Sir, - Professor Kader Asmal chose his time well to visit Ireland. No doubt, as a shrewd observer of the political scene both in Ireland and throughout Africa, he will be noting the parallels between the Alliance Party in Northern Ireland, the ill-fated Liberal Party in South Africa and the like small groupings that breathed a short life in Central Africa prior to the collapse there of colonialism.
The South African Liberals and those others sought to find a level of accommodation between the extremes of black and white politics in the 1960s but soon realised that their dreams of riding the political tiger of compromise were doomed to failure. Why? Simply because their philosophy was never accepted by even those wavering followers of the main political streams, even though they could claim such influential giants as Alan (Cry the Beloved Country) Paton and Helen Suzman. Paton packed it in quite early but Suzman, to her credit, soldiered on to distinction. But the party foundered because, in the political terms of the times, they were neither one thing nor the other in circumstances where extremist politics thrived - as in Northern Ireland today. In fact, observers of the political scene throughout Africa in the 1960s were aware that the extreme parties had greater respect for their opposites than for what were regarded in derisory terms as "Capricornis" - from the Tropic of Capricorn that splits Southern Africa in half.
On the very day that Kader Asmal was featured in The Irish Times (July 1st) casting a gloomy eye on the Northern Ireland political scene, Lord Alderdice was seeking a new place in history as the first Speaker of the emerging Assembly after being accused by his likely successor of ditching the party in its hour of crisis. Could it be that we are witnessing the start of the decline of Alliance, no more acceptable as a middle ground political grouping in Northern Ireland today than the Capricornis were in Africa?
At that time I joined with a newspaper correspondent of the Daily Telegraph in bidding goodbye to a group of "settlers" leaving permanently for London. "The ship deserting the sinking rats," he sniped. I wonder does Kader Asmal see Lord Alderdice's snap decision to go for the big job in Belfast as an indication of his Lordship's reading of a similar state of the times in Southern Africa 30 years ago. - Yours, etc., Tim Magennis,
Killiney,
Co Dublin.