Speaker 1: Pushing it. I'm Khalil Jibron Muhammad.
Speaker 2: I'm Ben Austen. We're two best friends, one black, one white.
Speaker 1: I'm a historian and I'm a journalist. And this is
Speaker 1: some of my best friends are.
Speaker 2: Some of my best friends are dot dot dot. In
Speaker 2: this show, we wrestled with the challenges and the absurdities
Speaker 2: of a deeply divided and unequal country.
Speaker 1: Today we're talking about South Africa, another deeply divided and
Speaker 1: unequal country.
Speaker 2: No kidding. We are going to discuss how successful South
Speaker 2: Africa has been in its attempts to address its history
Speaker 2: of apartheid.
Speaker 1: Let's do it. I had never been to South Africa
Speaker 1: until a few months ago, and I was really looking
Speaker 1: forward to it because my dad had gone many times
Speaker 1: to cover like the elections there in the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1: I went to actually study how they memorialize the history
Speaker 1: of apartheid and how they've addressed it since it ended.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a really big, important, meaty, heavy
Speaker 1: issue because if we are in the United States to
Speaker 1: figure out how to reckon with our own past, it's
Speaker 1: definitely the case that South Africa has been a model
Speaker 1: for a lot of places, including people here talking about
Speaker 1: what we should do. So that's what I went there
Speaker 1: to look at up.
Speaker 2: Close, no doubt. And when you said your father was
Speaker 2: there looking at the elections in nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 1: He was shooting them. He was a journalist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was there in nineteen ninety four. He and
Speaker 2: I hung out because I was there on a full
Speaker 2: bright to go to graduate school at the University of
Speaker 2: Cape Town. And so I was there at the birth
Speaker 2: of the country's democracy, its first all race election. And
Speaker 2: so to think about all these years past to talk
Speaker 2: to you about, you know, what's happened since then. I'm
Speaker 2: really excited for this conversation. I've been looking forward to it,
Speaker 2: and we've been kind of saving it, not talking about
Speaker 2: it because we're saving it for right now.
Speaker 1: So let's do it, all right, Well, let's get to
Speaker 1: some history. Let's talk about the basics of what happened
Speaker 1: in this country so we can figure out how this
Speaker 1: country is or is not moving forward. So A Part
Speaker 1: eight starts when the Nationalist Party is elected an Africana
Speaker 1: Party Dutch descendant settlers in nineteen forty eight. And this
Speaker 1: is the moment when every kind of you know, like
Speaker 1: the shittiest way that you could imagine separating white and
Speaker 1: black and giving black people the worst of everything in
Speaker 1: white people the best of everything comes into law.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the closest thing for us is segregation in the
Speaker 2: South in the United States, except in South Africa, the
Speaker 2: population is overwhelmingly black and you have this small minority
Speaker 2: controlling power, control, owning land, all the resources.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it's remarkable. Someone told me. The interesting thing
Speaker 1: about South Africa is it's had every form of colonialism
Speaker 1: and slavery. You could imagine they had chattel slavery going
Speaker 1: back to the sixteen hundreds when the Dutch first settled
Speaker 1: the Cape Town region. Then they had indigenous dispossession. They
Speaker 1: removed the Khoi and Sun indigenous populations from their land,
Speaker 1: and then for the Bantu populations which spanned from Zulu
Speaker 1: to le Soto to Kosa and many other you know
Speaker 1: what they recognize as indigenous tribes to the region. They
Speaker 1: were dispossessed from their land, mostly after the discovery of
Speaker 1: gold in the late nineteenth entry. So part of the
Speaker 1: story of A Part eight is really building on a
Speaker 1: long history of European settlement in what is today known
Speaker 1: as South Africa and the British had a big part
Speaker 1: in it. The Dutch, of course, you know, have been
Speaker 1: there a long time, particularly since the Africana population is
Speaker 1: descended from it. And the thing about A Part eight
Speaker 1: when it formalizes in nineteen forty eight is it's so
Speaker 1: systematic people have to carry passes to identify which township
Speaker 1: they come from. It limits their mobility and their ability
Speaker 1: to come and go. Because of course South Africa is
Speaker 1: also about labor extraction. There they're using black people to
Speaker 1: make money for white people, largely in doing gold mining,
Speaker 1: diamond mining, and other forms of hard labor.
