In the following interview, we delve into the heart and mind of Dr Michael Schluter. From the trenches of apartheid to the aftermath of genocide, from the delicate diplomacy in the Korean Peninsula to the current tensions between Russia and Ukraine, his testimony is one of relentless pursuit of peace through the power of relationships and faith. Let’s begin by exploring the conversation behind such a commitment to international peacebuilding.
- Why were you so concerned with international peacebuilding so that you gave a significant part of your life to this process in different contexts?
It is difficult to recognise the severe impact of conflict and war on the wellbeing of men, women and children. This is true in Israel and Gaza, Russia and Ukraine, and even in North/South Korea where at present there is no conflict. The threat of conflict casts a long shadow over people’s lives. The death of every solder causes grief and suffering to many other people including wives/husbands/partners/parents/grandparents/siblings/ children … so to prevent war, or bring conflict to an end, seems to me one of the most worthwhile ways to spend one’s short life.
- Why do you emphasise relational peacebuilding?
Relational Thinking is a worldview. For example, one can emphasise the impact of a microwave oven through an economic lens (what it costs to buy and run relative to a conventional oven, levels of carbon emissions) or simply in terms of convenience. Or one can ask about the impact of a microwave oven on relationships in a household: does it give more time for conversation because less time is spent cooking, or does it facilitate everybody having their meals separately?
So relational peacebuilding focuses on ending or preventing wars by building relationships between protagonists. This is done through identifying shared interests and goals and spelling out the peace dividend if the war is ended.
- How did you end up involved in peacebuilding?
Round Church Bible study group with Jeremy Ive was in that housegroup in Cambridge a person who was from SA originally and had just finished his PhD in history in Cambridge. He was familiar with a number of key political actors and was available to work with me to explore the possibility of some involvement in trying to find a way forward to end apartheid.
Trip to South Africa in 1986 catalysed me to get involved. The KSSC had just defeated Mrs Thatcher and when I encountered Apartheid in SA I thought ‘If the Lord can defeat Mrs T, He can also defeat Apartheid’.
The wider context: The P W Botha Rubicon address in 1985. Then the Rand fell and big companies pulled out so there was serious incentive for white South Africans to rethink. Also, the townships became increasingly unsettled so armoured vehicles were starting to be sent in to keep order.
- What was your first approach to finding a way forward in South Africa?
Initially, in my ignorance of the situation on the ground, I explored a number of major options. These included:
- Partition of the country, and
- The possibility of holding meetings with key South Africans coming from different racial and political groupings to explore possible ways forward.
Jeremy and I prepared a document which looked at all the constitutional options in the light of Christian principles and practical feasibility ranging from a unitary, federal, confederal options. Jeremy took the document to South Africa and we invited an initial group of six senior Christian leaders: two Afrikaners, one English-speaker, one mixed-race “Coloured”, and two black African.
This resulted in a first meeting at the home of my brother-in-law and sister at a large house in Sussex called Newick Park, where we explored the principles and practicalities for a peaceful solution.
- What other influences impacted on your thinking at that time?
Another major influence on my thinking resulted from Revd Peter Lee, at that time a vicar of an Anglican church called St Luke’s, Orchards, who took me into Soweto to see the trials taking place in August 1986. Going through border controls manned by huge SA white soldiers, having the car searched etc, was a sobering reality, as was the sight of the trials of black dissidents where the court was entirely controlled by a single white judge who decided whether these black activists should go to prison or be punished in other ways.
- How did you set about getting involved with the problems in South Africa?
Jeremy and I set up a small organisation called the Newick Park Initiative (NPI) following from our first consultation, taking the name of the home of Crispin and Gill Brentford where we met initially, to explore the possibility of leaders from the white and black communities meeting and coming to trust one another through informal discussions over several days at a safe location. NPI was based at the Jubilee Centre, which I ran at the time. We started research building on our initial consultation, to cover the range of different issues which needed to be addressed, including land rights, business, the public services as well as further consideration of the constitutional issues.
- What were you trying to achieve?
Our aim was to try and facilitate finding consensus through a ‘Track 2; process of informal discussions which could undergird a constitutional settlement. This was NOT negotiations, but exploration of possibilities through informal discussions which were confidential but not a secret process of negotiation.
- Were all the participants in the process Christian? Was your approach itself shaped by the Bible at all? Was there anything distinctively Christian about the way you were working?
In terms of who we invited, as all parties were at least nominally Christians, we invited people we knew had Christian convictions for these meetings so that the discussions could be shaped by a biblical framework. The Afrikaners, who dominated the National Party in government, had appropriated the Exodus narrative into their understanding of their own history of the ‘Great Trek’ from the Cape up to the plateau in Johannesburg and areas of the gold mines etc. The Africans had also appropriated the Exodus narrative but differently, seeing themselves being like the Israelites exiled in Egypt who had to find a way to achieve freedom. These approaches were less significant and less adopted by the white English-speaking South Africans whose ideas were less shaped by the Bible. However, all parties were influenced by the vision for peace put forward in the Bible and the recognition that whether in the OT (Micah 4/Isaiah2) or the Beatitudes (Matthew 5), the Bible emphasises peace as an important value and objective.
