`We always say that our police demonstrates the Irish coffee syndrome; a mass of black at the bottom, then a mixed-up brown bit and, at the top, a layer of purest white."
Zelda Lynn Holtzman is herself an assistant commissioner in the South African Police Service, a vibrant young black woman who proves that despite her words quoted above, radical change is possible. Before joining the police as a lateral entrant, she worked as manager of a popular justice project, training local leaders in community policing projects.
Last weekend Ms Holtzman was in Belfast to speak at a conference, organised by the Committee on the Administration of Justice, on the future of policing in Northern Ireland. She was keen to stress that no two situations were exactly alike, that the problems of securing an acceptable police service in Northern Ireland were inevitably different from those which she and her colleagues faced in South Africa.
Comparisons, in other words, can be pushed too far, but there are enough similarities for what she said to make for a riveting and relevant discussion of policing in the aftermath of civil conflict.
The assistant commissioner described the primary challenge facing a divided society where one community feels "a deep entitlement" to own and to control the police force.
For white people in South Africa during the long years of apartheid, the police represented much more than a job. It was a way of life which provided exclusive housing, leisure clubs, holiday resorts, retirement homes.
In recent years there has been increasing criticism of the RUC for encouraging its members to live in exclusive estates, virtually isolated from the rest of the community and socialising mainly with other members of the force.
In South Africa the first reaction of the new order was that everything must be changed. Many white police officers found the pace and scale of the reforms impossibly difficult to take and left. Some of the changes, to the insignia and the ranking system within the service, were largely symbolic but an important sign of commitment to reform.
There had been a rule during the apartheid years, for example, that any black officer, however senior, must salute a white police officer, even if he or she were junior in rank. This practice was stopped. On the other hand a proposal to abandon the wearing of a cap, which denoted seniority, was dropped because it led to a deterioration in discipline.
Ms Holtzman was candid in admitting that there had been a serious increase in violent crime in South Africa, particularly against women. It is almost as if the energy and drive which went into the long struggle against apartheid has found expression in much more anti-social and destructive forms.
This ugly phenomenon has been all too apparent in Northern Ireland in the scourge of punishment beatings, and it was encouraging to hear an assistant commissioner of police express her confidence that these problems are part of the challenge of transition.
Serious attempts were made to correct the racial imbalance of the police service in South Africa by the use of affirmative action, bonus points in recruitment and so on. Every police station was instructed to set up a community liaison scheme. New training schemes were put in place to root out not only racism, but sexual prejudices.
But Ms Holtzman was not the only speaker at last weekend's conference to stress that training schemes, however well-intentioned, rarely trickle down to improve practices at grassroots level.
Lee Jasper, a black leader who was one of the founder members of the campaign for an inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, told us that "millions of pounds have been spent setting training schemes in place in the Metropolitan Police, yet a black youth is still five times more likely to be stopped than his white equivalent".
A woman from the Ardoyne, who has worked to try and improve relations between the RUC and her community, made this point vividly. She said: "I've been on delegations to RUC headquarters and been treated with the utmost courtesy, given tea and biscuits and treated like a lady. Then I've gone back to my own area and the policeman on the beat has addressed me as a Fenian slut."
There are other similarities which struck instant chords of recognition. Lynn Holtzman spoke very eloquently of the difficulties which black recruits to the new police service in South Africa face in serving with white officers who are known to have been guilty of misbehaviour and much worse during apartheid.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission had been helpful to some extent, but there had been great disappointment and anger that more white police officers had not availed of the amnesty provisions to confess what had happened in the past.
This bitterness is rarely, if ever, referred to in public, mainly because the majority of black recruits hold President Nelson Mandela in such regard that they genuinely try to meet his high demands for forgiveness and reconciliation but, Lynn Holtzman told us, "the emotions run very deep and they are scary".
This description is reminiscent of the emotions which Chris Patten and his colleagues have encountered during the hearings of the commission of inquiry into the future of the RUC.
The review body has now held 30 public meetings across Northern Ireland. These have been attended by more than 10,000 people, of whom 1,000 have spoken. There have also been several thousand written submissions.
These encounters, public and private, have revealed a deep concern for the future of policing in Northern Ireland which goes far beyond the sterile debate focusing on "disbandment v. reform" of the RUC. They have also cut across class. One of the surprises has been that meetings have been well attended and passionately argued in areas which have suffered very little from the violence of the past 30 years.
Often the stories which people have told have been harrowing, bearing tragic witness to a legacy of bitterness and grief which is common to both communities. This legacy and how to deal with it represent one of the most serious challenges with which the Patten commission will have to deal when it publishes its report this summer.