Abstract
Can African youth be a sustainable resource for peace? Under which requirements can such a project be achieved? This questioning introduces the concern of this article which examines the current burgeoning of African youth from conceptual and qualitative perspectives. Thanks to the awakening of critical voices of African civil society, African youth are more than ever active in the political arena. They contributed, for example, to the fall of the Compaoré regime in October 2014. They closely follow the evolution of democracy in Senegal and create anxiety for the Congolese (DRC) over the mandate regime. Their commitment can be viewed as a search for peace as social cohesion. The paper explores two case studies: the Balai citoyen and Filimbi. It affirms that these youth platforms deal with issues that are intertwined between local challenges, global interactions and transnational conflicts. They can be viewed as peace builders.
Introduction
The recent burgeoning of critical voices of African civil society has allowed more visibility of African youth on the African political scene than during the authoritarian postcolonial state. These young people denounce the postcolonial modes of governance and they incarnate the desire for social and political renewal. Their commitment to a state of rights and democratic alternation announces the possible beginning of a new era marked by justice, civic consciousness, and the search for the common good. The youth civic movement in Africa mobilizes against postcolonial African states and transnational actors. Their search for peace embodies a local dynamic influenced by global interactions and transnational conflicts.
This article focuses on African youth as peace builders, taking as case study two platforms, the Balai citoyen (Burkina Faso) and Filimbi (DRC). From the outset, it must be kept in mind that my approach to the platforms is mainly a theoretical analysis empirically grounded in the activities of the two mentioned cases. It pays more attention to debates concerning key concepts such as civil society, peace and youth, rather than to the exploration of related empirical data.
The paper divides into three sections. The first section focuses on the notion of African civil society as the framework legitimizing the contemporary youth dynamism. It briefly addresses the debate concerning the relevance of this notion for African societies, showing that despite the Western origin of this concept, its use in Africa refers to social and political realities that are not (and should not be) a pale copy of Western ways of thinking. In addition, it relies on the link between democracy and civil society to sustain the expansion of the African civic youth platforms.
The second section explores the idea of peace. Deliberately, it doesn’t pay attention to African indigenous and endogenous concepts of peace. It stands on the distinction introduced by Galtung between the negative and positive peace (Barash and Webel, 2009: 7–14) and approaches to peace as the expression of social cohesion. Negative peace is defined as the deficit of wars, while positive peace refers to the idea of a society organized according to principles of justice, recognition of the other, and democracy. The paper upholds the position that the African civic youth commitment for peace better matches the latter perception of peace than the former.
The third section analyzes two African youth platforms, the Balai citoyen and Filimbi. Previous to this exploration, the paper sketches a general portrait of contemporary African youth as socially and politically committed. Regardless of their “primary membership” (appurtenances primaires), 1 these young people have in common the consciousness of belonging to a social and political community, the development of which they feel called to contribute towards. They rely on this consciousness to struggle for peace. The article also emphasizes their aptitude for denouncing conventional narratives of peace and governance, turning young people into a source of social trouble and instability. Through analysis of the representative platforms, the paper upholds the view that young people’s civic platforms can be viewed as a resource for peace.
The Grassroots of the African Youth Civic Commitment
From the outset, it is worth remembering that the current engagement of African youth for peace has roots in the recent proliferation of African civil society. The concept of civil society came back to life in the context of events that precipitated the fall of real-socialist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe. This dynamic was viewed as expressing a new breath for democracy. At the same time, this concept resurged in Africa as a criticism of the African postcolonial state which, for more than 25 years, stifled political pluralism under the pretext of both national development and unity. Contrary to the case of Central and Eastern Europe, the use of the concept of civil society about African social and political realities sparked a huge theoretical debate among scholars. For several and sometimes contradictory reasons, some scholars reject the application of this concept to African realities, while others support it (Poncelet and Pirotte, 2007).
