Lesson Drawing: Northern Ireland and South Africa

Helen Brocklehurst, Noel Stott, Brandon Hamber & Gillian Robinson

In Indicator SA Vol. 18 (1), March, pp. 89 – 94.

Helen Brocklehurst and Gillian Robinson are based at the Initiative on Conflict Resolution and Ethnicity (INCORE) in Northern Ireland.

Noel Stott is a former Researcher at the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation.

Brandon Hamber is an independent consultant.

In the shadow of political violence, Northern Ireland and South Africa are seeking to manage a diverse society through transformed public policies and new institutions of governance.

The two countries have engaged in negotiation processes to end decades of civil and social conflict. Despite dramatic differences in demographics and the balance of political forces, both transitions have been characterised by the need for compromise by all the actors involved.

Important in both transition processes were unofficial and informal interaction between representatives of adversary groups to develop strategies and create an environment that could contribute to the resolution of their conflicts.

Connections

Connections between Northern Ireland and South Africa were, in many cases, forged prior to the shift in governance. Individuals and groups from across the board sought to make comparisons and build relationships – a phenomenon that might not have been formally recognised as lesson drawing at the time.

There have been a substantial number of exchanges between Northern Irish and South African politicians, policy makers, researchers and non-governmental organisation (NGO) staff.

In 1994 and 1995, the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa) invited two separate groups of Northern Ireland political leaders to South Africa to "provide them with the opportunity to study the South Africa experience and negotiations process since the 1990s".¹ In an article published in the Sunday Times, one the participants, John Alderdice of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, said that "the lessons (learnt) have influenced my party to publish proposals for changes in police accountability in Northern Ireland".² Sinn Fein's National Chairperson, Tom Hartley, said that they had learnt "imaginative ways of co-operation, compromise and the significance of personal contact and trust".³

In 1997, leading politicians from both the National Party and the ANC invited Northern Ireland's politicians to South Africa so that "they could benefit from their experience in reaching accommodation".⁴ More recently, there has been a range of exchanges between South Africa and Northern Ireland These have included a focus on) community policing, the criminal justice system, punishment beatings, restorative justice and victim-support work. Mechanisms to deal with past political violence are being investigated, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of a South African style truth commission for Northern Ireland.⁵

Victims policy

In a broad sense, South Africa has developed what is considered to be some of the most progressive legislation and public policy in the world. This is in part due to the ANC's international exposure while in exile. More generally, South Africa's acceptance back into the international community has allowed the country to benefit (and learn) from a range of international policy developments. As a result, South Africa has sophisticated policies in relation to gay rights, gender, human rights, crime prevention, land reform and the relationship between national and provincial governments.

The idea of the 'truth commission' strategy was adapted by the South Africans after a range of exchanges between South Africa and Latin American countries – including Chile, El Salvador, Argentina – and Germany. This culminated in the birth of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 1995.

The TRC's applicability to Northern Ireland is still under review. It is postulated that "the debate should not be whether Northern Ireland should have a South African style truth commission or not, but rather, what strategy (or strategies) Northern Ireland should be considering for dealing with the past."⁶ A number of exchange programmes to explore the lessons for Northern Ireland in the work of the South African TRC have taken place.⁷

Victim support policy in Northern Ireland is innovative in the sense that it is made on behalf of a newly recognised sector of the community with distinct policy needs which need to be served across public policy sectors. The 'Bloomfield Report' compiled by Victims Commissioner, Sir Keith Bloomfield, raised many pertinent issues. A Minister for Victims has been appointed and a Victims' Liaison Unit has been established and recently a Victims' Unit set up within the Office of the First and Deputy First Minister to deal with victims issues in a cross departmental capacity.

Although South Africa never had a Minister of Victims, the broad areas of concern covered in the report are reminiscent of issues raised in South Africa and which are now firmly on the national agenda. These include compensation for victims of political violence, recognition and acknowledgement of suffering, the need for trauma care and counselling, and issues such as truth, justice and reconciliation insofar as they relate to victims.

