safety project in a low-income community in the Western Cape, South Africa. This analysis focuses on some of the possibilities and challenges relating to using community-based participatory research as a community engagement strategy for the purposes of enacting critical community psychology in an African context. C 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.The effect of colonization and globalization on knowledge systems, research practices, and social development in Africa and other contexts has been recognized by many (Bishop, 2005;Brown-Acquire, 2011;Smith, 2005). In this respect, within South Africa's history of colonization, which has been expressed particularly through the violent system of apartheid, there is evidence of approaches to research and practice that endeavour to decolonize knowledge construction, transform exclusionary modes of community

Departing from the position that critical African psychology is an endeavour whose objective is to harness psychological knowledge in, by, for, and with Africa, as well as the world, but also to critically think Africa into psychology, this article considers space as a key idea to consider in the further development of African psychology, and more specifically, a critically inclined African psychology. Taking critical African psychology as one of the orientations within Africa(n)-centred psychology, we argue for constructing and enlarging space so as to resist ruling epistemes in psychology in and of Africa and to create oppositional spaces that adduce alternative readings and makings of psychology-in-place. We outline three pathways, namely, (1) collective thinking and writing, (2) transdisciplinarity, and (3) affective community building, via which to realise and work from a critical African psychological position. These by no means exhaust all the pathways that can be charted by critical African psychologists and are instead offered as illustrations with which our collective has been engaging, thinking together, and experimenting.

Exceptionally high levels of interpersonal violence have triggered a call by many experts for the need to determine effective ways to address the onset and effects of exposure to interpersonal violence. The specific aim of this study was to identify and draw on existing promising practices to make a more informed decision on strategies to develop a contextually relevant intervention that focused on the promotion of positive forms of masculinity to create safety and peace. This study used a qualitative meta-synthesis (QMS) technique to integrate and interpret findings from various intervention studies that focused on males and/or gender. An in-depth literature search yielded a total of 827 papers that met the search criteria. After removal of duplicates, abstract review, and review of the full texts, the subsequent sample for this meta-synthesis included 12 intervention programs and 23 studies. This QMS revealed the value of a comprehensive approach, using multiple strategies, employing participatory and interactive methods, and promoting social mobilization to address interpersonal violence. The promotion of positive forms of masculinity as an interpersonal violence prevention strategy is a much-needed, relatively untapped approach to generating safety and peace for both males and females.