Critiques of the idea of African civil society consider it inappropriate to apply this concept to African social and political realities because of the Western origin of the term, the ambiguity of the relationship between the African state and societies, as well as the weakness of the African market as a mode of economic regulation. Chabal and Daloz (1999), for instance, observe that […] the emergence of a properly institutionalized civil society, […] is only possible where there is a strong and strongly differentiate state. […] Historically, however, the only instances of the development of civil societies of this type have occurred in Europe […] – The situation in contemporary Africa is at this stage, historically so different that it is hard to see how it could evolve in the same direction – at least in the foreseeable future. (Chabal and Daloz, 1999: 21; emphasis added)
This observation of Chabal and Daloz’s gave rise to a huge debate that cannot be developed in the framework of this analysis. Let’s simply note that both scholars outlined only one definition of civil society to the detriment of tens of other interpretations and potential manifestations of this reality. In addition, the concept of civil society is not the only concept of Western origin to be involved in the complex set of relationships between Africa and Europe (Kasanda, 2018: 107–24).
The protagonists of the idea of African civil society affirm that this notion embodies universal beliefs and values to be shared by every society regardless of its cultural, social and political peculiarities. They highlight the intrinsic link existing between democracy and civil society. They consider as granted the idea that democracy presupposes the existence of civil society, and inversely civil society constitutes an indication of achievement of democracy. Pirotte (2007: 87) observes that There is no democracy without civil society wherever […] civil society [is] at a time an active factor in the process of democratization as well as an indication of progress achieved in this process. (Author’s translation from French)
The conjunction between democracy and civil society constitutes the fundamental background on which the current youth dynamism takes stand.
2
Two factors can be outlined to explain this upsurge of African youth: the idea of democracy itself and the youth’s opportunism. As already suggested, the search for a reinvigoration of democracy establishes the legitimacy of African civil society, and subsequently it constitutes the grassroots of African youth engagement. In this respect, the idea of democracy includes more than defined institutions and conventional paradigms. Following Kervegan (1996: 127), it can be observed that [D]emocracy no longer refers to a political regime among others, but it seems to be the horizon of any legitimate political order. The fact that democracy gained normative status can be explained by the fact that this notion now includes more than defined institutions, it means a set of values: the human rights. (Author’s translation from French; emphasis added)
A growing number of African young people are more sensitive than ever to promoting this set of values. They take advantage of this new context to free themselves from the state’s tutorial, cultural and traditional constraints to commit in defense of alternative social and political paradigms including concerns for peace, justice, and human rights, for example. Contrary to widely-shared opinion, the youth’s posture of defiance takes place not in the spaces deserted by political power and outside the community and their dominant cultures (Diouf, 2003: 5), but in the very heart of their own society because they engage with crucial claims concerning, for example, city cleansing, sustainable education, medical care, freedom of speech and respect for their country’s fundamental law. They move away from approaches enclosing them in a geography of delinquency or, even better, the category of resistance (Diouf, 2003: 5), to claim the full achievement of sustainable structures of social cohesion. Standing on the framework of African civil society, they concentrate on targets such as human rights, the rule of law and the claim for basic resources to human dignity. Now the question is, how far do they achieve such a commitment? This question implies an exploration of the unsaid premises of African people’s daily reality and concern for social cohesion.
The Meanings of Peace
It is worth keeping in mind that peace is a protean term. In different places and times, people have approached this concept differently. The way cultural and religious traditions such as Chinese, Hindu, Islamic and Judeo-Christianism, for example, perceive this concept is significantly different from each other (David, 2008). To approach the idea of peace for today’s Africa, I choose to take a stand on the distinction, from Galtung’s work on world peace, between negative peace and positive peace (Webel and Galtung, 2007). This choice by no means implies any ignorance of other potential approaches to peace, particularly the African indigenous perceptions and related contexts (cf. Murithi, 2008: 16–30). It simply responds to the methodological need for an analytical concept that can include at the same time both the local and global challenges of peace.
The Negative Peace
The concept of negative peace denotes the idea of deficit. It refers to the absence of wars, violence and conflict. In other words, peace is viewed as a condition in which neither overt conflict nor active and military violence is taking place. This approach to peace is often viewed as anchored in classic works such as Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War and in a more recent set of political works including theories of thinkers such as Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Morgenthau, for example. These theories have in common the philosophical premise according to which human nature is pessimistic and bellicose. Subsequently, the state must be powerful and strong enough to submit such a nature and to promote peace. To put things in a different way, according to this postulate, peace is intrinsically a matter of power relationship within society, communities and countries. It epitomizes the rule of both the strongest and victors. Expressions such as pax Romana, pax Americana, pax Britannica, illustrate this perception of peace.
