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It is assumed that fieldwork experiential learning on constraints of survey and ethnography research orientations in investigating armed conflict in Africa can contribute to the body of knowledge and help practitioners as well as other researchers working in difficult situations, such as war zones. More importantly, this paper aims to understand significant problems in Southern Africa, further methodological debates and produce new frontiers of knowledge in Southern African research studies. This paper will help other researchers who will be planning to conduct research in ongoing war-torn zones to be flexible with mixed research methodologies and data collection techniques that can ensure not only reliability and validity of the data but also, and more importantly, greater generalizability of this study.

This research in Cabo was initially guided by survey and ethnographic approaches. After facing constraints in their use in investigating the complexity of new wars, the author developed and shifted to interpretivism methodology as an alternative. It is essential that researchers be sensitive to the tensions between survey and ethnography methodologies and how they can be a mismatch to the research purpose.

The fieldwork experiences, using standardised survey and ethnography research orientations in Gabo, show that there is no generally appropriate blueprint of how to conduct research in violent conflicts. The valorised survey and ethnographic research strategies were not closely matched to facilitate understanding of the complexity of hybrid armed actors, indiscriminate and targeted violence which combined to militate against data generation. In the face of these problems, the author developed a new methodology, interpretivism, which embedded the descriptive, explanatory and predictive approaches. In tumultuous contexts, the standardised methodologies prioritize data generation more than critical thinking.

It is essential to study the nature of African armed conflicts by combining creativity and flexibility in the selection of research strategies. The constraints on peace research in war-torn situations in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique, have laid out the weaknesses of peacetime research methodologies, including survey research and ethnographic approaches. Now is the time to reassess fieldwork-based research particularly in violent settings.

The paper seeks to analyse the constellation of social structures, administrative institutions and hierarchies that sustain the exclusion of the San minority group in Zimbabwe, with a particular focus on how the European expansion in the eighteenth century, the modern state and private property owners have colluded to perpetuate exclusion from accessing forest as their natural habitat. The purpose of this paper is to therefore highlight the various abuses, including those social, administrative legislative frameworks that discriminate against the San minority and it advocates for actions the right to consultation and the right to free, prior and informed consent to proposed developments.

Through the modern ethnographic approach, data generation was guided by the principles of indigenous and decolonising research methodologies, which place emphasis on the importance of San people telling their own stories thereby shifting the power of a researcher to the indigenous participants. This is a qualitative study that gives prominence to the descriptions of experiences (phenomenology) and interpretations (hermeneutic) of their survival. The paper employed cultural ecology theoretical framework as a lens through which to see the San’s exclusion from forest resources and how this has tragically shifted their egalitarian lifestyle characterised by reciprocity, sharing and levelling to adaptation to the unfamiliar sedentary farming practices.

The technical implementation of forest boundary demarcation and forcing the San to join sedentary farming form part of the state’s territorialisation that excludes, restricts and disrupts the San minority from accessing forest products. The treatment of the minority group reveals not only the enormous authority of the state to transfer alienation to individuals and companies but also to legitimise the exclusion by establishing laws and policies that safeguard the interests of those favoured by the state. The San, who are already overly dominated by the social administrative structures of the Ndebele and Kalanga tribes, lack systematic and organised responses to their marginalisation.

The San community in Zimbabwe is under-researched and under-theorised particularly in relation to how historically formed postcolonial hierarchies of exclusion and marginalisation manifest themselves in contemporary resource governance. Less is known about how those that are powerful – government officials, private property owners and Kalanga/Ndebele tribes benefit more from the environmental resources than the powerless minority San, whose livelihoods depend on the primary natural resources. The unequal power relations have been demonstrated by the evictions of the minority from wildlife areas that were converted into game parks. The study reveals how indigenous San not only resist exclusion but also develop adaptable strategies through negotiations to improve their situation with social and administrative institutions.

This paper argues for the need to use multiple sources and methods that respond to research challenges presented by new forms of war. There are methodological constraints and contention on the superiority given to positivist and interpretivist research designs when doing fieldwork in war situations, hence there is a need to use integrated data generation techniques. The combined effect of severe limitations of movement for both the researcher and researched fragmented data because of polarized views about the causes of the war and unpredictable events that make information hard to come by militate against systematic, organised and robust data generation. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to make fieldwork researchers understand significant research problems unique to war zones.

This research was guided by the postmodernist mode of thought which challenges standardised research traditions. Fieldwork experiences in Cabo suggest the need to use the composite strategies that rely on the theoretical foundation of integrative and creative collection of data when doing research in violent settings.

The fieldwork experiences showed that the standardised, conventional and valorised positivist and ethnographic research strategies may not sufficiently facilitate understanding of the dynamics of war. There should not be firm rules, guidelines or regulations governing the actions of the researcher in conflict. As such, doing research in violent settings require reflexivity, flexibility and creativity in research strategies that respond to rapid changes. Research experiences in Mozambique show the need to use blended methods that include even less structured methodologies.

Fieldwork experiences in Cabo challenges researchers who cling to standardised research traditions which often hamper awareness of new postmodernist mode of thought applicable to war settings. It is essential to study the nature of African armed conflicts by combining creativity and flexibility in the selection of research strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to draw lessons from the important contributions of appreciative inquiry leadership in shaping the future people aspects to police leadership. A practice model of the Zimbabwe Republic Police Women Network (ZRP WN) illuminates how the future of policing in a context of mutually reinforcing confluence of increasing rate of crime, state decay, and economic decline is contingent upon shifting from the current preoccupation of “what works” to “what is important.”

Guided by the organising principles of the 4-D cycle involving discovery, dream, design and destiny/delivery, the appreciative inquiry leadership model illuminates a sustainable future-oriented policing.

The case study of ZRP WN reveals the resilience and adaptability of female police officers to policing challenges as they constantly designed people-oriented policing operations and activities.

Of importance is the exponential influence of communis and phronesis in rethinking and redesigning police roles in decades to come.

The ZRP WN, through its shared vision of values, gives us a leaf on how to respond to the ever-changing values of justice and police leadership altering contexts.