- What difference do you think the project made to the broader process in South Africa?
In God’s providence, I believe the project made an enormous difference ultimately to the broader process. This was not just because a small group built trust between them about the way forward, but the breakthrough came about because a particular person joined the process. He was a senior Kenyan diplomat who was not employed by his government because he was from the ‘wrong’ ethnic group. His name was Washington Okumu.
Washington had long experience working in the SA context from previous employment at the UN and had met not only Mandela but also Chief Buthelezi, who was leading the Zulus at that time who were in opposition to the ANC. He was uniquely positioned to be able to speak to the major political players in SA and discuss with them the proposals that were coming out of our research in Cambridge and the informal discussions we were holding in the UK.
Washington’s intervention was crucial in the weeks running up to the first free elections in April 1994, where he proposed a solution to the stand off between Mandela and Buthelezi which satisfied them both and which led to the involvement of all parties in the first free election in SA. This avoided a cataclysmic confrontation of the Zulus and other ethnic groups, which the State Department had estimated would have resulted otherwise in the deaths of up to one million people in the Province of Guateng alone. The ‘New South Africa’ would have started its political life bathed in blood. It is important to remember how close South Africa came to the edge of the precipice.
- Moving on now to other areas of conflict in Africa, what was your involvement in Rwanda?
Our involvement was concerned to provide and support intervention on two issues:
Firstly, the context of the genocide was that the population was growing at nearly 4 percent a year in Rwanda at that time, i.e. doubling every 17-20 years! Agricultural production was only increasing at around 2 percent a year because Western governments had discouraged use of chemical fertilisers; without fertilisers, production can at best increase at only 2 percent a year. So the gap between food demand and food production was increasing all the time. Rwanda did not have foreign exchange to be used to import food. It was the food deficit which many people believe was the reason why the Rwandan government at that time was able to mobilise the majority ethnic group to commit the genocide. Hungry young men can be mobilised easily for violence, so hence we felt a priority was to use the best available agricultural production techniques to get agriculture rapidly increase agricultural production. I used my contacts with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) to help the Ministry of Agriculture to achieve this goal.
Secondly, it so happened that I knew the Minister of Agriculture personally and also the director of IFPRI, and thereby was able to help mobilise the international resources required in terms of the substantial technical expertise to increase production.
- Now both in Rwanda and South Africa those are situations where there has been a huge amount of evil and injustice perpetrated against one group by another, but the aim was to prevent that becoming a spiral of revenge. I was struck the other day watching the BBC news talking about the situation between Israel and Iran, and Jeremy Bowen the correspondent said something along the lines of, “for Israel, it’s definitely not a case of turning the other cheek, it’s always very much an eye for an eye”. I was quite struck that he was explicitly referring to Jesus’s teaching about forgiveness. Do you think Christianity in particular provides resources to enable people to hold back from taking revenge that other religious and philosophical perspectives don’t?
Certainly, I would agree that Christianity’s emphasis on forgiveness is different from an Islamic emphasis or current secular Jewish thinking, which often seems to result in revenge or retaliation. However, Christianity clearly ‘failed’ in Rwanda; 95 percent of people in Rwanda are Roman Catholic or Protestant Christians but this did not prevent the genocide. I believe these Christians of all denominations had been taught a superficial version of Christianity which expressed more about getting your place in heaven rather than transforming your life on earth as well through forgiving those who have wronged you. Hence the churches failed to prevent the genocide, to our shame.
- And then you worked in Sudan – how did you see those principles about building relationships and trust over time make an impact there?
Let me tell you a story as an illustration. When a conference was held under the auspices of IGAD at Lake Naivasha in Kenya between North Sudan and South Sudan, and talks were once again getting stalled, one man from the North went round in the middle of the night to the room of a person from the South and knocked on the door. The Southerner let him in for a discussion because they had got to know each other at the talks which my organisation had been running. These two guys hashed out the basis of a solution overnight which they presented the next day to the whole conference and it was this solution which became the basis of ending the war and a long period of peace ensued.
- Why is mutual respect and trust so vital do you think?
- It is impossible to lay down your arms, which makes you vulnerable, unless you believe the other party will do the same. So how can such mutual trust be generated becomes the key question. Both our research and our experience indicate that there are two key factors to enable leaders of different ethnic groups to get to know each other over time:
- Firstly, knowing each other’s backgrounds and motivation.
- Secondly, identifying the values and goals which they share.
This enables them to work together towards those shared goals and values rather than focusing on their differences.
- And in Sudan no doubt lots of the participants weren’t Christians – how can a Christian approach to peace building help when not everyone in the conflict is a Christian?
