Viewing Gaza through prism of apartheid limits our perspective — Greg Mills

Greg Mills

THE extent of the destruction and the loss of innocent life in Gaza suggest peace is a long way off, and reconstruction and development further still. Most South African politicians can hardly ever help themselves in viewing that conflict through the prism of apartheid: Israelis as whites and Palestinians as the forces of liberation. This may be primarily for domestic political consumption, as the fundamental differences between the two situations are greater than any similarities.

For one, white South Africans have never faced an existentialist threat of the type promised to Israel by Hamas.

Regardless, the success of the South African transition in the early 1990s does offer some guidelines on how to move any peace negotiations along. First, the conditions have to be ripe. There can be little expectation of success if the protagonists continue to prefer war over peace, or if they do not recognise the right of existence of the other party.

Hamas has made it clear it prefers that Israel should not exist, while the appetite of both sides for fighting seems insatiable, temporary withdrawals notwithstanding.

Success also depends on the international community applying pressure to get them to the negotiating table, and to stay there.

In the case of FW de Klerk’s National Party, a combination of financial sanctions, a worsening regional security environment, the arms embargo, and international isolation and opprobrium more generally, all helped to push it in this direction. For the African National Congress (ANC), the end of the Cold War and the settlement in Angola altered its options while, at the same time, providing encouragement to De Klerk’s government that there was a different path available. Again, the parallels are uncertain. While the US and even the European Union just might be able to strong-arm the Israelis in this regard, it is far from clear whether Iran, among others, has the same intentions with Hamas.

Even so, foreigners cannot want peace more than the locals.

The South African transition from apartheid to democracy highlights, too, the importance of local leadership, ready to seize the moment, capable of sensing and realising the strategic circumstances and tactical opportunity, and establishing a methodology for the negotiation process.

“Leadership plays a key — and perhaps a crucial — role,” says De Klerk. “Some present and past leaders simply would not have had the skills and/or the temperament to manage the process successfully.

“Others might have risen to the occasion if they found themselves in leadership positions. Few — if any — on the ANC side,” he reflects, “would have been able to play the role that (Nelson) Mandela played so consummately.”

Are there Israeli and Palestinian leaders willing to use up political capital in managing their constituents and making tough concessions? SA is a popular, but not the only, African example of this leadership premium. Pierre Buyoya knows something about power and negotiations. The longest-serving president of Burundi, having led a coup as a young major in September 1987, he ruled until the advent of a civilian government in 1993 and, when this fell apart amid interethnic violence costing about 150,000 lives, again from 1996 to 2003.

During the peace negotiations in 2000, he dealt extensively with former president Mandela as the external facilitator in trying to hammer out a peace deal between the Hutu majority and Tutsi minority.

With the creation of an ethnically inclusive government, Buyoya, a Tutsi, handed power to his Hutu deputy in April 2003.

“In the short time I worked with him I could see Mandela was a controversial man,” recalls Buyoya.

“He was not a common mediator, but a very strong one and most of the time used pressure on the parties, very strong pressure … to move on some of the issues. I also learnt to resist him and (to do so) I went to talk to those white people who had negotiated with him in SA, who told me that if you resist him, he will recognise you have a point.

“But he was also a man of great integrity, pressurising all sides equally. No side was

While a political settlement is the door through which much follows, the real work comes once fighting stops

happy with him…. We sometimes thought he was going beyond his mandate in the negotiations. But he never focused on or favoured one side or another.

“His other great characteristic was his link between the leaders and their people. He said that ‘you cannot take a decision against the interests of the people’. He helped sell the decisions to our people, in addressing parliament, and in talking to the (Tutsi-dominated) military, both senior officers and soldiers.

“He spoke to church leaders and civil society, even those who were opposed to the peace process. And he also went to talk to the prisons. This was difficult for us, for you know how prisoners are treated in Africa.

“When he came from there, our discussion was a little hard,” says Buyoya, now the African Union chief for the Sahel, “as he had himself been a prisoner.”

While a political settlement and local security is the door through which much follows, the real work comes once the fighting stops. Again, this involves much more than the volume of external assistance and the extent of aid.

Gaza, in particular, has a steep economic path to climb, especially after the recent bombings, but intrinsically as it is overwhelmingly geared to aid and to war.

Recovery is not just about money. Transforming states is about politics and the political economy. Experience teaches that backing up the establishment of security with increased economic activity ensures transitions are more likely to stick.

Understanding and implementing policies for economic growth is, however, the bit that many have struggled with, for a whole host of reasons — not least that governments and aid agencies do not understand business well or, worse still, are sometimes ideologically antithetical towards the private sector. As a result, the international community is very poor at delivering development, especially in postconflict countries. This should not be surprising as the donors themselves developed through internal rather than external actions. Their failings are inevitably worsened by an inability to stay the course.

Countries are quick to respond to emergency situations, or to engage militarily, driven often by their own domestic political considerations. But few have the staying power. Thinking things through to the finish, by locals and outsiders, is imperative.

SA shows that countries can change for the better, and that outside assistance and pressure can be important in setting the stage, but that locals have to get on with things themselves.

Establishing a path to peace is but one, albeit critical, aspect of transformation; sticking to it is another.

Mills is the author, most recently, of Why States Recover (Picador).