Policing

Policing reform in Northern Ireland and South Africa has been influenced by the findings of senior officers who have visited other countries with the specific intention of drawing lessons from observation and discussion with their counterparts across the world.

Making international comparisons is not new to the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). International police networks on the issue of community policing in divided societies originated in 1993, particularly between the RUC and various forces in the USA. RUC and South African officers have also established contacts with the Belgian gendarmerie on the subject of public order policing and their new model, which is underpinned by a community-policing ethos. Senior officers in Northern Ireland and South Africa have recently consolidated their relationship in 'engagement sessions' between their respective Change Management teams.⁸

The South African police were clearly influenced by the Canadian concept of community policing. Moves are also afoot to look towards a range of countries in the South, including Brazil.

'Lesson drawing'

The climate of transition in both South Africa and Northern Ireland seems to have provided a significant rationale for looking abroad for lessons.

In South Africa, 'transition' is generally defined as something more than mere 'regime shift', something less than transformation and certainly not merely a shift from authoritarian to democratic rule.⁹ As Friedman states "…if there is a reasonable expectation among a significant section of society that the basic rules governing society could change, then that society is still in a period of transition."¹⁰ He argues that 'transition' involves a change from one set of rules to something else and that policy is thus made in conditions of uncertainty."¹¹

Lesson drawing in transition may be part of a broader strategy of attempting to remove uncertainty in a complex and fast moving environment. One reason why lesson drawing is particularly useful in times of transition is that it often enables policy makers to remove themselves from their own scene. Learning in another place, albeit in a closed and intense environment, away from the distractions of everyday work, is ideal for creating the space conducive to learning and exchange. Secondly, where issues are particularly sensitive – for example, policing a divided society – it enables players to discuss reforms by alluding to the exporter environment and its parallels without using the highly charged identities and issues of the potential importer country. This has certainly been the case in recent exchanges between the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the RUC on the subject of Change Management.

However as Kingdon argues, policy makers do not have the time or knowledge to be 'maximisers' – that is, to fully exploit and recognise other options.¹² Lesson drawing is not an exact science. Policy makers in transition are often dealing with immense time and resource pressures. South Africa had a highly politicised society, which may have substantially contributed to what Mark Orkin et al., call "a flurry of social policy formulation", as the key national organisations – loosely co-ordinated by the ANC – prepared to participate in government.¹³ Civil society in South Africa consisted of some 50 000 voluntary organisations and an inordinate number of policy-related NGO type think-tanks.¹⁴

It can be said that South Africa is further advanced down the path of transition than Northern Ireland. New policies have been developed and implementation is being attempted. In addition, South Africa has a unique corporate image of successful transition and as a 'miracle unfolding'. It consequently attracts international interest. However, as Adrian Guelke notes, the pervasive notion of a South African 'model' or 'miracle' could be more accurately be described as a 'myth'. Myths "gloss over the substance of the changes, while exaggerating the significance of some of the symbolic trappings of the transition."¹⁵

In a positive sense, South Africa now serves as a conceptual benchmark for others. Key players in that country are often assertive and realistic in their understanding of the frameworks they were operating in and the factors they were subject to.

While states that are seen to be engaged in successful implementation of policies are regarded as ideal environments from which lessons can be drawn, this can, however, be an inappropriate way of doing things. The particular context which allowed these policies to be successfully implemented is not taken always taken sufficiently into account.¹⁶

Looking north There is a tendency in the West to downplay the success of policies in Africa and Latin America.17 South Africans experienced a great deal of pressure to emulate successful Northern states rather than those in the developing world. As some key South African players now reflect, examples from countries closer to home – now 'discovered' six years further down the line – may have offered much more than practices taken from, say, Germany. Friedman notes that "there was a strong need to show that we could do things the same way as those successful folks in the North…and to neglect what for example, Uganda was doing with respect to AIDS or Botswana with respect to traditional leaders."18 Other reasons include the fact that, in the era of the Internet, policy information from, and about, Northern countries is more likely to be available than from African states. Africa (with a population of 780 million people) has about as many hosts on the Internet as a small Eastern European country such as Latvia (with a population of 2,5 million).19 In addition, it is Western countries who have both the willingness and the financial ability to assist.20

Institutions

In South Africa, public and social transformation is often supposed to be carried forward by 'disaggregated' units such as the Commission for Gender Equality and the Human Rights Commission. It has been argued however, that despite the best intentions, these are not always the best mechanisms for implementing social change.