The principles for building trust, which we wrote up in a book called The Relational Lens, published by CUP in 2017, apply equally to people of any religion, although we derived them from our study of Scripture. These 5 principles are:
- People should meet face to face.
- They do this over a period of time.
- They understand the background, interests and motivations of the other party.
- They show mutual respect through participation in decisions and in other ways.
- They identify shared values and shared goals.
Obviously, it is easier to identify shared values, and to get to know the other party well, where there is a shared faith but there are still multiple possibilities even where there is no shared faith.
- And now your colleagues are working on Ukraine and Russia – are you able to tell us what they’re doing or not really?
I can tell you that we are currently at the research phase. Until it is possible to identify, at least in theory, a mutually acceptable solution, it is generally not helpful to bring together the parties simply to argue, which may do no more than deepen their differences and make peace more difficult to achieve. We are reaching a conclusion of this research phase so we will then need to seek funding and staffing to organise the meetings phase, as well as decide an appropriate neutral location, such as Geneva.
- And you’ve been working on pursuing a path to reconciliation between North and South Korea. Many people would say that that’s totally hopeless – what has motivated you to put so much time and effort into that?
Christians will hopefully understand me when I say that I had a sense of ‘calling’, that is I believe that God communicated to me through various means that He wanted me to engage with seeking peace in the Korean Peninsula. Once I had become convinced that this was where God was pointing me, I had to decide where to start. To cut a long story short, the research I did with the team pointed to the potential of a trade agreement as a starting point, rather like France and Germany starting a healing process after WW2 through a trade agreement for iron and steel; it was this trade agreement which was extended to cover all products, and also widened to include more countries, which developed into the EEC and then the EC/EU.
- Some might say that your faith in God makes you naïve or overly optimistic – what would you say to that?
I would have to agree that my faith does make me optimistic, simply because I believe and trust in the kindness of God, and that He answers the prayers of His people. Jesus asks whether if a child asks for bread, a father or mother will we give him/her a snake? In the same way, when we pray to God, He answers us with kindness, not brutality. Also, we know that God’s interest is in justice and peace; Jesus stresses in the Beatitudes, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall inherit the earth’ (Matt 5:9). So I believe Christians should believe that their efforts to work for peace will never be wasted, although we cannot be sure exactly how or when our efforts will result, or contribute to, the peace we seek.
- Can I ask you this as well, on a related note. I know that this work has not always been easy for you – I remember you saying at one point you had run up a fairly life-changing deficit that you weren’t sure how you could pay off – has your faith made a difference in the times where it’s been risky or costly to do this work?
Let me respond by focusing on one example. When we finished the initial phase of our work seeking to build peace in SA in 1991, we had a deficit of approx. £50K, which in those days was a lot of money! My wife and I thought we would have to sell our house and move to something smaller. However, in the end a Christian friend who lived locally stepped in and paid off the debt, so we still live in the same house to this day. But, yes, sometimes in one way or another peacebuilding does involve financial and/or physical risks. A firm belief that God has called you into the work you do enables you to cope with those risks much more easily.
- I’ve been thinking as I’ve listened to you speak about all you’ve done over the years, in the midst of such evil and violence – do you ever get frustrated with God that He’s not doing more about it himself? Do you get frustrated that He’s leaving so much for you to do?
I don’t believe humans have a right to question the circumstances which God allows in human affairs. The Prophet Jeremiah in the Bible asks whether a lump of clay can question the wisdom of the potter? Also, I have learnt that God likes to work through His children in sorting out human affairs, rather than directly intervening and miraculously bringing about the outcomes He wants. I feel it is a huge privilege as a Christian to understand that the Lord might and does sometimes use an ordinary person, like me, to achieve the outcomes He wants to see in human affairs, even at a national or international level.
- I’d like to ask you the big glaring question that I imagine will have come into many of our minds tonight. Isn’t religious belief itself more a part of the problem than the solution when it comes to conflict? Doesn’t religion cause wars? I mean look at Gaza, or Putin quoting the Bible – a few years further back, look at the situation in Northern Ireland. Your experience might be a glorious exception, but in general doesn’t religion cause more violence?
Sadly, religion is often the cause of conflict, and as you pointed out this is not only between Christianity and some other religions, but also sometimes between Christians themselves, as in Northern Ireland. Political leaders can use religious belief as a lever to demonise the other party and encourage loyalty to themselves. I regard this as a tragedy, but at the same time another aspect of how we humans manage to distort even the highest goals and values of our faith to achieve personal glory and personal goals.
- If there are people here tonight who’ve felt really stirred by what you’ve been saying about how much God cares about peacebuilding – what would be a next step for someone who wants to be part of that and live that out?
It would be truly wonderful if some of those here this evening chose to seek to attempt to resolve international conflicts in the future. The steps to take to move in this direction, I suggest might be as follows:
- Choose a specific conflict in a particular geographical area.
- Then find out about it in more detail.
- Try to meet those on both sides of the conflict.
- Start to pray every day for peace to come in that conflict and see where it leads.