Professional background and experience:

Clive is a director at CoSolve, an organisation that provides facilitation, mediation, investigation and training services in an independent capacity. He has been admitted as an attorney of the High Court in South Africa and a solicitor of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, Australia.

Former roles of his include partner of attorneys Cheadle Thompson & Haysom, Director of the Labour Law Unit (later the Institute of Development & Labour Law) at the University of Cape Town, Associate Professor of Commercial Law at UCT, Senior Commissioner of the CCMA, arbitrator of the Workers Compensation Commission in New South Wales (Australia) and Senior Fellow at the Law Faculty of the University of New South Wales (teaching graduate courses in dispute resolution and labour law). His qualifications include a BA(Hons) degree from Stellenbosch University and an LLB from the University of Cape Town.

Mediation experience and style:

Clive has been a mediator and arbitrator of the Independent Mediation Service of South Africa and at Tokiso. He is also an accredited mediator in Australia (under the National Mediation Accreditation System). His approach is to allow the parties to craft their own solution in the first instance but, by consent, to actively facilitate exploratory approaches – while preserving independence – if the parties are battling to make breakthroughs themselves (evaluative mediation).

Facilitation experience and style:

Much of Clive’s work involves the facilitation of negotiations in a range of settings. He has co-facilitated multi-party bargaining across the South African auto industry, between New Zealand largest company (the diary industry’s Fonterra) and its unions, in the Australian local government sector, the education and health sectors and in numerous private sector contexts.

Whilst sometimes no more than robust and independent chairing is possible in more adversarial situations, he prefers to foster a mutual gains approach. CoSolve is an exponent of interest-based bargaining, and Clive has co-authored (with Jerome Barratt of the United States and John O’Dowd of Ireland) The Collaborative Workplace Option – Interest-based bargaining, consultation and problem-solving: a guide for parties and practitioners.

Chairing and investigations experience:

Clive has –

• co-chaired major inquiries into mine violence on joint brief from the National Union of Mineworkers and Impala Platinum
• sat as a sole arbitrator to decide the fairness of mass dismissals following episodes of violence in the South African retail and textile industries
• co-chaired as international consultant (on appointment from the International Labour Organisation) a change process to turn around labour institutions and practices of the public service of Sri Lanka (leading to the Report Building a High Quality Public Service in Sri Lanka through Workplace Reform). The latter role flowed from his earlier commission from the ILO to produce its publication Manual on Collective Bargaining and Dispute Resolution in the Public Service.

In an Australian context, he has conducted investigations and made findings in relation to allegations of bullying and harassment (and other issues involving probity) in relation to senior figures at Note Printing Australia (a subsidiary of the Reserve Bank of Australia), the Law Society of New South Wales, in the secondary and tertiary education sectors, and in the health sector.

A current assignment concerns investigating and producing recommendations on the model of employment in the care sector on brief from the federal Department of Health and Ageing in Australia.

With respect to his style of chairing, Clive’s point of departure is that the character of the process should flow from the relevant objectives and circumstances – applied and appropriate flexibility is needed to arrive at the best form. Workplace violence inquiries, for instance, have on occasion obliged in camera sessions to protect parties against reprisal and victimisation. Other circumstances have required a clear Continental inquisitorial style, with only the independent investigator(s) having access to the full suite of evidence. The preferred approach, though, would always be open proceedings, subject to considerations of efficiency.

And with respect to efficiency, justice delayed is justice denied. Clive believes that the investigator’s responsibility is to cut to the chase on the essentials of the matter, and to produce an outcome as expeditiously as the circumstance of the matter will allow.