Abstract

Comparisons of South Africa and Northern Ireland date back to before their creation as political entities, when Afrikaners and Irish nationalists were both battling the British empire. By the 1980s a different categorisation of the two as cases of intractable conflicts had developed. The unexpected achievement of political settlements in both societies in the 1990s enhanced the appeal of comparing the two miracles. But it also engendered two misleading comparisons in the aftermath that were based on similarities in the process of their transformation, as this article explains. The analysis highlights contrasts in the actual outcomes of the two cases