Many of the commissions in South Africa were set up as consolidations of the political agreement. They are not holistic solutions to areas of policy being carried forward. Some organisations in the voluntary sector have argued that they "are toothless watchdogs, compromised by their dependence on the state for funding, constraints on their resources and an unwillingness to take on the state".²¹

Transitional governments face the paradox of having to institute changes before they lose widespread credibility and are overwhelmed by intractable social and economic problems. They tend to turn to institutions that they can create from scratch, such as commissions of investigation and enquiry.²²

The real difficulty is that often these bodies are empowered to develop and recommend, rather than to implement new public policy; a process which is infinitely more complex than the recommendations that generally come out of government commissions set up during times of transition.

The TRC

The establishment of the TRC in South Africa provides a good example of the gap between policy making and policy implementation. The TRC, amongst other functions, was mandated to make recommendations with regard to granting reparations to people, and their families, who were found to be victims of murder, attempted murder, torture or severe ill-treatment between March 1960 and May 1995.²³ The TRC handed its final report to the government in October 1998. It was then the responsibility of the President (now Thabo Mbeki) to consider the recommendations and make suggestions to Parliament.

A number of issues are strikingly apparent. Firstly, the TRC could only make recommendations with regards to a reparations policy. The implementation of the recommendations lay with government. As such, much of the recent criticism levelled at the TRC regarding the lack of reparations to victims of gross human rights violence is misplaced. Instead, what it demonstrates is government's inability to match the demands of visionary new policy formation with the technical and financial capacity to implement these policies.²⁴

The TRC also confronted other problems. The amnesty process has extended some two years over its mandated time frame. The TRC claims to have lacked funds for a more extensive public communication strategy and the number of researchers to investigate the 35 000 reported violations was hopelessly inadequate.

The TRC's problems resulted from financial and technical constraints, but in part they were also the consequence of over-ambitious policy objectives, which were contained in legislation, rooted in political and constitutional compromise and which, at a practical level, remained substantially detached from the needs and expectations which had been generated at a grass-roots level as a result of the TRC process.²⁵

Crime prevention

This is also evident in South Africa's National Crime Prevention Strategy (NCPS). The NCPS, which was passed by Cabinet in May 1996, presents several fundamental challenges to government. It seeks to develop a victim-centred approach to crime prevention, demands that violent crimes against women and children are given priority, highlights the central role of firearms in violent crime and places youth at the heart of any crime prevention initiatives. The NCPS argues for a long-term developmental approach to crime prevention and advocates an integrated, cross-cutting approach from the various departments of government.²⁶

It is arguable that, precisely because of its forward-looking nature and view of crime as a complex and multi-layered problem, the NCPS ultimately represents the kind of ambitious policy making which a government in transition is probably incapable of implementing effectively.

On the one hand, the ANC government, in large part drawing on its traditional intellectual power-base within the NGOs, the trade unions and the universities had a uniquely powerful intellectual capacity for creative and innovative policy making. On the other hand, however, government's capacity to implement these policy visions has been dependent on inexperienced new recruits into government departments who have frequently proved to have little capacity to drive and operate state bureaucracies. Many activists have found the shift from being in a 'revolutionary underground movement' to working within a governing political party a difficult one to make.²⁷

This situation has been further exacerbated by the fact that South Africa favoured the maintenance of and reliance on the pre-existing civil service. The ANC inherited bureaucrats from the old order who have either been passively or actively resistant to implementation of certain policies, or have been, at times, simply incapable of doing so as they lacked the same vision as the policy makers. Furthermore, the bureaucracy itself was often not flexible enough to deal with the type of policy suggestions made.