Speaker 2: You talked about how systematic it is. It's also messy
Speaker 2: in the ways that you just said too, because a
Speaker 2: vast majority of the population are also working for people
Speaker 2: working the minds of working at homes. So there's also
Speaker 2: all kinds of interaction. Part of the laws that are
Speaker 2: about sort of separating even more relationships sex and marriage,
Speaker 2: removal of people from neighborhoods onto homelands, and bantu stands
Speaker 2: like actual physical removal of entire neighborhoods to try to
Speaker 2: try to keep that separation even more.
Speaker 1: That's right and partly what is so powerful in seeing
Speaker 1: the country today. When you define a country's natural resources,
Speaker 1: its land, the things that make the country wealthy, like
Speaker 1: its gold and diamonds, and the people themselves, when you
Speaker 1: restrict them the eighty seven percent of a population a
Speaker 1: giver take to about twelve percent of the land, you
Speaker 1: can imagine how fundamentally traumatic and delimiting and ultimately dehumanizing
Speaker 1: that's been generation after generation after generation. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that's really fascinating about, like thinking about the
Speaker 1: United States and its own process of segregation, like black
Speaker 1: people were only thirteen percent of the population. But if
Speaker 1: you take the worst thing you think about, Jim Crow,
Speaker 1: and then say do that to eighty seven percent of
Speaker 1: the population, then you really do get a sense of
Speaker 1: the visceralness of a part eight and how powerful a
Speaker 1: way of controlling the population it's been all these years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and also this sense of almost like holding back
Speaker 2: a damn a flood because there was always resistance against
Speaker 2: it too.
Speaker 1: That's right, well, talking about resistance. I mean, so listen,
Speaker 1: everyone knows that Nelson Mandela is the most famous freedom
Speaker 1: fighter in terms of the history of a parteit And
Speaker 1: the thing about Nelson Mandela is, you know, he's part
Speaker 1: of a political resistance organization called the African National Congress
Speaker 1: that by the nineteen forties, Nelson Mandela, who is a
Speaker 1: young lawyer, gets involved and begins to organize with A
Speaker 1: and C leaders, and their goal is to end A
Speaker 1: Part eight. They're going to build a movement kind of
Speaker 1: in the tradition of the Civil rights movement, particularly in DOAACP.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of borrowing in fact between these two movements,
Speaker 1: because by nineteen forty eight, the civil rights movement hasn't
Speaker 1: yet taken a kind of grassroots dimension. But over the
Speaker 1: next ten years, in nineteen fifties, these movements are going
Speaker 1: to grow just.
Speaker 2: As interesting that borrowing from the United States happens even
Speaker 2: more by the nineteen sixties, the black resistance movement in
Speaker 2: South Africa is borrowing from black power movement in the
Speaker 2: United States. I've seen this as a model for a change, yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. And it's sometime in the mid nineteen sixties that
Speaker 1: Nelson Mandela, who's on the run for his political resistance,
Speaker 1: there's this moment when the A and C decides that
Speaker 1: it's going to have to resort to violence as a
Speaker 1: way to make change. They see this next phase as
Speaker 1: a resistance movement, and they began to plan for bombings
Speaker 1: and other forms of violence. You know, this is the
Speaker 1: kind of thing we saw in Northern Ireland during the
Speaker 1: Troubles for people resisting the British colonialism. So violence by
Speaker 1: the mid nineteen sixties is a part of a liberation strategy.
Speaker 2: I will say also in response to extreme violence by
Speaker 2: the government. Absolutely that they are these dramatic moments in
Speaker 2: history of sort of these massacres of different sorts and
Speaker 2: tamping down on even peaceful protest that lead to this
Speaker 2: violent resistance as well. Yeah. So by nineteen sixty three,
Speaker 2: Nelson Mandela is imprisoned and he spends the next twenty
Speaker 2: seven years in prison. He's not freed until nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: when he's in his seventies.
