439 - Niël Barnard, interview by Tony Trew, Overberg, 17 November 2015.

Where we cannot escape severe criticism was that we had given the process of governance after democracy far, far too little attention – governance not ruling. We didn’t prepare ourselves well enough.

There would be another argument, but I don’t think it’s good enough. There was a structure, before the elections, involving myself, Kobie Coetzee, Trevor Manuel, Zola Skweyiya, Patricia De Lille and Benny Alexander, and we were discussing these matters. The argument would be from their side, ‘We are not going to settle that matter right now. First take the kingdom, political power, and then we will handle it when we are in political power in a way which we see fit.’ That is a logical argument from their side. It comes back to the question of trust again.

We were on the whole, except for a small few pockets of capacity, as a country not geared for the process after the settlement and we shouldn’t be let too easily off the hook, all of us in that process. We should have realised, while we will now sign a document and find a constitution, the real McCoy is the implementation thereafter and also the process of governance. It could be said with some justification, that ‘You, Barnard, were one of the few people who had a long experience, and it could not have been expected of the ANC,’ and I think that holds true: we should have done more.

For any peace process, there will never be a perfect settlement – but the challenge is how you implement the settlement. For that you must be prepared, People must be prepared.

If after all these years, Mandela and myself could have a few days with each other and the question was put to us, how would you have done things differently, with the wisdom of hindsight, I don’t have the slightest doubt that the first and main issue from all participants would be, that we underestimated the difficulty of the process of governance. And for all our speeches in Parliament and all our high-falutin’ policies, it doesn’t produce water in the tap. We should have tackled that.