Intercultural Conflict and Conflict Management in South Africa as Depicted in Indigenous African Literary Texts

Conflicts are inevitable. They can be prevented on some occasions, managed on others, but resolved only if the term conflict is taken to mean the satisfaction of apparent demands rather than the total eradication of underlying sentiments. Within the context of South Africa and Nigeria, two nations characterised by a mix of reputations, the understanding of the concepts of conflict prevention, conflict management and conflict transformation is pertinent to courting peace and harmony among the different groups of people. For one, conflict resolution opportunities restore our humanness and avowed commitment to the larger society. This is premised against the backdrop that conflict is both an intrinsic and inevitable part of human existence involving the pursuit of incompatible interests and goals by parties. This paper attempts the development of a general framework for understanding the different concepts of conflict. The paper concludes by admitting that conflict resolution has less to do with removing conflict per se, but evolving an appropriate option for nipping it in the bud before it degenerates into a crisis. Conflict resolution therefore becomes the harbinger of our social reconstruction and the criterion for measuring the sanity and conformity of social systems

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Teaching mindful intercultural conflict management

Crossing Cultures ◽

10.4324/9780203218693-24 ◽

2004 ◽

pp. 273-288

Keyword(s):

Conflict Management ◽

Intercultural Conflict

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Lineages of Hope and Despair

Dreaming of Freedom in South Africa ◽

10.3366/edinburgh/9781474430210.003.0002 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 8-40

Author(s):

David Johnson

Keyword(s):

South Africa ◽

South African ◽

Political Discourse ◽

Literary Texts ◽

Bill Of Rights ◽

Promised Land ◽

Political Journalism ◽

Native Policy

Literary and political expressions of the liberal dream of freedom from the 1880s to the 1970s are analysed in the opening chapter. The liberal dream’s lineage in political discourse is analysed in Cecil John Rhodes’s dreams of unifying South Africa in the 1890s; Olive Schreiner’s political journalism from the 1880s to the 1910s; the ANC’s Bill of Rights of 1923; H. Selby Msimang’s pamphlet The Crisis (1936); R. F. A. Hoernlé’s lectures South African Native Policy and the Liberal Spirit (1939); the ANC’s African Claims in South Africa (1943); the ANC’s Freedom Charter (1955); and the Liberal Party’s Blueprint for South Africa (1958). In juxtaposition with these political texts, the following literary texts articulating the liberal dream of freedom are analysed: Olive Schreiner’s Dreams (1890); J. A. D. Smith’s The Great Southern Revolution (1893); Archibald Lamont’s South Africa in Mars (1923); George Heaton Nicholls’s Bayete! (1923); S. E. K. Mqhayi’s U-Don Jadu (1929); Arthur Keppel-Jones’s When Smuts Goes (1947); Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country (1948); Lewis Sowden’s Tomorrow’s Comet (1951); Garry Allighan’s Verwoerd —The End (1961); Anthony Delius’s The Day Natal Took Off (1963); Karel Schoeman’s The Promised Land (1972); and Jordan Ngubane’s Ushaba: The Hurtle to Blood River (1974).

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