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Warner Brother's recent Invictus tells the story of the most consequential game of rugby in history, South Africa's defeat of New Zealand in the 1995 World Cup. The movie, starring Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela, also gives us a lens for viewing the potential of alternative diplomacy.
Rugby had been a White man's game, a symbol of the oppressive apartheid regime. The South African rugby team, the Springboks (gazelles), was all Afrikaners except for one Black. Yet President Nelson Mandela seized the event as an opportunity to unite a newly-founded nation.
"Tree Shaker," or "Rolihlahla" in Xhosa was the original name given to the world's most famous political prisoner by his parents. He was renamed the Anglo-Saxon "Nelson" at age 7 by a school teacher on his first day of class. In later life, Mandela smiled when he recalled that his people used his birth name to mean "troublemaker."
Mandela shook things up in the days leading up to the championship match by proudly wearing the Springboks' number 6 jersey. He also appealed to Black communities to cheer on the squad. The charismatic statesman mobilized his countryman towards a mutual goal and against a common (sports) adversary. The day after South Africa won the World Cup the Sowetan, a Black township paper, boasted the Xhosa word for "Our Springboks" in its headline: "Amabokoboko!"
Mandela's reconciliatory actions speak to contemporary efforts of Track II diplomacy, which distinguishes traditional mediation (Track I) from unofficial interaction between members of enemy groups or sovereign nations. This approach to diplomacy resolves conflicts by exploring alternative strategies of intervention such as athletic, artistic and cultural exchanges.
Vamik Volkan, a psychoanalyst and nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize 2005-2008, is a leader in Track II negotiations. Informal diplomacy is his expertise and he has been described as putting groups on the couch by viewing them as a shared mind and treating them with the methods of psychoanalysis.
Volkan, a Cypriot Turk, champions "psychopolitical dialogue" as a means of conflict resolution. This three-step process begins as facilitators travel to the location of a conflict to make a diagnosis of the situation between two groups. The team conducts extensive interviews with a range of people from both sides of the dispute including government officials, "average" adult citizens and children. These interviews aim to uncover shared feelings connected to the group's identity and their perceptions of the other group.
The second leg of psychopolitical diplomacy convenes rival factions in a neutral site for 4 days, several times a years over a period of years. An interdisciplinary team of diplomats, political scientists, historians, and clinicians redirects inflamed group emotion to creative forms of release such as therapeutic role-play. In some cases, symbolic objects are used to reenact the large-group conflict.
Such was the case in the Republic of Estonia, during talks between Russian and Estonian representatives in 1993 when facilitators helped participants create effigies that stood in for their enemies. Estonia had gained its independence from the Soviet Union two years previously and Volkan's team met with Parliamentarians and scholars from both countries to work through collective perceptions of humiliation and dominance. Participants spent hours role-playing in a game of Rabbit-Elephant and Volkan says, "The deadliness and rigidity of the negotiations became more playful.''
Such tools of statecraft enable communication and empathy. They also provide a self-reflexive setting where groups can examine their own hidden beliefs, particularly how members of large groups share certain mental images of history.
The third and final step of this diplomatic effort takes the team's findings to both the grassroots and official level in order to institutionalize peace. Psychological discoveries are used to inform real world problems such as economic and legal issues. These methods have lead to ameliorated tension between Russians and Estonians, Greeks and Turks, Georgians and South Ossetians.
Frequently with enemies there is too much malignant emotion in both parties, Volkan says, "too many psychological barriers. Without trying to deal with them first, a graceful and systematic diplomatic effort will not take place."
Mandela (aka Tree Shaker) has an extraordinary understanding of how to reach across societal trauma. Volkan has developed a solid theoretical grounding for it in the process described above, dubbed "The Tree Model." At its best, these psychopolitical techniques help representatives from opposing camps work-through collective injury and complicated mourning.
Next time we're considering statecraft between two sworn enemies, let's remember the fruitful trees and those who fiercely shook them!
For more on Vamik Volkan, see:
http://www.uvamagazine.org/features/article/putting_enemies_on_the_couch
http://www.virginia.edu/topnews/03_19_2004/volkan_vamik.html
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