Arts managers trained on peace building

Thobekisiwe Gumede Sunday Leisure Reporter
THE Culture Fund Trust of Zimbabwe in partnership with the Ecumenical Church Leadership and United Nations Development (UNDP) Programme have undertaken measures to increase the role of culture and arts in fostering national dialogue and creating cohesion within the context of peace building and reconciliation in the country.

The programme on Conflict Prevention Management, Reconciliation and Transformation (CPMRT) training workshops were held a fortnight ago in Harare and Bulawayo and were attended by arts managers.

Culture Fund projects manager Simbarashe Mudhokwani said the training was being done in line with the Constitution which spells out the importance of peace and national reconciliation in developing the country.

He said the focus was to try and get the message of peace building and reconciliation to the people using such vehicles as various art and culture forms.

He stressed the need for artistes to relay the message to the communities through the different art genres they are in.

“The proposed workshops are in line with the Zimbabwe Constitution which enshrines the value and importance of peace and national reconciliation as a foundation for durable peace and sustainable development processes in Zimbabwe, through the establishment of the National Peace and Reconciliation Commission as an independent commission,” he said.

“The training is being implemented within the context of collaboration between Government, civil society and the church seeking to support peace building, disaster, risk management and increased access to sustainable livelihoods for resilience building and social cohesion.

“The programme also aims to support national and community mechanisms and capacities for peace building, dialogue, prevention, management and resolution of conflicts.

Mudhokwani, however, mentioned that the programme mostly targeted women and the youth around the country.

“It targets youth and women, while also strengthening national and community capacities to anticipate, respond to, cope with and recover from disasters,” said Mudhokwani.

He also mentioned that although the arts and culture had been playing a critical role in the promotion of peace and social cohesion there was no CPMRT training done for practitioners in the arts and culture sectors in Zimbabwe.

“Artistes have always played an important role in making sure that there is peace in the country. It is against this background that we saw it appropriate that arts managers undergo training so that we achieve better results,” he said.

Bulawayo songstress Sandra Ndebele who was part of the training workshop told the Sunday Leisure that the training was an eye opener into how they were supposed to resolve conflicts within their establishments and the community at large.

She said they were equipped with ideas on how they could relay the message of unity and peaceful co-existence within the country as artistes through their creative work.

“We learnt quite a lot at the workshop. We realised we had a lot of intra conflicts within our groups and ourselves. Some of them popped up at the workshop. It is good that we now know how to deal with our subordinates as artistes.

“We also got to know of our importance in the national peace building discourse which we used to take for granted. Various forms of arts products can be used to relay the message of peace in a leisurely and entertaining way. We learnt and began to appreciate that peace, conflict resolution and unity are not subjects for politics and politicians alone but everyone’s even those in the arts industry,” she said.

The project activities address the Zimbabwe United Nations Development Assistance Framework, collaboration between the government of Zimbabwe and UNDP, which calls for the strengthening of mechanisms for peace building, conflict prevention, management and peaceful resolution of conflict to achieve national development priorities.

It also seeks to enable promotion of social cohesion, peace and national reconciliation through arts and culture focusing on harnessing the transformative power of arts and culture in creating societal bonds that bring people together in the context of cultural diversity.

Notable arts managers who were trained in Bulawayo were veteran artiste and Amakhosi director Cont Mhlanga, Iyasa’s Nkululeko Dube and actor and modelling instructor Sarah Mpofu Sibanda, among others.