Thank you very much for coming here this afternoon for this program. I'm Princeton Lyman, a senior advisor here at the U.S. Institute of Peace. And we're looking forward to really an extraordinary discussion about, as you see on the program, one-time miracle or exemplar, what are the lessons of Mandela's legacy and South Africa's transition for other countries. All of us, I think, who have had any connection with South Africa, were very pleased at the tremendous international attention at the time of the passing of Nelson Mandela to not only him personally, but to what he stood for, the legacy he created, and that South Africa still lives by today. But in all that wonderful discussion and tribute, I think there was a feeling that the relevance of South Africa to the rest of the world needs even for much further work, much further discussion, much more intensive effort. And we're very fortunate today to have with us visiting some extraordinary people and others, and you have bios on them. I won't go into it at great length, but many of you, I think, know Ambassador Rasul. Ambassador Rasul is a scholar, a political figure, governor of the Western Cape, a man of faith, an extraordinarily active ambassador, and a man who carries that understanding of legacy from South Africa to a number of other countries. Next to him is Mohamed Babaw, who has played a major role in the development of the South African Constitution, wrote the chapter on local government, and those of you who remember that time will remember that issues of state and local government were some of the most difficult issues in the Constitution, played a major role in the negotiation, has been very active subsequently, as I'll talk about all of them. And then my very good friend, Ralph Maier, we spent many, many hours together in South Africa, a man who was the principal negotiator for the government of FWD Clerk with the A and C and the others. In those extraordinary negotiations, Ralph Maier was not only a tremendous and wonderful negotiator, he was a man of great courage. He has been contributing, as Mohamed Babaw and others, to bringing the relevant lessons from South Africa to countries in many parts of the world, Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka, Bahrain, others that we will be talking about here. We're going to, I might say that I heard a much simpler view of the South African legacy from MacMaharaj. When I was leaving South Africa, I said to Mac, who was then the minister, I said, well, what's the future? How do you draw the lesson from this? He said, as long as we continue doing what we're doing, we'll be all right. And I said, well, what's that? He said, whenever we had a problem, we found a solution. I think it's not as simple as that, but we will get into it. But first, I want to ask Tim Phillips, who is a co-founder of Beyond Conflict, a very important organization that's sponsoring the visit of Mohamed Babaw and Ralph Maier. Tim, would you talk a little bit about Beyond Conflict and its visits and all good things? Well, first of all, thank you, Ambassador Lyman. It's my first opportunity today to meet the ambassador. And I had to thank him for introducing me to Ralph Maier. When he was ambassador to South Africa, we were doing this conference in Belfast in 1994 before the Good Friday peace process began. And who would have ever imagined in 1994 that just two or three years earlier that apartheid would have ended peacefully? And it struck us, we, the organizers, Wendy and others, that it would be important to bring the South Africans to Northern Ireland from both sides because of what they represented. And it was not easy in the beginning to reach out to Ralph Maier or Sarah Romaposa. And we had support from the US ambassador to Dublin, Gene Kennedy-Smith, and others. And they said, well, we'll reach out to my colleague and friend Princeton Lyman. And so here was this very busy US ambassador who took my phone call. I said, please, could you go to Minister Maier and Minister Romaposa and ask them to come to this conference? And he did. And when I was in Belfast three months later, the first person who responded was Rolf. And he was Minister of Constitutional Affairs. And I said, you know, this is long before email. And I said, I got this plain paper fax coming over the transom in which you agreed to attend. And I said, you know, other than the ambassador reaching out and asking you, why did you do it? You didn't know us. And he said, well, I called up Sarah Romaposa, and we both got the invitation. And he said, you know, nobody had ever asked us to come outside our country other than to get an honorary degree to talk about what we achieved. And to go to a place like Northern Ireland that's in the midst of a violent conflict was a moral responsibility. And so we both thought we had to come. And that visit in 1994 led to not only us doing over 20 initiatives in Northern Ireland, but Rolf and Cyril and many others playing a really active role both publicly and privately to help Northern Ireland think about peace. And I remember this moment at the conference when Jerry Adams and Martin McGinnis came up to me and said, thank you. They said, you know, for us to hear Rolf and the other South Africans who have become friends talk about what they achieved lists our conflict from being very provincial to being very important. And we take real sort of guidance and confidence in their process. And so I'll just say that over the last 22 years now, since Wendy and I co-founded this organization, it's been about sharing experience. It's been about taking people like Rolf and Mohammed in Ibrahim and sort of setting the table, pulling back as Americans and letting people like this or Richard Goldstone, who I'm happy to see here. We both turned gray, so I didn't recognize you right away.  But, you know, they share that experience. And I'll just end by saying that people often say, well, how can people in South Africa have anything to connect to our experience? You know, everybody who's been through trauma, through repression, conflict, or dictatorship, thinks their experience is unique, that nobody has suffered the way they have suffered. And when they hear people, we're compromised, wasn't in their language. We've actually reconciled in a real effective way and not something that seems very light, but that is deeply powerful. And that's been at the core of the South African experience that we've tried to bring around the world and what we're continuing to work on today. So with that, I want to thank the USIP and others. And, oh, one final thing, Ena, our executive director, wanted to point out, we now have a book called Beyond Conflict. If you go to Amazon, you can get it. Thank you. And I do want to point out that we are very privileged to have with us Richard and Nolene Goldstone. Anybody who knows South Africa knows Judge Richard Goldstone, the fantastic contribution he made. And, Nolene, we're very, very happy to see you here. Back in the US again, it's wonderful. We're going to make this a conversation for a while, and then we're going to open it up. And let me ask, if I can, to the panel, when we talk about the lessons of South Africa, the legacy, what are we talking about that's most relevant for other countries? Is it that it was a negotiated transformation rather than a wholesale civil war? Is it reconciliation? Or is it because out of it came a very strong democracy? What are the key lessons, or maybe all of them? Maybe Rolf, if I could ask you to start on that and then others to comment. I can start off by saying Mac was right. I can recall that during the process, Cyril and I developed this line between ourselves, which said, there's not a problem that we can't resolve. And I mean, that was serious. You can imagine how powerful that was in itself. Now I think I should start off by saying one of the most important lessons that we can convey, just the three of us who are sitting here, is that the process helped us to become friends from a position of complete animosity where we were literally enemies of each other. Just over 20 years ago, still. Into a position where we not only share a platform like this, but we do it, first of all, as friends. And that's an amazing lesson in itself. And of course, Madiba had a lot to do with that, the personality, the way in which he expressed himself. Everything he did, everything he did, since that day he walked out of prison, helped us to overcome our own shortcomings, our own misgivings, our own mistakes, but also our own mistrust of each other. And there are three things that I would like to point out, just for a start, to give a little bit of context and we can discuss the detail more. That I keep on thinking and I share this wherever we go. Mohammed and I are traveling the world as charity workers in conflict areas. And there are three things that I share in every place that we go and that is, I think the fundamental characteristics of principles, if you want, that helped us to really settle our conflict in South Africa, to overcome our problems. There were three things. The one was the fact that we did it on an inclusive basis. Now, inclusivity, meaning in this context, not only the fact that we had, at all given times, more than 20 parties at the table negotiating, but the fact that we helped each other to be part of the solution. And it was sometimes difficult and we had various mechanisms and whatever that helped us to do that, but I think the overarching principle in this regard was the one of inclusivity, bringing everybody together, not the one prescribing to the other, which is the natural tendons that you find in all conflicts because the one side always thinks they are right and the other side is wrong. And to overcome that and to realize that maybe I'm partly wrong and partly right and the other side is in the same position. That inclusive approach is the one thing. The other one is that we succeeded in building trust amongst each other from a position of complete mistrust, where we sort of hated each other. I never hated Muhammad, but I think he hated me. But the point is, as a result of the long history of racial division in South Africa, more than 300 years since the first white settlers arrived there, that obviously led to a long period of mistrust. How could you expect something different? And in this process, this relatively short process of just a few years, we succeeded in overcoming that and building trust between us. And Medeba was the key factor in helping us to lead us to building that trust. And I can assure you if we didn't have that level of trust between us, and I can speak from personal experience between Sotol and I, if we didn't have that level of trust, the process would have taken much, much longer to complete, if at all. And the third one is the fact that we made it our own problem. We didn't expect others to come and help us. We didn't have the Secretary General involved, or other multilateral institutions. We didn't have facilitators, and there were plenty of them that offered their services. Hacking up. And most of them, fortunately, the ANC, for different reasons than us at the time, said, no, sorry, we don't need your services. We trusted no one, and the ANC thought they could do it in any case themselves. So we didn't bring facilitators on board, but it was the right thing, because it means that we have made, that we have taken ownership of this problem, but also ownership of what we had to do in terms of resolving that. So it was ownership and owner responsibility. Let me stop there. Thank you. When Roth speaks of hundreds of years of an oppression system, and a later apartheid system, and in other societies, you have these long-term grievances, the context in which you were working. How did one move beyond that into having this kind of relationship? Well, let me go into the context first. Okay. We call South Africa's colonialism, is a colonialism of a special type. Our enemy lived with us. They were pariahs in the world, and by the time apartheid was dismantled, or by the time apartheid was down on its knees, there wasn't a country that was going to receive our oppression. Our enemy was with us, and was going to stay with us, and was as South African as we claim to be. And that brought about certain pressures, but also, and I'd like to believe, brought about the outcome that we do have, because it allowed us, and that's where Mandela's leadership comes in, is first of all to realize the objective realities that faced us. Amidst huge expectations, amidst huge anger, he was able to temper those expectations, and that's where the leadership came.  