by Michael Schluter
The start of RPI goes back to the start of NPI from which RPI evolved, and the start of NPI goes back to August of 1986 when South Africa was still living under the system of apartheid.
I made my first trip to South Africa with my wife, to visit my aunt who lived on a farm near Pietermaritzburg. I was still living in the afterglow of the defeat of Mrs Thatcher on the subject of Sunday shopping through a campaign which I had helped to organise. This had occurred in April of that year.
When I arrived at the airport in Johannesburg, my BA plane parked next to one branded South African Airways. As I looked out of the plane window, the thought occurred to me that if the God I served could defeat Mrs Thatcher when she had such a huge majority in the House of Commons, He could also bring down the system of apartheid in South Africa.
While in South Africa on that trip, I was offered a trip by a local Anglican Minister to visit the trial of Black activists in a small town called Delmas; it was in front of a white judge, of course. The experience shook me up. How could a court be fair if the judge was from one racial group and all the accused from another? And on what basis of legitimacy did the white Minority population believe they had the right to determine the lifestyle and occupations from the majority racial group?
Another disturbing event during that visit was a trip into Soweto, an enormous black township. We were stopped on the road at the entrance to the township at a roadblock manned by white soldiers of giant proportions. They were intimidating, as they systematically checked through not only the boot of the car but underneath the back seats as well. It seemed unreasonable as well as unjust to evaluate a person simply by the colour of their skin with no reference to personal character or background.
Was that really no way that this system of injustice could be changed? If Mrs Thatcher could lose a vote in the House of Commons in England, when she had a majority over all other parties of 140 out of 650 MPs, was it not possible also that the system of apartheid could be brought to an end and replaced by democratic system of government.
When I returned to the UK after that trip, I started to work on the idea of what a fair settlement for South Africa to replace the system of apartheid and white rule might look like. In the bible study group from the Round Church in Cambridge to which I belonged was Jeremy Ive, a South African who had just finished his PhD. He and I worked on a document setting out the range of different possible constitutional settlements looked at in the light of Christian principles and practical feasibility,
Meanwhile, I contacted my brother-in-law and my sister, the Viscount and Viscountess Brentford, and asked if they would be open to the possibility of hosting a consultation on the question of a just and fair future for South Africa at their home at Newick Park in Sussex. They were happy to do so if we were able to arrange the invitations as well as set the agenda for the meeting based on the initial document we had prepared.
On Christmas Day 1986, Jeremy then took the document to South Africa and made contact with his friend, Johannes Wessels who advised us on people Jeremy might approach, and this resulted in the invitation of six South Africans from different racial and political backgrounds for an initial consultation. This led to the first consultation in March 1987 of what became known as the Newick Park Initiative, or for short NPI.
The NPI approach we came upon in this way provided a model and process that we followed over the next few years, first on the South African question, then, from 1994, for Rwanda, and then, from 1999 for Sudan. These consultations took place mainly in the UK and other locations.
We continued to use the name NPI for all of the work in South Africa and Rwanda, and only changed it to RFI (Relationships Foundation International) when we started to work on peace in Sudan.
If you’re interested in exploring our history, click here to learn more.