The armed conflicts shaking African countries can be viewed as signs calling for this paradigm of peace. The recurring wars that ravage the Great Lakes region, particularly in the Eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), for example, illustrate the will of warlords to impose their own rule (or concept of peace) on one another. This situation calls the attention of international institutions and the world ruling powers to promote a peace agenda that conforms to their world view and strategical ambitions. In this respect, it can be observed that in the last two decades one of the most important contingents of the United Nations peacekeepers is based in the DRC. 3 The Blue Helmets achieve their mission according to UN resolutions and following international treaties including, for example, the Geneva Convention. Their mandate varies and it includes the interposition between the belligerents, support to the governmental forces, as well as the protection of civilians and assistance to civil society, particularly to NGOs working for peace, education and health. 4 The balance sheet of this dynamic remains debatable.
In addition, it can be noted that this paradigm of peace grants very little attention to both the local conceptions of peace and traditional conflict management mechanisms (Murithi, 2008). Stemming from the fact that legal and military actions must be undertaken by the state, this paradigm gives privilege to the state actors and it subsequently assigns ancillary roles to the non-state actors. The state actors include the local state, structures, major world powers, regional powers and intergovernmental organizations, while the concept of non-state actors denotes in a generalized way international NGOs and local civil society’s organizations. In this respect, Bah (2013: 5) observes that [The category] of non-state actors is loose […] While the role of state actors and their positions are often specified in the relevant resolutions and official policies that defines peace operations’ mandate, the role of non-state actors tend to be ad hoc and constantly adapting to the pace of conflict and the deficit of appropriate state action.
Realistically, non-state actors don’t have any access to the decision-making sphere even if they can provide important links to local actors and deliver vital services to war-affected populations without which state actors could not achieve their missions (Bah, 2013: 5). Through her analysis on sustainable development and hunger in the world, Brunel (2012) observes that civil institutions engaged in the struggle against hunger in regions such as Sudan and Eritrea, for example, participate in a scenario written and controlled with absolute cynicism by the great powers, the involved states and the so-called rebels. The people suffering and hunger are cynically used as a weapon of war to compel the other party to surrender, or in other words to make peace. The human being’s suffering and want are also used as a strategy to access an international audience and political recognition by the belligerents.
As already suggested, I believe that in such a context non-state actors, including civil society’s organizations, benefit from a small and even precarious margin of action. For want of capacity of coercion, they are submissive to the rule of the strongest and the world ruling institutions. They are vulnerable as they are exposed to abrupt changes of policy, alliances and power relationships between belligerents. They are not immune to any slippage and blunder. In such a context, the involvement of civic youth movements is weak because this approach to peace insists on a power relationship rather than on dialogue and cooperation.
The Positive Peace
The notion of positive peace denotes the idea of social cohesion. It postulates the human being’s capacity to promote social, economic and political integration of the community members. This paradigm of peace aims at the emergence of a society organized according to ideas of cooperation, recognition of the other, well-being, equity and respect for everyone’s rights. It implies the rejection of social and political structures supportive of violence. Barash and Webel (2009: 9) consider that [contrary to negative peace], positive peace focuses on peace building, the establishment of nonexploitative social structures, and a determination to work toward that goal even when a war is not ongoing or imminent […] positive peace is more active and bolder, implying the creation of something that does not currently exist. (Emphasis added)
From this perspective, this approach to peace implies two things. First, it calls for a real cooperation between the State and other social and political agencies including, for example, local and international NGOs as well as intergovernmental organizations. The shortcomings of the African postcolonial state to achieve its commitment are covered by organizations of civil society that don’t attempt to weaken the state because they consider it to be the guarantee of both the common good and well-being for all.
The second implication of the positive peace paradigm is the concern for cooperation as a means to provide peace. Contrary to the negative peace that is achieved through the power’s gun, the positive peace constitutes an opportunity for dialogue and negotiation between those involved in the conflict. Therefore, the search and sensitization of the people for the real causes of conflicts in Africa, at both the local and global level, constitute a crucial stage. Constructive strategies and methods for people’s capacity-building toward peace such as theater, music and art, to name a few, are preferable to the firepower of belligerents.
