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Communication in
Peacebuilding
Civil Wars, Civility
and Safe Spaces
Stefanie Pukallus
Communication in Peacebuilding
 Stefanie Pukallus

Communication
in Peacebuilding
Civil Wars, Civility and Safe Spaces
Stefanie Pukallus
Department of Journalism Studies
University of Sheffield
Sheffield, UK

ISBN 978-3-030-86189-6 ISBN 978-3-030-86190-2 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86190-2

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2022
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
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names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
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To the sisterhood
 Acknowledgements

This book was written in the most unusual of times. My deepest gratitude
goes to my ‘no matter what’ family and friends, near and far, who—
I hope—know how much they matter to me, each in their special and
unique way. I also want to thank the members of the Hub for the Study
of Hybrid Communication in Peacebuilding (HCPB) who it has been
wonderful to work and embark on new adventures with. I have experi-
enced great team spirit, mutual encouragement and the kind of intellec-
tual generosity (and curiosity) that makes life in the academy worthwhile.
I am indebted to Stacey Connaughton, Laura Brouwers, Derya Yüksek,
Birte Vogel, Valentina Bau, Nicki Hitchcott, Jaremey McMullin, Rousbeh
Legatis, Anastasia Shesterinina, Frank Möller, Hannah Baumeister and
Maria Tomlinson who read parts of the manuscript and took the time
to comment, make suggestions and recommend relevant literature. Of
course, all omissions and errors are mine. Finally, I would like to thank
Jackie Harrison for creating an environment in which my colleagues and
I can flourish, where opportunities can be seized, and new ideas explored.

vii
 Contents

1 Introduction: Civil Wars and Communicative

Peacebuilding 1
2 Civil War as Discursive Dehumanisation 15
3 Remnants of Civil Life and Civil Potential in Post-civil
War Settings 77
4 Communicative Peacebuilding: Discursive Civility
and Safe Discursive Spaces 139
5 The Transformative Capacity of Communication:
Integrative Communicative Acts Across
the Communicative Spectrum of Civil Society 181

Index 259

ix
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Civil Wars and Communicative

Peacebuilding

Civil Wars: A Global Challenge

Civil wars (or intra-state conflicts) have been and still are the ‘most
widespread, the most destructive, and most characteristic form of orga-
nized human violence’ (Armitage, 2018: 5). Indeed, since the end of
WWII, civil wars have been a recurring and seemingly insoluble global
problem as Fig. 1.1 shows. The number of intra-state wars spiked in the
early 1990s and then declined only to return to consistent highs between
2013 and 2019 (which had 52 ongoing civil conflicts—see Pettersson &
Öberg, 2020). Since 2013 civil wars have become increasingly interna-
tionalised.1 This can be explained by the ‘expansion of the Islamic State
(IS)’ and ‘is concurrent with IS declaring a worldwide Caliphate on 29
June 2014’ (Palik et al., 2020: 9). Overall, there is an ‘average of twenty
[civil wars] (…) in progress at any moment’ (Armitage, 2018: 5) meaning
that since 1989 around 20% of nations have ‘experienced at least ten years
of civil war’ (Blattmann & Miguel, 2010: 4).
Half of those experiencing a civil war will experience another one with
recurrence rates estimated at 43% (Philpott, 2012) and sometimes even
50% (Jenkins, 2013). What these statistics show is that civil wars are not a

1 Internationalised civil wars can be defined as ‘internal conflicts in which other states
intervene militarily on one or both sides (…). In 1991, 4% of conflicts were internation-
alised according to this definition; by 2015, that number had multiplied ten-fold to 40%’
(von Einsiedel, 2017: 5).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
S. Pukallus, Communication in Peacebuilding,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86190-2_1
2 S. PUKALLUS

Fig. 1.1 State-based: Armed conflicts by conflict type and year (1946–2020)
(Copyright: Pettersson et al. [2021]. https://ucdp.uu.se/downloads/charts/)

feature of the past but a persistent feature of the contemporary globalised

world. What they obviously don’t show are the dire humanitarian conse-
quences that affect civil war countries. Civil wars typically entail extreme
deprivation for civilian populations. The destruction of physical, social and
economic infrastructures leads to poor hygienic conditions, an accelera-
tion and worsening of endemics as well as poverty, famines and starvation.
The net result of this, in turn, is the depredation of human capital usually
exacerbated by the lack of continuous school education for the young. In
addition, most civil wars also lead to high numbers of internally displaced
persons (IDPs) and refugees which has ‘important implications for inter-
national security because of their potential to spread conflict, overwhelm
neighboring states and host communities, and undermine postconflict
peace and development’ (Lichtenheld, 2020: 253). These humanitarian
consequences are problems that need to be urgently addressed by the
international community, donors, local peacebuilding organisations and
communities alike—and of course, it is exactly this that the many attempts
at peacebuilding try to successfully do.
Through various declarations since 1945 such as the Charter of the
United Nations (UN) and the UNESCO Constitution, the international
community (including UN member countries that have experienced or
 1 INTRODUCTION: CIVIL WARS AND COMMUNICATIVE PEACEBUILDING 3

are experiencing civil war) have made a commitment to contribute to the

achievement of worldwide peace. This commitment has been re-affirmed
and strengthened through the establishment of the UN’s 17 Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015. In order for these 17 SDGs to be
realised account needs to be made of the enduring problems that civil
wars pose. Redress must therefore be based on the recognition that such
problems are global in significance and not just parochial in consequences.
And whereas local (the term ‘local’ referring to what are variously called
hyperlocal, local, regional or national levels, see Chapter 3) features pose
unique problems that must be well understood and handled with the
greatest sensitivity, the rationale for redress and peace also has a universal
dimension because without the achievement of peace (SDG 16), all other
SDGs including the fight against climate change (SDG 13), poverty (SDG
1), hunger (SDG 2) and inequality (SDG 10) as well as for quality educa-
tion (SDG 4), health and well-being (SDG 3), decent work and economic
growth (SDG 8) will remain elusive and merely aspirational. The imper-
ative to find ways to achieve sustainable peace therefore rests on a very
basic premise: if the SDGs represent a genuine commitment rather than
a rhetorical flourish, then it is crucial to continue to discuss, identify and
redress shortcomings in peacebuilding and to look for complementary
approaches and innovative solutions in order to permanently end civil
wars. It is this search for complementary and innovative approaches to
peacebuilding that contextualises what I attempt to do in this book—
namely to make a contribution to the ways in which peacebuilding can
be conceptualised and practically be carried out. Specifically, I suggest
that we look more comprehensively at communicative peacebuilding as
fundamental to the (re)building of an associative and cooperative civil
society and as complementary to existing political, social and economic
approaches to peacebuilding.

Civil Society, Communication

and Communicative Peacebuilding
Overall, this book is concerned with the question of how communication
can contribute to peacebuilding in a post-civil war setting.2 More specif-
ically, it is concerned with the communicative conditions for civil peace

2 By post-civil war peacebuilding I mean peacebuilding after a peace agreement.

4 S. PUKALLUS

understood as the peaceful cooperation that can and does occur, despite
differences and disagreement, within communities and civil societies. My
argument is straightforward: in order to build self-sustainable civil peace
in a post-civil war setting it is necessary to encourage and support the
reimagining of former enemies3 as co-citizens. Such reimagining relies in
part on the use of the transformative capacity of communication to bring
about integrative communicative acts4 that help individuals and commu-
nities to move from enmity to inclusive solidarity to peaceful cooperation
with co-citizens. It is this that I wish to explore.
Before mapping out how the argument unfolds throughout the book it
is necessary to clarify three things: first, my understanding of civil society;
second, the way in which I define communication and third, what I mean
by communicative peacebuilding. This clarification is necessary for two
reasons: first, I derive my understanding of these three ideas from a mix of
sociological, communicative and cultural approaches and second, I hope
that it will be helpful to the reader to be presented with the intellectual
architecture for what follows in Chapters 2–5.

Civil Society
I follow Alexander’s (2006: 31) understanding of civil society as ‘a
solidary sphere, in which a certain kind of universalizing commu-
nity comes to be culturally defined and to some extent institutionally
enforced’. Ideally, such a civil sphere is based on a form of inclusive soli-
darity that can ‘provide a thread, not of identity in the narrow sense, but
of the kind of mutual identification that unites individuals dispersed by
class, race, religion, ethnicity’ or culture (ibid.: 43). Civil society relies
‘on feelings for others whom we do not know but whom we respect
out of principle, not experience’ (ibid.: 4) or in the case of a post-civil
war setting, often despite experience. It relies on a ‘feeling of connect-
edness to “every member” of that community, that transcends particular
commitments, narrow loyalties, and sectional interests’ (ibid.: 43). Inclu-
sive solidarity is ‘the sine qua non of civil life’ (ibid.: 7). However, this
ideal of civil society based as it is on the normative principle of inclusive
solidarity can never be fully realised. It is an ideal and, to be blunt, real

3 Lederach (2005) speaks of moral imagination.

4 Following Geertz (1963) who speaks of integrative revolutionary acts.
 1 INTRODUCTION: CIVIL WARS AND COMMUNICATIVE PEACEBUILDING 5

civil society is always fragmented and contradictory and conceptions of

solidarity are always contested. And yet such contestation, including the
extremes of a civil war, can never completely obliterate the civil conscious-
ness through which citizens express and practice a variety of forms of
inclusive solidarity. Civil societies are never ‘governed by power alone
and are not fueled only by the pursuit of self-interest. Feelings for others
matter, and they are structured by the boundaries of solidarity’ (ibid.:
3). The degree of solidarity is constantly negotiated between members of
civil society, or as Harrison (2019: 7) puts it, ‘the civil sphere is a space
of contestation where civil and anti-civil forces collide and compete for a
form of hegemony in the institutions of civil society’. Accordingly, inclu-
sive solidarity is always vulnerable to hierarchy, power and self-interest
but at the same time and particularly in a post-civil war setting, the desire
for peace amongst citizens can be inclusive and based upon an expan-
sive version of solidarity—one capable of recognising former enemies as
partners (of some kind) in building civil peace.5
Civil society is institutionally grounded. It has its own institutions and
therefore can be understood as ‘a sphere or subsystem of society that is
analytically and, to various degrees, empirically separated from the spheres
of political life, economic, family and religious life’ (ibid.: 53). It can be
studied and importantly and practically, be built. Alexander (2006) distin-
guishes between the regulative institutions (legal institutions, voting,
office and political parties) and the communicative institutions of civil
society (public opinion, civil associations and the mass media both factual
and fictional). And although I discuss regulative institutions at various
points in the next few chapters, particularly when defining civil peace as
peaceful cooperation, my focus is primarily on the communicative insti-
tutions. Here, it is worth clarifying that civil associations can have both
formal and often permanent forms such as is the case with the various
kinds of NGOs (international, national, regional and local) that comprise
civil life as well as less formal ones where individual citizens come together
on an ad hoc and temporary basis for a specific purpose such as the

5 Alexander (2006, 2016, 2018) has developed a concept of civil repair which, when
applied to post-conflict societies, consists of repairing the civil sphere in such a way that
it can be seen as a ‘society of self-regulating individuals, who see not only themselves but
also others as honest, independent, open, cooperative, and rational, as fellow members
of a horizontally organized community who merit their trust’ (Alexander, 2018: 3). This
resonates with the idea of a civil society being repaired when it is able to peacefully
cooperate.
6 S. PUKALLUS

building of a school, the planting of a community vegetable garden or

the repairing of the local water system peacebuilders (see Chapter 2).

Defining Communication
Following Dewey, I understand communication to be foundational to
civil society. For him, civil societies ‘exist (…) in communication’ (Dewey,
2011 [1916]: 6). It is through communication that members of civil
society build relationships, define the identity of civil society; that is,
the values it stands for and the values it rejects as well as how it
represents itself to the many non-civil spheres of life. Following Park
(1938 in particular), Jaspers and Alexander I also understand that the
role of communication in civil society is to bring about inclusive soli-
darity, to create customs and civil norms as well as understanding and
consensus on those aspects that define civil society. Civil engagement—
that is the coming together of members of the community to decide a
common cause of action or to imagine and experience alternative ‘better’
versions of current societal/civil life—is always communicative. In this
way, communication can be seen as a cultural process of diffusion and
acculturation in Park’s (1938) sense where the communicative spectrum
of civil society spans a variety of different forms of communication—
both mediated and non-mediated. Mediated communication includes
for example the factual mass media such as news journalism, documen-
tary (which can also be considered visuals arts), social media (though
it certainly takes a fictional character when perpetuating lies, rumours
and disinformation) as well as citizen journalism and peacebuilding radios
such as UN radio. It also includes the fictional mass media such as liter-
ature, poetry, film, radio and TV soap opera (or series). Non-mediated
communication comprises face-to-face interpersonal communication, i.e.
the mundane routinised daily exchange between members of civil societies
as well as dialogue, debate, negotiations, discussion groups and delib-
eration. In its entirety the communicative spectrum of civil society also
spans the visual and the performative arts: graffiti, street art, paintings,
photography, dance, music, memorials, murals, sculptures, architecture
(buildings and bridges), cartoons, graphic novels and theatre. What
unites all of these forms of communication is that they all possess a
transformative capacity to change social relationships. It is through this
transformative capacity that they can all contribute to peacebuilding in
post-civil war societies.
 1 INTRODUCTION: CIVIL WARS AND COMMUNICATIVE PEACEBUILDING 7