Speaker 1: So yeah, Vin, I mean, you just talked about the
Speaker 1: end of Nelson Mandela's incarceration, which itself grew out of
Speaker 1: really powerful student led movement by Winnie Mandela in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties while Nelson was still incarcerated, but by the
Speaker 1: early nineteen nineties. By nineteen ninety one, South Africa's president
Speaker 1: FW de Clerk decides that he's going to have to
Speaker 1: basically usher in a transition moment to end the party
Speaker 1: and here you are showing up just about this time.
Speaker 1: So so what was it like just just landing there
Speaker 1: and being part of that moment?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it was. It was incredible. So you're right, like,
Speaker 2: there's this there's this hope for a peaceful transition to
Speaker 2: majority rule, but it also feels really precarious and uncertain
Speaker 2: at the moment. I'm there, I'm there before the election,
Speaker 2: and you know, is there going to be a civil war?
Speaker 2: There's this scramble for power. Is the election going to
Speaker 2: go off peacefully?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: It feels sort of like, you know, like at the
Speaker 2: start of a democracy of a history, like at the
Speaker 2: United States after the Revolutionary War, you know, like like
Speaker 2: what's going to happen to this country?
Speaker 1: So it felt I have a question for you. So
Speaker 1: it felt it felt like that rather than being there
Speaker 1: at the moment when the civil rights movement achieves its
Speaker 1: legislative victories, like you were thinking about a new country altogether,
Speaker 1: not just fixing an old one.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think I think it felt like something radically new.
Speaker 2: I remember the election day. It was also I remember
Speaker 2: that it's your birthday. It Pril twenty seventh and so
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety four, and in Cape Town, where I was
Speaker 2: this beautiful city, you know, framed by these mountains. It
Speaker 2: was rainy and overcast and just like this eerie quietness,
Speaker 2: and the lines stretched for miles and miles of people voting. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but it did feel like the start of this of
Speaker 2: a new country, an entirely new country. And I know that,
Speaker 2: I know that's imaginative, but countries are imaginations, like a
Speaker 2: democracy or something. I mean, their laws and there's going
Speaker 2: to be a constitution. But this sense, this thing actually
Speaker 2: went off without without violence, that the country didn't fall apart,
Speaker 2: they were able to hold election.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, you mentioned the constitution, and I have to
Speaker 1: say that that's one of the shining prideful consequences or
Speaker 1: legacies of this transition moment. People in South Africa do
Speaker 1: this very day. The people I got to spend time
Speaker 1: with and talk to, you know, they are very proud
Speaker 1: of the constitution for its ability to express their shared
Speaker 1: commitments to equality, which is one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: some of the failures of this vision of South Africa's
Speaker 1: future from nineteen nineties to the present is really less
Speaker 1: about what the constitution promises, and more about the failures
Speaker 1: of the country to come to terms with reckoning with
Speaker 1: that past, as well as reparations, which is a huge
Speaker 1: and controversial issue to this day.
Speaker 2: So making a democracy is different than dealing with generations
Speaker 2: of extreme inequality and enforced inequality and segregation. And so yeah,
Speaker 2: I want to hear what you saw on your trip
Speaker 2: about how the country has reckoned with this past, what
Speaker 2: you learned.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back from the break, Ben. I want
Speaker 1: to tell you about a couple of places we visited,
Speaker 1: like places we spent time and seeing up close. One
Speaker 1: of these places is called Constitutional Hill. It's in Johannesburg.
Speaker 1: It is it is home to today's Constitutional Court, which
Speaker 1: is their equivalent of our US Supreme Court. As we
Speaker 1: were approaching it, though, I asked, I asked our host
Speaker 1: what was going on? Because I was confused about where
Speaker 1: we're going?
Speaker 3: Court?
Speaker 1: Is the labordated.
Speaker 2: Question?
Speaker 1: It will become a pedent to you.
Speaker 3: It used to be.
Speaker 2: So they chained that. Yes, interesting, damn one. You know
Speaker 2: now you were always going to say the thing, man,
Speaker 2: You're always going to be like, why is this so
Speaker 2: messed up? Why does it look like that? Too. It
Speaker 2: used to be a prison man, so their court used
Speaker 2: to be a prison. Is that purposeful, like in terms
Speaker 2: of meaning or is it practical in terms of like
Speaker 2: we need to repurpose that building and we got limited funds.
