This penetrating study of successful mediation in a half-dozen violent conflicts across the African continent focuses on a hitherto neglected dimension of mediation and the motivations of the parties in conflict and of the mediators themselves in initiating the mediation option. The "problem" of many journalistic accounts and scholarly analyses of conflict mediation is that they detail the mediation process in full swing but have largely neglected the crucial phase of mediators' entry into the destructive and disturbing mass violence in Burundi, Rwanda, the Congo, Sudan, and West Africa and the border conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea. This collaboration of renowned scholars and a practitioner in conflict management and African politics seeks to draw wide-ranging and timely conclusions on the early stages of mediation from six case studies.