African Youth and the Struggle for Peace
Can African youth be a resource for peace? Despite all potential considerations, I would be tempted to answer positively. But this attitude immediately comes up against a stigma guiding for years the policies of African states concerning youth. This stigma stands on the postulate that young people are fundamentally a source of disorder and destabilization of the established order. They constitute a strength against which the state must set out strategies of protection and repression in case it is needed (De Bonneval, 2011: 15–29; Diouf, 2003: 4–6). Contrary to this postulate, as I will show through the case studies, African youth constitute a central resource for both peace and development. These young people cultivate a new political consciousness based on citizenship rights and the claim for common good. They represent a gamble for another possible Africa. Before exploring their philosophies and strategies for action, let’s roughly sketch their general profile.
African Youth, a Multiple and Ambiguous Reality
The concept of African youth is complex and difficult to define. There is not a standard definition of what African youth means. This expression denotes multiple traits including social and cultural positions, freshness, state of mind, and ranges of age, to quote a few. Otherwise, the idea of youth is commonly approached as the period of transition from childhood to adulthood. Institutions such as UNESCO, for example, consider that this range of age includes young persons from 15 to 24 years of age. African countries such as Nigeria, for example, define this period as starting from 18 years up to 35 years of age while the African Youth Charter views youth as the time running from 15 years up to 35 years old (African Union Commission, 2006).
Facing this multiplicity of meanings, my approach to African youth deliberately follows the definition sketched by the African Youth Charter, which considers African youth as people aged 15–35 years old. In this regard, I note that various studies confirm that more than 60% of African people are younger than 35 years old 5 . In addition, this population is in full expansion. Subsequently, by 2060 Africa is predicted to be one of the youngest continents in the world. 6 As already outlined, I concentrate on the category of young people committed to social and political renewal through burgeoning civic platforms. This category includes people who were born in the last quarter of the 20th century and early 21st century, regardless of their educational background, gender, religious belief, social class and living areas. This generation witnessed the postcolonial state’s authoritarianism, failures and fallacies. They also suffered (and are still suffering) from negative effects of neoliberal policies that the world ruling institutions and powers imposed on African countries including, for example, the Structural Adjustment Programs.
Relying on the stated definition of youth, I can observe that the presence of young people in the African political arena is not something new. Most of the independence fathers, social and political leaders during the struggle for emancipation and soon after, were young. Some of them had a higher educational background while others were less educated and self-made men. The curriculum vitae of leaders such as Nkrumah (1909–1972), Nyerere (1922–1999), Lumumba (1925–1961), Senghor (1906–2001), for example, can attest to this statement. Their presence in the political arena had two meanings. First, the duty to put an end to colonization and the subsequent exploitation of African people. Second, the commitment to promote a new political leadership. Standing on ideas of African modernization, they dreamed of a better future for Africa as a land of freedom and prosperity where youth will play a fundamental role. Diouf (2003 : 4) describes this dream as follows Youth was conceived not only as the hope of African nations under construction […] but also as the hope of the world. […] young people incarnated the future and represented the promises of restored identity, both national and pan-African, as opposed to colonial alienation and postcolonial forms of domination and subordination. (Emphasis added)
A few decades later, it can be observed that this dream was peppered with more shadows than lights for younger generations. Both the economic stagnation and questionable state management by African leaders turned this dream into a nightmare, because they contributed to the excessive precariousness of African youth. Abandoned to their own devices, a wide range of young people created their own “territoires refuges”, that is to say, alternative spaces of socialization and multiple activities on the margins of society. In other words, they became marginalized and excluded and they started acting from such a perspective. The occupation of deserted areas of some African large cities (De Boeck and Jacquemin, 2000), and the drug trade and consumption, as well as prostitution, among other things, can be mentioned as illustrating this double context of marginalization and exclusion. Diouf (2003: 5) observes that Excluded from the arenas of power, work, education, and leisure, young Africans construct places of socialization and new sociabilities whose function is to show their difference, either on the margins of society or at its heart, simultaneously as victims and active agents, and circulating in a geography that escapes the limits of the national territory. (Emphasis added)
Tshikala Biaya (2000: 26–27) echoes the same point of view while highlighting the negative, violent and insidious reaction of the African postcolonial state to these new forms of sociality. According to this Congolese sociologist, these forms of sociality [based on] illegality and marginality, clearly show their break with ethnographic logics and public policies. The provocations and more or less violent demands [subsequent to these lifestyles] call in return an insidious or sometimes violent reaction of the state apparatus. (Author’s translation from French; Emphasis added)
It would be damaging to limit the initiative of African youth to the simple context of their social and financial marginalization. Contrary to the described experience, I think that there is another category of young people who are aware of current challenges and who try to promote social and political alternatives. This category of youth stand on a renewed civic consciousness and struggle to reverse the evoked precariousness and its subsequent exclusion. More and more young people question the current ruling structures that they consider as failing and deficient concerning both social cohesion and development. This critique of the postcolonial state includes international financial institutions, such as the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which, through their neoliberal policies, largely contributed to the collapse of the state in Africa. Conclusively, this category of young people request respect and full implementation of the social contract uniting all citizens and that relies on the search for well-being for all, political pluralism, participation of citizens in the decision-making spheres, accountability and respect for human rights, for example.
