Everyday peace and youth agency in Zimbabwe: Grassroots peacebuilding practices among the youths in Harare and Bulawayo
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.64754/rtzq1x61Keywords:
Everyday peace; youth agency; grassroots peacebuilding &social media.Abstract
Zimbabwean youth are frequently portrayed as instruments of political violence, obscuring the everyday practices through which they negotiate division and sustain coexistence. This study examines how young people enact peace amid political polarisation, economic precarity and unresolved historical violence in Highfield, Harare, and Entumbane, Bulawayo. Grounded in everyday peace theory, positive peace and the peace–development nexus, it employs an interpretivist comparative case study design. Qualitative evidence was generated through focus group discussions, key informant interviews and sense-making workshops involving 64 purposively selected participants: 16 former ZANU PF Youth League members aged over 35, 16 current members, 12 workshop participants and 20 institutional informants representing government, political parties, civil society, faith-based organisations and regional bodies. Reflexive thematic analysis identifies interconnected practices of livelihood protection, inter-party coexistence, sport and artistic engagement, substance-abuse prevention, digital peace communication, disability inclusion and faith-based trust-building. These practices create spaces for negotiating difference and preventing conflict escalation, yet remain constrained by partisan resource allocation, economic insecurity, surveillance, inaccessible facilities, adult-dominated decision-making and tokenistic participation. Results reveal how everyday peace is differently conditioned by political mobilisation and livelihood pressures in Highfield and the unresolved legacy of Gukurahundi in Entumbane. Further, locally sustained coexistence does not necessarily constitute reconciliation or positive peace: practices that reduce immediate tensions may simultaneously accommodate unequal power relations. The study advances an understanding of youth agency as relational, politically situated and capable of reproducing as well as contesting exclusion. It challenges reductive perpetrator–peacebuilder binaries and demonstrates why grassroots peacebuilding cannot be assessed independently of the structures governing participation, livelihoods and historical recognition. Sustainable peace requires protected civic spaces, equitable opportunities, meaningful youth decision-making authority and credible survivor-centred processes of truth, memorialisation and restorative justice, particularly in communities where historical grievances remain unresolved and institutional trust remains fragile.References
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