In the 1970s, the political conflicts in South Africa, Northern Ireland, and the Middle East were often grouped together as among the world's most intractable. They exhibited profound racial and ethnic animosities, reinforced by linguistic, cultural, economic, and religious differences, and solidified by decades of more-or-less violent confrontation. They were often held out as paradigms of “divided” societies, and there seemed little chance of a transition to peaceful, let alone fully democratic, arrangements in any of them. Whether one focused on the players contending for power, the histories of the conflicts, or the capacities of outsiders to influence events, the prospects for negotiated settlements seemed dim.

The conflicts have diverged remarkably in subsequent decades. South Africa, often depicted in the grim 1970s as the most intractable of intractables, moved through a comparatively peaceful four-year transition to majority rule in a unitary state. Democratic elections in 1994, 1999, and 2004 put the African National Congress (ANC) securely in power without civil war, economic collapse, or catastrophic white exodus. To be sure, the continuing economic and social challenges are enormous, with a third of the population unemployed and one in nine infected with HIV, but by most measures South Africa has weathered the transition well. Democracy may not yet be entrenched in South African politics, but it seems at least to have a fighting chance.