Nelson Mandela had spent 28 years in prison before agreeing in 1985 to begin negotiating with an apartheid regime he considered essentially evil. On the occasions when the regime had offered to end his incarceration Mandela had refused because his conditions were not met. However, by 1985 the South African government was coming under increasing pressure to end apartheid and Mandela initiated secret talks with the regime. Some five years later, the South African government met Mandela’s conditions, which allowed him to leave prison and begin negotiations for a post-apartheid South Africa.
There is no gainsaying it; when someone deliberately inflicts serious and unjustifiable harm upon you, negotiating with them must be very difficult and few people could have gone through what Mandela did without looking to exact vengeance at the first opportunity. But Mandela began negotiations with a regime in which he had little trust and today he is an international icon par excellence, largely because of his inclusive world outlook. Indeed, his approach to negotiation is given as a text book example on how to negotiate with those you consider evil.
Cheddi Jagan and the PPP were kept out of office in Guyana for a not too dissimilar amount of time, largely because of a naive belief that international capital would never have allowed its