Communicative Peacebuilding
My concern for peacebuilding is exclusively contextualised by post-civil
war settings and with that the task of building of civil peace between
former enemies who have to face the challenge of reimagining each other
as co-citizens through communication. By civil peace I mean a mundane,
banal everyday kind of peace where interactions with others are safe and
predictable; where citizens accept that difference and disagreement are
part of every society but that they can be dealt with in non-violent
agonistic ways. It is a setting in which tolerance and pluralism are possible
because difference is not feared or perceived as a threat to one’s own
existence or the identity of one’s group. In essence societies that enjoy
civil peace are associative and cooperative in character; their civil engage-
ment is civilised and non-violent. Civil peace as peaceful cooperation is
communicatively performed and more specifically, relies on the commu-
nicative performance of three categories of civil norms: first, assent to
civil peace as peaceful cooperation; second, substantive civility and third,
building capacity and civil competencies (see Chapter 2). Any civil society
that is associative and cooperative will interpret and enact these three
categories in its own culturally specific and locally contextualised ways.
The aim of communicative peacebuilding is to use the entirety of the
spectrum of the different means of communication available to partic-
ular civil societies to support the development of both the relationships
and the social and cultural transformations necessary to move from
enmity to co-citizenship, i.e. to peaceful cooperation, in post-civil war
settings. Alternatively expressed, communicative peacebuilding aims to
use communication to contribute to the (re-)building of a solidarising
and inclusive civil sphere.
With these qualified understandings of civil society, communication
and communicative peacebuilding in place and to repeat the point that
in order to build self-sustainable civil peace in a post-civil war setting it
is necessary to use the transformative capacity of communication to bring
about integrative communicative acts that help individuals reimagine
former enemies as co-citizens, I shall now outline the form the elaboration
of this point takes.
8 S. PUKALLUS

Mapping the Argument

Chapter 2 establishes that a civil war is a statement of difference—of seem-
ingly irreconcilable difference and unsurmountable alterity, otherisation
and enmity. It is a difference that goes so far as to dehumanise ‘the other’
thereby justifying the elimination of this other. In civil wars, commu-
nication is weaponised to discursively dehumanise6 a fabricated internal
enemy. Analytically speaking, discursive dehumanisation proceeds in two
steps: first, the already existing antagonism and hostility (whether histor-
ical in origin or completely fabricated) between different groups in society
are utilised to create an internal enemy. Second, this fabricated enemy is
then discursively dehumanised across the communicative spectrum; that
is in public discourse, the factual and fictional media as well as through
the visual and performative arts. Essentially, discursive dehumanisation is
a communicative weapon that targets and attempts to destroy civil peace
within civil society and attendant upon that, the possibility of the commu-
nicative performance of the three categories of civil norms of peaceful
cooperation. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the damage done
by discursive dehumanisation to the institutions of civil society and civil
relationships and asks the question of how we can move on from the civil
war conditions of discursive dehumanisation to the performance of civil
and peaceful cooperation.
The premise of the argument in Chapter 3 is that civil life can never
be entirely obliterated but that remnants of it always survive. Accord-
ingly, and in order to overcome the enmity experienced during civil war

6 I follow Pettit (2001: 67) who defines discourse as follows: ‘The word “discourse”
derives, etymologically, from the idea of running to and fro, or back and forth, and
thereby connotes a social exercise in which different parties take turns in exchange with
one another. In this respect it has the same connotations as “conversation”, which derives
from the idea of turning things around. But discourse does not refer to just any form of
turn-taking between people. Specifically, it refers to the sort of turn-taking involved in the
attempt to resolve a problem by reference to what all parties regard as inferentially relevant
considerations or reasons. To discourse is to reason and, in particular, to reason together
with others (Scanlon, 1998)’. To this definition I would two things: first, Williams’s
(2002: 198) observation that discourse aims at arriving at a ‘practical conclusion typically
involving a shifting and indeterminate set of wishes hopes and fears in addition to the more
clearly defined architecture of desire and belief’ and second, that ‘inferentially relevant
considerations’ regarding the way I use discourse throughout are derived from a desire
for peace.
 1 INTRODUCTION: CIVIL WARS AND COMMUNICATIVE PEACEBUILDING 9

and redress the damage done by discursive dehumanisation and atten-

dant atrocities, communicative peacebuilding needs to both identify the
remnants of civil life and recognise the civil potential of non-civil ties. My
point here is that the remnants of civil life (its culture, norms and social
identity) survive in some form or other. They are inspired by both indi-
vidual and collective remembering of how things used to be, how forms
of co-citizenship and association existed and how they could be again.
They speak of both a past and future peaceful civil life. In post-civil war
settings these remnants of civil life and ultimately of civil consciousness
need to be stimulated, encouraged and mobilised through civil engage-
ment across the communicative spectrum of civil society because they are
vital in making the reimagining of former enemies as co-citizens possible.
The civil potential of non-civil ties is equally important in the process
of rehumanising the former enemy and especially former combatants and
child soldiers and encouraging a civil consciousness of belonging to the
same community. There are three types of non-civil ties that have the
potential to act as excluding forces and to preclude peaceful collaboration:
primordial, platoon and ideological. This is because each of these types of
ties generates fear and suspicion of former combatants and child soldiers
and their ability to reintegrate into civilian life (or be part of it for the first
time). Communicative peacebuilding has to focus on the civil potential of
these ties which lies in first, the fact that these ties can be challenged,
transformed and reoriented towards peaceful cooperation and second, in
the recognition that returnees with these ties often possess transferable
and even collaborative skills that can be used in the peacebuilding process
and help former combatants and child soldiers to be accepted into the
community.
Chapter 4 addresses the practical matter of how the reimagining of
former enemies as co-citizens can be undertaken and importantly, how the
recurrence of discursive dehumanisation can be prevented. Ultimately, the
achievement of civil peace as peaceful cooperation depends on two things:
discursive civility and safe discursive spaces. Discursive civility is a universal
feature of self-sustainable civil peace which aims to ensure dignity-
as-respectfulness in civil engagement. It is a minimal communicative
requirement for civil engagement defined by three principles:

• Principle 1: Participants have to make a commitment to manage their

individual negative emotions (emotional forbearance)
10 S. PUKALLUS

• Principle 2: Participants have to make a commitment to both listen

to the other and importantly to hear the other (perspective-taking)
• Principle 3: Participants have to commit to making only such contri-
butions that are supportive of the pursuit of peace (reasonableness)

These three principles can be locally and culturally interpreted in different

ways but they are the universal standards that ensure that disagreement
and difference can be dealt with in non-violent and agonistic ways. They
represent the minimal communicative conditions for safe civil engagement
with former enemies. In this way, they are indispensable to the creation
of safe discursive spaces. To put it differently, safe discursive spaces are
characterised by the utilisation of the three principles of discursive civility
to serve as a form of guarantor for safe civil engagement with former
enemies. To be clear safe discursive spaces are not abstract spaces but
real spaces, places or locations which can be built. Accordingly, they can
exhibit different features and dynamics; they can be permanent or tempo-
rary, mobile or fixed, natural or artificial. They can be created by building
new physical spaces, by repurposing and re-designing existing buildings
and public spaces, by adapting outdoor space to specific forms or modes
of civil engagement or by creating new plastic space that can house or
embody civil engagement. However, and importantly, they all have one
invariant ethico-pragmatic purpose which is to encourage the reimag-
ining of the former enemy as a co-citizen through the experience and
instantiation of civil peace as peaceful cooperation.
Chapter 5 shows that when these safe discursive spaces in which the
principles of discursive civility are upheld are built, then it is possible to
harness the transformative capacity of communication; that is, its power to
help transform relationships of enmity to relationships of co-citizenship,
to revise and soften prejudices and stereotypes, to encourage rehuman-
isation and cooperation as well as support the creation of mutualistic
relationships (Karlberg, 2005) and the ‘capacity for doing’ (Keith &
Danisch, 2020: 16). Communication needs to be understood as a
‘process of forming, maintaining, building, fostering and changing rela-
tionships’ (ibid.: 14) as well as of changing behaviours and perceptions
 1 INTRODUCTION: CIVIL WARS AND COMMUNICATIVE PEACEBUILDING 11

(Connaughton et al., 2017).7 The success of this communicative process,

however, depends on the upholding of the principles of discursive civility
as it is this that provides participants with the necessary communica-
tive agency (also Keith & Danisch, 2020) to harness the transformative
capacity of communication in and through civil engagement across the
communicative spectrum of civil society and in safe discursive spaces.
When this happens, then communication can bring about integrative
communicative acts. Integrative communicative acts are a form of civil
engagement. They include both participants and audiences in opportu-
nities for the performance of various versions of cooperation. Integrative
communicative acts provide them with the opportunity to reimagine and
rehumanise their former enemies, to revise prejudice and stereotypes, to
soften or even lose fear and suspicion of former combatants, to experi-
ence the compatibility of civil ties with non-civil ties (primordial, platoon
and ideological) as well as explore their civil potential and skills. The
integrative aspect of these communicative acts lies in the triple move
from enmity to inclusivity/commonality to peaceful cooperation with
co-citizens. It is therefore concerned with communication that aims at
‘relationship transformation’ (Ellis, 2006: 140). The integrative aspect of
these communicative acts lies in the triple move from enmity to inclu-
sivity/commonality to peaceful cooperation with co-citizens. This does,
of course, not mean that disagreement and difference disappear but simply
that they become part of the ordinary features of everyday life. It means
that civil peace as peaceful cooperation is instantiated in the real, to
use Alexander’s (2006) words. Finally, and to illustrate the argument
built throughout Chapters 2–5, the book concludes with a performance
of this argument via four sketches of civil engagement as integrative
communicative acts: news journalism, theatre, music and memorials.

Final Introductory Remark

One of the aspects that concerns any civil society is thematised in various
ways throughout this book: difference. The aim of communicative peace-
building is not to eradicate difference and disagreement as they are vital

7 They show this kind of transformation through the example of how the behaviour of
Liberia’s pen-pen riders changed through an appropriate communication campaign and
how in turn the pen-pen rider’s visible change of behaviour transformed the way in which
they were perceived by other citizens.
12 S. PUKALLUS

to a dynamic and progressive society but rather to help societies move

from the perception of irreconcilable difference to one of inclusive soli-
darity despite differences. This book starts with civil war as a statement
of difference as enmity where difference is perceived as so threatening
that the killing of the other is seen as the natural consequence and only
solution. However, as the argument unfolds ‘difference’ is addressed in
myriad ways. Chapter 3 addresses different civil war experiences, different
non-civil and civil ties which matter to varying degrees to individuals and
groups, different memories, different skills, different visions of peace as
well as different experiences of remnants of civil life. Here, difference is
moving from being a threat and dividing mechanism to being seen as
having the potential to actually contribute to the building of civil peace.
Chapter 4, in turn, is concerned with how the principles of discursive
civility can be used to marginalise attempts at exclusion and power as
domination and instead be oriented to practically deal with differences in
opinions, views and interests in non-violent and agonistic ways. Differ-
ence is also addressed in terms of the myriad forms that safe discursive
spaces can take, the multiple ways in which the principles of discursive
civility can be interpreted and applied. Finally, Chapter 5 brings all of
these considerations together in showing how civil peace as peaceful coop-
eration can be performed despite difference or maybe even because of
it; that difference can be seen as enriching and be valued. What these
different kinds of difference show is simply that post-civil war settings are
terribly complex and varied and that no post-civil war setting and no post-
civil war community are ever the same—not even in the same country.
And this is also the case for civil peace—no community or civil society
ever peacefully cooperates in the same manner or interprets and performs
the categories of civil norms in the same way. Rather, the performance
of civil peace as peaceful cooperation, the upholding of the principles
of discursive civility and the outlook of safe discursive spaces are deter-
mined by local traditions of communication and dispute resolution,8 by
historical circumstances and cultural processes as well as by the actual
root causes that made enmity and subsequently discursive dehumanisation
possible. And it is this recognition of difference and ultimately possibility
for pluralism that ties communicative peacebuilding so closely to a specific

8 See for example Welty et al. (2019) on local conflict resolution mechanisms and
initiatives in Kenya and Uganda. For a mixture of traditional mechanism and innovative
approaches to mediation and conflict resolution see Ervin (2019).
 1 INTRODUCTION: CIVIL WARS AND COMMUNICATIVE PEACEBUILDING 13

kind of local peacebuilding; locally led peacebuilding. This kind of local

peacebuilding can be defined as ‘an approach in which the people involved
in, and most affected by, violent conflict work together to create and enact
their own solutions to prevent, reduce, and/or transform the conflict,
with the support they desire from outsiders. (…) It is an approach to
peacebuilding that aims to amplify local ownership of conflict transfor-
mation’ (Locally Driven Peacebuilding, 2015: 2). This approach can be
described as a ‘local leadership module’ (Kuang et al., 2020: 986; Krishna
et al., 2019) in which locals, i.e. ‘those who must deal with the conflict on
a day-to-day basis and live with its consequences’ (ibid.), lead some ‘com-
bination of the design, implementation, and evaluation of peacebuilding
efforts’ (Connaughton & Berns, 2019: 6). I will return to this aspect and
its practical challenges in more detail in Chapter 3.

