After South Africa's democratic transition, he briefly represented the ANC in the National Assembly in 1994, but he left to become involved in peacemaking in Burundi, where he worked for over a decade as an independent mediator in the Burundian civil war.
[1] In August of that year,[2] he resigned from the PFP and sat as an independent until the 1989 general election, when he won re-election as a candidate for the newly established Democratic Party (DP).
[3] He was also among a group of DP members who advocated for stronger ties to the African National Congress (ANC), the majority-black anti-apartheid organisation then banned inside South Africa.
In a joint statement, the group said that they were responding to a call made by Nelson Mandela shortly after his release from prison in 1990, for "all our white compatriots to join us in the shaping of a new South Africa".
[8][9][10] On 2 June 1992, the NP moved to suspend van Eck from Parliament because he had claimed that the government was responsible for the deaths of a large number of black activists.
[7] Van Eck left Parliament in order to join the fledgling peace process in the Burundian civil war, which dominated his attention for the next decade.
[16][1] The Rotary Foundation awarded him a Paul Harris Fellowship "in appreciation of tangible and significant assistance given for the furtherance of better understanding and friendly relations among peoples of the world".