Barry Streek
Peacemaking in South Africa: A life in conflict resolution by HW van der Merwe (Tafelberg)
This book was nearly not completed because at the end of 1999 HW van der Merwe was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Yet with the help of two friends, fellow Quaker Candy Malherbe and former Cape Times deputy editor Gerald Shaw, he struggled on, and by January last year he had made “a remarkable recovery” and was able to do the final editing himself.
Thank goodness, because the book fills a significant gap in our understanding of how we were able to turn away from violent conflict and to democratic elections in 1994. Many factors and people contributed to that transformation, but the modest behind-the-scenes “peacemaker”, HW (as pronounced in Afrikaans), as he is known, was one of the first to attempt to build bridges between an apparently intransigent National Party government and the African National Congress.
Long before it became fashionable, he was travelling to Zambia to meet the ANC with the full knowledge of the security police.Way back in September 1984, he was meeting Nelson Mandela in prison, conveying direct greetings from Kenneth Kaunda and Thabo Mbeki, and then reporting on his discussions with the ANC and Mandela to the then minister of justice, Kobie Coetzee.
Some of the personal background is a little boring, but does explain how Van der Merwe became one of the few people both the NP and the ANC would talk to, and how he was able to help reduce tensions between the United Democratic Front and the Inkatha Freedom Party in KwaZulu-Natal. He was also able to reach out to Winnie Madikizela-Mandela when she was banished to Brandfort, delivering a sewing machine from South African Quakers to a project she had initiated. This had great symbolic significance in a town where the Quakers had helped Boer women 80 years previously in their struggle against British imperialism.
One may not be convinced that the mediation methods used by Van der Merwe and his colleagues at the then Centre for Intergroup Studies were always the best ones, and there are also some memory lapses, but they are are small blemishes in this fascinating and important book by an Afrikaans-speaking Quaker who made a real difference in the transformation of South Africa into a democratic state.