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 CHAPTER 2

Civil War as Discursive Dehumanisation

Towards a Definition of the ‘Civil’ in Civil War

Although civil wars represent the most frequent form of conflict, it ‘is
generally acknowledged that a theory of civil war is completely lacking
today’ (Agamben, 2015: 1). What exactly a civil war is, how civil
wars occur and why there are such high recurrence rates has puzzled
peacebuilders and academics alike. This problem is exacerbated by not
knowing precisely what constitutes or triggers a civil war. Certainly, the
meaning and scope of civil wars have changed over time (Agamben, 2015;
Armitage, 2018)1 but nevertheless some common aspects and patterns of
civil war do exist and lend themselves to generate at least some general
and indicative definitions. Kalyvas (2006: 17) defines civil war as an
‘armed combat within the boundaries of a recognized sovereign entity
between parties subject to a common authority at the outset of hostilities’,
a definition which he claims is minimal and ‘agnostic about causes, goals,
and motivations’ (ibid.). Other definitions are less minimal and sometimes
concerned with what motivates civil wars. For example, whereas Sohn
(1963: 208) argues that ‘a civil war exists when two opposing parties
within a State have recourse to arms for the purpose of obtaining power

1 Armitage (2018) distinguishes between four traditions of civil war or violence within
communities: the Greek tradition of stasis, the Roman bellum civile, the Arabic tradition
of fitna and the Chinese conception of internal war.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 15

Switzerland AG 2022
S. Pukallus, Communication in Peacebuilding,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86190-2_2
16 S. PUKALLUS

in the State, or when a large portion of a State rises in arms against

the legitimate Government’, Cederman and Vogt (2017: 1993) define
civil war ‘as armed combat within a sovereign state between an incum-
bent government and a nonstate challenger that claims full or partial
sovereignty over the territory of the state. In other words, civil war always
concerns an incompatibility in terms of political control’. Or in Doyle
and Sambanis’ (2006: 31) words, civil war can be seen as ‘an armed
conflict that pits the government and the national army of an internation-
ally recognized state against one or more armed opposition groups able to
mount effective resistance against the state; the violence must be signifi-
cant causing more than a thousand deaths in relatively continuous fighting
that takes places within the country’s boundaries; and the rebels must
recruit mostly locally, controlling some part of the country’s territory’.
In short, and following Weber’s definition of the state, Cramer (2006)
straightforwardly argues that a civil war is an attempt to (successfully)
establish a new monopoly of legitimate violence.
Overall, the various definitions of civil war share four broad features:
first, civil wars are intra-state wars, that is they occur within the same
country2 ; second, they take place between the State and one or more non-
state actors; third, they are armed conflicts and fourth, they often concern
struggles for territory as well as for power and control over government
or territory (separatist). These four criteria also point to what all civil wars
share and that is that in ‘the most brutal and destructive manner, both
parties to a civil war show an unbreakable attachment to the society which
is being fought over’ (Shils, 1982: 16). It is this unbreakable attachment
that makes civil wars so violent and yet, as I hope to show later, it is
precisely this shared attachment that needs to be remembered and built
upon in post-civil war peacebuilding initiatives.
Civil wars do not simply occur within the same states, they occur
within civil society; that is between different groups of the same civil
society—they are ‘fought within the bounds of a community of fellow citi-
zens’ (Armitage, 2018: 198)3 or in Kalyvas’ (2006: 17) they are fought

2 Though it is possible that civil wars spill over into neighbouring countries. Equally,
retaliation against external states that intervene militarily which is often considered and
treated as terrorism might take place outside the civil war territory.
3 Agamben (2015) traces the meaning and significance of stasis in Ancient Greece.
Stasis is, as Armitage (2018) pointed out, a form of violence within communities and it
is the ‘within communities’ that Agamben is interested in understanding. Here he uses
 2 CIVIL WAR AS DISCURSIVE DEHUMANISATION 17

between rivals that at the beginning of the war ‘are subjects to a common
sovereignty or authority’. This is (at least partly) why they are referred to
as ‘civil’. The qualifier civil is used to ‘acknowledge the familiarity of the
enemies as members of the same community: not foreigners but fellow
citizens’ (ibid.: 12), family members, neighbours, teachers, students,
friends. Civil wars polarise and divide civil societies; they turn famil-
iarity into alienation. They thrive on hostility, hate and antagonism and
firmly reject pluralism especially when it comes to attachments, belong-
ings, loyalties and obligations to those once conceived of as co-citizens
but now radically conceived of as an enemy. Correspondingly, what is
rejected in a civil war is inclusive solidarity; that is, solidarity understood
as ‘a thread, not of identity in the narrow sense, but of the kind of mutual
identification that unites individuals dispersed by class, race, religion,
ethnicity’ or culture (Alexander, 2006: 43) all while respecting individual
and group identities based on more particularistic attachments to specific
traditions, cultures, customs, language, religion and ethnicity. The rejec-
tion of inclusive solidarity also signifies a rejection of pluralism and with
that the rejection of such ties that normally exist between different groups
and individuals across societies, space and time (Simmel, 1964) and are
understood as complementary, compatible and able to coexist. Instead,
civil wars introduce norms of enmity or forms of exclusive solidarity (only
extending to one’s group). When this happens and a person is required
to choose (or told what to ‘choose’), when inclusive solidarity is called
into question, when allegiances are expected to be exclusive then such
formerly universal and banal ties and attachments become an instrument
of polarisation either by creating a new antagonistic ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ or by
building on existing tensions and exacerbating them. Simultaneously, the
‘illusion of a unique and choiceless identity’ (Sen, 2006: xv) is created,
maintained and reinforced by ‘proficient artisans of terror’ (ibid.: 2).

the work of Nicole Loraux who ‘immediately situates the problem in its specific locus,
which is to say, in the relationship between the oikos, the family or the household, and
the polis, the city’ (ibid.: 5). For Agamben (ibid.) then ‘Civil war is the stasis emphylos; it
is the conflict particular to the phylon’, to blood kinship. It is to such an extent inherent
to the family that the phrase ta emphylia (literally, ‘the things internal to the bloodline’)
simply means ‘civil wars’.
18 S. PUKALLUS

In such a scenario, citizens are pitched against each other to the

point where ‘the “they” is perceived as putting into question the iden-
tity of the “we” and as threating its existence’ (Mouffe, 2005: 16f.).4
Once ‘the opponents are not defined in a political but in a moral way,
they cannot be seen as adversaries, but only as enemies’ and with them
‘no agonistic debate is possible. They have to be eliminated’ (Mouffe,
2013: 143). In short, civil society starts to organise itself5 around the
friend/enemy distinction.6 The enemy—who previously might have been
a club member, a friend, a family member or a neighbour—soon becomes
a threat; a fabricated and artificial threat that feels so real that the elimina-
tion of the enemy becomes equally soon legitimised as the only possible

4 The creation of an enemy that is inferior and has no qualities and represents a threat
has a long history. Thucydides in his work on the Peloponnesian War (and specifically the
debate at Sparta) attempts to show the differences between the Athenians and the Spartans
and how one poses a threat to the other. See Book I.68/69 for a negative description of
the Spartans compared to a rather positive one of Athenians in Book I.70/71.
5 This kind of organisation around the friend enemy distinction is a certain kind of
boundary maintenance that society undertakes. Though JS Mill in On Liberty does not use
the term ‘boundary maintenance’ he shows his awareness of the deep divisions that could
arise within civil society and the tyranny one group could exercise over another. Weber
and Durkheim equally recognised the importance of societal boundaries—for Durkheim
they are normative and symbolic and for Weber they arise from different social statuses.
With regard to contemporary civil society whereas Alexander (2006) speaks of bound-
aries between the civil and non-civil spheres in particular, Harrison (2019a) focuses on
boundaries within civil society as articulated through the news media.
6 This distinction was first made by Carl Schmitt for whom politics—or the concept of
the political—is defined by the distinction between friend and enemy. He insists in his
discussion of the friend–enemy distinction on the public nature of the categories, ‘it is
not my enemy but our enemy; that is, “enemy” is a political concept’ (Strong, 2007: xxi).
Schmitt (2007 [1932]: 26) himself argues that the ‘specific political distinction to which
political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy’ which, in
turn, ‘denotes the utmost degree of intensity of a union or separation, of an association
or dissociation’. To this he (ibid.: 29) adds that the ‘political is the most intense and
extreme antagonism and every concrete antagonism becomes that much more political
the closer it approaches the most extreme point, that of the friend-enemy grouping’.
However, Schmitt does not support the dehumanisation of the enemy (Runciman, 2021).
 2 CIVIL WAR AS DISCURSIVE DEHUMANISATION 19

way of self-protection.7 ‘Neighbourly murders’8 do not only become

possible, they become an ordinary and seemingly unavoidable feature of
everyday life (also Lederach, 1997). They become part of a politics of
necessity (Shklar 1998) whereby the organisers and leaders of the civil
war invent a threat that makes the elimination of the enemy a ‘neces-
sity’; a necessity that the fighting population buy into and carry out by
killing—often even enthusiastically (Hatzfeld, 2006).9
The polarisation of civil society around the friend/enemy distinc-
tion is equally used to facilitate and justify the kind of mass killings
and genocide (often also simply referred to as ethnic cleansing or mass
murder especially when the occurrence of a genocide hasn’t been legally
established yet) occasioned by civil war. The former can be briefly under-
stood as ‘the intentional killing of a massive number of noncombatants’
(Valentino, 2005: 10) which can belong to various groups (Staub, 1989).
Mass killings don’t necessarily target a specific group; that is, a specific
enemy. The enemy is only loosely defined, it is some form of ‘the Other’.
This is different from genocide. The term genocide was first coined in
1943/1944 by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jewish lawyer who worked tire-
lessly on making genocide an international crime. Following his initiative
and various proposals the UN adopted the Convention on the Preven-
tion and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948 which included
some of Lemkin’s ideas but not all by any means.10 Art II the Convention
reads: ‘In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following
acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national,

7 See Shesterinina (2016) who examines in the context of the Georgian-Abkhaz war
of 1992–1993 how information about threats is received by individuals and potentially
mobilises them. She (ibid.: 411) argues that ‘Abkhaz men and women relied on the
familiar social structures of family, friendship, local relation, and national authority for
essential information on how to understand the threat presented by the war and how to
act in response across a range of combatant, support, and nonfighter roles that existed at
the war’s onset’.
8 This is how the poet Seamus Harvey, in his poem Funeral Rites, pointedly refers to
civil war.
9 For a critical perspective on Hatzfeld’s work and an engagement with the question
to what extent perpetrators can be portrayed accurately and to what extent their testi-
monies can be seen as genuine especially when editors and translators are involved in the
production of these see Hron (2011).
10 On the development of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the
Crime of Genocide (1948) based on the work of Lemkin see Power (2013) and Waller
(2016).
20 S. PUKALLUS

ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the

group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the
group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated
to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing
measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly trans-
ferring children of the group to another group’; art. III lists the acts
related to genocide that are punishable by law and clarifies in art. IV that
those who can be punished for the acts listed in art. III includes rulers,
public officials and private individuals. To establish whether a genocide
is occurring or has occurred is legally laborious and often too slow—
the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar is a recent example, the recognition of
the Herero Nama genocide by Germany in 2021—113 years after it
occurred—is another. In non-legal terms, a genocide can be defined as
a deliberate ‘attempt to eliminate a whole group of people’ whether this
is ‘a racial, ethnic, religious, or political group’ (Staub, 2013b: 576).11
Recent genocides occurred for example in Rwanda, Myanmar, Darfur,
East Timor, Cambodia, Guatemala and Bosnia and Herzegovina. In all
of them the ‘enemy’—the whole group of people to be eliminated—
was clearly defined and targeted. In genocide, the ‘enemy’ is always
associated with specific characteristics which make its elimination ‘nec-
essary’ and ‘legitimate’. In this sense, genocide can be understood as an
action, as systematic and ‘deliberate extermination’ (Booker, 2008: 72)12
sometimes also referred to as ethnic cleansing. Both mass killings and
genocide occasioned by civil war thrive on the same kind of antagonism

11 In a similar vein, Drost (1959) understands genocide as ‘the deliberate destruction

of physical life of individual human beings by reason of their membership of any human
collectivity as such’ (cited in Jones, 2011: 16). Some authors understand destruction
more broadly to include starvation, forced deportation, rape and economic consequences
(Huttenbach, 1988; Porter, 1982). They are concerned with what Semelin (2013) and
Shaw (2007) refer to as civilian destruction. For further definitions of genocide see Jones
(2011: 16–20) and Feierstein (2014). On various genocides see Tatz (2003), on the
Bosnian genocide see Cigar (1995). On the psychology of genocide see Baum (2008)
and Morrock (2010).
12 For a comparison between the economic and political causes of genocide compared
to civil war see Stewart (2011).
 2 CIVIL WAR AS DISCURSIVE DEHUMANISATION 21

between friend and enemy that civil war itself does and will henceforth be
subsumed under the term ‘civil war’.13
Overall civil wars use this polarisation between friend and enemy
to destroy the possibility of pluralism, solidarity, equality, civil values
and institutions as well as the dignity of the designated enemy. Society
becomes brutalised (see Mosse, 1991) and relationships with the enemy
become too dangerous as they are considered treason. Ultimately, what
civil wars attack and aim to destroy is what characterises the ‘civil’ in civil
society: a society’s potential for civil peace as peaceful cooperation.

Civil War: An Attack on Civil

Peace as Peaceful Cooperation
Defining Civil Peace as Peaceful Cooperation
Civil peace as peaceful cooperation can be understood as a civil setting in
‘the day-to-day, taken-for-granted, ordinary habits and routines of social
life’ (Brewer et al., 2018: 200)14 —everyday life15 —can be relied on.
Specifically, it is a setting where the normative nature of peaceful coop-
eration is manifest through a continuous expressive assent to civil peace,

13 See also Stanton (2016) who distinguishes between 10 stages of genocide which
show various stages that are visible in both civil war and the run up to genocide and as
such, support this broad definition of civil war.
14 In her study, Firchow (2018: 6) distinguishes between big-P Peacebuilding and
small-p peacebuilding in the following way: ‘Big-P Peacebuilding encompasses all commu-
nity-level interventions, from humanitarian assistance received immediately after war
to longer-term assistance in economic development, health and education, governance
reform, conflict resolution, rule of law, transitional justice and security – essentially, every-
thing that purports to work toward a normative goal of peace. In contrast to big-P
Peacebuilding, the small-p approach to peacebuilding is one that is focused, often at
a more local level, on agency and the transformation or building of relationships with
normative goals of peace’—the kind of civil peace I am referring to is peace within civil
society and can be seen as close to Firchow’s understanding of a small-p peace.
15 The ‘everyday’ is also an important feature of local peace as Mac Ginty and Rich-
mond (2013: 769) describe it: ‘this should reflect, not displace, localised peace or
reconciliation processes, which may be a by-product of other more prosaic processes
whereby individuals and communities get on with everyday economic, cultural or survival
tasks. The pursuit of everyday tasks may allow individuals and communities in villages,
valleys and city neighbourhoods to develop common bonds with members of other ethnic
or religious groups, to demystify “the other” and to reconstruct contextual legitimacy’. I
discuss local peacebuilding in the next chapter.
22 S. PUKALLUS

behaviour which displays substantive inter-personal civility and coopera-

tive endeavours that serve as expressions of building up civil capacity and
civil competencies (see below). It is an ordinary kind of peace; one which
ethnomethodologists would refer to as ‘taken for granted’. In essence
societies that enjoy civil peace are associative and cooperative in char-
acter.16 They exhibit ‘an approach to life, a way of carrying one’s self
and of relating to others’ (Carter, 1998: 15) and a ‘commitment to
the common goals of society’ (Kingwell, 1995: 227). Their way of life
shows ‘an appreciation or an attachment to the institutions which consti-
tute civil society’ (Shils, 2003: 297). Such civil peace further manifests
itself in a routinised ‘quest for commonalty despite honest differences,
for responsibility despite antagonism [and] the recognition of the other
despite divergent self-interests’ (Barber, 1999: 46)17 as well as an appre-
ciation of diversity and pluralism as a valuable societal resource (Caspary,
2000) rather than a reason for war. In this way, civilly peaceful soci-
eties represent what Deutsch et al. (1957: 5) call security communities
which are those that have ‘come to agreement on at least this one point:
that common social problems must and can be resolved by processes
of “peaceful change”’ which he, in turn, defined as ‘the resolution of
social problems, normally by institutionalized procedures, without resort
to large-scale physical force’ (ibid.). For Deutsch, ‘the goal of peace (…)
[is] an integration in thought (a sense of community) and action (creating
institutions and practices)’ (Davenport et al., 2018: 148). For Alexander
(2006), an ideal society that is at civil peace would express its sense of
community through solidarity which is enacted via specific interactional
practices such as civility, social criticism, reciprocity and mutual respect
in the face of differences, a commitment to the upholding of common
values as well as an institutional architecture designed to safeguard and
defend such common values and to abide by principles of justice. The
kind of values and principles a civil society endorses, the way in which it
envisages institutions and the manner in which members of civil society
interact with each other determines its civil norms.