In sum, I can note that those young people are critical and mistrustful of conventional narratives of order that enclose them in categories such as ethnic group, alumni of, or nationals of such region or such country, or religious groups like Christian or Muslim youth, and student trade unions, to quote a few. They think that those categories freeze them in narrow ruts of corporatist interests. Contrary to this view, African youth platforms promote wide and inclusive networks where, regardless of one’s educational level, religious belief, gender, ethnic origin, all young people are welcome. The youth platforms base their political commitment, and subsequently their approach to peace, on the consciousness of being part of a social and political community (Anderson, 2006) that they must support and to which they inversely claim inherent rights and duties.
Struggling for Peace
The struggle for peace refers to a set of strategies aiming at a double purpose. First, it aims at preventing the start of conflicts 7 and at promoting their fair conclusion. Second, it leads the search for social and political balance, which means the economic and ecologic well-being as well as the claim for human rights achievement. Both movements, the Balai citoyen in Burkina Faso and Filimbi in DRC, count as being among the most representative youth civic movements. Let’s explore their respective theoretical profile, philosophy and commitment for peace.
The Balai Citoyen : Searching for an Alternative Mode of Governance
The term Balai citoyen evokes the collective and street-sweeping activities initiated by Thomas Sankara (1949–1987), during which citizens were called to bring their brooms and clean their neighborhoods. Those activities were aimed at strengthening the civic consciousness of the people. This expression can be viewed as a metaphor referring to the cleaning of the country and public institutions from corruption and non-civic behaviors. It resumes the Burkinabé’s challenge for political and civic excellence. Leaders of the Balai citoyen view this challenge as part of the political legacy from former Burkina Faso President, Thomas Sankara, who they consider as their political inspiration.
The Balai citoyen claims to be neither a political party nor a partisan movement even if it allows its members to join political parties. This raises the question of how far and under which conditions the Balai citoyen cooperates with the ruling institutions as well as with political parties. Can the Balai citoyen activists also be members of a political party whose philosophy and interest are opposite to those of this civic platform? Where is the limit (if any) between the civic activism and political initiative? These questions lead to a huge and open debate that somehow evokes the topic of accountability on behalf of both the ruling institutions and civil society activists.
The awareness of belonging to the same political community whose development must be ensured constitutes the main link between the Balai citoyen activists. This sense of civic solidarity represents their strength. In virtue of this consciousness, they transcend a range of cleavages including linguistic, ethnic or religious barriers. This citizenship consciousness doesn’t emerge ex nihilo. It anchors in the spirit of struggle and resistance of the Burkinabé people from the pre-colonial era to the present day (De Bonneval, 2011). Its recent reactivation is due to artists and musician activists such as Sams K the Jah, Serge Bambara and Smockey who, following the mutiny of 2011 claiming the resignation of President Compaoré, started reflecting on how to acquire democratic freedoms and to put into practice the citizens’ control of public institutions. In other words, the issue is to know how to turn political leaders accountable to the people. The events of October 2014, including the strong mobilization of young people that led to the fall of the Compaoré regime, can be counted amongst the achievements of this movement (Stepan, 2017).