It was as crude as that, or that they were not human. And on our side, white men was an enemy, that was it. And that was the currency that was rallied around for centuries or for years, decades. The responsibility of going back to your own constituency and undoing your own propaganda was, I think, the more difficult task. And I think Rolf will concede that we had, as the ANC, we were a lot more successful in transmitting and conveying the message out to our own constituency. We were able to bring them along because I think Ambassador would be able to tell you that the first thing that did happen when we were unbanned is that we established very, very strong dynamic structures starting from branch level and so forth. So the greater challenge I thought was going back to our own constituencies and undoing the very currency that we were operating on for many decades. But I think what was also very unique and perhaps that doesn't directly answer your question is next to me is Rolf Mayer, who perhaps would have been the president of South Africa. He was going groomed to be, I don't know why he may have any friends in high places. But the point is that it's, South Africa is unique in this sense that you had an oppressive and pragmatic and realized that for South Africa to survive and for us to have a South Africa, they needed to be pragmatic. And I've very rarely seen someone or a power and at that time I think you were the minister of what, perhaps the fifth or sixth best army in the world who voluntarily, well voluntarily in inverted commas abdicated that power, the absolute power they had. On the other hand, and I'm glad Judge Goldstone is here, I've very rarely seen a revolutionary party negotiate in the constitution, institutions that will keep itself, its power in check when it does get into power. So it's as if we didn't trust ourselves because we realized we were human as well. And we had learned this from experiences elsewhere around the world. And perhaps we were fortunate that we were the last in Africa to have gained independence, so to speak. But I think it's a rare example where both happen at the same time. Perhaps it happened from our own volition or it happened because of circumstances and because there wasn't a victor of anguish. But the truth is that is the result. So the lesson I learned is that do not look at your opposition as a homogenous being. Strategically what we did was we were able to divide our adversaries into hawks and doves. Fortunately, the dove is sitting next to us. But we were able to create a very strong center on both sides to the extent where you had a strong center the extremities were then squeezed out. And that showed in the election results too. Some of the more populist, we were not the only anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. But some of the more populist and the more aggressive we thought they would have a greater appeal and resonance with particularly the unemployed youth in South Africa. The results showed otherwise. Yeah, that's right. And I think strategically if you are able to reach out there is one lesson on the other side. There are moderate people on the other side whom you bullet trust with. And as that center grows, your extremities are then pushed further aside and become non-entities. Thank you. Ambassador, when you think about what Muhammad has just said about the ability to do several things. One was to negotiate a constitution that created limits but also established democracy. And the importance of a movement that had existed for decades on the liberation side, ANC. As you look at that lesson, Ambassador, and you have now, you have wonderful insights and experience particularly through the Middle East. How important is it that there be strong institutions in any country that go to shading itself, not only out of conflict but into hopefully democracy? How important is it that those institutions be there in order to make this kind of a transition? No, thank you very much, Ambassador. Both for the question and for just doing this job for us and getting us to think more self-consciously about what it is that we've done because a lot of the things happened not according to a pre-plan or a template but happened on the spur. It was simply good people who were, you know, guardian, not tied to each other. Didn't have anyone outside to blame and who then had to come up with the solutions to the problems. I often think that there are societies without naming any who have a problem for every solution. I think we were forced to find solutions for every problem because we depended on each other so much but the idea of institutions, I think what sticks in my mind is this idea that you don't destroy what you want to inherit and we understood, for example, using Judge Goldstone's presence here, that the odds were stacked against us in a legal judicial system. It often was so capricious that it depended entirely on which judge you had, whether you'd get the death penalty, a life sentence, or be acquitted. It wasn't the institution itself. It was the capriciousness of the personnel in the institution that was often the thing. And so, in a sense, we understood that we want to have a world-class, legal, judicial institution and therefore you don't spit into the well from which you want to drink. The same with the economy, the same with the infrastructure and all of those kind of things. We loved South Africa as much as what I think our opponents loved South Africa and that was the glue that held us together and withheld us from absolute destruction. And therefore I think that in inheriting the institutions, I think we went about its transformation rather than its rebuilding. And that, I think, has given us the kind of purchase on a constitution that could do the kind of things that our constitution does today. I remember Nelson Mandela responding to Muhammad's point, saying that the task is to keep the rights of people out of reach of temporary majorities because he understood that every majority is temporary. Maybe a 50 years temporary, it may be 10 years temporary, it may be until the second coming temporary. But the fact of the matter is that the constitution needs to be the document that guards a nation against itself at its most vulnerable moment and at its most rampant moment.  And so I think that those are the kind of things that we've learned. And so the first thing is don't destroy what you want to inherit. It gives you a respect for the country and its institutions. The second thing in negotiating to arrive at that is don't give, and since you mentioned the Middle East, don't give anyone a veto. The Middle East has been masters at handing over the veto to anyone.  The extremists on the other side know if you want to destroy negotiations, announce a settlement. And the people who should occupy the middle ground should have the kind of tenacity, resilience, and commitment to see the process through, irrespective of the provocations. Because once you respond to a single provocation, you've handed the veto over. And that is where the mechanism of sufficient consensus came in. That if the ANC and the National Party agreed, it was sufficient to maintain the momentum for going forward, and we didn't even let the PAC attack on the St. James Church derail us. We allowed the assassination of Krashami to be a moment of great introspection, but it turned into a moment of greater commitment. Because out of that, we announced the election day to say to the extremists, you don't have a veto. We will now show you, we will reach the 27th of April next year. And so it is about not handing over a veto. The other thing is that you must take responsibility to strengthen your adversary. There is no merit in humiliating F.W. de Klerk. It may be very tempting to call him all kinds of names there, the skin from his face, but at the end of the day, you want him to have to be invested with sufficient authority to continue to make the right decisions, and he in fact needs a glue to his constituency and that requires trust and credibility. So with you, you must have sufficient authority to push through the discussions. With his constituency, you must have sufficient trust and credibility to be able to make that decision.  And I think that those are the kind of lessons that I think should be learned. And then lastly, you've got to dismantle two extreme emotions, victimhood and triumphalism. Again, speaking about the Middle East, you have a competition for victimhood. Who is history's greatest victim? And I think that the sobering moment that Mohammed speaks about the objective reality is when Nelson Mandela came and said, listen, we won't defeat them militarily. They're too strong. Let's find ways to do it through other means. And that tempered the triumphalism on our side. And it meant that we needed to take responsibility and that meant, because victims can't be creative.  They're looking at the past. And so I think when that sobering moment came, we understood the tenets of what would take us forward, including all the things, the three issues that Rulf spoke about and that Mohammed has also elaborated. Very, very interesting. Thank you very much. Let me just ask one more thing before I open it up. You've been working now, going to a number of other countries. What's been your experience? Can you give us some indications of where these kind of principles and understandings and conclusions that you've reached through your own process, and so, however, have been used or relevant or picked up, whether in Wales, Ireland, or Sri Lanka, or wherever else you feel that you have been able to make these relevant to other situations? I think one must immediately say, no two conflicts are the same. Each one is unique in terms of its own characteristics and the source of the problem, the source of the conflict, every time differs. So it's impossible to make, as you know, direct comparisons and draw similarities. But I think that the case, according to their own witnessing on more than one occasion, that the South African example probably set themselves onto course was Northern Ireland. And they said it themselves. I've heard Martin McGinnis and people from the Unionist side saying this more than once. And you two said it at the Golden Globes Award. The fact is, when we invited the Northern Ireland part is the first time to South Africa. I think it was in 1997. They were not prepared to sit in the same room yet. It was separate. I will never forget it. When Madiba came to speak to them, they had to make two speeches. Because they first had to speak to the nationalists, the Sinn Féiners and others. And then they had to go to speak to the Unionists because the Unionists were all prepared to be seen with Jerry Adams. That was 1997. And a year later they signed the Good Friday Agreement. That was not the end of the troubles because it took them another 10 years to actually implement that agreement. But I think that was them being in the face of our experience, seeing what we had achieved. Black and white coming together and they left the room. I can recall that. Well, they left the South African soil afterwards and said, if these guys could do it, then we can do it too. Other cases may be less successful, but it's not their fault. Maybe we didn't carry our message clear enough. But we must remember in the South African case over and above anything else, there was the will and the intent to find the solution. The day that Madiba walked out of prison, he was focused on one thing and that was to find the solution. He didn't demand, like Mohammed said, he didn't demand the handing over of the keys, of the capital. But he was focused on one thing and that was to find the solution. And in the same way, we were focused, maybe for a different reason.  