Speaker 1: No, it's very purposeful in terms of meaning. This is
Speaker 1: one of the ways that South Africa is doing a
Speaker 1: good job, a very good job of reckoning with its past,
Speaker 1: of a form of truth telling about the system of
Speaker 1: a party. And indeed, the Constitutional Court sits at the
Speaker 1: apex of what was once considered the Old Fort Prison complex.
Speaker 1: It was in many ways the most productive site for
Speaker 1: incarcerating political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela who spent time there.
Speaker 1: Prisoners were brought in stripped, naked, humiliated, beaten, starved, placed
Speaker 1: in solitary confinement. The actual prison for or tells this
Speaker 1: story and shows you the actual grounds there. They're still maintained.
Speaker 1: That's why it looks dilapidated, because it looks exactly like
Speaker 1: this place purpose has always looked. Ok. It's a place
Speaker 1: that is that is there to help remind people of
Speaker 1: how precious their democracy is in relationship to this past.
Speaker 1: It's a very powerful undertaking. And then being in that
Speaker 1: place I mean being on Constitutional Hill seeing the prison
Speaker 1: and a memorial to the Constitution itself. It's like you
Speaker 1: also are reminded that they had this Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Speaker 1: They began this process of bringing the country back together.
Speaker 2: So the truth, truth and reconciliation begins actually a couple
Speaker 2: of years after I leave, and it's a way for
Speaker 2: the country to in a legal way, to try to
Speaker 2: deal with this past, as you said, of murder and torture.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, established in nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: was to allow for people who could prove they have
Speaker 1: been victims of mostly police violence in the period between
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty and nineteen ninety four could make an application
Speaker 1: to appear before the Commission, at which time they would
Speaker 1: tell their stories and they would identify perpetrators, who would
Speaker 1: then be subject to prosecution under those terms. Perpetrators, on
Speaker 1: the other hand, could apply for amnesty under the condition
Speaker 1: that they would also tell their stories of the terrible
Speaker 1: things they did to people, including murder, and that they
Speaker 1: would receive amnesty. They would not be punished for participating
Speaker 1: fully in that process. The idea was that if enough
Speaker 1: stories were told on both sides. It would create a
Speaker 1: path for healing and reconciliation for the country, and it's
Speaker 1: a really important first step for the African National Congress
Speaker 1: to begin to create you know what Nelson Bendela called
Speaker 1: this rainbow nation, like you know that we're all going
Speaker 1: to come together, This multi racial democracy is going to
Speaker 1: be real. But we have to have this truth reconciliation
Speaker 1: process to achieve that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, a kind of restorative justice, which we've talked
Speaker 2: about before.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, well, first of all, we were trying to
Speaker 1: make sense of how successful it was. I mean, the
Speaker 1: whole point of our trip to South Africa was to
Speaker 1: study the degree to with truth telling practices like a
Speaker 1: truth commission is a useful way to reckon with the
Speaker 1: past for a state or for a country and to
Speaker 1: determine what are the ingredients for success. Some of this
Speaker 1: I was reading, but a lot of my new learning
Speaker 1: came with interviews of a number of people who were
Speaker 1: either state actors, meeting public officials, or people who've been
Speaker 1: responsible for enacting the commission itself. I actually spoke to
Speaker 1: a commissioner or talk to people who were activists who
Speaker 1: are doing some of the work today to support the
Speaker 1: goals of the Commission that have never really truly been realized.
Speaker 1: I mean, this thing went on for only two years
Speaker 1: between nineteen ninety six and nineteen ninety eight, about twenty
Speaker 1: two thousand people participated. But obviously you know that millions
Speaker 1: of people suffered out of our parteip So some of
Speaker 1: the basic limitations of the process itself have created this
Speaker 1: movement that is called the Unfinished Business of the Truth
Speaker 1: and Reconciliation Commission.
