SA transition `example to Sinn Fein'

South Africa's transition from an apartheid regime was vital to Sinn Fein's justification of a change in the direction of the republican movement, a conference on contemporary South African history and politics heard yesterday.

Prof Adrian Guelke of Queen's University, Belfast, said Sinn Fein's comparison of the political situation in Northern Ireland with that of South Africa played an important role in the 1980s in the party's justification of the IRA's campaign of violence. In the 1990s, the comparison became a "basis for justifying a change of direction by the republican movement" and an "important means . . . of legitimising Sinn Fein's peace strategy", culminating in the IRA ceasefire of August 1994. "Even when the ceasefire broke down," Prof Guelke said, "the South African analogy continued to be used by the Sinn Fein leadership to sustain the party's commitment to a peace strategy".

A "notable borrowing" by the parties to the Northern Ireland talks from South Africa's multiparty negotiations was the principle of "sufficient consensus" as a basis for decision-making, he said.

In Northern Ireland, this was interpreted as "the requirement that substantive decisions should have the support of majorities of both unionists and nationalists".

While Nelson Mandela caused controversy during trips to Ireland in the 1990s by remarks which "demonstrated that he viewed the conflict in Northern Ireland in anti-colonial terms", it was because of the ANC's perceived sympathy for the republican movement that it was later "able to play such a constructive role in the Northern Ireland peace process".

Former minister for foreign affairs Mr Dick Spring said while South Africa had "a huge economic mountain to climb", if it "followed the economic example of Ireland", it could arrive at its destination in "a less painful way" than other countries.