There was no return. Nobody could put him back in jail. So that will and intent to go forward and to find the solution was there. And that is not always the case, unfortunately. Many conflict areas, that will and intent remain absent forever. I think we have seen some elements of success in many cases, not only in Northern Ireland. But, you know, then you have to go back and say the same thing over and over. Even in Northern Ireland, like Wendy was saying over there, 20 visits at different stages brought about in there the solution, not our making, but themselves. But it's repeating the same story. Sometimes you have to use ultimate patience. And I think that's a lesson in itself. Also to governments who think that they can impose from outside sufficient pressure to just affect the solution. It's not working that way. How do you see the experiences that you've had so far for work, traveling? I'd like to steal a line from Professor Fukuyama's book on what makes a nation successful. And my experience is clearly I'm beginning to see it in some of the Middle Eastern countries as well. That the notion of a state has not been quite strongly embedded. In South Africa itself, the strategy of our adversary, I'm not going to call him an enemy anymore. We friends, by the way, was to divide us on our tribal urges and instincts. So the loyalty towards the tribe, there was a stronger cultural identity than a national identity. And I'd like to take credit on behalf of the ANC that there is one thing they did succeed, is they were able to transcend those tribal urges. And again, the Mandela leadership factor comes in here. While he respected tribal identity, he was able to invoke a larger South African identity. Yes, from time to time we will get tribal urges even now within the ANC and within the South African context. But the primary identity has been South Africa. And my own view is that sometimes, and again, external factors come in to try and solve the problem. And it's a band-aid. An election does not produce democracy. If we don't, if we believe democracy is the result of just one or two days of ballot paper, it's not going to result in that. It's a process. And to steal from Fouke Yama, the first is the notion of the state. The second is strong institutions. So before an election even comes in, and I think I hope Ibrahim will touch on that, the kind of measures we took before the first election came in, creating an IEC and so forth. And then the third thing is accountability. Again, I'm stealing this from Professor Fouke Yama's writings. And what we find again is where there's been the absence of the notion of a state. You remove a despot, and what you have is four militias operating in the country. And those militias are linked to particular tribes. We've seen it over and over now in the Middle East, we're beginning to see that. I'm not beginning, we've seen it for several years now. So when a country is a conglomeration of tribes, held together by a strong person, one man, one boat, one person, one boat is not going to give you the desired result. It's a long process. And I think from our experience, we've been going around, sometimes we've been too much in a hurry. It's as if it's a tick box. You know what, let's have the election. We've now delivered democracy and we move on.  And I think that's, it's a slow patient process. And it's about building, it's about conscientizing. So that would be one experience I would like to share. So Ambassador, you, building on this, but also your own thoughts, how do you move people leaders, et cetera, off of either authoritarian impulses, maybe they're liberation leaders, but they're not Democrats, and move them beyond tribal or other narrower affiliations to get to the process of building trust and broader understandings and the constitutional principles that you said were so important in South Africa. How did you get there? I think that I was deployed by the ANC to one of its most difficult provinces where the demographics were completely different to the rest of the country. You might want to explain that Western Cape. In simple terms, the Western Cape, the South Africa is a country with a majority African community where colors white and others are a minority, but in the Western Cape, the colored community, which is brown, because I know it's a swear word here, is a majority. And Africans are a minority because of job reservation acts which forcibly kept Africans out of the Western Cape. And so at the moment of liberation, it was a province that voted the national party back into power and it was confounding to all of us. And I think that I then had to work in the Western Cape with the chief work of the national party as governor and I was sat in his cabinet and I had to work my way to win the Western Cape. And it was a residue of what existed prior to 1994. And it was particularly in this notion of trust that I think we needed to work because it wasn't an election campaign we were busy. It was a 10-year process to win trust, to overcome fear and to see the tenuous nature of privilege and that if privilege is seen as ill-gotten and obscene, it breeds its own resistance and envy. And that the politics of envy is the most dangerous politics that the nation can have because it breeds the crime, it breeds the insecurity that people have. And so there's no place for islands of prosperity in a sea of poverty like it was the case in the Western Cape and that is why it's got the most entrenched kind culture, the most deep drug, what is it named? The pathologies of human abuse, of child abuse are absolutely deep and it's part of a residue. It's the one province that had a genocide under colonialism and so there's no memory of your values. It was the one province that had a legacy of slavery who were physically removed from everything that defined you. It was the one province where dependence was actively pursued through the welfare system and there was no sense of dignity in the poverty that existed unlike in many of the other parts of the country and that's the way they sent me. And basically it was really about doing exactly what you're saying. How do you make the constitution a document that unfolds the softness, creates a vision not simply of a non-racial society but a gentle society, not simply of an equal society but a caring society? And I think that that is what by 2004 I was able to lead the ANC to its first victory in the Western Cape and that's how I became the governor or the premier of the province but it was about the inclusivity that Rolf speaks about and that's why the notion, the vision that we held up was of a home for all. And really underpinning it, dealing with the racial issues, calling a spade a spade. I think that if we had moved too quickly to define ourselves after 94 as a post-racial society we would have really just covered up the fault lines of our society.  You've had to be a, because when you bury it you simply let it fester underground and it manifests itself in all manners of pathology and I think that that's the first thing to call a spade a spade. The second thing then is to then work from the self-recognition of who we are and what we are, and to say, listen, if you're white and you have these privileges, we're not here to take it away, but the only way you can't live behind your secure religious, your high walls, your dogs, your dobermans and your alarm systems, you've got to enjoy what you have and the only way to enjoy is to share and sort of the strategy for the Western Cape was then Ikapa Elish Lumayo, the Cape that we grow and the Cape that we share. And people bought into it because they understood that in sharing, they were building their own security. And on the other side, people understood that we do have these inequalities, but there are people who are working actively every day to overcome it. And that's the issue of trust. So it has a visionary component and many people stop at sprouting a visionary component, but it also had a hard-nosed strategic component. You needed to use the instruments of government to facilitate a sharing that would go on and to show and to use another cliche that the patience of the poor will be rewarded with the generosity of the rich.  And when your divide is color coded, you have the recipe of a bomb. So it's all about winning trust. And I think that that's what in the Western Cape we were able systematically to do. And we want so much trust that when the remainder of the national party dissolved itself, they dissolved itself into the agency because even some of those leaders understood that this was the kind of mutual assurance that I think that we were working towards.  