60 years after the UN Convention - Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation

34 development dialogue december 2008 – revisiting the heart of darkness
it is an ever-present, usually implicit, threat (cf. Benjamin 1980: 188).
Violence therefore is a central concern of any discussion on ethics
(ibid: 179).
Power relations and dominance occupy a central place in the following
considerations. However, it should be noted that violence is not
inserted into such vertical frameworks in all cases. Rather, as noted
by Foster, Haupt and de Beer (2005: 60-2) one may usefully distinguish
between four forms of ‘political violence’: ‘state-led’, administered
and controlled by bureaucratic state organs; ‘state-supportive’,
perpetrated ‘by oppressed people in support of the state’, as happened
frequently in South Africa during the 1980s and early 1990s, for example
by homeland security forces; ‘bidirectional’, ‘on behalf of the
oppressed people’, including specifi cally liberation organisations carrying
on armed struggle; and ‘lateral or horizontal violence – between
and among oppressed people’, frequently seen as spontaneous
and often – erroneously – considered irrational, while more recent
research has demonstrated defi nite patterns of group behaviour to
be completely rational within a specifi c framework (Haupt and de
Beer 2005: 80-2). With particular reference to pre-1994 South Africa,
this adds up to a vista of ‘multi-directional or multi-sided violence’
(ibid: 60). This conceptualisation underscores the complexity inherent
particularly, but certainly not exclusively, in the South African
paradigm, as well as the ambiguity that almost inevitably goes with
such complexity. Be it noted that none of this yet includes forms of
violence dubbed, for some reason or other, non-political.
Even though the interpersonal aspect is never quite absent from notions
primarily concerned with violence in a widely understood fi eld
of politics, they may usefully be contrasted with concepts of violence
focusing on interpersonal relationships. Thus, Jon Abbink describes
‘inter-personal violence’ as having ‘four minimally defi ning elements:
the “contested” use of damaging physical force against other humans, with
possibly fatal consequences and with purposeful humiliation of other
humans. Usually, the use of force – or its threat – is preemptive and
aimed at gaining dominance over others. This is eff ected by physically
and symbolically “communicating” these intentions and threats to
others’ (Abbink 2000: xi).
Here, the feature of contestation points to an agonistic or competitive
dimension of violence: It contains an element of struggle over goals
or objects, as well as over superiority and precedence. Again, violence
does not mean just any form of competition. Rather, violent behaviour
would denote in the fi rst place such competitive action that is apt