Speaker 2: So you have ten tens of thousands of victims of
Speaker 2: crimes who get to get to give testimony and they're heard,
Speaker 2: and you have thousands of perpetrators who also get to
Speaker 2: talk and apologize and they can possibly get amnesty if
Speaker 2: they present honestly and so on and fully and so so, yeah,
Speaker 2: tell tell me more like about this. You know the
Speaker 2: sense that this is obviously that's only it's only like representative.
Speaker 2: It's almost like symbolic for the rest of the country.
Speaker 2: And you couldn't you couldn't do every better, right, and
Speaker 2: so why couldn't that work as a sample size of
Speaker 2: what a country needs to do to move forward in
Speaker 2: this fledge link democracy and sort of to try to
Speaker 2: live together in a sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, that's that's an interesting way to put it,
Speaker 1: because in some ways, Desmond Tutu, who chaired the commission,
Speaker 1: thought of it like a kind of sample, kind of
Speaker 1: awn sample of reconciliation that it only could be. But
Speaker 1: in the end, part of what led to frustration was
Speaker 1: this arbitrary notion that there were very limited definitions of
Speaker 1: what was a crime in the apartaiit understanding of the TRC,
Speaker 1: meaning you know, police officers who killed people, or even
Speaker 1: A and C members who killed people. Oftentimes members who
Speaker 1: were fighting against A Part eight might use violence to
Speaker 1: discipline and or execute someone who was an informant for
Speaker 1: the state. So one of the ways to sort of
Speaker 1: appreciate this challenge is that one, if it's only about
Speaker 1: state violence, then you ignore the suffering of people who
Speaker 1: led lives of destitution and desperation, who were victimized by
Speaker 1: every form of inhumanity that a state can dole out,
Speaker 1: including not having clean water, including eighty seven percent of
Speaker 1: the population living on about twelve percent of the land,
Speaker 1: and so on. The other thing that is a source
Speaker 1: of current tension and frustration that we heard from people
Speaker 1: when we talked was that more A and C members
Speaker 1: were ultimately punished under this system than actual white ringers,
Speaker 1: meaning you know, people who were avowed white supremacists, that
Speaker 1: were far fewer of them, because in the course of
Speaker 1: the prosecutions, when names were revealed, it was up to
Speaker 1: the state to actually go after people, and the state ultimately,
Speaker 1: that is the Black A and C government that's been
Speaker 1: in charge since the end of A Part eight, failed
Speaker 1: ultimately to follow up on prosecutions of people who who
Speaker 1: were known to meet the definition of political violence again
Speaker 1: committing a crime against the Part eight. Yeah, totally, totally.
Speaker 2: I want to go back to something. I want to
Speaker 2: go back to something you said, because I think it's
Speaker 2: really fascinating. You said that it could only the TRC
Speaker 2: in its in its purview, could really only deal with
Speaker 2: people who are victims of political crimes. But it couldn't.
Speaker 2: It can't. It can't address people who are victims of
Speaker 2: the vast inequality and suffering and structural problems in a country.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: That's fascinating because you know that is changing the entire
Speaker 2: sort of economic system of the country, which is the
Speaker 2: country has failed to do.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: So if we're twenty eight years since the end of
Speaker 1: A Part eight. The basic infrastructure of a PARTAIT that
Speaker 1: was never designed to accommodate a quality of life standard
Speaker 1: for everyone means that today something like electricity and power
Speaker 1: does exist universally across the country. But today in a
Speaker 1: free post to Parte South Africa, they have to manage electricity.
Speaker 1: And the first thing we saw when we got off
Speaker 1: the airplane was a blackout community. The hotel we were
Speaker 1: staying in actually was surrounded by darkness. And of course
Speaker 1: this hotel had generators to accommodate its overwhelmingly privileged guests
Speaker 1: like ourselves and white people who are visiting the country.
Speaker 1: So it's a mess, man, It's just I mean, we
Speaker 1: heard from people who literally said in some ways their
Speaker 1: lives were better under PARTEID, which was just devastating to hear.