16 See Sennett (2013) on (the politics of) cooperation and togetherness.

17 In a similar vein, Sen (2006: 7) argues that ‘the assertion of human commonality
has been a part of resistance to degrading attributions in different cultures at different
points in time’.
 2 CIVIL WAR AS DISCURSIVE DEHUMANISATION 23

In their entirety and generality civil norms are what sustain civil society.
They are typically defined as rules governing specific associative situa-
tions, as regulatory or controlling guidelines and customary ways of going
about things. They manifest in accepted social practices and traditions
that are passed on; their ‘transmissible parts (…) are the patterns or
images of actions which they imply or present and the beliefs requiring,
recommending, regulating, permitting, or prohibiting the enactment of
those patterns’ (Shils, 1981: 12). More specifically the term civil norms
refers to a prescription of actual behaviour, skills, orientations, sensibili-
ties, habitual modes of acting and feeling (Weintraub, 1996) accompanied
by values that justify that behaviour and provide a reason for why some
actions are more approved of than others (Alexander & Thompson,
2008). The value and importance as well as force of civil norms has been
well and long understood. Tocqueville considered them so persuasive in
character that he believed that coercive laws were hardly needed to back
them up. He (1985: 294) was indeed ‘quite convinced that political soci-
eties are not what their laws make them, but what sentiments, beliefs,
ideas, habits of the heart and the spirit of men who form them (…) have
made them’ (also Maletz, 2005) while Jefferson (1999: 171) believed
it was ‘the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in
vigour’. Civil norms ‘are formed, in large part, by the practices in which
they engage and, thus, their everyday experiences’ (Weintraub, 1996).
As such, they are ‘creatures of social practices’ (Stout, 2004: 79) and
designate the collective18 rather than the individual level. Civil norms are
sustained when people adhere to them and support them in their daily
behaviour. They are also ‘sustained by the feelings of embarrassment,
anxiety, guilt and shame that a person suffers at the prospect of violating
them, or at least at the prospect of being caught violating them’ (Elster,
1989: 99f., also 1996). It is in this way, that norms have an affective ‘grip
on the mind’ (ibid.: 100) and help ‘define what is acceptable and what
is not’ (Dutton, 2007: 97).19 Correspondingly, civil norms can be insti-
tutionalised and when they are their upholding can be understood as ‘a

18 See also Sumner (1940 [1906]) on mores and folkways, see Gibbs (1965) on their
collective character, definitions and classifications as well as sanctions. Also Morris (1956).
19 According to Shils (1982: 5), ‘Durkheim gave much attention to the promulgation
of a code of civic morality which would reduce conflict and produce an integrated society’.
However, Durkheim (2019) is more concerned with the relationship between citizens and
the State than with civil society as such.
24 S. PUKALLUS

product of spontaneous interaction among individuals who act, respecting

conventions, self-imposed codes of conduct and moral principles’ (Pata-
lano, 2007: 227). The civil norms a civil society adopts reflect its values,
rules, traditions and mores and it is these that civil society displays and
performs in daily interactions.
Civil peace as peaceful cooperation depends on the communicative
performance of three categories20 of civil norms21 : (1) Assent to civil
peace as peaceful cooperation, (2) Substantive civility and (3) Building
capacity and civil competencies. Each category has a domain of meaning
and a field of reference. They can be understood in the following way:
The first category is assent to civil peace as peaceful cooperation22
which requires an ongoing individual and collective23 commitment to
civil peace as peaceful cooperation. Assent manifests itself in both a
certain disposition and a practice.24 The disposition needed is a cognitive
(and/or affective) preference for peace over war and an open-mindedness

20 Category here is understood in Berlin’s (1999) way; that is, categories provide the
basic structure of thought for the way in which we think about something. They mould,
scope and shape how we think about ‘something’ (in this case peaceful cooperation)
and how we relate our experience to that something. They also define the concepts we
use to explain this ‘something’. Whenever I refer simply to the civil norms of peaceful
cooperation I mean the three categories of the civil norms of peaceful cooperation.
21 The three categories of civil norms are based on Harrison and Pukallus (2018a),
Pukallus (2019), Harrison and Pukallus (2021; forthcoming) but were developed further
in this book.
22 It is clear that assent to peace will not be given by all citizens of the affected
population as war will be preferable for some and peace too costly. Nevertheless, one
can consider a community to assent to peace when those assenting to peace are in the
majority—in the way Tocqueville in Democracy in America understands the majority; that
is, either in terms of number or perceived as the majority.
23 By individual I mean citizens and by collective, I mean citizens as part of and
forming civil society. Civil society here is understood in Alexander’s (2006) sense that
is comprised of individual citizens and both regulative and communicative institutions
including associations. As such, my understanding of civil society extends beyond equalling
civil society to non-governmental organisations, NGOs and advocacy groups.
24 This does not simply refer to the formal signing of a peace agreement (which might
serve certain sectorial interests and not necessarily the interest of all) but rather how
peace is practised and lived in everyday life and how elements of peace are being upheld
by individual citizens and civil society. Of course, peace agreements can be ignored and
post-conflict settings in general have to deal with a variety of peace spoilers (Stedman,
1997) as well as different kinds of violence (Brewer, 2010). On how civil wars end see
Licklieder (ed.) (1993) and on why peace agreements fail see Walter (2002) and Call
(2012).
 2 CIVIL WAR AS DISCURSIVE DEHUMANISATION 25

for new ways of going about things as well as for pluralism25 and toler-
ance; that is, a disposition that allows for the acceptance and affirmation
of the existence of and the need for toleration of conflicted histories26 —
independently of whether forgiveness is a feasible possibility, whether
historical amnesia27 (not denial) is required and appropriate or whether
there needs to be an active engagement with the past and particularly
past atrocities. The latter often requires both perpetrators being held
legally accountable for their crimes as well as a communicative engage-
ment between perpetrators and victims in the form of, for example,
Truth and Reconciliation Commissions28 and memorialisation initiatives.
It also requires initiatives that are forward-looking and aim to find a path
towards civil peace as peaceful cooperation together. Assenting to civil
peace as peaceful cooperation (when it occurs after a civil war) comes with
an acknowledgement that everyone—perpetrators, victims, bystanders
or more generally the fighting and the non-fighting population—need
healing (Staub, 2008). This is necessary so that the dehumanisation of
either party is no longer and not ever again considered an acceptable way
of engaging with co-citizen and so that a society moves decisively (and
for good) beyond the friend/enemy polarisation. It is a commitment to
the reimagining of former enemies as co-citizens.
Sometimes, assent to civil peace as peaceful cooperation is sought
after atrocities of an unimaginable inhumanness have happened; situ-
ations where in fact ‘responsibility [is] infinitely greater than could

25 See Wenman (2003, 2013) on agonistic pluralism and agonistic democracy.

26 Levy and Dierkes (2002: 244) refer to this as ‘a contested terrain on which groups
with competing memories struggle to generalise their ideal conceptions of society’.
27 Historical amnesia or the whitewashing of history was something that was practised
by the European Commission (and before that High Authority) officials at the beginning
of European integration. It was a technique that allowed them to leave the past behind,
that made it possible for ‘perpetrators’ and ‘victims’ to be of equal civil standing and be
future-facing. This, I turn, was necessary in order to bring about the European integration
successfully (see Guisan, 2012; Pukallus, 2019; Seidel, 2010).
28 A Truth (and Reconciliation) Commissions (TRC) is (1) ‘focused in the past, rather
than ongoing events; investigates a pattern of events that took place over a period of time;
(3) engages directly and broadly with the affected population, gathering information on
their experience; (4) is a temporary body, with the aim of concluding with a final report;
and (5) is officially authorised or empowered by the state under review’ (Hayner, 2010:
11f.). TRC have been undertaken for example in South Africa, Guatemala, Timor-Leste
and Peru, Argentina, Chile, El Salvador and Colombia—some have been more successful
in contributing to reconciliation than others.
26 S. PUKALLUS

ever [be] assume[d]’ (Agamben, 1999: 21) through legal procedures

and judgements and where therefore moving towards sustainable civil
peace as peaceful cooperation requires that a society assume collective
forward-looking responsibility.
Collective forward-looking responsibility is not about legal respon-
sibility and doesn’t establish a causal relationship between event and
individual. It isn’t concerned with attribution of blame. It is in fact best
understood in the way Arendt (2003 [1968]: 149) speaks about it: ‘I
must be held responsible for something I have not done, and the reason
for my responsibility must be my membership in a group (a collective)
which no voluntary act of mine can dissolve (…) This kind of responsi-
bility (…) is always political, whether it appears in the older form, when
a whole community takes it upon itself to be responsible for whatever
one of its members has done, or whether a community is being held
responsible for what has been done in its name’. To this she (ibid.:
157f.) adds that ‘This vicarious responsibility for things we have not
done, this taking upon ourselves the consequences for things we are
entirely innocent of, is the price we pay for the fact that we live our lives
not by ourselves but among our fellowmen’. For Jaspers, such collective
forward-looking responsibility had no statute of limitation but required
an authentic, continuous and truthful engagement with the past through,
for example, the keeping of publicly available archives, the recording of
past crimes, the collecting of testimonies, the insistence on trials and
justice and the absolute rejection of the possibility of denial. Only then
can society work through its own past and own it, for Neiman (2019)
a process of Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung/-bewältigung, and by so doing
ultimately become free and self-determined.
Assent to civil peace as peaceful cooperation equally requires the accep-
tance that each member of the community is of equal civil standing
(independently of the role played in the civil war) as well as the commit-
ment to be future-facing; that is, to endorse the need for peace and to
agree to actively help the peace process or to at least passively assent to
it. Practically, assent to civil peace as peaceful cooperation requires three
main commitments: (a) to make an effort to solve conflict peacefully and
to learn the skills required and adopt a behaviour that helps do this; (b)
to show minimal solidarity and to make sacrifices in the way Allen (2006)
 2 CIVIL WAR AS DISCURSIVE DEHUMANISATION 27

understands them—to accept reasonable losses.29 What this means is that

it is necessary to accept that peaceful cooperation will require ‘communal
decisions [which will] inevitably benefit some citizens for the benefit of
the others, even when the whole community generally benefits’ (ibid.:
28); and (c) to accept the obligations that come with such assent. Assent
is analogous to Locke’s version of consent which, as Kramnick (2005:
455) points out, is ‘readable’ in civil and associative behaviour; it is ‘what
we bring to relations with other people or abstract institutions and is
perceivable in what we do’ (ibid.: 454). Just as Locke’s version of consent
(both tacit and express) comes with obligations so too does assent since
ultimately, what is being assented to is in effect a new social contract or at
least a codicil to a pre-existing ‘contract’. This comes with the obligation
to conduct oneself in such a manner that is compatible with and reflects
substantive civility.
The second category of civil norms of peaceful cooperation is ‘sub-
stantive civility’. Substantive civility, a term coined by Shils (1997), is
essential to the functioning and the peaceful associative character of
civil society and its institutions. It has four particular functions: (a) it
expresses a concern for the common good. It can be understood as an
attitude, a disposition, an ethos and a way of conduct expressing a concern
for society as a whole (despite being aware of its different constitutive
parts) and correspondingly, an acknowledgement of the possibility of a
‘common good’ (Shils, 1997: 339). According to White (2006: 453),
‘Civility is the chief mechanism (…) through which good citizens are
cultivated’ and uses ‘its power in order to “pacify” specific groups with
the hope of cultivating a shared vision of the common good’. Directly
linked to this, substantive civility is (b) concerned with the standing of
members of civil society. More specifically, it ‘denotes a sense of standing
or membership in the political community with its attendant rights and
responsibility’ (Boyd, 2006: 864) and as such, should show a concern

29 The making of sacrifices is for Sennett (2013) a reflection on the depth of commit-
ment one has made. The commitment can be measured by the extent of a person’s
willingness to make sacrifices. In their joint work with Cobb and Sennett develop the
notion of a sacrificial contract. Though they mean by it the ‘sacrificial contract, in which
workers make what they consider to be sacrifice for others, especially family members,
with the implicit expectation that such sacrifice will be repaid with respect or gratitude’
(Barbalet, 1992: 158), it is a notion that resonates with the idea of assenting to civil peace
as a form of sacrificial contract. On sacrifice as transformation and renewal see Eagleton
(2018).
28 S. PUKALLUS

