WATCHING THE WIND: Conflict Resolution During South Africa's Transition to Democracy.

• Author: Mansbridge, Tara
• Position: Review

WATCHING THE WIND: Conflict Resolution During South Africa's Transition to Democracy by Susan Collin Marks United States Institute of Peace Press, $14.95

IN WATCHING THE WIND, SUSAN Collin Marks describes the push for peace in local South African communities struggling to deal with life after apartheid. From her own experiences working to implement the 1991 National Peace Accord, which laid the groundwork for South Africa's 1994 elections, Collin Marks culls a collection of the stories that have gone unnoticed by an international community that has focused on the political movements in the upper levels of South African society. With sensitivity and care, Collin Marks describes the life and work of peace workers who put themselves at daily risk in order to facilitate South Africa's transition to democracy: activists sitting across the negotiating table from their torturers; brave citizens putting themselves between enraged crowds and frightened, combative police; community groups working desperately for change. Through these stories Watching the Wind seeks to capture and explain how South African society managed to move from apartheid to democracy without suffering the fragmentation undergone by other countries in transition.

The problem is that Watching the Wind lacks a broader perspective into which its pieces...