PHILIPPE BERNES-LASSERRE, Johannesburg | Monday
SOUTH Africa’s negotiated transition from apartheid to a multi-racial democracy still draws peacemakers from conflict zones: such as Israelis and Palestinians in the past week and politicians from Northern Ireland before them.
“We came here to listen to the great experience in South Africa. You have inspired us,” Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said Friday after three days of talks with Israeli moderates.
Erekat had led a delegation into talks with an Israeli peace team headed by Labour Party former minister Yossi Beilin.
They gathered at Spier River Estate near Cape Town with South Africans who negotiated the way to their country’s first majority-rule elections in 1994.
Five years ago, similar informal talks at Arniston east of Cape Town brought together parties on either side of the Northern Ireland divide.
And Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein – the political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), came back in October during an impasse over disarmament.
“We have a duty to listen and try to replicate what you have done here back home in Ireland,” Adams then said. The IRA began to disarm 20 days later.
Few observers expect any direct impact from last week’s “presidential retreat” hosted by President Thabo Mbeki on the conflict in the Middle East.
Yet seven years after the end of white minority rule, foreign politicians still seek to understand South Africa’s transition — a process which Allister Sparks, a journalist and writer of reference on the critical years, summed up thus: “An authoritarian country with no history or experience of interracial dialogue had engaged in… a ‘gigantic ongoing seminar’ on South Africa’s future. And it had reached concurrence. People as far apart as the Communist Party and the old guard of the National Party had agreed on the essential shape of that future.”
What outsiders appear to gain from talking to those who forged today’s South Africa is less a “miracle solution” or a specific approach than an understanding of factors lacking in other conflicts.
“The obvious thing in South Africa, and this might be of interest to people in conflict situations, is that both sides realized they can’t win by making war,” political analyst Harald Pakendorf said.
“Fortunately, we also had the kind of leadership that was prepared to take a huge step, (Nelson) Mandela and (current President Thabo) Mbeki on one side, and (the last white leader Frederick W.) De Klerk at the right moment,” he said.
The laborious, halting process of negotiations at Codesa (the Convention for a Democratic South Africa), despite setbacks and violence that sparked fears of civil war, was marked by perseverance by all who took part.
As Sparks recorded, once Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) and De Klerk’s National Party (NP) had agreed on a step, the acts of extremists on either side served only to isolate them unless they moved towards consensus.
A vital factor was trust between key individuals, exemplified in the personal contact between chief negotiators Cyril Ramaphosa for the ANC and Roelf Meyer of the NP, who then came under flak from conservatives outside the inner cabinet circle for making what they saw as too many concessions.
Meyer, who was at Spier River this week, on Sunday said that the trust mattered most.
He had tough words for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, whose unwillingness to negotiate he likened to right-wing elements within the apartheid regime.
“The current (Israeli) government has a similar attitude to that taken by right wingers (in South Africa). That is why the peace process is not getting off the ground,” he said.
“Trust not only from the people on the other side that you are dealing with, but also from within your own group is a crucially important aspect,” he said.
Such trust should be brought to bear elsewhere, Meyer added. “The facts may be different, but the way of solving it remains the same.
“That is why we can share the experience we had in negotiating South Africa’s transition to democracy with other conflict areas in the world.”
While Meyer considered an impartial third-party broker important, he said he soon learned to trust Ramaphosa.
“It was a continual process which we have shared with one another.”
The two men maintained their close relationship even when negotiations were officially broken off, to bring the discussion back on the rails, and were known during the last, delicate meetings for leaving the main forum together to tackle the thorniest issues.
“A negotiated peace should never be seen in terms of winners and losers. It should always be a win-win situation,” Meyer said. – AFP