Abstract
Religion has been presented as a critical resource in both discourses on peacebuilding and development. However, as conflicts increase worldwide, the ambivalence of religion in peacebuilding has started to receive more attention, more importantly in relation to how this impedes the development agenda. For example, development actors are conscious of the fact that development takes place in a context where peace thrives. For quite a long time, an uncritical eye was paid to the significance of religion both in peacebuilding and development discourses. Religion was perceived as private practice which could not influence the public sphere. However, actors in both fields have come to realise how religion can be either a stabilising or a destabilising force for both peacebuilding and development. It becomes even more problematic to bring together the three largely independent but interdependent concepts. The purpose of this chapter, therefore, is to unpack the challenges at the intersection of religion, peacebuilding and development. The focus of the chapter is on how the three concepts influence each other and the challenges encountered thereof. It is incumbent upon this chapter to establish how these challenges may affect the realisation of the laid down Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This is largely desktop research which draws its data from global contexts and more specifically, African experiences.
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Notes
- 1.
In 1980, Robert Mugabe single-handedly pronounced peace and reconciliation in his victory speech after election victory that ended white minority rule.
- 2.
Gukurahundi is an ethnic genocide that was perpetrated on the Ndebele ethnic group from 1983 by the ZANU PF led government in Zimbabwe.
- 3.
AICs in Zimbabwe are also referred to as Mapositori (the term is derived from ‘Apostolic’).
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Manyonganise, M. (2023). Religion, Peacebuilding and Development in Africa: Challenges. In: Kilonzo, S.M., Chitando, E., Tarusarira, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Religion, Peacebuilding, and Development in Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36829-5_4
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