F.W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela Celebrate the End of ApartheidMichael Young may be the most influential person that you’ve never heard of. He’s never held public office. He hasn’t burned up the lecture circuit, written a book, or been interviewed by Oprah. He doesn’t even have a website.

Michael Young was a corporate communications guy—a middle-management executive—who instigated and mediated the talks that peacefully ended South African apartheid. His is an improbable and amazing story about the power of connecting authentically, and how that desire can change the world.

A Radical Idea of Astonishing Imagination

In 1985 South Africa was in a state of emergency, a tinderbox of tension ready to explode. Most white establishment Afrikaners knew that they needed to give up minority rule and share political power with the black South African majority, but feared the seemingly inevitable violence and the economic backlash. Black South Africans were convinced that Afrikaners would never willingly cede political and economic  control, and their rage, frustration and hopelessness were at a boil.

Young was the public affairs director for Consolidated Goldfields, a British mining company with extensive interests in South Africa. He, like many others, knew that South Africa was on the verge of imploding, and that when it did Goldfields would lose most of its assets.

In this atmosphere of absolutism, terrorism, and inflamed rhetoric, Michael Young received a request from Oliver Tambo, a member of the African National Congress, to set up a dialog between the ANC and establishment Afrikaners.

Young arrived at a radical idea:  to persuade influencers from both sides—none of whom held any official power—to meet secretly at Mells Park, Goldfields’s lavish estate in the English countryside, and attempt a negotiated settlement.

Mission Impossible

Young convinced his boss to provide corporate funds for his impossible mission. And like Mr. Phelps, his boss swore to disavow all knowledge if the operation blew up in their faces.

Young looked back on the process in a 2009 interview for the London Times: “The template that we've used, that has applicability elsewhere currently, is to identify players who are serious, not always visible, to bring them away so that they could begin to understand one another as human beings.”

The Times story continues:

Outside the hours of formal negotiation he used subtle tactics. Opposing players were given adjacent rooms, maximising the possibility of chance meetings, of walks in the grounds, and Young provided Glenfiddich to oil evening conversations.

That was when the breakthroughs happened, as they drank, told jokes, stopped being frightened of each other and came to trust instead. [Young explained,]“More often than not I made myself scarce in the evenings because I wanted them to feel safe together.”

Mells Park offered a haven from South Africa's nearly unbearable daily tensions. Throughout the negotiation process, Young was followed and intimidated by South African government agents. His phones were tapped, his life was threatened, and he couldn’t drive without first checking his car for bombs. It was a nerve-wracking five years of patient work.

In February 1990, Nelson Mandela was finally released from a 27-year imprisonment and President F.W. de Klerk began official negotiations to end apartheid. South Africa’s first multi-racial democratic elections were held in 1994 and Nelson Mandela became the country’s first president elected by a fully represented citizenry.

Enduring Personal Friendships Changed the Tide

As the Times explains, the key was the enduring personal friendships that developed in the peaceful atmosphere of Mells Park. “Between 1987 and 1990 there were 12 meetings and as attitudes softened on both sides, the players began to see each other as people rather than enemies, and came to understand that reaching a settlement would not involve one-sided capitulation.”

The astounding success of Young's efforts launched a "peace virus" that is still spreading around the globe. When the IRA got serious about peace in Northern Ireland, they secretly consulted the African National Congress about how to begin and manage the process. The ANC is also advising Hamas on the peace process in the Middle East, and Michael Young was later involved in Portugal’s transition from a dictatorship to a democracy.

The Power of Genuine Connection

Michael Young’s success demonstrates the power of what genuine connections can achieve. I love social media because, as the Internet continues to make the world an ever smaller, more accessible place, social media is making it a friendlier, more personally connected place.

I tweet “connection nudges” as a reminder—to myself, as much as anyone else—to look up, to reach out, to connect in all the small ways of daily life. Maybe you and I will never change the world as profoundly as Michael Young did. But we each have the power to make our little piece of the planet a happier place.

Ciao for now!

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Michael Young’s story was depicted in the 2009 BBC film Endgame, starring William Hurt, Chiwetel Ejiof, and Derek Jacobi, with Jonny Lee Miller as Michael Young. Endgame is currently available on Netflix for rental or instant viewing.

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