Look, I'm going to turn it over out to audience, but for a moment, Richard, do you want to add anything that Richard Goldstone? Sit here. Do we have a microphone? If you may, you can go to the mic. Or you can come up here if you'd like. Well, thanks very much, Ambassador Nyman. It's been a wonderful discussion. I didn't anticipate entering it at all. But let me just add three aspects to what our distinguished panel has mentioned. I think it should be borne in mind that in South Africa there was no religious issue. It's an important negative, if you like. But I think many of the areas of the world, unfortunately, that are involved in violence have religious issues and it's impossible to compromise on religion. I think we were very lucky in South Africa that that was absent. The second advantage we had, crucially important, is we had leaders who could deliver on what they agreed. Very important. I think in too many areas, leaders are unable to get their people to stick with them and behind them to deliver on what they promise. And that was important. And I think that was part of the trust that Rolf Mayer was talking about. All of the leaders involved in our negotiations knew that they could deliver what they promised. I can think of nothing more frustrating than going into a negotiation process with partners who can't deliver what they agree. The third, I think Rolf Mayer and other members of the panel have indicated that South Africa was able to manage its own transition. That was important. But I don't think one should underestimate or under-emphasise the role of the international community that stood behind the whole process. Ambassador Mike Princeton and Lyman had important meetings around your dinner table. I was privileged to attend some of them. But the diplomatic corps, the ambassadors of leading Western nations in particular, played a very important role, especially in the early days, in bringing enemies together around their dinner tables. And that was important. But perhaps more to the point was that the United Nations and leading countries had their spotlight on what was happening in South Africa. I know in the work I did in investigating violence in South Africa, without the support of the Security Council, I don't believe that we would have been able to get the powers that we wanted. But then President DeClaire was aware that if any reasonable requests were refused, and there were some important ones, there was a downside because of the effect that would have on the whole prospect for successful negotiations. So I think we're very fortunate. But I thought I'd just add the three additional elements. Thanks very much. Now let's open it up, we have a gentleman here, and then we'll go here and there. Microphone for this gentleman. Oh, there you don't need it. That's right. A loud voice, but that's all right. And please indicate who you are. I will. My name is Andrew Senj. I spent 13 years in Belfast in Dublin, working on the decommissioned body. Mike, is Mike on? It's on you, but just keep it closer. Is that it? Can you hear me now? Right. Anyway, a concept I first ran into in Belfast was parody of esteem. It seemed to mean that the other, who may have been brought up to fear, to hate, to despise, actually had a right to live. It had a right to more or less equal application of the rule of law, and it had a right to be free of the condescension and contempt that sometimes characterizes the behavior between communities on both sides. That seemed to the ambassador particularly what you were talking about, or getting at. And I was curious, taken by what Judge Goldstone said, in that it seemed to be the leadership in South Africa that was different in the South African case, from in many other cases, because you had Mandela's, you had Rolf Meyer, for that matter, people who would stand up and tell the community, sorry, this behavior is no longer acceptable. I remember once, in about 2000, seeing a very pleasant-looking young woman standing on the side of the road as a parade went through, screaming, burn in hell, Phenian bastard as a sort of four-year-old hanging onto her skirt, and that kind of thing translates down through the generations. You really have to stop it, and you have to understand why you stop it. I just think that the South African experience may have been unusually blessed in the sense that you had leaders who could understand that, or did understand it at least very early on. Thank you. We'll take several comments. I'll come back to the panel. Gentlemen, right next to you, right there. Thank you, Fred Berger with Loose Berger Group. I think that you probably would agree that while the political side was necessary, it wasn't a sufficient condition to the achievements that you reached. Could you explore a bit the role that the economy, the economic structure of South Africa had? If I recall correctly at that time, it was the 10th largest and most complex economy in the world, and it had a strong middle-class. As you look at some of the problems that you seek to assist in other countries, be it South Sudan or Burma or elsewhere, how important do you think that is in those countries achieving the peace that we'd like to see there? Very good question. We'll come back to the panel on that. Can I see a third? Gentlemen, right there. And then I'll ask a comment. I'd like to ask if you have any experience with the situation of Bahrain if you were involved in an initiative and how do you look at the situation there from different aspects. The sectarian part, which is the religious part and the issue and what is the impact, and the second issue is the kleptocracy which is very deep corruption environment. And the third issue is the relation with the US government, where the US government is in a situation where they need to deal with those regimes and the Gulf and Bahrain specifically. Yes, that's interesting. Okay, indeed. I'm going to come back to you. But let's come and lay the comments there. And then the whole, the question, this is an important question on the economic, how important is it that South Africa had the particular kind of economic structure or was that a plus or minus or what's your feeling? What are the panelists who would like to... Well, there are people in the audience that know the subject much better than I am. You're speaking about J.P. Landman. Exactly. He has actually written a book recently on the subject so we should ask him to come and speak. But I would like to put two points in perspective The first is that it might have been limited to the white community, but it was a very institutionalized economic system that existed in South Africa. And it was one like Mohammed said earlier that was just like that taken over by the new government in the sense that the institutions that made that economy successful or running rather not necessarily successful were kept intact like for instance our financial system which is still now being regarded as J.P. the third probably most proven financial system in the world according to its records. And I think that in itself was part of the historic background that came along and that was being intact and was not thrown out which I think was an important step. Some people might say well, you know we haven't seen the real redistribution of wealth that was required. And there's long debates about that issue in South Africa. My immediate reply to that question would be it was not the system that was the problem but it is still not the system that is the problem it's another way of thinking how to bring about economic redistribution that we have to address and which is not necessarily the case even up till now. But the other point that I think is relevant is that we had during the time of of the process of negotiations a willingness from the civil society as well as organized business to participate and assist the whole process of change. I can speak from experience that even long before the party leadership on the side of the National Party started to take or make any moves for change they were encouraged to do so by the business leadership at the time and the business leadership right through the process with some of the main contributors arguments in terms of persuasion to carry on and to push forward at one stage just to put it in context after the release of Madiba and whilst the process already started in other words the initial phases of talks before the constitutional negotiations happened we experienced a long process of serious violence in the country and none of the political leadership or political parties could really get it under control and it was then that business leaders and civil society leaders started an activity which became known as the piece of court that played a very important role and it was then that actually led it that whole piece of court process business leader with the name of John Hall was the chairman of the piece of court structures that established peace committees in every single village and local community around the country and that helped us to a large extent to address the problem of violence so business in itself and it's always a message that I think we try to convey to other areas of conflict is to say get your organized business and your civil society actively engaged it's not only the task of politicians you know there was a feedback I'm glad you mentioned the peace process because that structure which was quite well organized and had some extraordinary stories of people at local levels coming together who had been bitter enemies together but you know the other aspect of it was that people working at the peace process at the local level would feed back to the leadership we're knocking ourselves out here what are you guys doing to settle all these issues so it was a two-way process I thought I'd like to get others on this but also to the issues raised on Bahrain not only because Bahrain is a case in itself but because it touches on Richard's comment about religion is that a specially difficult area to deal with etc so I'll let you deal with that question sorry your name was Mata you're going back to Bahrain no we've been to Bahrain on several occasions it's very convenient to fall into the narrative that it is a religious divide it's a narrative that has been determined by the royal family and the government there are elements of it and it's become very convenient for that government to polarize the society and define that conflict in religious terms it is not necessarily so it is as it's going to become dangerous if the population then buys into that narrative and which it is doing the pearl square it's now a circle in my mind it's just a road it's now just a road the first uprising did not have any sectarial definition it was an uprising because of the socio-economic conditions Bahrain was going through a rough time and there is in all fairness to Bahrain by Gulf standards it is a much more open society than some of its neighbors or most of its neighbors I suppose because it was an island and because of its cosmopolitan nature there is by comparison a significant civil society activity there surprised by that and that I don't think was by design I think it just happened over the years because of how Bahrain developed as a nation but the problems of Bahrain and again this is a personal view I haven't canvassed it with with the ambassador and I suspect he may disagree with me but anyway is about a region trying to assimilate with it as well it's about a region in which its rulers there's a complete dissonance with an increasingly educated population that's becoming agitated and it doesn't have the answers it's comfortable with what it has it believes its people are subjects not citizens and it's very difficult to engage at that level because you they don't see their subjects as equal participants even in a negotiation very difficult it's an ancient way of looking at things and certainly unable to address and assimilate with what's coming through it's unfortunate that I even see it watch it on some of the television programs and news items she has suddenly divided it's described as that it's very convenient for the government to define it as that it's just put people into little lagers and allowed the government to continue with the system of patronage that's what it has done again then there's also the real danger that that becomes a fertile ground for the geopolitics of the area to start playing out and there's that risk that does take place about the US would you like to answer that? I'd like to go back to South Africa and I'll just check I would do and I don't pretend to be a Middle East expert it's Bill Taylor here but you know what it does raise no question about it is when a country like the US has a particular relationship that goes well beyond the issues that you're dealing with having to deal with security and military access and all the rest which constrains the way the US may approach this issue and it's not the only situation in which countries have mixed motives or mixed issues when they