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Exploring transitional justice options for Zimbabwe
Full text linkSubmitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Public Administration – Peace Studies, Durban University of Technology, Durban, South Africa, 2017.Zimbabwe is in dire need of wholesale reform. Gross human rights violations which date back to the pre-colonial period could have been abated in 1980 when the magnanimous policy of national reconciliation promised a new start. The watershed opportunity was, however, lost mainly because no deliberate efforts were made to account for the wrongs of the past in order to start afresh. The result was that Zimbabwe won the independence, but peace remained elusive. This is evidenced in the continued instability, insecurity and uncertainty.
The non-retributive pledge had inherent weaknesses; it lacked inclusive participation, hence, no broad ownership. Simply drawing a line between the wounded past and the present, meant burying the past without the prerequisite rituals bent on ensuring non-recurrence. The futility of this blanket amnesty is evident in the sustained legacy of gross human rights abuses and impunity.
Political violence has been institutionalised through politicisation of all aspects of life. This research is guided by Lederach’s reconciliation theory which uses Psalms 85:10 to emphasise the importance of commitment in converging the seemingly divergent aspects of truth, peace, justice and mercy into a ‘meeting place’ called reconciliation. Using a mixed methods approach, this research established that the invariably top-bottom approaches massage the symptoms rather than address the root causes of conflicts. The victims’ agitations for revenge and retribution prompted me to design action research processes aimed at engaging the research participants in interactive activities.
The action research component aimed at sensitising participants to the merits of letting go of the burdens of the past, and to use scars as reminders of hope and not victimhood. The issues of forgiveness without apology, compensation or even remorse were contentious. However, through give-and-take concessions, the dialogue intervention yielded invaluable by-products such as maximisation of indigenous knowledge systems. Building on the participants’ input, sustainable healing and reconciliation can be achieved through deliberate truth-recovery, the right to justice, reparation, forgiveness and non-recurrence assurances.
The research outcomes show that Zimbabwe urgently needs a ‘hybrid’ transitional justice framework based on inclusive participation. Inclusivity is critical because politicians are not necessarily experts in peacebuilding. The yet to be implemented National Peace and Reconciliation Commission can be used as a tool to seek public opinion on how to overcome the entrenched ‘fearology and militarism’ (Oberg 2016) ahead of the watershed 2018 general elections. Uncensored national debates can be used to gather information on the way forward. The multiple merits of Information Communication and Technology should be fully maximised in peacebuilding.
Transitional Justice: The Evolution of an Essential Component of Post-Conflict Peace Building Processes
Full text linkThe term transitional justice has become synonymous with contemporary post-conflict peacebuilding processes. The concept evolved from modest theoretical assumptions into distinctivemodels. The formal origins of the transitional justice concept can be traced to the 1990s, following the demise of the Eastern Communist bloc when nations experienced transition from autocratic to democratic rule. The roots of the concept can however be traced back to major peace settlements such as the Congress of Vienna (1815), the Paris Peace Settlement (1918) and the Nuremberg and Tokyo Trials after 1945. The major challenge it faced was acceptability and legitimacy; it was largely viewed as an instrument devised invariably to punish either the vanquished or the perceived perpetrators. This criticism may have informed the concept’s evolution from being a vindictive ‘victor’s justice’ seeker into defined frameworks such as criminal tribunals, commissions and courts. This paradigm shift was evidenced by the United Nations’ recognition of the framework and its deployment in Yugoslavia (1993), Rwanda (1994) and Sierra Leone (2002). Arguably, success story of these case studies’ motivated the formation of the International Criminal Court in 2003. The paper will underscore the importance of contexts in the choice of transitional options
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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