‘for the good of adversaries (…) [and that] of allies’ (Shils, 1997: 339).
Following on from this, (c) substantive civility regulates the relationships
between citizens. In fact, it governs public conduct between strangers
as members of a specific community (Allen, 2006; Billante & Saunders,
2002; Carter, 1998). To consciously and continuously uphold substan-
tive civility is vital especially in post-civil war settings as Carter (1998:
281) points out: ‘We will never be able to reconstruct community – we
will never even be able to follow (…) simple rules (…) unless we first
rethink the manner in which we approach others’. This kind of substan-
tive civility is supported by certain manners, customs, values and practices.
One of the important values underpinning the conduct between citizens
is the acknowledgement of the equal civil standing of members of civil
society (as required in the first category assent to peace) by granting
them equal dignity.30 As Shils (1997: 338) argues ‘Civility as a feature
of civil society considers others as fellow-citizens of equal dignity in their
rights and obligations as members of civil society’ and that accordingly, ‘it
would be antithetical to civility to refuse esteem or deference to another
person. Civility treats others as, at least, equal in dignity, never as infe-
rior in dignity’ (ibid.). In this sense, substantive civility is concerned with
the ‘deep rules’ (Allen, 2006: 10) that guide interactions in public life at
the level of daily routines and interactions; that is how such routines and
interactions meet common values and accepted standards of behaviour,
how action is designated, how common welfare is understood and perhaps
most importantly (in terms of the beginning of the peace process) with
the acceptance and tolerance of different viewpoints, agreed norms of
argument and dissent. And it is here that its fourth function (d) lies,
it equally governs disagreement between citizens thereby preventing the
creation of a friend/enemy divide or the dehumanisation of ‘the Other’.
Substantive civility requires of citizens ‘the readiness to moderate
particular, individual or parochial interests’ (Shils, 1997: 345), to ‘[limit]
the intensity of conflict’ (ibid.: 343) and to ‘[reduce] the distance
between conflicting demands’ (ibid.: 343). In this way, substantive civility

30 Others have emphasised the importance of respect for societies. See Arendt (1998
[1958]: 243) who defines respect as ‘a kind of friendship without intimacy and without
closeness’ and ‘a regard for the person (…) independent of qualities which we may admire
or achievements which we may highly esteem’ and see Sennett (2003) who points to the
complexity of the concept and concerns himself with the question of how respect can
actually be performed in such a way that can be noticed by the person we respect.
 2 CIVIL WAR AS DISCURSIVE DEHUMANISATION 29

acts to ‘bridge the specific identities of different communities; (…) find

a balance between conflicting norms; and (…) orient procedures for
handling conflicts of interests so that they do not escalate’ (Rucht, 2011:
387). These include principles of civilised and agonistic engagement with
conflicting viewpoints and disagreements. Substantive civility does not
reject disagreement and conflict, as long as it is handled in agonistic or
‘civil’ ways (Carter, 1998). In fact, substantive civility ‘can produce citi-
zens who are both critical and sensitive, both restraint and articulate’
(Kingwell, 1995: 234) and it does not ‘does not imply quiet, obedient
or even necessarily well-mannered. It means open and restrained (…)
in the interests of pragmatic social goals we all share and the vibrant
social debate necessary to keep them in play’ (ibid.: 48). Overall then,
this category is concerned with what kind of values, ordinary virtues (as
learned practices following Ignatieff, 2017), manners and customs make
a peaceful and cooperative civil society and how these can be practised
in daily life in support of civil peace. The respect of substantive civility
provides for the basis of trust and solidarity, necessary generally in civil
life and particularly in enabling the enactment of the third category.
The third category of civil norms of peaceful cooperation is building
capacity and civil competencies. This category operates at both the institu-
tional and individual levels. At the institutional level, it covers the building
of formal regulative (legal institutions including courts, constitutions and
laws; political parties) and communicative institutions (the factual and
fictional mass media, opinion polls, civil associations).31 In a post-civil war
setting this might include the establishment of transitional justice mecha-
nisms including Truth and Reconciliation Commissions as well as trials for
war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. It might also include
the writing of a new Constitution—‘self-consciously designed to articulate
general principles, to establish moral frameworks that will guide the subse-
quent individual and institutional life of entire communities’ (Alexander,
2006: 164)—and legal texts and subsequent rebuilding of the legal system
including traditional and local forms of justice. This needs to be accompa-
nied by the (re-)establishment of one form of citizenship for all thereby
reversing any legal discrimination32 established during civil war. This is

31 See Alexander (2006). On institutions see Smelser (1997), North (1994) and
Patalano (2007).
32 Staub (2008: 250) explains that ‘Discrimination is a matter of how institutions
operate. Laws often institutionalize discrimination. Discriminatory laws and institutions
30 S. PUKALLUS

where the law exercises its civil force, helps defend civil morality and
exercises ‘repressive power [not] for the sake of efficiency, but rather
to regulate individual and collective action in terms of the principles of
civil solidarity’ (ibid.: 163f.). However, and as Alexander (ibid.: 294f.)
warns ‘If legal changes are to take effect, they must be complemented by
changes in office obligations, by shifts in communicative institutions, and
by deep alterations of public opinion’. What this shows is that calls for
civil equality, the respect of civil rights within civil society but also their
protection from the state or the market for example need to be broadcast,
defended, amplified and endorsed by communicative institutions. There
exists a dependency and symbiosis between the law and the media—one
which has been abused during civil war to reinforce and justify exclu-
sion and discrimination but which in post-civil war settings needs to be
re-established as supporting inclusive civil solidarity and civil peace as
peaceful cooperation. Accordingly, and with regard to the communica-
tive institutions, building civil capacity could include the abolishment
or even outlawing of the kind of civil war communication conducted
and the closing or reform of those ‘news’ organisation that supported
discrimination and incited to violence, hate and possibly even genocide.
Politically, competition for power is organised through non-violent chan-
nels and the advocacy of opposing arguments is undertaken by political
parties and the strength of their arguments judged via elections. Ulti-
mately what is needed are institutions with a civil outlook and a sufficient
degree of resilience defined as ‘the ability of these social institutions to
absorb and adapt to the internal and external shocks and setbacks (…)
[and] to manage [society’s] own tensions, pressures, disputes, crises and
shocks without [re]lapsing into violent conflict’ (de Coning et al., 2015:
2). Such resilience develops slowly and can be encouraged in the initial
peacebuilding stage (and especially with regard to elections) through the
involvement of independent and monitoring organisations whether these
are national, international or attached to specific missions.

are, in turn, justified by increased devaluation. While devaluation between groups in a

society can be mutual, it is the more powerful group that can institutionalize devaluation
through discriminatory laws and practices, practices that progressively enhance devalua-
tion’. Such discrimination has happened in Rwanda and to a large extent also in Myanmar
where the Rohingya were in fact turned into non-citizens. See also Abdelkader (2014).
 2 CIVIL WAR AS DISCURSIVE DEHUMANISATION 31

At the individual level, it refers to an empowerment of citizens to act

as civil and political actors. In political terms, this is mainly through elec-
tions (including understanding the value of them and one’s responsibility
make an informed choice) and other forms of local governance. In civil
terms, this often necessitates the learning of civil skills and beyond this,
often concerns taking on or endorsing civil actions, initiatives and duties
at the local, regional or national level, but also and where appropriate
to voice disagreement, join civil protest and exhibit civil disobedience.33
Often such actions concern calls for justice, equality in terms of rights,
socio-economic opportunities and education. And it is here that the
commitment to assent to civil peace as peaceful cooperation has to be
upheld and practised especially when experiencing a ‘reasonable loss’. At
an individual level, but collective in character, this category covers also
the inventive and creative capacity of individuals to come together as
members of civil society in associations to build civil institutions. The
ways in which citizens associate might vary as will the frequency of asso-
ciations. Clearly, not all societies will associate to the extent Tocqueville
(2010 [1840]: 896) thought Americans did: ‘Americans of all ages, all
conditions, all minds constantly unite. Not only do they have commer-
cial and industrial associations in which all take part, but they also have a
thousand other kinds: religious, moral [intellectual], serious ones, useless
ones, very general and very particular, immense and very small; Amer-
icans use associations to celebrate holidays, establish seminaries, build

33 The term was coined by Thoreau in 1848 when he refused to pay a newly introduced
state poll. Also see Shklar (2019) on civil disobedience in the nineteenth and twentieth
century. Rawls (1999: 320) defines civil disobedience as ‘a public, non-violent, consci-
entious yet political act contrary to law usually done with the aim of bringing about a
change in the law or policies of the government. By acting in this way one addresses the
sense of justice of the majority of the community and declares that in one’s considered
opinion the principles of social cooperation between free and equal men are not being
respected’. It is ‘a form of dissent at the boundary of fidelity to law’ (ibid.: 322). Civil
disobedience has the following features: conscientiousness, political motivation, desire for
change in law or policy, publicity expectation or acceptance of punishment which shows
fidelity to law. Müller (2019) extends the argument to uncivil and argues there ‘is nothing
wrong with being uncivil, as long as a number of conditions hold. First, the confrontation
is directly with the person involved in the unjust practices to which one seeks to draw
attention (…). Second, confrontations have to plausibly communicate the actual injustice
or flaw with the democratic process (…)’. Some of the most famous acts of civil disobe-
dience that led to the desired change in policy and law and thereby to social change were
Martin Luther’s actions against segregation and Rosa Parks’ refusal to vacate a seat on
the bus for a white passenger.
32 S. PUKALLUS

inns, erect churches, distribute books, send missionaries to the antipodes;

in this way they create hospitals, prisons, schools’. But what is impor-
tant is that there is a pronounced capacity for association34 accompanied
by a society’s ability to learn to collaborate and cooperate across a wide
range of diverging interests through forming coalitions, co-alignments
and associations. The art of association is to work with those one doesn’t
know, and who one doesn’t necessarily agree with and to do so across
a range of political and social perspectives and skills. It is the ability to
associate that makes citizenship dynamic and active and that allows for
self-determination, community formation and collective problem-solving.
This includes importantly the creation of communicative channels that
enable debate and dialogue on issues of common concern as well as
adjudication, judgement, dissent and civil scrutiny. It is the associative
character of a society that can give insights into the levels of trust between
members of civil society. According to Putnam (2000: 136f.), ‘people
who trust their fellow citizens volunteer more often, contribute more
to charity, participate more often in politics and community organiza-
tions [and] serve more readily on juries’. To this he (ibid.: 137) adds:
‘In short, people who trust others are all-around good citizens, and those
more engaged in community life are both more trusting and more trust-
worthy’.35 Ultimately, this category of civil norms refers to knowing how
to associate cooperatively and peacefully in order to achieve agreed civil
ends, of fulfilling self-imposed civil obligations and duties and of building
civil institutions. It is self-interest rightly understood (see Putnam, 2020;
Tocqueville, 2010 [1840]).
Importantly these three categories of civil norms of peaceful cooper-
ation are simply that: categories. They provide an ethical framework, a
justificatory arc and in essence a normative architecture for civil peace as
peaceful cooperation. They serve to underwrite the adoption and expres-
sion of local norms of peace in particular post-civil war settings, that is

34 Granovetter (1973: 1376) argues that weak ties can be of advantage for association
because they ‘are more likely to link members of different small groups than are strong
ones, which tend to be concentrated within particular groups’.
35 Nussbaum (2016: 173) sees both love and trust as ‘the willingness to place important
elements of one’s own good in the hands of others (…) rather than engaging in self-
protective and evasive actions’. She (ibid.: 212) also emphasises that trust is ‘a necessary
part of the stability, hence the legitimacy, of any society’.
 2 CIVIL WAR AS DISCURSIVE DEHUMANISATION 33

the specific nature of the local adoption and interpretation of these cate-
gories in situ. They are manifest as a ‘meta topical space’, a universalistic
and universalising background to any particular foregrounded ‘topical
space’ (Taylor, 2007: 187). Accordingly, they lose their abstract, ideal
and uniform character when understood in their local expression and as a
product of history (Berger & Luckmann, 1991 [1966]). This is because
the three categories of civil norms of peaceful cooperation only come to
‘life’ when they are practised in situ; that is, locally and culturally through
rituals, symbols, traditions and importantly, when they are communica-
tively performed in civil institutions. Institutions understood, in Smelser’s
(1997: 46) sense, as consisting of ‘those complexes of roles, normative
systems and legitimising values that constitute a functionally defined set of
activities’ and are both simultaneously imagined and yet spoken about as if
they enjoyed a public ‘empirical existence’. The performance of the cate-
gories of civil norms and attendant institutions is culturally specific and
context-dependent and thereby gives each civil society its own particular
outlook, shows which values are prioritised over others, what civil norms
are deeply engrained in the fabric of a society’s everyday life and what
the sanctions are for not upholding them, to what extent and for what
causes citizens associate. Importantly, civil norms (including traditions)
‘are not independently self-reproductive or self-elaborating. Only living,
knowing and desiring human beings can enact them and reenact them
and modify them’ (Shils, 1981: 14f.). They have to be lived and commu-
nicatively performed and enacted in order to exist and to be meaningful
to civil life. Their communicative performance, though locally interpreted
and determined, has to abide by three principles which will be discussed
in Chapter 4. According to Burke, civil norms (though he referred to
manners) ‘are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase,
barbarise or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible opera-
tion (…) They give us the whole form and colour to our lives’ (cited in
Eagleton, 2016: 65) but they are ‘largely invisible’ and yet, ‘we follow
norms constantly. And we rarely recognise how much we need norms:
[civil] norms are the glue that keeps us together, they give us our iden-
tity and help us to coordinate and cooperate at such a remarkable level’
(Gelfand, 2019, cited in Putnam, 2020: 164). In peacebuilding it is
important to respect and build on existing pre-civil war civil norms (or
the remnants of them) as they represent the code of conduct of a partic-
ular collective social entity which have emerged in culturally specific ways
and which have their own way of being transmitted (Lapinski & Rimal,
34 S. PUKALLUS

