The South African experience is still fresh in the mind because tomorrow it will be exactly 10 years since Nelson Mandela walked out of prison after 27 years. South Africans have already started celebrating this historic moment because it was on February 2nd, 1990, that the then president, F.W. de Klerk, surprised the world with his announcements that changed South Africa forever.
The period that followed had the typical ingredients of conflict resolution one comes across in almost all countries that struggle with peace processes. Although no two situations are the same, it is also clear that there are certain universal phenomena.
We had to pass from talks about talks to preparatory talks and on to real negotiations - all part of similar processes elsewhere, including Ireland. In the case of South Africa it took us from February 1990 to October 1991 to reach the phase of preparatory talks, which led to the first round of real negotiations, which started on December 20th, 1991. The six months that followed were a period of turmoil and turbulence and the negotiating forum (Convention for a Democratic South Africa - Codesa) eventually crashed in May 1992.
The reason for the collapse was that from the launch of Codesa there were fault-lines that could not be healed and the initial rounds of negotiations just led to more and more problems. These fault-lines included a lack of trust and credibility between the parties, a lack of leadership and direction inside the forum and consequently a lack of ownership of the process itself.
When all talks came to a complete standstill in June 1992, those South Africans who were really committed to the process were in despair. On the other hand, the extremists rejoiced in the failure because that was what they hoped for.
Does it ring a bell regarding the latest events in Belfast?
The period that followed after June was arduous because we had to remove the fault-lines of the previous process before we could start with multi-party talks again. For those committed to a negotiated settlement, it was, however, clear that every effort should be made to get the process back on track and to find lasting solutions - the alternative would have been civil war and bloodshed.
It was during this period of three months to September 1992 that adjustments were made to the process which provided the foundation for the later agreements on the interim constitution and the implementation of democracy through the election of April 27th, 1994.
The foundations were the establishing of trust between the opposing parties, the commitment to ownership of the process by the parties and the giving of direction to the process by the parties involved. These three aspects were agreed between the then South African government and the African National Congress through a "Record of Understanding" which was signed by De Klerk and Mandela at the end of September of that year.
Although there were more than 20 parties altogether, the National Party government and the ANC recognised that they had the responsibility to lead the process.
During the following six months, further hiccups occurred because some of the other parties (the Inkatha Freedom Party in particular) were not prepared to accept the Record of Understanding and the result was lengthy negotiations bilaterally and multilaterally with these other parties to bring them back to the negotiating table.
Finally a new multi-party negotiating forum was established at the end of March 1993 and the final phase of negotiations then started. Shortly after this, the election date was set for April 27th the following year and we all knew that we had to work against that deadline to finalise the interim constitution.
Unfortunately, a few months later a few parties again withdrew from the process and never returned but the remaining parties included the government and the ANC and it was accepted that sufficient credibility remained to complete the process. The second half of 1993 was still very tense and on many occasions deadlocks occurred between the government and the ANC regarding the substance of the interim constitution.
The foundations laid a year earlier made it possible to overcome these setbacks and the negotiating pattern that was followed included technical committees, committees of political line functionaries, referral to the chief negotiators of the government and the ANC and finally meetings between de Klerk and Mandela to resolve differences. This pattern was followed with success as a result of the commitment and determination between the key role-players.
The interim constitution was finalised on November 17th, 1993, and then followed a period of intense preparations for the elections and the change of government thereafter.
This period is probably less known overall but it was in my opinion a critical period to ensure continued co-operation between the key role-players on the implementation of the interim constitution and all its provisions. We worked as a team in this preparatory phase to ensure that everything was well prepared for the final execution of our agreements.
In my view, this phase could have been better used in Northern Ireland subsequent to the Belfast Agreement. From what I observe, not sufficient attention was given to preparations for implementing the agreement from April 1998 to June last year and this failure caused the various hiccups and the late establishing of the Executive.
More importantly, not enough preparatory attention was spent on the issue of decommission which was a burning issue, no doubt, all the time.
It was my expressed view during visits to Belfast that the political parties themselves had to become involved in the issue and that they could not leave it to the IRA or the loyalist paramilitary groups to take care of the issue on their own.
In addition, I thought it would be necessary for the politicians to become involved in the work of the de Chastelain commission because that would have enabled them to share their concerns and demands directly with each other and not through public announcements.
In the South African case, the matter of decommissioning (termination of the armed struggle) was always a critical issue and quite frankly we did not resolve it in the way the purists might have preferred. But it was quite clear that if we let this issue become the final stumbling block, we would not have had peace today in South Africa.
The ultimate criterion on an issue like this to my mind is that the overall objective (in the South African case, to bring about full democracy) should direct and focus the process at all times. If one loses sight of the bigger picture, the process can very easily get derailed with devastating effects.
From the South African experience, my recommendation would therefore be that the process must be proceeded with, adjusted where necessary, but always with the aim of implementing the Belfast Agreement. Failure to do so will just please the extremists on both sides.
The leading parties in Belfast must sustain the trust, ownership and leadership which they demonstrated in establishing the Executive in November last year.
That is the only way forward.
Roelf Meyer was a member of the National Party and chief negotiator for the South African government in the settlement talks with the ANC and others