Issued by: Truth and Reconciliation Commission
DUBLIN - South Africa's political settlement involved "costly" compromises, and a suspension of armed struggle was achieved only after negotiations began, Dr Alex Boraine, vice chairperson of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission told an Irish conference on reconciliation today (Monday).
Addressing a summer school at the Glentree Centre for Reconciliation, near Dublin, Dr Boraine said that in South Africa "it was through negotiation rather than prior to negotiation" that the end of the ANC's armed struggle was achieved. Peace efforts in Northern Ireland have been dogged by disagreement between the British Government and Irish nationalists over similar issues.
A verbatim extract from the relevant section of his address follows:
"Many people both within South Africa and beyond its borders have described this transition as nothing short of a miracle. But the miracle didn't drop out of the sky. It had to be worked for, argued over and costly decisions involving compromise on both sides had to be made, the most important of which was that neither side could win through force of arms or violence.
"The State could not suppress the resistance to its system of apartheid, nor could the liberation movements overthrow the State through force. The stalemate had to be resolved and the only way forward was negotiation politics. This is a fairly well-known process and I won't develop it.
"However, one major point must be made: the State first demanded that liberation forces should surrender their arms and their arms caches and commit themselves to constitutional means of resolving the conflict. The liberation forces, however, didn't trust the regime and refused to do this. It was only when the negotiations started and people from both sides stared, and sometimes glared, at each other across a table that it was made possible by agreement for the armed struggle of the ANC in particular to be suspended.
"In other words it was through negotiation rather than prior to negotiation that this decisive step was taken."
(The full text of the address is available from the Media Office of the TRC, telephone Cape Town 24-5161.)
26 August 1996