2005). As Tocqueville points out, ‘To proceed with (…) foreign mores is
to invite failure’ (selected letters, p. 11).36 Indeed, each society has what
Shils (1982: 93) called a ‘centre’ and by which he meant ‘the realm of
values and beliefs (…) the center of the order of symbols, of values and
beliefs which govern [a particular] society. It is the centre because it is the
ultimate and irreducible; and it is felt to be such by many’.
Civil peace as peaceful cooperation based on the three categories of
civil norms can exist in civil societies where citizens are able to ‘imagine
themselves part of a “whole”’ (Allen, 2006: 17).37 The performance
of civil peace as peaceful cooperation has the function to secure and
protect ‘the wholeness of “the people” in the minds of (…) citizens’.
By wholeness is meant ‘an aspiration to the coherence and integrity of a
consolidated but complex, intricate, and differentiated body’. Once this
body ‘is imaginable, it also invents customs and practices of citizenly inter-
action’.38 This is where the vital importance of civil norms and their
practical performance lies. They make peaceful cooperative civil societies.
As summarised by Burke: ‘Men are not tied to one another by paper
and seals (…) Nothing is so strong a tie (…) as correspondence in laws,
customs, manners, and habits of life. They have more than the force of
treaties in themselves. They are obligations written in the heart’ (cited in
Eagleton, 2016: 59). It is the familiarity and reliability of civil norms in
everyday life that provides the members of civil society with the kind of
ontological security felt in peace times.
However, civil wars deliberately attack what is familiar and what
provides security. They overturn all certainties and replace these certain-
ties with areas of enmity (cf. Armitage, 2018: 51). In short: they attack all
the foundations for civil peace as peaceful cooperation in order to make
it impossible and undesired; they aim to damage them to such an extent

36 This is why local approaches to peacebuilding are vital. For local approaches to
peacebuilding see particularly the works of Roger Mac Ginty and Oliver Richmond. Also
see Thiranagama et al. (2018) on the question of ‘whose civility’—though the focus is
on understandings of civility and the colonial baggage that comes with the term ‘civility’
the problematic equally applies to the question of ‘whose civil norms’. It is vital that
peacebuilding does not impose a specific version of civil norms or a way of how the three
categories have to be interpreted but that it is guided by local mores and knowledge in
order to avoid any impression of neo-colonial peacebuilding.
37 Allen (2006) distinguishes wholeness from oneness, which she understands as
homogeneity.
38 Also see Hobsbawn and Ranger (eds.) (2012) on the invention of tradition.
 2 CIVIL WAR AS DISCURSIVE DEHUMANISATION 35

that a preference for peace over war cannot be safely expressed let alone
exercised and they attempt to overturn established civil norms and any
kind of inclusive solidarity. This is done communicatively through the
use of a particular communicative weapon: discursive dehumanisation.

Attacking Civil Peace as Peaceful Cooperation Through Discursive

Dehumanisation
In civil wars, discursive dehumanisation (Savage, 2013) becomes a
communicative weapon for the systematic and intentional destruction of
civil peace as peaceful cooperation and with that the destruction of any
communicative and solidarising capacity necessary to enact and perform
civil peace as peaceful cooperation. Discursive dehumanisation can for
the purposes of clarity be analytically divided into two steps, though in
reality these two steps overlap and can (and frequently do) occur simul-
taneously. In the first step, the already existing antagonism and hostility
(whether historical in origin or completely fabricated) between different
groups in society are utilised to create an internal enemy. In a second
step, this enemy is discursively dehumanised so that it can subsequently
be legitimately killed.39 To take each in turn:

The Creation of an Internal Enemy

With regard to the first step, the creation of an internal enemy40 narra-
tives of identity and belonging, of inclusion and exclusion and ultimately,
as noted above, narratives of enmity are constructed and deployed. For
example, civil wars in Liberia, Eastern Congo and Ivory Coast were, in
part, triggered by the question of ‘who is a citizen and who is not’ (Bøas,
2012: 93). Civil wars escalate when the question of ‘who belongs and
who doesn’t’ appears to become a matter of survival for ‘either you or

39 Of course I am not suggesting that discourse is the sole reason for an outbreak of
violence, but I do believe, in agreement with Savage (2013), that civil war has to be discur-
sively prepared.See Valentino (2005) who argues that there is no quantitative evidence
for a causal link between propaganda/social cleavages and an outbreak of violence. On
roots of and influences on violence see Staub (2013a, 2013b) and Uvin (1999) who
compares the factors contributing to the onset of violence in Burundi and Rwanda. Also
see McDoom (2005).
40 On a smaller and less systematic scale we can see across the world how journalists
are turned into internal enemies by political power, enemies that can then be killed with
impunity. See Harrison and Pukallus (2018b) and Pukallus et al. (2020).
36 S. PUKALLUS

me’ and subsequently, turns deadly. However, as Keen (1986: 10) point-
edly remarks, ‘Before the weapon comes the image’, namely the image of
the enemy.41
The image of the enemy is artificially and deliberately created through
a process of dehumanisation. Dehumanisation consists of the ‘denial that
a certain group is “equally” human, no matter how that “humanity” is
defined’ (Savage, 2013: 144). It is ‘the removal of humanity of an indi-
vidual or group [which] occurs when people strip themselves and others
of other sources of identity besides the one in the conflict’ (Schirch,
2005: 125, also Ellis, 2006). In short, the denial of humanness (Haslam
et al., 2008) or a ‘complete disregard for the moral significance of the
victim’s human subjectivity’ (De Ruiter, 2021: 3). Dehumanisation is
supported by two things: (i) by stripping the enemy of its individuality
and corresponding identity. The enemy is no longer seen as a person—
a mother, a father, a child—neither is the enemy conceived any longer
as an individual with personality and character (also Halpern & Wein-
stein, 2004) or ‘perceived as feeling, thinking, or acting’ (Waller, 2007:
210). The enemy becomes a uniform, generalised and unchanging cate-
gory without the possibility of transformation or redemption. And as
such, the enemy falls victim to social death and concomitantly becomes
‘the permanent enemy’ who ‘did not and could not belong because
he was the product of a hostile, alien culture’ (Patterson, 1982: 39,
also Uvin, 1999). The attribution of characteristics (ii) that support
the dehumanised image—also called attribute-based dehumanisation (see
Vaes et al., 2012)42 —plays on individual and collective fears and ‘What-
ever a society considers bad, wrong, taboo, profane, dirty, desecrated,
inhumane, impure, will make up the epithets assigned to the enemy’
(Keen, 1986: 28). It is these attributes that justify that the enemy is
from then on openly considered ‘as [the] marginal and expendable (…)
“lower”, “less developed”, “inferior race”’ (Tully, 2003: 521); as ‘exis-
tentially something different and alien’ (Schmitt, 2007 [1932]: 26). And
accordingly, the dehumanised enemy is placed outside ‘the normative

41 On enemy images in warfare see Silverstein and Holt (1989), Oppenheimer (2006),
Bahador (2015) and the edited volume by Rieber (1991) and particularly the contributions
by White; and Szalay and Mir-Djalali.
42 On the relationship between attribute-based dehumanisation and metaphor-based
dehumanisation see Loughnan et al. (2009).
 2 CIVIL WAR AS DISCURSIVE DEHUMANISATION 37

universe of moral protection, leaving them vulnerable to targeted [geno-

cidal] victimization’ (Hagan & Rymond-Richmond, 2008: 876). They
are ‘put outside the law [vogelfrei] and [become] automatically the object
of an arbitrary execution’ (Schmitt, 2014 [1921]: 152). Examples of
such created enemies are multiple and span all types of war: the Jews
(Nazi Germany), kulaks (Soviet Union), ‘new people’ (Cambodia), Tutsi
(Rwanda), Muslim Rohingya (Myanmar), black African people (Darfur),
Bosnian Male Muslims (Bosnia) as well as the Communist Party and
its sympathisers (Indonesia) to name only few. Being designated the
dehumanised enemy is for all means and purposes sadly lethal.
As Semelin (2013: 9) points out, ‘massacres are mainly born out of a
mental process, a way of seeing some “Other” being, of stigmatising him,
debasing him, and obliterating him before actually killing him’. Enemies
become ‘nonentities, expendable, or undeserving’ (Opotow, 1990: 1) and
‘the existential negation of the enemy’ (Schmitt, 2007 [1932]: 33) is
to kill him. Importantly and frequently, ‘when groups of people dehu-
manise one another, the concept of good versus evil dominates people’s
understanding of identity’ (Schirch, 2005: 125) and the enemy becomes
the imagined evil (see Wieringa & Katjasungkana, 2019).43 This imag-
ined evil, ‘the universal evil image of the enemy is [then] reinforced
in posters, cartoons, and magazine illustrations depicting the enemy as
a crazed killer, sadistic torturer, greedy conspirator, rapist, barbarian,
gorilla, saber-toothed monster, reptile, rat, insect, or demonic enemy of

43 On the political struggles between good and evil see Harle (2000). Whereas Neiman
(2002: 7) argues that the problem of evil ‘is fundamentally a problem about the intelli-
gibility of the world as whole’ and that ‘morality demands that we make it intelligible’
(ibid.: 8), for Eagleton (2010: 16) evil ‘is indeed metaphysical, in the sense that it takes
up an attitude toward being as such, not just toward this or that bit of it. Fundamen-
tally, it wants to annihilate the lot of it. But this is not to suggest that it is necessarily
supernatural, or that it lacks all human causality’. For both Neiman and Eagleton evil can
be understood as something explicable (not ineffable) and something that demands our
attention. On evil see also Waller (2007: 13) who defines human evil as ‘the deliberate
harming of humans by other humans’; that is, ‘deliberate harm inflicted against a defense-
less and helpless group targeted by a political, social, or religious authority’ (ibid.: 14).
Also see Bernstein (2008), Calder (2003), Card (2010), Staub (2010), Singer (2004) and
Snow (2016).
38 S. PUKALLUS

God, or even as death’ (Waller, 2007: 210). And when such dehuman-
isation is accompanied by an eliminationist discourse (Bernard, 2009)44
then the destruction of the ‘enemy that has been defined as essentially evil
will soon appear rational, legitimate, and even honourable’ (Vuorinen,
2012: 4). It might even become a ‘democratic duty’,45 an act of self-
defence or a preventative measure to a perceived (often imagined and
fabricated) threat. According to Freeman (1991: 190), ‘Self-defence is
the most powerful motivation and justification for killing’ as it is seen
as ‘necessary to survival and/or as an act of purification (…) [and] mass
murder can be presented as heroic’ (also Kimani, 2007). To this Clark
(2009: 7) adds that for example in the case of Rwanda, ‘the genocide
was not the product of pre-existing, deep-seated ethnic hatreds. Rather,
it was the result of manufactured hatred, in which the Hutus were taught
to believe that the Tutsis posed a fundamental threat and were thus to
be viewed as a dangerous enemy’ (also Chrétien, 1995; Hatzfeld, 2006;
Hintjens, 1999; Straus, 2004, 2013). Concomitantly, the decision that
perpetrators believe to be faced with is ‘kill or be killed’. Once the enemy
has been designated the dehumanisation is carried out discursively—
this is the second analytical step and constituent feature of discursive
dehumanisation.

44 Neilsen (2015) speaks about ‘toxification’ as being a more appropriate indicator or

warning sign for genocide that dehumanisation. She (2015: 86) argues that ‘dehumaniza-
tion says nothing to the perception of killing a certain group being a necessity’ and that
it ‘does not necessitate an individual’s mistreatment, abuse, or murder, but simply renders
it more tolerable in the eyes of the dehumanizer’. Accordingly, she (ibid.: 87) claims that
looking for toxication as a warning sign for genocidal intent is more insightful as ‘a toxic
presence that must be cauterized and destroyed’. I don’t find this very convincing as toxi-
fication is difficult to distinguish from pollution/disease which is dehumanising but unless
accompanied by an eliminationist discourse cannot be taken as genocidal intent either.
Accordingly, to look for an eliminationist discourse in Bernard’s (2009) sense is probably
more reliable than signs of ‘toxification’ and makes another helpful distinction. She (ibid.:
184) argues that calling something eliminationist discourse is a useful ‘to distinguish it
from standard political content or even hate speech’.
45 See e.g. Chrétien (2007) and Kimani (2007).
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Maar hij schudde het hoofd en zeide: „Ik blijf bij u eten, en dan rijd ik
terug naar uw vader. Ik heb haast.”

Bij dit gezegde keek Dirk den spreker vorschend in het stroeve
gelaat, en vraagde, zonderling beklemd: „Is er zoo’n haast bij?”

„Ja,” zeide de leeuwenjager, „er is haast bij: er is oorlog in ’t zicht!”

Nadenkend keek hij de twee jonge menschen aan, die daar zoo
vroolijk voor hem zaten, en een vochtige schemering ging over zijne
oogen heen. In het volgende oogenblik echter schenen die oogen
weer zoo hard als de harde kogel [192]in den loop van zijn geweer, en
hij zeide: „Dirk! Ik roep u op tot den strijd voor vrijheid en recht!”

Maar als een bliksemstraal uit den zonnigen hemel, zoo trof dit
bericht den jongen Boer. Hij had zich nauwelijks nedergezet aan zijn
eigen haard, hij had nauwelijks den zoeten geur des vredes
ingeademd, en midden in die liefelijke, zoo vurig begeerde rust
kwam plotseling het stormgelui der oorlogsklok!

„Oorlog?” riep hij, terwijl hij overeind vloog: „oorlog?” Maar in ’t

volgende oogenblik had hij zijn evenwicht terug.

Met verwonderlijke zelfbeheersching ging hij weer zitten aan de

stevige, eikenhouten tafel tegenover zijn vrouw, en vraagde op
kalmen toon: „Het gaat zeker tegen de Engelschen?”

„Ja,” antwoordde de leeuwenjager, „ze willen Natal inpalmen.”

„Dat met het kostbare, edele Boerenbloed is gedrenkt?” zeide de

jonge Boer. „Maar zij hebben ’t nog niet,” liet hij er dreigend op
volgen.

„Doch zij zullen ’t krijgen,” antwoordde de leeuwenjager. „Ons volk is

uitgeput door de Kafferoorlogen; het moet zich herstellen van de
geslagen wonden, en de meeste lagers verkeeren in groote
armoede. Ja, de Engelschen zijn een zeer verstandig volk; zij kijken
hun tijd af.”

Er lag een snijdende bitterheid in den toon, waarop hij dit zeide.

