DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang has expressed his support of Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s olive branch to political adversary PAS to boost Malaysia’s political stability and post-pandemic economic recovery.

What the country needs now is stability for it to rise up again to be a great world-class nation.

Lim had previously proposed for PAS to join the unity government.

This time Lim is not only challenging PAS but also those opposed to the rapprochement to “make Malaysia the role model for the world for inter-ethnic, inter-religious, inter-cultural and inter-civilisation dialogue, understanding, tolerance, and harmony”.

Let’s recall what Nelson Mandela achieved in 1994 when he built bridges among South African political rivals. The bridges led to the formation of the Government of National Unity (GNU) comprising, and led by, Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC), the National Party (NP) and the Inkatha Freedom Party. The three had been locked for years in violent conflict.

The NP was long dedicated to policies of apartheid and white supremacy, even though by the early 1990s it had moved toward sharing power with South Africa’s black majority.

In 1948, after the NP won that year’s elections, apartheid became a social project of the government based on a series of laws designed to preserve white supremacy. It was illegal for South African citizens to pursue interracial relations. Citizens were classified into one of four racial groups; black, Indian, coloured (non-whites) and white.

Non-white South Africans (a majority of the population) lived in separate areas from whites and used separate public facilities, and contacts between the two groups were limited. The whites and non-whites were physically separated according to their location, public facilities and social life.

Millions of blacks were forcefully removed from their homes and confined to their tribal homelands according to their ethnicity, while whites occupied towns and cities. 

The IFP is a Zulu political organization under the leadership of Zulu chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi. The party was founded as the Inkatha movement by Buthelezi in 1975 to counter the Xhosa-dominated ANC. Unlike the ANC, which sought to overthrow the apartheid system through armed struggle, Inkatha was pledged to represent Zulu interests by working within the Bantu homeland system established by the White regime.

From the early 1980s onwards, increasingly violent clashes took place between supporters of the two groups, resulting in an estimated death toll of over 5000 people. The Inkatha movement became a political party in 1990 and changed its name to the IFP. 

Yet they came together to form the GNU. What did it achieve?

The answer is brief:

1. A new South African Constitution, which is said to be “the embodiment of the vision of generations of anti-apartheid freedom fighters and democrats who had fought for the principle that South African belonged to all, for non-racialism and for human rights.” 

2. The establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which sought to uncover the truth about past violations of human rights, facilitate reconciliation and grant amnesty, provided that perpetrators fully disclosed politically motivated crimes and provided evidence that led to investigations and prosecutions. The GNU contributed immeasurably to improving the spirit of reconciliation in South Africa.

Although the NP withdrew from the GNU in 1996, Mandela’s exceptional leadership of the unity government fostered cross-party collaboration and laid the framework for an inclusive and democratic South Africa. The model developed became a reference point for negotiators and leaders in other parts of the world. 

The story of the GNU is about reconciling the impossible. So is the story of the city-state of Madinah where the Prophet Muhammad reconciled the numerous tribes, big and small, of a hundred different kinds that were incessantly at feud with one another, and created a nation governed by the Charter of Madinah.

The charter, said to be the first written constitution, was a kind of alliance or federation of the tribes in Madinah and the Muslim emigrants from Makkah with the alliance specifying the rights and duties of all communities and their relationship to one another, including that of the Muslim community to other communities.

Reconciling the impossible is possible in Malaysia like in 6th-century Madinah and late 20th-century South Africa. – October 17, 2023.

* Hafiz Hassan reads The Malaysian Insight.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.