African Journal on Conflict Resolution - Volume 13, Issue 3, January 2013

This special issue of the African Journal on Conflict Resolution (AJCR) on the theme Then and now: Perspectives on conflict resolution in South Africa (in honour of H.W. van der Merwe) is unconventional in that most of the contributions are a combination of academic deliberation, historical overview and analysis, as well as personal reflections. Moreover, it is also unusual in having two main sections. The first contains a number of more academically oriented articles that reflect on the history of South Africa prior to the end of apartheid and the role that especially H.W. van der Merwe played as one of the earliest conflict resolution theorists and practitioners in South Africa, as well as a few reflections on the current state of South Africa and some prevailing concerns. That is followed by a number of personal tributes to H.W. van der Merwe as they relate to his role and influence in an historic period in South Africa's history, reflections that in some cases become a mixture of personal and theoretical contemplations and appreciations.

In the old South Africa, with its inhabitants divided into two worlds by an ideology-driven white minority, H.W. van der Merwe was one of the first white Afrikaners who took the risk of crossing the boundary which in the culture of his own group was upheld as divinely ordained. On account of the radical change in his socio-political convictions, and his resulting research and teaching, he was appointed as director of an institution aiming at improving intergroup relations through applied research and educational programmes. He also took the lead in founding an association for conflict intervention. His remarkable contribution to the anti-apartheid struggle and the eventual resolving of the white-black conflict was not only a structural one, however, but also an interrelated attitudinal one. His outreaching understanding and his courageous quest for justice and peace enabled him to bring adversaries together, and also to confront the unflinching guardians of apartheid. It behoves us, therefore, to celebrate his example and to emulate it in our current context. We may be grateful for the degree to which transition has already taken shape in the new South Africa, but so much remains to be done to minimise sociocultural distances between sectors of fellow-South Africans. H.W.'s legacy may indeed help us to respect 'them' and 'us' where appropriate, but also to promote an 'all of us' orientation as far as fellow-humanly possible.

In present-day South Africa we are daily confronted with individual or group scenes of violence in townships and 'shanty-towns' where people live in poverty. Frequently, it involves people clamouring for the redemption of the promises made to them by politicians prior to the first democratic election in 1994 - promises of a wonderful 'new South Africa' that would meet their needs. In reality, their common experience is of a housing shortage, poor education, few jobs and very little prospect of alleviating their profound poverty. It seems as if in our country violence has become the power of the powerless.

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It would, of course, be entirely misleading to give the impression that violence is a phenomenon created by the 'New South Africa', for under the previous government we experienced violence on an enormous scale, in particular state-sponsored violence, and structural violence. But it was not accompanied with promises that this would become better. At present it is this gap between the 'promised land' and harsh reality that to a large extent seems to fuel the violence.

This article explores the meaning of violence in South African society against the backdrop of its violent past. Using a perspective suggested by H.W. van de Merwe and Sue Williams in an article in 1987 - understanding violence as a form of communication - the article seeks to analyse how the persistence and scale of violence can be understood as a legacy of our past. This approach can also help foster spaces for more constructive engagement with those who resort to violence in the face of the society's failure to provide effective channels for more constructive communication.

This article is a personal account of my involvement with mediation and facilitation over the past 30 years.

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It does not purport to be a comprehensive or systematic account of the growing impact of these processes both in preventing and resolving conflict in our country and beyond. It therefore does not focus on organisations outside my own spheres of involvement, like the African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes and the Centre for Conflict Resolution, whose important contributions I readily acknowledge.

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The insights and experiences reflected in the piece nevertheless point to an ever widening application of the processes across a range of disciplines and tell something of the rich contribution they have made to making South Africa a better, and safer, place.

In South Africa the constitutional order brought about by the transition to democracy, and the subsequent policy and legislation frameworks, have enabled ordinary people to participate in governance and policy making. Yet, according to some studies, the importance of participation - agreed to by politicians, practised and promoted by academics - has yet to be translated into a lived reality at the local level. In this paper, I write about the debates on participation, its advantages, and disadvantages.

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This paper offers an additional resource to public participation practitioners and beneficiaries, aiding them in the use of negotiation, mediation, and generic conflict resolution approaches to resolve public participation stalemates, and in the process, to strengthen and legitimise those public participation processes. Drawing on the existing literature, I describe what works and why; I also point out the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches. Ultimately, the objective is to share the complementary nature of conflict resolution and public participation, and show how - if they are combined effectively - public participation can be enhanced.

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While I strongly believe that the literature supports my contention that conflict resolution principles and practices are useful for fair and equitable public participation, I do not have authoritative empirical evidence to state this as fact. Nonetheless, I believe that the 'best practices' outlined in the paper are useful and valuable tools and should be implemented as far as possible.

Hendrik W. van der Merwe (H.W.) died March 5, 2001. He was born June 24, 1929, in rural South Africa, about 130 miles east of Cape Town and he died on his farm near his birthplace. But he had travelled far in his life and helped bring his country with him. In the Foreword to his memoir, Peacemaking in South Africa: A life in conflict resolution, Nelson Mandela wrote about H.W.'s 'long journey from a rural conservative and Calvinist environment as an Afrikaner farm boy to the cosmopolitan, multicultural rainbow nation of the new South Africa'. Mandela continued, 'These memoirs tell the story of the gradual development of a Calvinist dissident to an anti-apartheid activist and a Quaker peacemaker whose religious commitment and academic insights enabled him to reach out to all sides of the conflict in South Africa'.

I met H.W. (as he was always called - sounding like 'Harvey' in English) in 1972 when I travelled from the university in Port Elizabeth to attend a three-day meeting organised by Dr Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert and a few other people including the Sonn brothers, Julian and Franklin (of whom Franklin later became our first post-1994 ambassador to Washington), to create the opportunity for progressive young (white) Afrikaners to meet and discuss issues with leaders of the so-called Coloured (brown) community.

'Today, with a democratic government in place, it is hard to remember how unpopular concepts such as negotiation and conflict resolution were even a decade ago.' H.W. van der Merwe, who wrote this in 2000 (110), was referring to the situation during the 1970s and 1980s in South Africa. The then South African government and the liberation movements both shared a common distrust of 'mediators' or peacemakers. The government had banned the liberation movements. Establishing contact or facilitating dialogue with these movements was not only illegal, it was treason. The liberation movements similarly rejected peacemaking. The reigning slogan was 'justice before peace'; and the dominant strategy non-collaboration and armed struggle. Would-be peacemakers, in their opinion, diluted their resolve to achieve victory.

H.W. van der Merwe can be considered one of the founding fathers of the conflict resolution field in South Africa. His role will always be that of the 'unsung hero'. True to his Quaker religious background, he did not publicise his efforts to build reconciliation across the apartheid divide in South Africa, and the quiet dialogue he fostered between Afrikaners in South Africa and the then exiled African National Congress (ANC). I first met him in 1990 in Washington, D.C., where I was immediately moved by this quiet but passionate man. I then had the opportunity to work with him in 1991 and to learn about and debate his many well-developed ideas surrounding peace and justice.

This is a personal narrative. As it unfolds, I weave in some qualities that I believe characterised H.W. van der Merwe and his work as a pioneer in the development of peace studies and conflict resolution in South Africa. It is also a reflection on my association with H.W. and the influence this association has had on my own amazing journey in the field of peace education and conflict resolution.