Sir, - Listening to several speakers from South Africa who visited this island during the months of June, I heard once more basic things concerning peace
. Peace is about building trust in a situation of conflict.
. Trust is developed through fostering respect, respect for those who disagree with one's own point of view as well as those who agree with it.
. Building trust requires taking risks it necessitates forgiveness and requires a capacity to put oneself in the shoes of the enemy.
. Mindsets are not immutable, and there is a life after they have been decommissioned.
The South Africa which former enemies have managed to build together is, they said, far better than what either could have done separately. Cyril Ramapose (general secretary of the ANC) smiled when the chairman of the Belfast meeting, at which he spoke, declared that the South Africans had not come to tell the people of Northern Ireland what to do. "Oh, but I have" he told his audience (guests of the Irish Association), and he wrote solemnly on a piece of paper his prescription, which the chairman then somewhat ruefully read out. "You all can do it together if you have the courage"!
At Ballycastle, when opening Corrymeela's Summertest, former Senator George Mitchell reiterated the advice conveyed by the South Africans. Addressing the theme "The Things that Make for Peace" ("Jesus looking over Jerusalem wept, saying. ("`If you had not known the things that make for peace"') George Mitchell gave the warning that a society which insists on living in the past will make that past become its future!
Strongly, he stated that peace is not so much a gift which others outside a situation can give but is built on trust, the ingredients for which are within each individual and which each must personally set out to develop if we want a peaceful society. Reassuring our own distresses and the injustices done to "our people" will not move things forward unless we consider also the plight of our enemy, forgive their injustices and, as Mr Mick McGoldrick (another Gordon Wilson) has implored, bury our pride along with his boy.
Too much to ask? So be it, then.
But that is what the experts advise, and the South Africans' joy in each others friendship and the sense of freedom which together they conveyed was highly en viable. Yours, etc., Castle Court, Booterstown, Co Dublin.