get out of it but I'm not an expert on Bahrain sorry can I just say just the one thing as we sit here what worries us is there is no incentive on the part of the Bahraini government to introduce any reforms no incentive for whatever reasons because there's no pressure there's no pressure and therein lies the difficulty it's business as usual and there is a particular modus operandi you respect my power and that power is respected through my violence and that's unfortunately what we're seeing you know Ambassador Lyman I just to agree with Mohammed despite his anticipation that I won't but you know not just Bahrain but I think that we're dealing with a Middle East and a Muslim world yearning for something different and in order to contain it we are the old binaries Shia Sunni and the moment you say Shia a whole rush of memories from 1979 come into every western mind and then you have predisposed it and secondly Islamist secularist and the moment you invoke Islamism a whole flood of memories come into especially after 9-1-1 and so what it does is it wins time for the old to hold on and to reorganize itself and to ingratiate themselves with western powers under notion and if you've quoted Fukuyama I'll quote Huntington the politics of order and to say that what is happening in Egypt is that we are the guarantors of the politics of order what is happening in Bahrain is that we are the guarantors of the politics of order what is happening in Saudi Arabia is that we are the guarantors of the politics of order and what is really filling the vacuum are the real fundamentalists not Islamists but the Salafists if you were to trace every conflict in the Middle East at this moment you will not find at the core of it is Islamism is Salafism but because it is able to invoke the Shia bogey and the Islamist bogey it is able to win time for itself and to win a space to reorganize themselves and to make themselves and to hide the real fault lines and the fault lines are about the politics of order because you need to hold up the strength and the whole world comes rushing with it basically it gives time for elites to reorganize their wealth as the oil wealth I mean the biggest buyer America is becoming oil independent and as they export less what is the future because no one has made provision for post oil economies and so you've got systems that have elite that have been built up in the Arab states built on the patternage of oil not working for oil but on the patternage of oil wealth suddenly you've got to understand what will be the post oil economy and there's no provision for it you've got to be able to understand that a mechanism you can't have monarchs except in Britain where it's a constitutional monarch but you can't have real monarchs and democracy coexisting something at the end of the day has to give and at this moment through the invocation of all of those things democracy is giving the world is willing to bless the outcome in Egypt in the hope that it will win two things the semblance of democracy of all guaranteed and so the geopolitics is then dressed up except there's the flying the ointment America is talking to Iran so world things hold and world Saudi Arabia now become a lot more intractable and Iran a lot more amenable how does that turn things on its head and I think that those are really the kind but to end up it comes down to the quality of leadership all over the world that the first questioner had raised and I think that what the world is ready for and this really is what I've experienced in the way in which the world but particularly where I was at the moment of Nelson Mandela's passing I did not find a historical year only for a historical admiration for Nelson Mandela I actually found a yearning for that kind of leadership where someone can speak his mind like Nelson Mandela said to if you watch the movie long walk to freedom which you should all do and hopefully if you have votes for the Oscars because the roof of walls it looks dangerous but the fact of the matter is that but the fact of the matter is he was able to debate it out with his comrades in prison about why he will continue with the negotiations even when they are skeptical because he understood what it means to do the right thing not the popularity it is not looking at the polls and the surveys but looking at the conditions and what the conditions need I think the world is ready for a new generation of leaders who don't stick to the script who will respond to the situation and I think that that is the yearning for Nelson Mandela and that's what we were fortunate to have that there was no script for an FW DeClerc and a roof mayor once they made the announcement in parliament that they will free Mandela and unbend the agency the script was gone everything was going to be made up from that moment there was no script Nelson Mandela once had to and I was with him in the the guerrilla camp in Vienna in Angola where he toe-to-toed it with the soldiers of the ANC on a hot humid day toe-to-toed it with them telling them why negotiations is the path and why they are as people are relevant but as soldiers may become irrelevant and you stand up to your army like that I've not seen it that year but certainly I think that that really is the kind of things that leadership and I think to end up I think that the United States economically has seen the limits of militarism I think social appetite for new wars the dial couldn't be moved ahead of the Syria President Obama's speech on Syria he couldn't move the dial more than two percentage points so the appetite for war is gone and what fills the strategic gap when there's no money and no appetite for war and that I think is the vacuum that the United States needs to fill as the remaining superpower how do we do what is right the key issue and the issues of leadership thank you very much I want to take the gentleman right here and then Pauline is the gentleman there thank you very much my name is Al Hassan I'm from African news analysis and North America editor speak up I'm actually picking up from the ambassador's point which is relevant to my question watching the live telecast of the funeral of the memorial in South Africa I saw one of the grandsons of Madiba made a statement that touched me so much and I can only paraphrase it he said something along the line of he has charted a path can we walk it that is really deep very very deep and then minutes later came the only branch of President Obama to Raul Castro unfortunately the world has made a political capital out of that and look at it look at a bigger picture with four U.S. presidents attending a phone role with a sitting U.S. president extending all the branch to a so called Diablo of South America a tiny island that to me don't pose no threat to America whatsoever can America look at the general narrative of South Africa of Madiba to try to package of course the United States Institute of Peace leading the charge kind of trying to see how U.S. foreign policy can package the experience the narrative of South Africa and try to kind of softening the ground from being a Western police to a Western pope or in this book how to come up with a humanistic foreign policy sort of war, war, war why can't we have a positive pressure positive pressure like that of late Madiba that's all I can say thank you like Pauline and then to take the gentleman behind her after Pauline Baker the fund for peace and it's good to see old friends here again I have two questions and I'll get to it quickly regarding the role of outside powers in the transition in South Africa the most controversial issue here was of course economic sanctions it triggered the biggest debate in this country over foreign policy since Vietnam looking back on the role that sanctions play in the transition in terms of content, timing etc the second question is I wonder if you would look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the diplomatic threats of Secretary Kerry and tell us what you think based on your own experiences in South Africa the likelihood of a breakthrough is here particularly with regard to two of the issues which you raised Mohammed and that is the concept of the state and the ability to roll back each side their own propaganda thanks gentlemen right behind her you are quite funny too my name is Otas I'm a full bright home fellow I'm from Burundi so as you know Mandela was involved in the negotiation in Burundi too as well as in Congo and some other places in the chat and I like when you say that each conflict has its particular aspects and the issue for me is that we try to compare some aspects from some countries and we try to find solutions as we did in some other places so Mandela did one term as a president and if you read some reports for example from Woodrow Center and some others you will see that Mandela did it necessary succeed as a person or as institution not only in Burundi even in Congo so my question is addressed to each of you would you suggest to each mystic mystical person like Mandela or any other person to get involved in these kinds of conflicts that's my question and gentlemen who are here can you take the microphone first of all I want to give thing to everybody I am from Kotea beach I don't use those things all the clothes my name is Kotea beach I am from Kotea I feel actually very interested in lesson marks and also I can something and I feel it is very important also if I can as a Christian so that I can because the way they put it that they started with the trust buildings and also the issue of accountability as a expertise I just want to know because currently we are in a situation that we need somebody like you who can help that community so that they can be able to come out from that situation so as expertise as somebody also worship a greater thing on this have what do you suggest or what do what lesson do you give to those follow so that they can be able to achieve their independence peacefully and also they can be able to transform their communities who have stereotype on their tribal issues and furthermore it is that in case how do the international development or manage the conflict or transform the conflict in that regions and thank you well we have a number of very important issues here let me skip for a moment the foreign policy on the U.S. I'm happy to have you comment on it but Pauline's question about outside influences sanctions we talked a little about that before how do they what would the impact in South Africa and you mentioned Bahrain no pressures from outside so how do those outside pressures work how do they work in South Africa and what made them relevant who was in parliament he would be able to in plus that we reacted to the pressure but did it matter in South Africa A because the business community as you said was very active and it affected them wasn't it also a psychological factor in South Africa because there are some countries or leaders who are impervious to international opinion my question in South Africa was among a lot of the white population being isolated in the world was really bothersome and of course played out in the sports community particular so my sense was it was not just economic it was psychological but you're better able to judge that than I am Pauline I would it's good to see you I would give sanctions 95% as the influence it had on making the change started in South Africa I always keep on thinking there were mainly four factors that influence the change or the start of change the one was undoubtedly sanctions