Northern Ireland's institutions are not intrinsically sectarian, the Glencree Summer School in Co Wicklow was told at the weekend. Addressing the theme "Tackling Institutionalised Sectarianism in Northern Ireland", Mr Steven King of Ulster Unionist Party said institutions such as the RUC could not be classed as sectarian because they did not as a matter of policy disadvantage Catholics or Protestants.
On the contrary, Mr King said, Northern Ireland has "some of the strongest human rights and equality legislation in the world". He added that there was a danger that people would define sectarianism as purely something which was inflicted upon Catholics and nationalists.
However, while he maintained that sectarianism was not institutionalised, he pointed out that Catholics and Protestants had discriminated against each other over the years.
The Belfast Agreement was approved by 71 per cent of the electorate, yet it "acknowledges the reality of a bitterly divided community" and doesn't make an attempt to transform Northern Ire land, he commented. The agreement, he insisted, institutionalises a two-community mentality.
The weekend summer school, entitled "Towards Common Citizenship - Transforming DeepSeated Sectarianism" was opened on Friday by Mr Daniel Stemmer, charge d'affaires in the South African Embassy in Dublin.
Mr Stemmer said that throughout South Africa's transition to democracy many friends had been made at the Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation.
Members of the South African parliament who had visited Glencree include Mr F.W. de Klerk, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Mr Liam Wessels and Dr Alex Boraine. However, Mr Stemmer said, the South Africans did not visit Glencree to lecture on how reconciliation should be driven.
"The purpose of sharing our experience of reconciliation as a process is merely to relate what happened and not to suggest that what worked for South Africa will necessarily, if at all, work for any society."
Mr Thembinkosi Ngcobo of the South African National Youth Commission said Mr Nelson Mandela had taken the country on "a fast learning curve" since its transition to democracy. Today they had to accept that no two people did things in the same way. "It is part of our political reconstruction programme to teach people that political affiliation should not be based on age or geography. As a condition for peace and reconciliation, we must have freedom of choice."
In a session on "Building a Pluralist Society in the South" Canon Kerry Waterstone, formerly from Kerry, now living in Northern Ireland, said many Protestants were driven out of the Republic by bigotry. As a result, a generation of Protestants in Northern Ireland were not interested in talk of a pluralist society in the South.
