The post-Apartheid era shows fascinating echoes of the era after the Boer War: Afrikaners learning that they can win by 'losing', the trade-off between vengeance and forbearance, and a worrying trajectory towards nationalism. Efforts to reconcile 'the nation' are treacherous and demand trade-offs. Tim Cohen looks at how Louis Botha and Nelson Mandela managed the transitions they were overseeing – and how both suffered the backlash. Is reconciliation even possible?
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Tim Cohen. Tafelberg Short: Reconciliation's vengeful echo
Reconciliation’s Vengeful Echo. Louis Botha, Nelson Mandela and Tricky Transitions
Versailles and Vereeniging
The question of reconciliation
The last battles of the First World War
A noble peace?
A model of reconciliation?
Botha and Mandela: did history repeat itself?
A strange kind of miracle
The sad irony of successful reconciliation
Back to Paris
The big three criteria
‘Slim Jannie’ . . . a little too clever?
Small moments in history
Notes
About the book
About the author
Tafelberg Short books
Imprint page
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Tim Cohen
The topic was not South Africa, but in some ways it could have been. The argument was about the Treaty of Versailles, and whether the South African defence minister and member of the British war cabinet, Jan Smuts, should sign the accord or not. The Versailles Treaty remains one of the most contentious treaties of all time; its scope was massive, like the war it followed, stretching from parts of China, chunks of Africa, to most of the Middle East, not to mention great swathes of Europe. It was a huge, bewildering, complex job, but the main charge against the treaty is that it planted the seeds that resulted in the Second World War.
.....
Yet for all his certainty that matters should not be minced, Smuts himself was not actually completely convinced. In his letter to Keynes sent about a week later in the European summer of 1919, Smuts affirmed his view that everyone would be ‘heartily ashamed’ of the treaty in due course.
But it is necessary to have a formal Peace in order that the world may have a chance; which it will not have so long as the present state of affairs continues. And it may well be that with peace, and the better knowledge of what it all means, a great revulsion will set in and a favourable atmosphere will be created in which to help the public virtually to scrap this monstrous instrument.[2]