but sanctions was only there in the last part of apartheid it was primarily after 1986 and the introduction of the US Sanctions Act the Comprehensive Sanctions Act and the implications or the impact of that started to really take effect from 1988 onwards because of the withdrawal of US investments etc etc but if you have to put more than 25% on sanctions it means all the other factors that started to play a role earlier on even during the time of PW Guerta are totally ignored and those factors were the isolation of South Africa in the broader sense like Princeton has just said sport politically and in many other ways the ANC had more representation in more countries than the South African government had officially as an example as part of that isolation the third one was of course the success ongoing and more and more success that the ANC achieved through the URF and others inside the country by making the country ungovernable I mean you might recall that I was deputy minister of police at one stage I had to deal with these problems that these others created you know it started to work this policy of the ANC of making the country ungovernable so that was a but the fourth one was equally important in the total package and that was the realization amongst many on the national party government side that what we were doing was totally unjustifiable and unacceptable not all with the national party but at least there was a growing momentum within the party that said we have to change and that made it possible that when FW took over as leader he could work on that aspect and realize that he has by then he had the majority of the support of the national party to make the moves so that was equally important could I add a twist to the sanctions actually because because I've worked in the U.S. we've reconnected with a lot of the anti-apartheid movement the divestment movement and used a lot of this last time around Nelson Mandela's anxiety to actually thank people for the role that they have played and I think that sanctions as part of an overall isolation package would have I wouldn't get into the scoring because I think Waman wants to score himself quite well in the UDF but the fact of the matter is that it was not an accident because you know governments work on four or five year per views they work with a view to the next election what works for the next election business often has to think well into the future the sustainability of business and the point that Roof is making is correct sanctions did not have to bite yet but those who work with long term projections about the profitability of minds about export markets about the negative growth of the economy about the reputation of South Africa it's no wonder that the politicians in the National Party were preceded by the business community who didn't have to feel a loss of money in order to understand that there will be a loss of income coming soon so it is both psychological it's also real but it's also based on the projection of where things would be would be heading to and I think that psychologically the kind of overturning of Ronald Reagan's veto and the weakening of Margaret Thatcher in Britain was an enormous psychological blow for the apartheid government because those were the two who had bought into the political strategy who had prioritized the fight against communism in Africa over the fight for human rights in South Africa and I think that at that moment so it was the comprehensive anti-apartheid act but not by itself and its immediate impact but in the symbolic defeat of President Reagan's veto that I think was absolutely critical and very interesting let me turn if I can unless you wanted to get around this one turn to this difficult question of the Israeli Palestine I've just been reading this book My Promised Land which if anybody hasn't read it it's well it's a book to read raises very difficult fundamental issues but I know Ambassador you've thought a lot about this issue in this question I wonder if you want to comment on that I'm not to show I think that I've got the probably unduly pessimistic outlook for what will happen I think that there's there's sound and fury I think that there's lots of energy but I don't think that there's momentum I think I've I've seen this energy from secular government but he's dealing with one side of the conflict that wants to claw back who's now beginning to realize that the zero sum politics that Palestinians generally have been engaged in have lost them all that where they could have been they've been pushed back that facts on the ground have eked out enormous chunks of Palestinian lands that they have no longer access to the aquifers the settlements coincide with the flow of the aquifers etc etc and the Palestinians are fighting or half of the Palestinians are fighting a rearguard action simply to claw back some of what Oslo had promised on the other hand I don't think that there's any incentive why would Prime Minister Netanyahu want to negotiate anything he's getting what he what he needs he's getting the land he's getting he's demilitarized zone he's got Jerusalem those are no longer the facts have pre-ordained what the negotiations have even said should be the final outcome discussions that should be had so I I'm a lot more pessimistic and just to take on apply that and the Burundi issue I think and Rulf said it as a disclaimer right at the beginning that every conflict has its own specificity but you can have your own specificity something can be more religious in one place and more political in another place something can be black and white in South Africa and Irish Protestant in another area it's all we all have those specificities but we shouldn't have specificities detract from single principles you still need leadership and there is no leadership you still need trust and there is no trust you still need inclusivity and there is no inclusivity for as long as someone says that the one who is the main problem will never ever sit at the negotiating table in Israel Palestine so you like those you undermine the outcome because Mahmoud Abbas and Netanyahu they are each others hostage in a sense but Hamas is the one that needs to be spoken to because they have the veto when they don't like it they fire a rocket and then they excite the army who then does collective punishment and they are the ones who can determine the perpetual cycle and so how can you not speak to them and then I think that you do still need the idea of investing in your interlocutor your adversary no one is investing in fact they are ravishing each other but that's a function of trust in much the same way they are competing victimhoods you don't relax victimhood you're not going to get a creative solution so while the specificity is very whether Burundi whether the Middle East I think we allow people to hide behind the specificities don't tweak us about South Africa we're different your leadership can't be different your trust building can't be different your inclusivity shouldn't be different your compromising spirit shouldn't be different etc etc and I think that we must make a distinction between the appearance of the struggle which have the specificities and the underpinnings of a settlement which I think South Africa has by and large so we mustn't look at the specificities in South Africa and what we have tried to do this often and what Rufan Muhammad does so wonderfully is to extract the underlying principles that can be applied from situation to situation well let me come back and we're just getting toward the end to the question raised about US policy and I would enlarge it to any external force whether it's the UN or Great Britain or others on those conflicts how do you US is actually going through a period where there's a not only as you point out of less faith in military action but there's also less faith in feeling you're going to influence countries one way or another whether it's toward democracy or conflict resolution so if I can ask and you can either do it through examples or generally how do you match the outside and the inside and we talked about this a little bit earlier and the question is how much can the outside influences or pressure groups do if there is not a genuine movement inside with some capacity for leadership and transition and can outsiders help fill that is that their role how much does outside influence help inspire that kind of action so it relates to US policy but it relates to South Africa's approach to Burundi or something else so if I could throw that out to any one of you who would comment could you go ahead we did you first on this one we have a very good example we have a neighbor called Zimbabwe yes yes yes very good very good I'll grant you a raise and I think it's Nelson Mandela that made the remark how do you expect us to help if you aren't able to organize yourself there are no democratic alternatives in the country yes there may be formations we saw that in Egypt as well but what kind of an alternative is it and if there are no viable alternative organizations and so forth what kind of where does the external help go to who do you assist and unless the people of a country themselves are able to resist foreign help is not going to be of any end how would you translate that to Bahrain where you were speaking about before for the US role or any outside role my own view there is enough to work on inside there is enough okay so but that's a critical question you need something inside absolutely to relate to other thoughts on this I think that especially this debate around the right to protect and so forth which really deals with this responsibility from the outside when things are going palpably horribly wrong inside do you wait for some organization to happen with in a country so possibly we've got to understand what are the gradations of outside intervention that would be required and so there is a gradation that needs human life to be respected and so I would I would understand and this is probably where South Africa had a bit of a standoff with the United States around Libya we voted for the right to protect but then it transmogrified itself into regime change and that has subsequently led to the kind of phenomenon that I think has not only created a militia based set of regimes in Libya but has inflamed the entire region and brought all conflicts back to life even through the proliferation of weapons so I think that we've got to understand what are the key lessons of what is possible from the outside and how do we play a responsibility and then create a critical mess, a pressure within to reach the point that I think we reached you prepare for it, prepare for it but then by 1989 1988-1990 the critical mess is achieved it now needs one little spark and so what is it that critical mess don't call it regime change don't presuppose the situation and so forth but work towards bringing, launching the boil and then I think it is then to determine whether it needs mediation from outside or whether there is capability for mediation amongst that is critical so I would then say the responsibility to save human life is different and the script from creating the pressure and the conditions that brings us that moment of of insight and that brings us to the point of managing dialogue negotiation, engagement and so forth and then reconstruction and that for me seems to be at least four parts of the conveyor belt of what is possible outside and I'm not sure I think the U.S. often is the victim of its desire to