Democracy, Violence and Peace in One House:

Violence, Peace and Everyday Modes of Justice and Healing in Post-Colonial Africa

“…As has rightly argued, Africa has undergone cycles of violence across the precolonial, colonial and post-colonial epochs. In recent history, as Marongwe and Mawere (2016) opine, overt violence became banalised on the African continent from the 1960s due to the entrenchment of the decolonisation process and since then almost all nations on the continent have suffered violent episodes of various proportions and modes. As Marongwe and Mawere argue, outside of the liberation wars, the violent struggles have included, inter alia, armed disputes in the Horn of Africa, service delivery protests and xenophobic attacks in South Africa, "confrontations over the distribution and access to resources like land and minerals, border conflicts, ethnic and religious tensions and over access to-or denial of-state apparatus" (Ibid: 1).…”

“…What can be done to end the cycles of the violence? Is it possible, as Marongwe and Mawere (2016) question, for Africa and Africans in Africa to enjoy peace and justice? What, also, is the link between violence and state formation, mobilisation for power, the preservation of sovereignty, state administration and state collapse in Africa?…”