The International Centre of Nonviolence (ICON) launched the books of two Peacebuilding Programme alumnis at the ML Sultan Campus on Wednesday, 14 November 2018.

The two books which are focused on healing after a conflict were written by Dr Chrys Kiyala and Dr Dumisani Ngwenya and published by Springer in 2018.

In his book titled “Child soldiers and restorative justice: Participatory Action Research in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo”, Dr Kiyala’s book investigates the practice of child soldiering and it further looks at the integration of former child soldiers into society.

Dr Ngwenya’s book “Healing the wounds of Gukurahundi in Zimbabwe: A Participatory Action Research Project” is a culmination of an exploration of group-based self-healing approaches to the pain caused by the violence of Gukurahundi in the late 1980s.

Expressing his excitement on these achievements, Professor Geoffrey Harris, Research Professor: ICON said the two published books provided intense action research, a philosophy which is emphasised in the Programme.

“Our philosophy is that simply finding out about something does not change anything. In order to change something, you have to intervene in some way by taking action,” said Prof Harris.

“These books are versions of their PhDs, not just reproducing the PhD thesis and putting it into an accessible form. It has been a very long journey for them and I think the research findings are very valuable. Hopefully, they will make some sort of difference in their respective countries,” added Prof Harris.

Dr Sylvia Kaye, the Deputy Head of the Peacebuilding Programme, said the accomplishment of Dr Kiyala and Dr Ngwenya should be attributed to hard work and team effort.

“The thing that strikes me about an event like this is that we are subscribing to the theory that says ‘the honour of one, is an honour of all’. All the people in this room really have contributed, the support staff, the Deputy Dean and the Library,” said Dr Kaye.

Both Dr Kiyala and Dr Ngwenya were part of the first Peacebuilding Programme cohort in 2013.

Pictured: Attendees during the book launch.

Sandile Lukhozi