Bonface Beti
Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and what it is that you do?
“My name is Bonface Beti, and I am a citizen of Kenya. I call myself an artist-peacebuilder. Specifically, I use theatre as the language of peacebuilding with grassroots communities embroiled in conflict within Nairobi, Kenya, across Africa, and even globally. I’m a practitioner of different participatory approaches — mainly improvisational theatre, but I also work with Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed and indigenous African storytelling.
As a young person, I started doing theatre in Nairobi and, later, when I joined university, I volunteered for a peace organisation. It was started in Kenya in the ‘90s when the country was going through a political transition and moving from a single-party state to a multi-party democracy. Because of the nature of Kenyan ethno-political society, we started to experience ethnic conflicts, especially where different ethnic groups lived together. We were invited to come and work alongside these communities to create peacebuilding processes that integrated culture and theatre as a way of imagining how transformation could take place. That’s how I got my start!”
Could you describe for us the most emotionally-impactful creative project that you’ve worked on to date?
“Yeah, a recent example immediately comes to mind. In 2020, I was working with young people in the slums of Nairobi, in a place called Majengo. A friend of mine was working there, and she was running a project that was looking at the underlying drivers of violent extremism, various push and pull factors, in young people.
For context, this community has been, and remains, marginalised in Nairobi. Majengo is a place where gang violence is common, and young people join groups to protect themselves or attack other groups. Eventually, this violence led to the advent of more extreme terrorism. There was a lot of recruitment in the area, which led to securitisation by the national police who crashed down hard on the local community because a lot of people there had been linked to various terrorist attacks. This crackdown left severe psychological wounds in the community for many years to come.
Anyway, I was invited by my friend to run a workshop for the young people in the area using Theatre of the Oppressed including theatre games to explore and to look at the conflict within their community. I worked with a group of about 15 people. Over the course of the week, they eventually created their own scripted play which was presented to a group of audience members on the fifth and final day. It was fascinating to see the stories that came up: unemployment, gang violence, gang membership, poverty, etcetera. The play was also created in Sheng, which is the slang language combining Kiswahili and English in Nairobi’s urban centres. In informal settings, people often use that language as a language of resistance, you know? At the end, there was a moment when the audience members could come up and replace the actors on the stage. We had people come up and experiment with different endings to the story or basically rewrite the script. It was all very powerful.”
What is one piece of content that profoundly impacted the way you view and/or work in this field?
“Actually, my own story which brought me to the theatre world was very impactful. When I was a young person on the streets of Nairobi, this Kenyan theatre director and filmmaker approached me and wanted to make a film showcasing the plight of African children. I eventually became a member of their performance group which travelled around the world talking about peacebuilding while highlighting the stories of young people on the streets. As you can imagine, it’s one of the biggest challenges facing most African cities, right? Theatre was now being used as a kind of language to engage with us; we used to perform those plays and go directly back into the streets. However, eventually, the organisation became powerful enough to have a centre of their own where all of the young people they worked with could get a home. So, the stage was used to give us connection to ourselves and to our community. It allowed many of us to transition back into normal life; most of the young people were even reconnected back to their families. Many also ended up pursuing further education by going back to high school and even continuing on to university! Theatre gave most of us young people purpose and meaning. It became a part of the healing process in a big way. Imagine street kids. Nobody comes close to them on the streets, but now, people are coming and paying money to watch them perform.
I’m reminded of a story I read in a book by John Paul Lederach. It’s either in “The Moral imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace” or in “Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies.” Lederach was undergoing negotiations with people in Nepal, I think. It was a high-stakes issue with many politicians involved. For weeks, he spent a lot of time with these politicians doing negotiations, and they could never agree on anything; the issue remained unresolved, In the end, they decided to go back home and return to the negotiation table in two weeks on the condition that, suggested by Lederach, everyone bring along pictures of their grandchildren. When they came back in two weeks to the facilitation session, they didn’t start with traditional dialogue and mediation. Instead, they started out by sharing pictures and stories of their grandchildren with one another. They immediately bonded over stories of their grandchildren’s talents, achievements and aspirations. In the end, Lederach asked them what kind of future and country they wanted to leave for their children. That day, they successfully agreed upon a deal and signed a peace agreement.”
Finally, if you could give yourself one piece of advice 20 years ago, knowing what you know now, what would it be?
“The best way to deal with the underlying drivers of conflict is to truly understand issues of identity. To address something like historical trauma, for example, it’s important to deal with these issues of identity which are very non-logical in nature: fear, suspicion, and even perception of so-called “enemies.” To do this is to address aspects of the human experience that may not necessarily be addressed by using solely rational processes. Of course, rational processes like mediation, dialogue, and engagement are very critical. However, emotional experiences like trauma, fear, and the effects of historical division are essential components of every conflict. I believe the arts provide this very humanistic approach which is needed now more than ever.
How do we tap into our human selves in addition to the traditional rational methods of conflict transformation? I’ve been thinking a lot about this recently, especially regarding integrating the arts with policymaking. What can the arts do in terms of challenging or expanding ideas, for example, on climate change? On peace and conflict? On social complexity?”