„Dus gij beschouwt de zaak voor de Boeren verloren?” vraagde Dirk.

„Ik heb uw vader zooeven gesproken, hij denkt het eveneens,”

antwoordde de leeuwenjager.

„En waarom zullen wij dan vechten voor een verloren zaak?”
vraagde de jonge Boer verwonderd.

„Omdat die verloren zaak een rechtvaardige zaak is,” antwoordde de

leeuwenjager.

„Het heeft zijn nut, er het geweer voor te laden, en ’t kan zijn nut
hebben, er voor te—sterven.

„’t Zal een protest zijn tegen het schandelijk onrecht, dat ons wordt
aangedaan.”

Zijn stem beefde, toen hij dit zeide; ze beefde van ingehouden toorn.

Zijne oogen begonnen het vuur te weerkaatsen, dat in zijn boezem

brandde, en de diep in het hart van dezen [193]man sluimerende
hartstochtelijkheid kwam met macht naar boven.

„Zie,” zeide hij, „het bloed der Boeren heeft nog meer kracht dan een
kogel, en dat bloed zal tot God roepen om wraak over onze vijanden,
die ons wreed verdrukken.”

„Maar,” liet hij er zachter op volgen, „het is hard voor u, Anna, om uw

man, met wien gij nog geen jaar zijt gehuwd geweest, in den oorlog
te zien trekken.”

„Ja,” antwoordde zij, „dat is hard. Het zou met ons huwelijk slecht
staan, als ik mijn man gaarne zag scheiden. Maar,” liet zij er op
volgen, terwijl haar heldere blik vast op den leeuwenjager rustte,
„Barend Jansen zou zich over zijn dochter schamen, als zij tot haar
man zeide: „Blijf!””

„Barend Jansen zal zich nooit over zijn dochter te schamen hebben,”
antwoordde de leeuwenjager met een warmen toon in zijn stem.
„Toen ik haar met den bijl in de hand den ingang van het lager tegen
de woedende Zoeloe’s heb zien verdedigen, heb ik respect voor
haar gekregen.”

„Dus gij gaat mee?” wendde hij zich tot Dirk.

„Ja,” zeide Dirk met vaste stem. „Wanneer vertrekken wij?”

„Ik ga nu terug naar uw vader,” antwoordde de leeuwenjager; „het is

reeds afgesproken, dat uw broeder Willem meetrekt in den oorlog,
en hij zal mij vergezellen, om nog eenige andere Boeren in deze
streken op te roepen tot den oorlog. Overmorgen hopen wij u dan
aan de „drift” te ontmoeten, en rijden wij te samen onmiddellijk naar
Natal.”

Met deze afspraak verliet de leeuwenjager in den namiddag, nadat

hij bij hen had gegeten, de woning der jonggetrouwden.

De volgende dag is een drukke dag. Dirk bestelt zijn huis en regelt
alles. Zijn vrouw zal zoo goed het gaat zijn plaats vervullen, en op de
raad en de hulp van haren schoonvader kan zij rekenen. De meest
vertrouwde kafferknecht wordt binnengeroepen, en hij zal een extra
belooning ontvangen, als hij een oog in ’t zeil houdt.
Inmiddels bakt Anna beschuit, droogt zij vleesch, vult zij het leeren
zakje met gemalen koffie, en zorgt ze voor tabak. Dit is de proviand
voor haar man op reis. Soms verduistert haar helder oog, terwijl ze
dit alles en nog zoo [194]veel meer gereed maakt, maar zij houdt zich
taai, want zij weet, dat zij is de vrouw van een Afrikaanschen Boer.

In drukke bezigheden en beslommeringen gaat de dag voorbij. Men

gaat op den gewonen tijd ter ruste, maar vóór het krieken van den
morgen staat de jonge Boer op.

Hij begeeft zich naar den stal, naar Hannibal. Hij strijkt het edele dier
het kophaar uit de oogen en klopt het op den slanken hals.

Inmiddels heeft Anna het ontbijt gereed gemaakt, en samen gaan zij
aan de eenvoudige tafel zitten. Ach, het is een droevig ontbijt; Dirk
kan het brood niet door de keel krijgen.

Nu is het ontbijt afgeloopen; nu zal het op een scheiden gaan.

Anna neemt de kogeltasch, gevuld met de kogels, die zij heeft

gegoten; en hangt ze haren man om de schouders.

Dan reikt ze hem het geladen geweer.

„Strijdt wakker, geliefde man,” zegt zij.

Ja, wakker strijden, dat hoopt hij waarlijk te doen.

En nu komt het afscheid.

Zij staren elkander in de oogen, lang en innig, die man en die vrouw.
Zij lezen in elkanders oogen, en ach, daar is niets in geschreven dan
droefheid en liefde. Zij neemt zijn hoofd tusschen hare handen, kust
hem de tranen uit de oogen en zegt: „De Heere beware uwen
uitgang en uwen ingang!”
De oudste kaffer leidt het paard voor de huisdeur. Het ruikt de
frissche morgenlucht, en hinnikt vroolijk zijn jongen baas tegemoet.

Snel springt hij in het zaâl, en geeft het paard de sporen.

Zijn vrouw staat in de deur hem na te staren.

Hoe snel verdwijnt hij uit het gezicht!

Daar blikt hij nog eenmaal om, heft zich in den stijgbeugel op, en
zwaait tot een laatst vaarwel driemaal met het geweer boven zijn
hoofd, zoodat de blanke loop schittert in de eerste stralen der
morgenzon.

En nu ziet Anna niets meer, want de ruiter is achter den naasten

heuvelrand verdwenen. Zij ziet niets meer dan een nevel; dat zijn
hare tranen.

Maar den jongen Boer wordt het nu ruimer om het hart. Hij is nu op
het oorlogspad, en hij zal strijden voor vrijheid en recht!

Geen Hongaarsche ruiter jaagt sneller door de eenzame

[195]wildernissen van zijn vaderland, dan deze Afrikaansche Boer
over de ongemeten grasvelden der Transvaal.

Hij jaagt al sneller en sneller—het zuiden in.… naar Natal.… tot voor
de mond van het Engelsche kanon.…
[Inhoud]
 HOOFDSTUK XXX.

Anna voelde zich thans zeer eenzaam. Nu eerst voelde zij de sterkte
van den band, die haar aan Dirk Kloppers bond.

Hoe menigmaal ging zij tegen het vallen van den avond op den
hoogsten heuvel in den omtrek, om te zien, of haar man nog niet
terugkwam! Zij wist, dat het dwaasheid was, zulks te doen, doch zij
had een weemoedig genot in die dwaasheid.

Ach, zij had hem lief—er is immers ook geen inniger, hechter,
teederder band te denken dan tusschen man en vrouw! Elken
morgen en elken avond smeekte zij op neergebogen knieën voor dat
zoo dierbaar leven, dat thans door de bommen der Engelsche
kanonnen werd bedreigd. Met haar gebeden wilde zij haar man
dekken als met een schild, en hare liefde wilde zich om hem heen
legeren als een slagorde met banieren!

Zoo lief had Anna haar man.

De tijd brak aan, dat zij een dochterke in haar armen hield. Het was
een allerliefst, mollig wichtje; het had de blauwe, schitterende oogen
van haren vader. Zij noemde het Mieke, naar zijn zuster, die in het
gevecht tegen de Zoeloe’s was bezweken, en soms ging er een
groote, heerlijke blijdschap door haar ziel, als zij dacht aan het
oogenblik, dat Dirk behouden terug zou komen, en dit lieve kindeke
aan zijn hart zou drukken.

Reikhalzend zag zij uit naar tijding, maar er verliepen weken en

maanden, zonder dat er tijding kwam.
Nu, dat was niet te verwonderen. Immers honderden mijlen wildernis
en het hooge Drakengebergte scheidden de streek, waar de familie
Kloppers woonde, van het gebied, [196]waar de bloedige botsing zou
plaats grijpen. Daarbij veroorzaakte de strijd tusschen de twee
blanke rassen een begrijpelijke spanning en gisting bij de
Kafferstammen, zoodat de wijd en zijd verspreide, als van de wereld
afgezonderde Emigranten-Boeren dicht bij huis en hof moesten
blijven, en weinig nieuws vernamen.

Eindelijk echter kwam er toch tijding, maar ’t was een vreeselijke,

ontzettende tijding. Zij zag er uit als een hoop harde, wreede
klipsteenen, waaronder het liefste ligt begraven, dat wij op aarde
bezitten.

Gert Kloppers zelf bracht de tijding.

Door de kleine vensterruiten zag Anna hem aankomen. Hij liep

gedrukt, gebogen; het scheen, dat een onzichtbare, doch zware last
hem neder drukte. Op zijn gelaat lag een trek van bittere smart.

En dat was niet te verwonderen, want Dirk was—dood! Dirk—de

trots van zijn oogen! De glans van zijn leven! Zijn eerstgeboren
zoon! Het wilde wat zeggen—Dirk dood!

Heden morgen had hij het vreeselijk bericht gehoord van een hem
bekend, rondreizend man, die pas uit Natal was gekomen. Die man
had het van een Boer, die zelf het gevecht tegen de Engelschen had
medegemaakt.

Dirk was met andere Boeren reeds tot de batterij der Engelschen
doorgedrongen; hij had de hand reeds gelegd op den zwaren,
ijzeren loop van het kanon, toen hij door den sabelhouw van een
Engelsch officier doodelijk werd getroffen.
Als een held was hij gevallen—voor vrijheid en recht!

Anna was, toen zij haren schoonvader zag aankomen, door bange
voorgevoelens gekweld, hem tegemoet gegaan.

Geen kreet, zelfs geen zucht kwam over hare lippen, toen Gert
Kloppers haar voorzichtig het treurige nieuws mededeelde. Slechts
beefden hare lippen, en de laatste bloeddrup week uit haar gelaat.
Zij greep den stam van een jongen appelboom, die verleden jaar
door Dirk was gepoot, om niet om te vallen.

Als in een droom liep zij, dagen lang. Maar eindelijk kwam zij tot de
werkelijkheid terug, en de diepe wateren der smart gingen over hare
ziel. Doch in de diepe wateren liggen de kostbare parels, en de
kostbaarste parel werd Anna’s deel.

Zij leerde zich zelve kennen, en zij leerde de roede kussen, die haar
sloeg. Van wege hare vele tranen kon zij [197]den Heiland niet zien,
maar zij voèlde de hand van den liefderijken Herder, die het verloren
schaap zocht, en zij hoòrde Zijne stem: „Komt herwaarts tot Mij
allen, die vermoeid en belast zijt, en ik zal u ruste geven!”

Hare schoonouders kwamen haar dagelijks bezoeken. Men zette

zich dan aan de eikenhouten tafel, waar Dirk en Anna zoo dikwijls
plachten te zitten, en men sprak met elkander over lieve
herinneringen, waaraan de naam van Dirk was verbonden.

„En heden zou Dirk jarig zijn geweest,” zeide Moeder Kloppers een
keer.

„Ja,” zeide Anna, „heden. Verleden jaar hebben wij dien verjaardag
nog samen gevierd; wij waren pas eenige weken getrouwd. Het
verschil is groot tusschen vrouw en weduwe.”

Ja, dat verschil was werkelijk groot.

Zij bedekte haar gelaat en weende.

Honderden mijlen van Anna’s woning verwijderd, aan een der

zuidelijkste punten van Natal, waar de golven van den Indischen
Oceaan zich breken tegen het strand, stonden op dienzelfden dag
een zestal kloeke ruiters bij hunne gezadelde paarden.

De paarden sloegen ongeduldig met de voorpooten in het mulle

zand.

Nu sprongen de ruiters vlug in het zaâl.

De voorste sloeg met de vlakke hand op den slanken hals van zijn
zwarten hengst, en zeide op vroolijken toon: „Vooruit, Hannibal! Naar
huis!”

Die ruiter droeg een breed, versch litteeken op zijn voorhoofd.

Dat litteeken was waarschijnlijk van een sabelhouw afkomstig. In elk

geval: het litteeken stond hem goed.

De ruiters gaven hun paarden de sporen.

Sneller, al sneller joegen zij door Natal, het land der duizend
heuvelen, het noorden in.… naar de Transvaal.… tot voor Anna’s
woning.… [198]
[Inhoud]
 HOOFDSTUK XXXI.

Wat was er met de Emigranten-Boeren in Natal gebeurd? 1

De Engelsche wolf was uit zijn legerplaats opgerezen, want hij had
weer honger gekregen. Natal was een te welkome buit.

Reeds was er bij den Volksraad der Natalsche Boeren een

zonderlinge missive ingekomen. Zij kwam van den gouverneur der
Kaapkolonie en was van den volgenden inhoud: „Het is voor Hare
Majesteit niet mogelijk, een gedeelte harer eigene onderdanen, die
zich eenige honderden mijlen buiten de Kaap de Goede Hoop
hebben begeven, voor onafhankelijk te verklaren. Zoo de Boeren
een militaire macht willen ontvangen, dan zal Hare Majesteit hun al
die handelsvoorrechten waarborgen, die aan de àndere Britsche
koloniën zijn toegestaan, en dan zal het land, dat de Emigranten
thans hebben bezet, aan hen worden toegekend, in zooverre
rechtvaardigheid en billijkheid dit gedoogen.”

De Boeren stonden vreemd te kijken bij het lezen dezer missive.

Wat? Zij zouden Natal afstaan? Het schoone, liefelijke Natal, het
land der duizend heuvelen? Het land, dat zij twéé keeren hadden
gekocht, den eersten keer met aan de bedingen te voldoen, die
koning Dingaan had gesteld, den twééden keer met hun bloed? En
durfde de Engelsche regeering nu nog de woorden:
„rechtvaardigdheid” en „billijkheid” op de lippen te nemen, waar zij
bezig was, met een goed gehuicheld komediespel het schandelijkste
onrecht te begaan?

„Neen,” zeiden de èchte, oude Voortrekkers, en zij schudden toornig

hunne grijze lokken; „wij willen geen militaire macht van Engeland,
en wij dulden ze evenmin.”