To achieve their goal, the activists of Balai citoyen rely on the philosophy of non-violence. It is according to this philosophical perspective that they think and organize their strategies. This background explains why they particularly make use of strategies such as civic disobedience, sit-ins, art exhibitions and music, conferences, capacity building workshops and internet networks, to mention some examples. They rely on the people’s aptitude to transcend their “appartenances primaires” to the benefit of their common citizenship and the search for a sustainable development in support of social cohesion. Stepan (2017: 24–25) reminds us that: The Burkinabé have always been open to civil disobedience, ready to stand together as citizens and to descend collectively in the street. This civic availability is a characteristic of the country, which really appears only in comparison with the ethnic conflicts of Kenya or the Ivory Coast, where, since the beginning of the millennium, the ethnic map has been used regularly with disastrous consequences. (Author translation from French)
Through their activism, the Balai citoyen members question a range of policies considering young people as a permanent source of conflict and trouble to be curbed by various means, including police repression and violence. These policies don’t take into consideration the difficult life conditions in which Burkinabé youth (and by extension, African youth) evolve. They also neglect both the youth potential of creativity and aptitude for building alternatives for peace. Through their search for alternative paradigms of governance, the Balai citoyen activists can be viewed more as a resource to social cohesion rather than its opposite. It can be said that peace for them is the equivalent of equity, social cohesion and good governance.
The Filimbi: The Advocacy for a State of Rights and Good Governance
The expression Filimbi is a Swahili word standing for whistle. It is a metaphor taken from the arbitration of games such as football, volleyball, or other competitions to outline the civic purpose of Filimbi’s leaders and activists. First, they want to put an end to the political and social chaos generated by the Congolese current ruling authority. They have an aspiration to create alternative narratives of order and to promote human excellence. Secondly, they commit to promoting fairness and respect of the country’s fundamental laws. Therefore, they rely on the premise that (Congolese) youth are the driving force for political and social changes. They consider Nelson Mandela’s personality and struggle as their source of inspiration. From this “mythical” African personality they retain notions such as non-violence, perseverance, historical patience, tolerance and creativity, and especially faith in collective action as both the support and expression of democracy.
At the official launching of Filimbi in March 2015, in Masina, a popular Eastern area of Kinshasa, the Congolese authorities dispersed the participants in the event and arrested some of the activists including Fred Bauma, Yves Makwambala, and their Senegalese and Burkinabé guests (Rimondi, 2005). The official reason for the arrest was “the attack on state security”, according to the government spokesman. Definitively, this police raid concealed a double purpose: on the one hand, to smother the project of youth eager for political alternative; and on the other hand, to intimidate all those who would try to follow this kind of citizens’ claims and paradigm. Paradoxically, the action of the Congolese government provoked sympathy and an unexpected wave of support toward Filimbi and its arrested leaders. Institutions such as the United Nations Human Rights Office in the DRC and the European Union have been actively concerned about the fate of arrested activists, while a major wave of solidarity came from all over the world including from various African artists and activist movements as well as the world NGOs.
This episode helps to shed light on two things. First, the Filimbi grassroots. This platform can be viewed as representative of the local and daily reality of youth, particularly the popular and poor areas of Kinshasa city such as Masina, Matete, Ndjili, Kimbanseke, Kingasani, and others. The young people who live in these neighborhoods do not benefit from decent schools, libraries or appropriate sporting infrastructures. They are abandoned to take care of themselves without any help (De Boeck and Plissart, 2004). These areas are viewed as socially explosive. Like a minesweeper, Filimbi began raising awareness of young people concerning this situation through the associations such as “Jeunesse pour une société nouvelle” and the “Forum national des jeunes”. In this respect, Rimondi (2015: 3) observes that Over the years, the collective structured itself through two associations, legally constituted and located in Kinshasa. First, the Youth for a New Society (JNS) that focused on field work inside the country for two years. The goal was to identify youth groups and to guide them to create a network. Then the National Youth Forum for Excellence (FNJE) was created, which is the association covering current activities of Filimbi. (Author’s translation from French)
Second, this episode also helps to outline the fact that the action of Filimbi does not unfold in an exclusively local context. This dynamic is linked to other similar movements in Africa and around the world, as many youth civic organizations attempt to defuse local conflicts and their global imbrications. For more than two decades, the DRC has been plunged into an unprecedented crisis, of which the causes are both internal and external. This crisis is punctuated by interminable civil wars with social damages, including the massacres of populations, and the destruction of the economic and ecological structures. It is the Congolese youth who pay a heavy price for this. If not idle, those youth are exploited as child soldiers and cheap labor in the “artisanal exploitations” of diamonds, gold or other minerals, or even in prostitution. This situation reveals, in addition to the absence of the state, the deep deficit of peace in this world region despite hosting one of the largest contingents of the UN peace forces, the Blue Helmets. This confirms the already mentioned premise according to which peace as social cohesion is fundamentally different from peace as power relationship. I can say that the Filimbi commitment sticks better with the former than with the latter.
