Common wisdom says that getting a settlement among high-level negotiators at a bargaining table is the major difficulty in achieving peace. In reality, the biggest problem is often not across the table, but behind it. Peace does not “trickle down from above. It has to be seeded broadly and actively cultivated throughout a society from near the beginning of the transition.
One reason for the success of the South Africa talks is that the politicians who designed them were quicker than most to learn this. A bitter season of killings threatened the entire process less than a year after talks had started in 1990. After several months of fumbling, South African leaders in the major parties responded by establishing structures and strategies at local, regional, and national levels to address the threats to peace that faced every level of the bitterly divided country. They did this while the outcome of top-level talks still hung in a dicey balance, well before agreements were reached about the key issues driving the conflict.
The prospect of major change unleashes vast pent-up energies in a society. Human emotions, good and bad, are escalated. People desperate for change press hopefully forward with their dreams. Those who fear change or a repeat of past traumas raise shrill voices of warning. Those hungry for power grab what they can.
Political groups of every stripe raised their rhetoric in an effort to win support for their favored formulas. Radicals stepped up their activities. Incidences of threats, intimidation and violence increased. By early 1991, South Africans picked up newspapers at the end of many weekends to frightening news: multiple deaths in faction fighting in Cape Town, dozens killed in raids by local level mobs run by political goons in Natal province, white farmers killed in rural areas by intruders unknown; scores killed and wounded throughout the country in violence of unclear origins; police moving in armored vehicles against stone throwers, hundreds of demonstrators tear-gassed, attacked by dogs, and targeted with rubber bullets by police. It seemed the entire country could go up in flames while politicians sat in endless talks. I was shocked one Friday evening to realize that every bridge I passed en route to a friend’s house was guarded by heavily armed troops. “It’s war! I thought.
In this time a handful of black and white business and religious leaders got together and agreed on a strategy: They would convene a conference on the violence on their own joint auspices and invite the politicians to attend. The group was well-balanced, black and white. They knew and trusted each other. They had good connections to key political leaders. No one group would gain power or credibility by having the conference convened in their name. Politicians of all backgrounds accepted their invitation to a second conference held in June, 1991.
The National Peace Accord that resulted established the largest structure ever created in support of a peace process. A dozen Regional Committees were formed, made up of respected black and white leaders. A National Peace Committee made up of senior national politicians oversaw the Regional Committees. Dozens of Local Peace Committees were set up in hot areas. More than two thousand training workshops were held, most several days in length, to train people in skills for monitoring violence, negotiation, conflict analysis, and mediation. Hundreds of salaried staff and a far larger number of volunteers served as monitors for marches and demonstrations, as advocates on behalf of local community needs, as mediators to defuse local tension points, and as motivators for peace within their own communities. A media section conducted a media campaign advocating peace. Programmes in schools told stories of peace and trained youngsters in conflict resolution.
Key to the success of the National Peace Accord was that it immediately and directly addressed daily grievances that were outrageous to South African blacks. The conduct of South African security forces had for years been brutal. Even while peace talks were going on, white police were beating up and often killing black demonstrators. The Peace Accord included a first for the country: a Code of Conduct for the police and a process and structure jointly controlled by both sides to deal with alleged abuses. Community development funds also began to flow through the National Peace Accord to needy black communities.
As director of training of a conflict resolution organization, I sat with a number of civil society advisors on the training committee of that National Peace Accord structure. Half the committee were high-level politicians also deeply involved as negotiators in the national talks. I often wondered how they found time to meet several times a month over details of training conferences on negotiation and violence monitoring. But there they were.
Key political leaders on both sides saw that they could not single-handedly drive the country to peace. They made constant effort to root the process downwards and immediately address things that drove people to hopelessness. Though the politicians did the high-level talking, they took measures to bring certain practical results to all levels of the nation. Not next year, this month. This allowed hope and momentum for change to grow and grow.
What worked in South Africa will not all work elsewhere. But as we behold a rapidly sinking Israeli-Palestinian peace process, I wonder:
– Whether political leaders on both sides now see the limits of their present “trickle down peace approach and recognize that keeping a peace process alive requires providing immediate results to the people of both sides in at least a few carefully selected ways?
– Whether politicians on both sides would be open to rooting the peace process more deeply in the societies with additional layers of civil society leaders mandated to help address immediate needs on an urgent basis?
– Whether civil society leaders here would be willing to make the commitments that South Africans did to actively support the faltering peace process
– Whether leaders on both sides recognize how the bitter divisions in the other side damage the prospects for peace for everyone, and might be open to conversations about ways to reduce these internal divisions? This is a task which a mutual understanding would greatly assist.
– Whether the international community, which generously funded South Africa’s National Peace Accord after the South Africans created it, might step forward once again to support such a structure if one were created here?
Ron Kraybill was Training Advisor to the South African National Peace Accord 1993-95. Presently he is based in Jerusalem and Amman as Senior Advisor on Peacebuilding and Diplomacy for the American Friends Service Committee (Quakers).This abridged article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org. The full version can be found at: www.maannews.net/en.