Onmiddellijk beantwoordde de Volksraad het schrijven van den

Engelschen gouverneur in een stuk, even ernstig als waardig.

„Wij vermeenen,” zoo schreven de Boeren, „dat beide, Hare

Majesteit en Uwe Excellentie omtrent ons, onze aanspraak op het
recht van onafhankelijkheid en het recht, hetwelk wij tot het land
hebben, door ons geoccupeerd wordende, [199]verkeerd zijt
onderricht. Wij zijn van geboorte Hollandsche Afrikaanders. Dadelijk
nadat wij Harer Majesteits grondgebied in Zuid-Afrika hebben
verlaten, hebben wij onze onafhankelijkheid gepubliceerd, en van
dien tijd af tot op dit oogenblik hebben wij als een onafhankelijk Volk
gehandeld, ons zelven volgens onze eigene wetten geregeerd, en
gevolgelijk opgehouden, Britsche onderdanen te zijn. Het door ons
bewoond wordende land hebben wij wettig verkregen, en het is nooit
tot op dit oogenblik een Britsche provincie of kolonie geweest, en
niettegenstaande Uwer Excellentie’s herhaalde mededeelingen, dat
wij Britsche onderdanen en kolonisten zijn, moeten wij beweren, dat
wij volgens alle rechten van beschaafde natiën nóch het een nóch
het ander zijn. En verder bedanken wij voor Harer Majesteit’s
militaire macht. Wij hebben vrede met alle natiën, en wij hebben
geen bescherming noodig.”

Dit was ronde, duidelijke, Oud-Hollandsche taal. En had de

Engelsche wolf niet zoo’n honger gehad, dan had hij ’t er misschien
bij laten zitten.

Doch nù was er geen denken aan.

Geen twee maanden later (1841) verscheen een nieuw dokument

van den Kaapschen gouverneur, luidende: „Aangezien de Volksraad
der Emigranten-Boeren, nu wonende te Port-Natal en aangrenzend
gebied, ons hebben bekend gemaakt, dat zij hadden opgehouden,
Britsche onderdanen te zijn, zoo proclameeren wij, dat die
onafhankelijkheid in geenen deele zal worden erkend; dat de
bewoners onderdanen en kolonisten zijn van Groot-Brittanje, en dat
wij onverwijld militair bezit van Natal zullen nemen, door derwaarts
eene afdeeling te zenden van Harer Majesteits troepen.”

Maar nu barstte de verontwaardiging bij de Boeren los, en zij

antwoorden: „Wij weten, dat er een God leeft, Die hemel en aarde
regeert, en Die Machtig en gewillig is, om den verongelijkte, hoewel
zwakke, tegen geweldenaars te beschermen. Op hem en op de
rechtvaardigheid onzer zaak verlaten wij ons, en zoo het Zijn wil is,
dat eene algeheele verwoesting worde gebracht over ons, onze
vrouwen en kinderen, en alles, wat wij hebben of bezitten, zullen wij
onderworpen zijn, en erkennen, zulks bij Hèm te hebben verdiend
maar niet bij de mènschen. Wij zijn bekend met de macht van Groot-
Brittanje, en het is ons doelwit geenszins, om die macht te
trotseeren, doch wij kunnen te gelijkertijd evenmin toelaten, dat
geweld inplaats van recht [200]over ons zou zegevieren, zonder dat
wij al onze pogingen zullen hebben aangewend, om zoodanig
geweld tegen te gaan.”

De gouverneur van de Kaapkolonie glimlachte even, toen hij dit

schrijven las, en gaf onmiddellijk bevel aan majoor Smith, om zijn
kamp in Pondo-land op te breken en in ijlmarschen op Natal aan te
trekken.

Aan zoo’n tocht, met een trein van wagens en kanonnen, waren
groote moeilijkheden verbonden, doch majoor Smith kwam alle
zwarigheden te boven, en was in zeven weken tijds tot de Natalbaai
doorgedrongen.

De Boeren waren door die plotselinge nadering inderdaad verrast,

en zelfs hun kundige generaal Pretorius had niet vermoed, dat de
vijand van dièn kant zou gekomen zijn.
De Engelsche majoor maakte intusschen van deze verrassing
gebruik, om op eenigen afstand van de havenplaats Durban—in den
vorm van een driehoek—zijn kamp op te slaan. Op elk punt werd
een kanon geplant, en terwijl de vlag der Boeren werd neergehaald,
wapperde de Engelsche hoog in de lucht.

Nu had de majoor de goedheid, om aan de Boeren een termijn van

vijftien dagen toe te staan voor hunne onderwerping. Anders zouden
zij als muiters worden beschouwd en de volle gestrengheid der wet
ondervinden.

Bijna terzelfder tijd brachten de brik „Pilot” en de schoener

„Mazeppa” nog twee kanonnen met eene groote hoeveelheid
mondbehoeften en ammunitie, en aan een zandigen uithoek bij
Durban, de „Point” genoemd, werd het aangebrachte opgeslagen.
Majoor Smith plaatste er een wacht naast van een sergeant en
vijfentwintig man, stak vervolgens zijn fijnste sigaar op, en zeide
vergenoegd tot zijn officieren: „Nu zullen jelui eens zien, hoe gauw
die koppige Boeren om genade zullen smeeken!”

Maar de Boeren liepen niet hard; ten minste niet, om genade te

smeeken.

Wel was er onder de Afrikaansche Boeren kaf onder het koren,

wijfelaars en wankelmoedigen, voornamelijk schuilende onder de
Emigranten, die pas een jaar geleden, nìet om de staatkundige
vrijheid maar om een ruimer stuk brood, uit de Kaapkolonie waren
gekomen, doch onder de echte Voortrekkers, den kern der
bevolking, was geen weifelaar.

Oogenblikkelijk riep de Volksraad alle beschikbare manschappen op,

en als een dreigende donderwolk legerde zich [201]Pretorius met zijn
ruiters, waarbij zich Teunis de leeuwenjager, Tijs de Jong, de twee
zonen van Gert Kloppers en de beide zonen van Barend Jansen
bevonden, op drie mijlen afstands van het Engelsche kamp.

Pretorius begon de vijandelijkheden met de ossen der Engelschen

weg te nemen, doch majoor Smith glimlachte, toen hij dit hoorde.

„Laat die domme boeren maar begaan,” zeide hij. „Wij krijgen de
ossen terug, en de Boeren toe.”

Reeds den volgenden nacht zou dit kunststuk worden uitgevoerd.

In het holle van den nacht brak de majoor met zijn manschappen en
twee kanonnen op, om het Boerenlager bij verrassing te nemen, en
om zóó—met éénen slag—aan de zoogenaamde muiterij een einde
te maken.

Het was een stille, liefelijke nacht. Fluisterend gaven de officieren de

kommando’s. Niets werd gehoord dan de dreunende stap der
infanterie, de gedempte hoefslag van het paard in het lange gras,
het gekraak der kanonwagens, de kreet van een wilden baviaan en
het ruischen van den wind in het loover van het woud. Slechts dit
woud scheidde nog de snel avanceerende Engelschen van het lager
der Boeren.

Dat lager lag in de diepste rust. Snelvoetige Zoeloekaffers brachten

den majoor de welkome tijding.

„Ja, zoo zijn de Boeren,” dacht de majoor; „dom—oliedom!”

„Tegen de dikhuidige, met vet en traan ingesmeerde kaffers zijn ze

wel bestand, maar het vechten tegen den Engelschman is toch nog
iets anders—dat zullen ze van nacht gewaar worden!”

„Voorwaarts, jongens,” zeide Smith; „gauw door dit bosch heen, en

dan het Boerenkamp genomen! Ge laat niet éénen Boer ontsnappen
—ik moet ze allemaal hebben—de verrassing zal volkomen zijn—
voorwaarts!”

Maar waarom deinzen de soldaten plotseling achteruit, alsof zij op

vergiftige slangen hebben getrapt? Waarom slaan de ossen, voor de
kanonwagens gespannen, wild op de vlucht? Waarom springt de
majoor met uitgetrokken sabel, vloekend en dreigend, voor het front
zijner wankelende gelederen?

Waarom?—maar ge behoeft het niet te vragen. Door het duister van

den nacht ziet ge den vuurstraal glippen uit het lange roer der
Boeren, die achter het geboomte in hinderlaag [202]liggend, den
vijand hebben opgewacht, totdat hij onder schot zou komen.

Majoor Smith had het wel bij het rechte eind gehad, dat de
verrassing volkomen zou zijn, doch zij was niet aan den kant der
Boeren.

Met huiveringwekkende juistheid sloegen de kogels in de Engelsche

gelederen, en de verwarring werd algemeen. Al sterker drongen de
Boeren op. „Hier heen!” riep Dirk Kloppers met luide stem; „dáár zijn
de kanonnen!” In een stouten aanloop werden ze genomen, doch
Kloppers viel en kleurde met zijn heldenbloed den grond van Natal.

Majoor Smith begon intusschen te begrijpen, wat voor vleesch hij in

de kuip had. Met het overschot van zijn gehavend legertje vluchtte
hij naar zijn verlaten kamp, woedend, dat die „domme” Boeren hem
te gauw waren afgeweest.

Maar de voortvarende Pretorius liet er geen gras over groeien.

„Kom,” zeide hij tot zijn mannen, „die levensmiddelen en die
ammunitie daar aan de „Point” kunnen wij gebruiken.”
Met honderd Boeren trok hij naar de „Point”, waar de sergeant met
zijn vijfentwintig soldaten nog steeds de wacht hield.

„Geef u over,” liet Pretorius aan den sergeant zeggen.

„Neen,” antwoordde de sergeant, „dat doe ik niet.”

„En waarom niet?” liet Pretorius vragen.

„Omdat zulks tegen de eer van Engeland is,” antwoordde de

sergeant.

„Maar dan word jij met al je soldaten dood geschoten,” liet Pretorius
zeggen.

„Dat hindert niet; dan is de eer van Engeland gered,” antwoordde de

sergeant, „en wij schieten ook niet met erwten.”

Nu moesten de Boeren al weer aan ’t vechten, maar toen zij twee

soldaten hadden gewond en twee andere doodgeschoten, zeide de
sergeant: „Zie zoo; nu is aan de eer voldaan,” en hij gaf zich over.

Een rijke buit aan levensmiddelen en ammunitie viel de Boeren in

handen, en terwijl zij wagenvrachten vol goederen doorzonden naar
Pieter-Maritzburg, hun hoofdstad, was de ammunitie zeer geschikt,
om majoor Smith uit zijn eigene kanonnen te bestoken.

Tevens legde Pretorius beslag op de schepen de „Pilot,” en de

„Mazeppa,” en nogmaals ging de vlag der Boeren zegevierend naar
de steng.

Van alle kanten werd majoor Smith nu door de Boeren

[203]ingesloten, maar hij liet hooge, aarden verschansingen
opwerpen, en dekte zich daarachter als een bunzing in zijn hol.
Zoo doende was hij beveiligd tegen het vuur der Boeren, maar
Pretorius zeide: „Wij zullen den bunzing door den honger uit zijn hol
drijven.”

Smith lachte, toen hij dit hoorde, maar de mondvoorraad begon toch
allengs te slinken.

Toen kwam een Engelsch koopman in Durban op de gedachte, om

zijne in ’t nauw komende landgenooten te helpen, en hij trachtte een
koppel ossen het kamp binnen te smokkelen. Doch de belegeraars
roken lont, en de list mislukte. En om ook voor het vervolg van hen
geen last te hebben, liet Pretorius de Engelsche ingezetenen van
Durban naar Pieter-Maritzburg verhuizen en legde beslag op hun
goed. Nu begon het meenens te worden; majoor Smith lachte niet
meer.

Al kleiner werden de porties gedroogd paardenvleesch, en al brakker

werd het water uit de gegraven put.

Wel deden de Engelschen verscheidene wanhopige uitvallen, om

zich door den waakzamen vijand heen te slaan, doch telkenmale
werden zij met bebloede koppen naar huis terug gestuurd.

Doch in dezen grooten nood daagde er redding op in de gedaante

van een jongen Engelschman, met name Richard King. „Ik red het
Kamp,” zeide hij, en—hij kreeg het gedaan.

De waakzaamheid der Boeren verschalkend, wist hij tusschen hunne

schildwachten door te sluipen, en voorzien van dépêches van
majoor Smith, aanvaardde hij een tocht van over de vierhonderd
mijlen, om die dépêches te overhandigen aan den bevelhebber der
Engelsche troepen in Grahamstown.
Door volle rivieren en langs stroopende Kafferbenden moest hij
heen, doch niets en niemand kon den taaien en onverschrokken
Engelschman keeren. In nauwelijks negen dagen volbracht hij den
gevaarvollen tocht en meldde zich, hongerig en afgebeuld, aan bij
den Engelschen generaal.

Onmiddellijk werd een afdeeling grenadiers met de „Conch” naar

Natal verscheept, gevolgd door alle beschikbare troepen op het
oorlogsschip de „Southampton”.

Een dag voor de „Southampton” liet de „Conch” het anker vallen op

de reede van Port-Natal, en den volgenden nacht verkondigden de
hoog opstijgende Engelsche vuurpijlen aan majoor Smith, dat de
hulp nabij was. [204]

J. A. Cloete, een geboren Afrikaander, doch kolonel in Engelschen

dienst, mag aanspraak maken op de eer en—de schande, Engeland
aan Natal te hebben geholpen.

Op Zondag 26 Juni 1842 bewerkstelligde hij de landing der troepen.

Met bange zorgen op het schrandere voorhoofd snelde Pretorius,
het beleg van het Engelsche kamp opbrekend, naar de Baai, om die
landing te keeren.

Doch te vergeefs was de moed en de doodsverachting, waarmede

zijn Boeren streden!

De troepen waren volkomen gedekt door het vèr dragend geschut

der „Southampton”, en de ammunitie der Boeren raakte op. Afgemat
en totaal uitgeput trokken zij zich terug. Toorn, smart en droefheid
spraken uit hun oogen.

Majoor Smith was ontzet, en donkerder dan ooit was de

staatkundige hemel.