The Filimbi movement relies on the premise of non-violence to achieve its project. This idea raises a range of questions to be explored including, for example, the meaning and the philosophical background of the notion of non-violence (Barash and Webel, 2009: 457–78). What is the relevance of the philosophy of non-violence in a (Congolese) context where even the structures of the state transpire violence? Is violence by principle a negative strategy in the struggle for liberation and peace? What are (if any) the limits of non-violence strategy for peace? This debate is still open even if most of the Filimbi activists seem satisfied with a simplistic and pragmatic idea of not taking a Kalashnikov to defend peace. I can note that the option for the sensitization of youth about their rights, the functioning of the state and strategies to turn political leaders and state servants accountable seems to be the way leading to peace. The Filimbi activists rely also on a wide range of collective actions, such as sit-ins, protest marches, art exhibitions, performances, theater, music, and various civic campaigns. Through such non-violent activities, this platform aims at raising awareness and educating young people concerning the real causes of their lack of development and prospects.
Despite its anchoring in Congolese challenges, the Filimbi platform is still open to the Pan-African dream of making all of Africa a democracy and peace-loving land. Therefore, the Filimbi youth platform creates synergies with other African youth and civic movements including, for example, Y en-a marre, Balai citoyen and Lucha to carry out together the challenge for peace. In this respect, new technologies of information and communication constitute a valuable tool to them. In short, just like the Balai citoyen, through its citizens’ dynamism, the Filimbi movement overthrows stereotypes enclosing youth in the role of troublemakers that should be tamed by coercive measures, including repression and physical violence. Through their daily commitment to peace and their cooperation with other actors working for the same purpose, Filimbi activists promote the youth leadership as responsible and eager for the common good and peace for all. They can be viewed as peacemakers.
Conclusion
Thanks to the burgeoning of critical voices of African civil society, a wide range of African youth civic platforms take the lead in various domains including in social and political spheres. They denounce the postcolonial state for being authoritarian as well as for failing in its commitment to peace and development. Most of these platforms commit to peace building as for them the concept of peace denotes more than the absence of wars; in other words, it also refers to concerns such as (global) conflict resolution and the real implementation of social cohesion.
Contemporary African civic youth are critical of the conventional view that classifies them into categories related to corporatist interests such as student trade unions, or into religious beliefs, gender or ethnic groups, to mention a few. Regardless of these appartenances primaires, the youth act in virtue of their civic awareness, which translates to their consciousness of being citizens and members of a community to the management of which they do contribute. They trust in the virtue of social and non-violent attitudes. Making use of new technologies of information and communication, they set up a wide network to promote the convergence of synergies between local and global youth dynamics.
Despite their legitimacy and relevance, the civic African youth platforms raise various concerns that have not been properly addressed in this analysis including, for example, the relationship between youth and political parties as well as concerning funding institutions. There is a question to consider regarding how do African youth current leaders envision the future of those civic platforms, and hence how do they perceive the transition to the forthcoming generation. These questions are still open and hopefully they will be the concern of further research. This statement is also valid concerning the debate on non-violence as a strategy for peace. The case study of two youth civic platforms (Balai citoyen and Filimbi) allows us to affirm that unlike the old prejudices and repression they suffer from, African youth civic platforms can be viewed as daily peace builders.
Footnotes
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.