The NCPS policy, for example, demanded the establishment of programmes and policies which cut across various government departments and ignored the extent to which a new political leadership would struggle to assert vertical lines of accountability within individual departments and bureaucracies which were inherited from the former government.

Added to this are the budgetary constraints, which demand an uncomfortable process of prioritisation if the massive task of redressing historical inequities at the social, political and economic levels are to be undertaken. Budgetary constraints also foster intense competition between various departments and this often motivates against cross-departmental co-operation.

A related problem was the extent to which any crime prevention strategy was ultimately dependent on the key processes of internal transformation of government's criminal justice institutions. This objective presented government with competing needs which were difficult to prioritise. While effective crime prevention was dependent on institutional transformation, popular confidence in the processes of transformation was dependent on successful crime fighting.

In framing long-term developmental solutions to the crime problem, the NCPS developed a vision which consciously anticipated media and popular political pressure for immediate solutions. Its authors, however, could not anticipate the extent to which an embattled and defensive government, in responding to this popular political pressure, would ultimately retreat from the principles which underpin the NCPS as a strategy document.

Finally, the commitment within the NCPS to partnership between government and civil society was also inadequately sensitive to the disproportionate influence which could be brought to bear by specific, well-resourced and interest-based lobby groups. The partnership-based approach has not led to any significant expansion in capacity-building partnerships between government and the NGO sector, resulting in many of the noble constituency-based objectives of the NCPS – amongst women, children, the youth and victims – being substantially neglected or under-utilised. Such policy development, although visionary, may have failed to adequately prioritise short term, deliverable objectives which resonate closely enough with grass-roots needs and which are realistically operable within tight budgetary constraints and cycles.²⁸ The Human Rights Commission and the Gender and Youth Commissions may well also suffer from an irreconcilable gap between their elaborate policy mandates and the resources with which they are expected to fulfil these mandates.²⁹

Issues for Northern Ireland

At this stage of the project, it is perhaps, too early to judge to what extent Northern Ireland policy making institutions and interim arrangements will impact on policy development with regard to victims. The Good Friday Agreement also leaves the Northern Ireland civil service totally untouched. So, similar problems and issues may arise in the future.

Initial evidence in relation to victims suggests that there are a number of key issues, including the fragmentation of the policy arena, lack of money and lack of skills or overall vision that may have a negative impact on policy implementation. The ability of traditional policy makers and the everyday subjects of policy to communicate with one another has been lost over 30 years of highly compartmentalised policy structures and sectarian overtones. Effort is now being put into capacity building courses in these skills – extending from civil servants to health professionals. However policy making has remained relatively disconnected from civic communities and at higher levels is now characterised as both insecure and highly complex.³⁰ The whole issue of generating a macro victim policy is particularly challenging.³¹ The identity of victims is contested and victims' issues are notoriously difficult to abstract from a plethora of highly politicised and emotional voices and, to a still large extent, silent and silenced thoughts on how to go forward.

One consequence of lesson drawing is that it may take place at the expense of drawing lessons from home. Lesson drawing through international exchanges may serve to reassure or build confidence amongst networks of practitioners³², but on issues such as victims policy, it is the home environment and experiences that may hold the clues to more appropriate solutions.³³ The opportunity cost of lesson drawing from outside might be worth considering.

¹ Press Release: "Northern Ireland Politicians to Visit South Africa", 21 November 1994; Press Release: 'Visit of Sinn Fein", 9 February 1995. IDASA Collection, National Archives of South Africa.

² J. Alderdice, "If Talks Can Work in South Africa, Why Not Here?" Sunday Times, 22 January 1995.

³ J. Masilela, "SA Hailed as a Beacon of Hope", Pretoria News, 17 February 1995.

