ABSTRACT

Washington Okumu (1936–2016) went to South Africa in April 1994 as part of the Kissinger–Carrington team charged to mediate Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP)-African National Party (ANC)/National Party (NP) differences on the interim constitution. A few days after the collapse of that effort he emerged as the individual broker for a behind-the-scenes agreement that brought the IFP back into South Africa’s democratic elections. His appearance was not a fluke. Rather, it was the culmination of a career with a conservative Christian network that was active in track-two diplomacy and constitutional theory from the 1970s through the 1990s. This article looks at this genealogy of compromise and mediation and treats it as a mode of politics in its own right, with interests, a constituency and a strategy. Okumu’s network envisioned South Africa as an interracial Christian society living under a Biblically sound legal system. They did not try to preserve apartheid, but held that federalism, free markets and protection for the heteronormative family were divinely ordained. These concerns provided essential context to Okumu’s appearance and signal a mode of politics that was not interested in either segregation or the project of deracialisation, but he was thoroughly conservative on social and cultural matters.

摘要

华盛顿·奥库姆（Washington Okumu，1936-2016 年）于 1994 年 4 月作为基辛格-卡林顿团队的一员前往南非，负责调解因卡塔自由党（IFP）-非洲民族党（ANC）/民族党（NP）关于临时宪法的分歧。在这项努力失败后几天，他成为幕后协议的个人经纪人，该协议使 IFP 重返南非的民主选举。他的出现并非侥幸。相反，这是一个保守的基督教网络职业生涯的顶峰，该网络从 1970 年代到 1990 年代活跃于二轨外交和宪法理论。本文着眼于这种妥协和调解的谱系，并将其视为一种具有自身权利、利益、选民和战略的政治模式。Okumu 的网络将南非设想为一个跨种族的基督教社会，生活在符合圣经的法律体系下。他们并没有试图维护种族隔离，而是认为联邦制、自由市场和对异性恋家庭的保护是神圣的。这些担忧为奥库姆的出现提供了必要的背景，并标志着一种对种族隔离或去种族化计划都不感兴趣的政治模式，但他在社会和文化问题上却是彻底的保守。