Northern Ireland must be extremely careful in how it addresses the past or else the current "tender" power-sharing arrangement could be jeopardised, former South African minister Prof Kader Asmal has warned.
Prof Asmal said at a conference in Belfast yesterday that politicians, human rights activists and others must always be mindful that the context of the truth commission in South Africa was markedly different to the situation applying in Northern Ireland.
The former head and founder of the Irish Anti-Apartheid movement, who left Ireland to return to South Africa 17 years ago, said that "on balance", the South African Truth Commission worked but that a similar model might not succeed in Northern Ireland.
"In South Africa, we were moving from an immoral, detestable situation to majority rule, but the situation is different in Northern Ireland where there is no majority rule.
"Unless a means of addressing the past is owned by everyone it can be divisive, disruptive and offensively injurious," Prof Asmal warned. "It took 10 years to arrive at this settlement in Northern Ireland. Effectively you are finished, you are at the end of the armed struggle as a determinant in politics. Do you want to interfere with that, to affect that?
"As a historian, as a lawyer I always want to know the truth, but it can be a self-indulgent thing; sometimes the price you pay can be too heavy," he added.
Prof Asmal was talking to The Irish Times at the Wellington Park Hotel in Belfast, where he addressed a conference on a bill of rights organised by the Human Rights Consortium.
Australian human rights expert Chris Sidoti, as chairman of the Bill of Rights Forum, is charged with finding agreement by next March from the political parties and the various human rights groups, including the consortium, on what should constitute a bill of rights for Northern Ireland.
Prof Asmal added: "A bill of rights must belong to as wide a cross-section of the public as possible, including in particular those who are marginalised in society and who by definition find it more difficult to access their rights."