⁴ J. McGarry, "Political Settlements in Northern Ireland and South Africa", Political Studies, vol. XLVI, 1998 p. 854. Reports can also be seen in An Phoblacht/Republican News, June 6 1997.

⁵ B. Hamber (ed.), Past Imperfect: Dealing with the Past in Northern Ireland and Societies in Transition, (Derry/Londonderry: INCORE, 1998).

⁶ B. Hamber, (ed.), Past Imperfect: Dealing with the Past in Northern Ireland and Societies in Transition, (Derry/Londonderry: INCORE, 1998).

⁷ See for example: All Truth is Bitter: a Report of the Visit by Dr. Alex Boraine, Deputy Chairman of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to Northern Ireland (Belfast: NIACRO & Victim Support Northern Ireland, March 2000) and the newly formed 'Healing through Remembering project', Belfast.

Independent Project's Trust: "RUC/SAPS exchange" http://www.webpro.co.za/clients/ipt/ruc/html

⁹ Author interview with Jackie Cock, Department of Sociology, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 15 June 2000.

¹⁰ Author interview with Stephen Friedman, Centre for Policy Studies, Johannesburg, 28 June 2000.

¹¹ ibid.

¹² Richard Rose, Lesson drawing in Public policy (New Jersey: Chatham House, 1993), p. 58.

¹³ Mark Orkin, Jackie Dugard & Zwelakhe Tshandu, Research and Social Policy Formulation in a Contested Context: Two South African Case Studies (Braamfontein: C A S E, 1995).

¹⁴ Author interview with Mark Shaw, South African Institute for International Affairs, Johannesburg, 20 July, 2000.

¹⁵ A. Guelke, South Africa in Transition: the misunderstood miracle (London: Tauris Academic Studies, 1999) p.183.

¹⁶ Author interview with Stephen Freidman, Centre for Policy Studies, Johannesburg, 28 June 2000.

¹⁷ C. Thunhurst and N. Ruck, "A lesson in Southern Comfort", Health Service Journal, 10th January 1991, pp. 24-5.

¹⁸ Author interview with Stephen Friedman, Centre for Policy Studies, Johannesburg, 28 June 2000.

¹⁹ M. Jensen, African Internet Status. May 2000 http://www3.sn.apc.org/africa/afstat.htm.

²⁰ Author interview with Mark Shaw, South African Institute of International Affairs, Johannesburg, 20 July 2000.

²¹ S. Gutto, "The Commissions and the Transition", Development Update, 3:1 (1999) p. 82-94.

²² N. Roht Arriaza , "Conclusion: Combating impunity", in N. Roht-Arriaza (ed.) Impunity and Human Rights in International Law and Practice (New York, Oxford University Press,1995).

²³ For a more detailed discussion of the powers of the TRC to grant amnesty to perpetrators and to document the stories of victims see B. Hamber & Kibble, S., "From Truth to Transformation: South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission", Briefing paper published by the Catholic Institute for International Relations (CIIR), (London, 1999).

²⁴ G. Simpson, "The Challenge of the State in Transition: From Policy to Delivery", Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, Annual Report, 1996. (Braamfontein: CSVR, 1997).

²⁵ Author interview with Graeme Simpson, Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, 19 July 2000.

²⁶ ibid.

²⁷ Author interview with Mark Butler, Critical Resources, Pietermaritzburg, 29 May 2000.

²⁸ G. Simpson(1997), op cit.

²⁹ Author interview with Graeme Simpson, Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, 19 July 2000.

³⁰ 'Comparative Experiences of Policy Making and Implementation in Countries in Transition', Workshop with 40 policy makers, INCORE, Derry/Londonderry, February 2001.

³¹ Brandon Hamber, "Comparing Northern Ireland and South Africa", in Remember and Change: Survivors of the Conflict Shaping Their Own Future: A Report of the Conference Proceedings, March 1999 (Belfast: Northern Ireland Voluntary Trust, 1999) p. 112.

³² Author interviews with 'victims' policymakers. May 2000.

³³ ibid.