A few weeks ago, in a Cape Town restaurant overlooked by Table Mountain, Robin Renwick — Britain’s influential ambassador to South Africa’s when the country’s apartheid regime surrendered power — spoke to me about the hard compromises involved in peacemaking.
I first met Renwick at the end of the 1980s, when he and his boss, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, were trying to head off a race war that would have cost thousands of lives. As in Northern Ireland, where President Bill Clinton played an active role in securing the Good Friday Agreement 25 years ago, the prestige and fresh thinking of outside players helped South Africa untangle a seemingly intractable local quarrel.