Type “South Africa peaceful transition” into Google and over a million hits appear. There are references aplenty to statements such as this:

South Africa’s peaceful transition to democracy was indeed a miracle that captured the imagination of people all over the world.

Wikipedia has been spotted proclaiming that the post-apartheid Government of South Africa have made remarkable progress in consolidating the nation’s peaceful transition to democracy.

And so on.

The question of South Africa’s transition came up unexpectedly during a lunch I hosted in Warsaw for a senior UK science delegation. The British guest of honour opined that it was excellent to be in Poland, a country which like his native South Africa had had such a remarkably peaceful transition to democracy.

I alas could not restrain myself. I asked what exactly had been peaceful about South Africa’s transition. Had not some 20,000 people been killed in sustained political violence over that period?

This prompted a lively response from said visitor. What was I talking about? Of course South Africa’s transition had been peaceful. To say anything else was quite ridiculous!

I ploughed on, suggesting that if Poland had lost some 20,000 people in its efforts to shake off communism we would not have called that ‘peaceful’. South Africa’s death toll in political violence far exceeded anything seen in Europe’s move from communism. Maybe that carnage had been in some way or other inevitable, and in the Greater Scheme of Things worthwhile? But let’s not pretend it did not happen.

After a couple of more lively rounds like this we somehow changed the subject, much to the relief of our bemused Polish guests.

On returning to the Embassy I got on to the Africa experts in London, just to check that I had not gone mad. Did they have any figures for political violence in South Africa as the apartheid period ended?

They did. They sent me statistics produced by the reputable South African Institute of Race Relations which indeed showed that between 1985 and 1996 deaths from political violence in South Africa had exceeded 20,000, with a large number of these taking place in the KwaZulu/Natal area.

In Poland by contrast deaths from political violence of different shapes and sizes during the Solidarity period and through to the first free elections were very rare, to the point where individual killings of pro-democracy activists were a major event. Above all the fate of Father Popieluszko.

That said, how peaceful was the Polish transition?

Maybe not too many people died, but during the Martial Law period thousands were beaten or tortured or imprisoned or harassed or otherwise brutalised for their political beliefs. From the outside it probably looked relatively calm and restrained. If one was at the receiving end of this nationwide wave of state oppression it did not feel that way.

Look at it this way. Back in 1960, 70 people died in the infamous Sharpeville Massacre. The world stood appalled, condemning this ghastly violence. A racist regime running a country at war with itself!

During its peaceful transition to democracy South Africa had the equivalent of one Sharpeville every fortnight – for eleven years.

So when is a transition officially said to be Peaceful?

When the killings are few and far between – or when they occur on so large scale that they are much too embarrassing to report or even discuss?