It is easier to build peace

good kid, mad city, mad world 

I was recently at a meeting where an important person advised another important person that "is easier to build peace than to prevent conflict". I nodded in earnest agreement, even murmuring to myself that this man is deep. But today, after watching the video below, of a woman talking about the election results in Ghana, I am wondering if that man's assertion is true, if it even makes sense. What do we really mean by peacebuilding? Can you build peace? When are we ever not in conflict? What is conflict prevention?

I guess at heart, I am wondering if I am or can ever be a true pacifist like civil rights activist Bayard Rustin. Can I revere Che, Malcolm, Toussaint, and Yaa Asantewaa and be a pacifist? Aren't these individuals defined by and great because of their militancy and relentless struggle "by all means necessary" in an unjust world?

To be clear, I am not necessarily concerned with the election and post election events in Ghana in this post. I am also not suggesting that this video reflects what is going on in Ghana as a whole; I do not know what is going on there and it is too easy to perpetuate the unstable African democracy stereotype so that is not at all my intention. I am simply interested in understanding what is being said in this particular video: what does this woman's testimony and experience on the elections say about peace, democracy, political parties, elections, and violence in general?

1. On peace. In observing the UN's Peacebuilding Commission, I am starting to realize that the word peace, for me, has become a catchphrase or a buzzword. It recently occurred to me that I do not know what peace means in the sense of a concrete realized idea (not peace as in a personal state of being). For a state, is peace simply the absence of conflict? Is it the absence of violent conflict - which is different from the absence of conflict? Is any country ever at peace?
2. Democracy is inherently fragile; democracy ANYWHERE, at any time, can be subverted. Whether or not this subversion occurs violently is the question. After what transpired with petitions of secession by some individuals in certain states after the US elections, I no longer buy into the African states have fragile democracies trite discourse. People are for majority rule when it is aligned with their affiliations and interests. The majority can also chose against their own best interest and can be misled. Democracy is just a difficult form of governance no one has mastered yet.
3. Political parties: my uncle reasoned that once people chose a political affiliation - for whatever reason - they tend to stick to it for good or bad, despite rationale.
4. Perhaps elections are delicate and at times violent events because in many cases, it is the only tangible access to democracy, power, and voice a lot of people have. Democracy comes once every 4, 5, 6 years for many people. How can we truly engage civil society in political power sharing everyday? Is that an aspiration we all really share?
5. In a deeper sense, knowing the intimate history of violence and liberation struggles for especially Black people - ancient conquest, to slave revolts, struggles for independence on the continent, coups and counter coups, Black liberation struggles post emancipation through the Civil Rights era to present day violent protests - I can not positively call myself a pacifist. Although I write about peace, anti-violence, and anti-war efforts, I concede to cases when violence has been instrumental (though not the only means) to subvert oppression, power, and violence. In a perfect world, I would be a pacifist, indefinitely. But I live in a city and world especially fatal to my kind and to just mankind in general. Frederick Douglas's famous assertion especially rings true:
    
   “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
   
   But even this may be shortsighted. It's a negotiation I don't have a clear insight on yet.