multitask they want to do all four at the same time and may often use the word regime change while they should simply protect and so it diminishes the quality of protection and I really think that we've got to think at this moment when we could possibly be envisioning a post militarism period I think we've got to hone our skills and our consciousness about what replaces it and I think that in a sense dedicating this to Nelson Mandela's memory and extracting the lessons of his methodology I think is really what we should and I think someone mentioned the Raul Castro Barack Obama handshake has that positioned us to to bring closure to what is an anachronism in international relations the embargo doesn't work the Cubans may be ready Cuban Americans are going through a generational change people are tired of it but there's just this memory of a thing and our father's memories that we must keep alive and but these are all the things that's waiting for us thank you very much and I'm going to bring this close I know we've come to our I'll take two more questions there's been a lady there can we go to four o'clock then it's okay then the lady right back there and then I'll say oh my goodness I thought thank you very much to the panelist there and I actually liked the discussion and the level at which it is going first of all I'm Eva I'm a heart-free, full-bright fellow from Liberia my basic concern actually listening to you especially looking at the lessons learned from the Mandela legacy and how applicable is that to other countries I'm just kind of thinking again about how successful was Mandela to encouraging indigenous Blacks of Africans embracing other Africans I ask this question on the basis that when you engage a typical Black South African it's like there is that same animosity and I had a personal encounter at the Oliver Tambo airport in Johannesburg where I had to talk to a Black South African because of a delay in our flight and this guy was kind of hissing and he didn't even it was like I was not welcome you know the manner in which he interacted with me I didn't feel good about it I was like this guy doesn't know me not because I'm Black but I think he's working here because he needs to respond to the needs of people but it had to take a White South African to address the problem so I'm thinking how successful was Mandela in actually bringing together indigenous Black South Africans alongside other Black Africans who always will flood their country and is there something that we need to really think about seriously in terms of how we apply you know the successes of Mandela like thank you we'll take this we'll have to be as brief as we run close to time the gentleman right here and then the lady behind me Hello my name is Boyan Wazarewski I I'm originally from Macedonia but I've been living for three years in South Africa I've been living for three years in South Africa and I had a very good life I was working as an urban planner there or a town regional planner as you say and I just wanted to add one thing to the whole discussion there is a according to me what I call the invisible hand that is actually contributing to social peace in South Africa and it's also a legacy from Mandela's policies I think that's the unique developmentalist approach of economic development in South Africa it's moderate touch applied modified to South African conditions and I've actually seen how that transforms companies together with the PE at first transforms companies transforms how municipalities look at spatial racial integration through spatial integration social economic integration so that's just my first the second thing is this is a little bit a cynical question to Mr. Mayor do you think that also the military foreign military intervention in the Bush war was also a contributing factor this is the cynical point of view that the war pressure there should be a military threat to bring peace thank you so much the woman right behind me Hello I'm Ginny Bouvier I'm here at the Institute of Peace and I head up the Columbia work here I'm delighted to have listened to your thought provoking comments today I have a couple of questions I guess the first most obvious is what are the lessons for Columbia in particular and maybe to specify a bit more I wonder if you might reflect a bit on the peace process design that you came up with in South Africa and how elements of that might be of use I'm thinking about the fact that you didn't choose to have a mediator what did you do in its place what did you do when the two sides came to a head and couldn't get past did you have internal mediators did you just decide that you trusted each other and you were going to find an answer or do you have any tips on that front I'm also thinking about the pedagogy of peace you know how do you make that transformation of people looking at each other as enemies move into a new realm what kinds of things did you all come up with looking at the agenda how did you define what would be a realistic agenda I could go on maybe we need another session to look at these kinds of comparisons but I'd appreciate that there was someone back there the woman back there in the yellow and then I'll take this gentleman and then I'll think about it my name is Irina I'm a graduate student in peace and conflict at American University my question is just what are your thoughts and maybe suggestions and recommendations for the current issue in South Sudan and given that it's such a tribal society the very divided long tribal lines I was just wondering if you had any comments about it good afternoon my name is Brahm Hanukhwan I'm in the National Leadership of the ANC Youth League in South Africa and my question I suppose is to Berthroth and the speakers one from the ANC side we've often and the youth league side we've often thought that Mandela's taken a lot of the credit of a movement and quite frankly the conditions that were there may well have been taken on by somebody like Walter Susulu had Mandela not survived to the stage he survived so maybe to elaborate on the conditions that created such a personality and elevated him to national relevance in the ANC Youth League and the ANC Youth League and the ANC giving him the authority to negotiate on behalf of the people and then on the other side in the government that negotiated releasing its power to the majority what were the conditions and influencing factors and personalities in fact that created people mature enough to see beyond interests thank you and before I turn to the panel and let this be the last round JP did you did you want to make a comment at all I'm sorry put you on the spot I wondered if you wanted to make a comment at all it's got a very important book on South Africa yes you should well you are putting me on the spot sorry maybe I just want to make this one comment I think the idea of the economy was raised and of course it's an extremely important thing I think the point it was made from the panel side was the point that the ambassador made people didn't want to spit in the well from which they're going to drink I think it was a fundamental contributor to what happened the rules point about maintaining institutions I think equally so and I just want to leave the audience with this one number you can forget the rest in the 20 years before we became a democracy we became poorer measured in per capita income terms by half a percent a year that's not a catastrophe but if you add it up in 20 years it becomes quite a substantial degree of getting poorer in the 19 years after democracy so far we've been raising or lifting per capita incomes by 1.5 percent a year consistently for 90 years so from minus 10 we went to plus 33 I think that tells you all you need to know about the transformation in South Africa was not just a political one but indeed it has also so far been quite an astonishing successful economic one lots of work to be done especially on the inequality front there's no question about that and I challenge you to bring me one South African that will say that inequality and unemployment and so on are not important those issues are vitally important but you cannot deal with them unless you generate resources and that we're doing that's also the questions and I'll let you deal with the relationship of South Africa towards other African countries black African countries the Columbia experience which I know you have insights to and the the question that you just dealt with but also how important we talked about outside influence what about outside threats of military intervention I'll put all those out there and let you pick and choose and yes we draw to a close but I think there's a rich set of questions out there may I suggest that he does the Columbia because he's involved in that I'd really like to answer the issue about the word that was used the lady is garnish here xenophobia oh dear oh you've moved over there she has a meeting I would love to have said what you said Mr. Hanukum but then they would say I'm campaigning for the ANC but it's nice to see a comrade in Washington no let's say about me look at the badges no no the point is that I didn't want to say that because it would detract from what is a great figure Nelson Mandela but the truth is he was a product of a party he was also a product of a community and it was a very interesting discussion room that I had and a minister told me after he had been to the funeral in Kunu that a lot of what Mandela's personality was was reflected in that village the people were so warm and so caring as poor as they may have been so he is a product of certain circumstances so we will give credit to the party he came from because it was a collective but we've also got to give credit to Mandela where strength was needed but we can't detract from the water sissoulos and back his and the leadership of the ANC sorry I it was a collective leadership and he may be have been a symbol as well but there were moments in our history where his leadership brought about changes and prevented bloodshed again we don't want to detract and take away from what was I agree with you that he was a product of what I'd like to believe was a great movement at the time do you want to address the question that the leg brings? ma'am he's going to answer I'm trying to answer your question I think I know why they shouted you at the event I was thinking I know we do have two problems you've addressed two problems in fact there are three problems or three issues that need to be discussed one is the quality of our administration okay ambassador when we when we drafted our ready to govern I think there was one very important aspect that we did not cover and that was the state machinery we looked at political transformation but we didn't quite emphasize the importance of the state machinery at the time and we were going into this debate and the reasons and so forth but we've made some mistakes in that regard and the application of some of our policies has compromised our administration but there's one point I'd like to raise when you landman I'd like to hear you on this one a bit controversial it is disappointing that at the time during the time of apartheid and I raised this because in the truth and reconciliation commission I did not see any business people who came to the TRC people who benefited from the apartheid system it's been disappointing for us it was largely african people and people from the security apparatus that came up there it would have helped things a bit easier for us and a bit