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This book challenges the conventional understanding of South Africa's transition to democracy as a home-grown process through comparative analysis of Commonwealth and United Nations mediation attempts. Approaching power transition through the lens of South Africa, Zwelethu Jolobe raises questions about how methods and types of mediation are understood, and their appropriateness for certain stages of negotiation processes. International Mediation in the South African Transition calls into question the generalisations about the determinants of success by international third parties in resolving internal conflicts. It moves from the position that the success of a mediation effort depends on the examination of the time horizon of a conflict and on the contribution the mediation effort plays in improving the relationship between the belligerents. The book argues that the international community, particularly the Commonwealth and the United Nations, played a profound and beneficial role in the political transition to end apartheid. International Mediation in the South African Transition will be of interest to students and scholars of African politics, conflict resolution, international relations and global governance--Provided by publisher.

Includes bibliographical references. ; This dissertation examines the pre-negotiation stage of the negotiation process in South Africa leading to the first plenary session of the Convention for a Democratic of South Africa on 20 December 1991. The pre-negotiation stage was that period in the South African conflict when negotiated solutions were considered, and negotiation towards a political settlement was adopted as an option by the major parties, namely the National Party South African government and the African National Congress. The central question this dissertation asks is why did the South African multiparty negotiations begin? This question is important; De Klerk's seminal address to the Tricameral Parliament on 2 February 1990, and the subsequent release of Nelson Mandela on 11 February 1990, is often considered as the beginning of the negotiation process in South Africa. This however is not true. Negotiations did take place before this date and they were crucial in shaping the path towards multiparty negotiations. The important question therefore is what prepared the ground for 2 February 1990, and the resulting political process that l ed to multiparty negotiations. The dissertation thus has two sub-questions: (1) why negotiations in South Africa occurred at all; and (2) why the South African government ended up negotiating with the ANC. To answer these questions, the dissertation will use I. William Zartman's theory of ripeness as a guide, and Brian Tomlin's five-staged model of prenegotiation as an analytical framework. In this respect, the dissertation is a theoretical singlecase study. The dissertation argues that multiparty negotiations in South Africa began because the South African government and the African National Congress reached a shared understanding that the South African conflict could be solved through a negotiated solution, produced a commitment to a negotiated solution, and in the process, overcame the problem of preconditions as a barrier to the opening of multiparty negotiations.

"The reconciliatory project [in South Africa] seems to have completely fallen away from the national agenda, and many of the TRC's [Truth and Reconciliation Commission's] recommendations remain unimplemented and unrealised. Has reconciliation been successful? Do South Africans feel reconciled? What is the way forward? This book brings together leading social scientists and researchers to critically interrogate the success of the reconciliatory project, using ten years of public opinion data collected by the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (IJR) through the South African Reconciliation Barometer survey."--Back cover