Beyond Intractability: A Free Knowledge Base on More Constructive Approaches to Destructive Conflict
Introduction:
Ron Fisher, of American University, briefly describes an information process in South Africa that helped restore trust between factions, paving the way toward a peace agreement.
This rough transcript provides a text alternative to audio. We apologize for occasional errors and unintelligible sections (which are marked with ???).
Building Trust Between Factions in South Africa
Ron Fisher
Professor of International Peace and Conflict Resolution, School of International Service, American University
A: Everyone finds what happens in South Africa inspirational. There is a
small slice of that which involved a series of quite unofficial meetings between
high level ANC folks coming unofficially, and people on the other side who were
very well connected to the national government, like people in the Afrikaans
Brotherhood. These were initiated and facilitated by, believe it or not, a
mining company and a business firm with interests who had people in its human
relations department with some expertise to bring folks together and provide a
forum to initiate some discussions that helped pave the way toward negotiations
by building understanding and trust. Obviously many people in South Africa,
especially what was previously the Center for Inter group Relations, did a lot
of work, I don't know the case well, but I know a lot of people did a lot. This
is just one slice but it seems to be an essential slice of how South Africa got
on the road to peace when it did. That is fairly inspirational. We need more.
Mankind will never win lasting peace so long as men use their full resources only in tasks of war. While we are yet at peace, let us mobilize the potentialities, particularly the moral and spiritual potentialities, which we usually reserve for war. -- John Foster Dulles
Featured Links Organizations Making Noteworthy Contributions to Efforts to Promote More Constructive Conflict Transcend Peace University
Other Resources from Beyond Intractability Stable Peace Kenneth Boulding's classic vision of what stable peace might look like.
Nobel Peace Prize Winners
Mother Teresa Leader of Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, and 1979 Nobel Peace Laureate
The Beyond Intractability Knowledge Base Project Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess, Co-Directors and Editors c/o Conflict Information Consortium(Formerly Conflict Research Consortium), University of Colorado Campus Box 580, Boulder, CO 80309 Phone: (303) 492-1635; Fax: (303) 492-2154; Contact