more difficult for the malemas of this world to emerge the second thing is and it is disappointing I'm being honest with you and say this and it touches on the issue that we had pressures as a political party to accommodate many people who had fought against a system compromise meritocracy to accommodate it would have helped in the private sector could have put just as much energy in accommodating our aspirations as much as they did accommodate the families of those people who were fighting on the border it did put pressure and the perverse thing that has happened is because we capitulated to this pressure the people who suffer in the end with less than desirable services are the poor which is our constituency so it's a perversity but again we need to take responsibility but I just need to give you the context under which that happened so just to answer that question the third thing is yes we have had xenophobic violence what was termed as xenophobic we live in a very rough neighborhood it's the truth very rough neighborhood and with all our difficulties we are in attraction to many people we have people who would walk from Central Africa and come to South Africa in areas and living areas where we already have high unemployment in social economic conditions so I don't think the the animosity so to speak is a personal one it's as a result of social economic and competition and I think Ambassador you've been involved in mediating in that regard but there's also another one more aspect that one of our esteemed intellectuals when you're on a come I think you'd agree with this that our mindset as well I mean my own development what my opinion of beauty was was molded in a particular way until you brought an intellectual side to it and you would find as we grow in confidence this thing goes away but what happens is initially after 1994 if you saw two French speaking people in South Africa if it was a white French speaking person welcome to South Africa if it was a black French speaking person or you're an illegal immigrant and it was our own black people who were doing it but it's also about our own history and it's a mindset I think you'll have an understanding of that it comes from a deep inferiority complex that we still have and it'll take years to dissipate yeah we'll leave rules to pick up all the questions but I want to say that I was Premier in 2008 when this wave of violence broke out and you really needed to spend time in that situation to understand the psychology of it and it was the competition for scarce resources it was the fact that unfortunately I think that South Africans had become a lot more status they were looking to the state to provide where Africans who were coming were a lot more creative in business and so forth they were selling sugar by the teaspoon where as we were trying to sell 5 kilogram bags of sugar to very poor people etc etc and I think that a lot of these kind of things happened the kind of Africans that also came were your very hardened warriors from the battlefields of the Congo Somalia and other places and I think we needed to deal with some of that I wouldn't put it at the door of Nelson Mandela as a failure I think that we underestimated we almost took for granted that there will be a natural solidarity amongst Africans because Africans across the continent had taken huge risks for us had the infrastructure bombed by the apartheid state because they had ANC camps there and were receiving so we thought that the solidarity was going to be natural and seamless and that it wasn't an aspect of work but we have a constitution that has allowed the constitutional court and others to for example allow South Africans to vote counter instinctively on say civil unions amongst homosexuals we transcended ourselves even though the instinct of our people may not have been ready and so Nelson Mandela was able to allow us to transcend ourselves in that way but I think we were slack on underestimating the need to work for a solidarity amongst Africans and to overcome the challenges that I think we saw I think just on just Braham, you know what created Nelson Mandela and you're just giving me an opportunity to repeat a wonderful line that I just read last night from Bertolt Brecht's play on Galileo Galilei and Galileo responds to someone who points out a hero and he says unhappy is the land that needs a hero unhappy is the land that needs a hero and it is not that the one person does it but that the one person we invest in to be our symbol Nelson Mandela would be the first one to say he would not have been as disciplined in 1990 had waltzed his sulu not molded his personality from an angry person in 1962 Nelson Mandela would be the first to say that he was allowed to use his charm in the negotiations had Oliver Tambo not canvas the Arari declaration across the length and breadth of the African continent in the camps of the ANC and amongst the cadres of the ANC to create the space for Nelson Mandela to do what he had done that he would not have been who he was had it not been for the intellectual rigor of a governor who taught them and had lessons with them on Robin Island and so in a sense we invested in him to be our hero because he had the personality for the time every era allows the personality to arise Oliver Tambo great hero through the fractures years of exile he kept us believing and kept us moving forward and the ANC sees these things of the battle leadership is a relay race not a sprint not all on yourself and I think that we all bring our personality to bear on a fundamentally similar policy and I think that I just look back it was the ANC leadership in the 1950s who wrote to Dave Malin the apartheid prime minister to say we are ready for a national convention we can talk just only the later leadership where the opportunity to talk so I think that those are absolutely critical and just a quick thing on this very interesting idea on the pedagogy of peace I think that the pedagogy of peace starts with reinvesting strength in words which have been rendered weak to speak peace is often seen as the domain of the weak to speak compromise is to see it as being owned by those with no backbone to speak courage because you know the Kentian understanding of courage is not that courage is the opposite of cowardice the opposite of cowardice is recklessness the perfect middle is courage and so this notion and that's the beauty of the leadership that we had in the country at that time that they made it a strength to be peaceful built an entire movement as Rufus has described they made compromise a virtue not a submission you knew what your principles were but you were accommodating on the pathways to your principle it's really that we redefined courage we understood that the one who was willing to die in front of the Casper or the tank was not courageous he was reckless and we mustn't invest in such people the false value of courage but we also understood who were the cowards and the courage was the perfect middle the the appropriate bravery to not be a coward and the appropriate restraint to not be reckless and that I think is absolutely critical the most fascinating concept that someone has introduced here the pedagogy of peace and it starts with reclaiming words because negotiations at the end of the day are all about words and their power very interesting the last words on everything I will try to address some of the questions but not so today there is the expert that was Friday's meeting I will first respond I'm sorry I can't do it in Albanian I believe that might be your home language your question about the military pressure whether that was a factor no what was a factor in that context was probably the fact that it was more and more difficult for the apartheid regime to sustain the military power simply because the pressure on the budget we were running with a huge deficit on an ongoing basis for a number of years by then and it was impossible we had a various well equipped military force but it costed money and it was impossible to sustain it at that level on the question of Columbia I don't want to go into the details now but I would love to exchange views simply because I think there is a lot of similarities between Colombians of Africa presently more or less the same GDP the same size in terms of population and all that a lot we can learn from Columbia what they've done about inequalities but of course they can take examples from us about how to resolve the problems there and it's not easy but I would like to share with you because I think it's a place where we're from our experience should become more involved on the question of process I'm a very strong believer that process is equal to content 50-50 and it was because we succeeded right from the beginning in building a process on an inclusive basis it was not a matter of the one prescribing to the others what the rules of the game would be it was mutual agreement on what the rules would be that helped us to overcome the early phases of challenges in the negotiations and long before we even sought to address the fundamentals of a new constitutional dispensation we had agreement on the process that we would follow we found our own mechanisms and tools along that to enable us to overcome the challenges that inevitably had to come so breakdowns came but we were able to handle them as they arrived and that is how we succeeded in not depending on the outside to deal with those critical moments and challenges as they arrived so process is a key factor in these situations because there is an absence of attention to process there is no progress as far as the peace process is concerned a very critical question and I wish we had more time to elaborate on this and analyse it more is the question of how do you move into a new realm if I understand you correct what I would like to say about this and in short is that if I didn't go through a paradigm shift myself I would not have been able to participate and contribute in the negotiations in the way I succeeded in doing it it's a simple fact but it was not only me it was a whole range of colleagues and in the end we had a critical moment where we reached a paradigm shift with international party thinking about the new constitutional arrangement for the country the old paradigm was there from 340 years it was one of superiority versus inferiority which was the basis of racism and we had to get rid of that and we succeeded in getting rid of that only during the negotiations through a paradigm shift where we realised that old paradigm is totally unsustainable not only unsustainable it's the past and the moment that that shift arrived was when we started to ask the question what is it that we want from the future instead of what is it that we want to protect from the past that was the moment of real change but people unfortunately and it's a human behaviour mostly rely on what they want to protect from the past that informs their thinking where they are because that is what they know best and that's so difficult most conflict situations get people out of that battle and think of what the future expects of them and what would be far better than whatever they might have protected from the past so I think that is a critical factor that one has to look at I think that covers well it's been one of the most extraordinary panels I've participated in I want to thank thank everyone here it's been rich and full and very instructive and I wish you all every success as you go forward but thank you very much for sharing