van der Merwe (24 June 1929 – 5 March 2001) was a South African academic, a Quaker, and a pioneer of conflict resolution.
He was born on 24 June 1929 in rural South Africa, about 130 miles east of Cape Town.
He returned to South Africa, where he taught sociology at Rhodes University, Grahamstown from 1963 to 1968.
In that year, he was made emeritus honorary professor of the University of Cape Town.
[1] His memoir, Peacemaking in South Africa: A Life in Conflict Resolution (with a foreword by Nelson Mandela) recalls how in 1984 he was the first to arrange meetings between the then-banned African National Congress (in exile) and South African newspaper editors.