Speaker 1: So when we were at the Constitutional Court, I mean,
Speaker 1: there were like sixty people there protesting, most of them elderly,
Speaker 1: most of them black. But they are chanting a song
Speaker 1: where they're calling out Cyril Rama Pulsa, who is the
Speaker 1: current President of South Africa is the fifth president since
Speaker 1: the end of A Part eight. They're basically saying we
Speaker 1: helped get you elected, We gave you a helping hand.
Speaker 1: We want your support. Now we need you to support
Speaker 1: us to bring reparations to our communities.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we put you in office. Follow up on your
Speaker 2: promises you owe us.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I ended up talking to one of the
Speaker 1: protesters and her name is Nomah Russia Bonase and Noma
Speaker 1: Leeds an organization called Kulamani. Now Kulamani is focused on
Speaker 1: a whole range of issues. They had huge signs out
Speaker 1: because they wanted people to understand they're at their Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: what kinds of issues they're facing. One of their signs said,
Speaker 1: today's disasters are worse because of a PARTEP. Victims have
Speaker 1: no redress. They talked about COVID, they talked about flooding,
Speaker 1: they talked about gender based violence, about poverty, crime, inequality.
Speaker 1: They basically saying, like, you know, our lives are worse
Speaker 1: off when these terrible things happened because we've never actually
Speaker 1: addressed the problem of a PARTAI. And they were calling
Speaker 1: for reparations. They were making reparations the cornerstone of their organizing.
Speaker 2: And so in the TRC, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,
Speaker 2: I think people who testified they could get a small
Speaker 2: lump sum of like thirty five hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: It was thirty thousand rand, which Noma, the head of
Speaker 1: the protest, told us had been one hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: thousand rand when it was first proposed and recommended by
Speaker 1: the TRC, But Tabo and Beck, the second president after Mandela,
Speaker 1: had reduced it to thirty thousand, and they were basically
Speaker 1: saying without any community input, it was just a unilateral decision.
Speaker 2: And that would also only be for people who gave
Speaker 2: testimony to the TRC. Correct, where is the country on
Speaker 2: that in terms of reparations, economic reparations for the economic
Speaker 2: system under a part EID that has created a two
Speaker 2: class system that the vast majority is living in poverty
Speaker 2: and the minority is living well.
Speaker 1: That's right. That's a great question because one of the
Speaker 1: recommendations fell under a rough category of community reparations. This
Speaker 1: was an idea that you wouldn't necessarily pay individuals a
Speaker 1: lump sum of money, but actually you would address entire communities.
Speaker 1: Outside the Constitutional Court where Noma was protesting, she told
Speaker 1: me there were other promises too that weren't met. Promises
Speaker 1: to individuals.
Speaker 4: A victim is going to get education for himself, for Hesan,
Speaker 4: for the children, the gren and Grenn and grandchildren's let
Speaker 4: is the recommended. There will be a proper housing given
Speaker 4: to the victims. There will be also a proper education
Speaker 4: because people were wounded, spirits, lati in their body and
Speaker 4: also mental. But now you did not to call on
Speaker 4: not saying anything even about the education.
Speaker 1: She said that not only have reparations not been forthcoming,
Speaker 1: but we've had to demonstrate. I mean she's talking about
Speaker 1: she and all the people out there to hold the
Speaker 1: A and C government accountable. The Black government of South Africa,
Speaker 1: who is that government has failed to live up to
Speaker 1: these these goals that they set for themselves as a nation,
Speaker 1: and it's time that they give them what they deserve.
Speaker 2: It's so interesting to think about reparations in terms of
Speaker 2: South Africa versus when the conversation comes up here because
Speaker 2: there's no man. These other protesters are saying, you know,
Speaker 2: you are us who are in power, and you're still
Speaker 2: not You're still not doing this, like you're still not
Speaker 2: thinking about how to make to to level an imbalanced
Speaker 2: playing field.
Speaker 1: And that's a big part of the frustration that we
Speaker 1: heard from not just Noma and the protesters there.
Speaker 2: What did you feel like, where did you feel in
Speaker 2: relationship to history? You know, is there some sort of
Speaker 2: analogy you would use to the United States?
Speaker 1: If anything, I thought a lot about what it means
Speaker 1: to live in a country where black people are mayors
Speaker 1: of cities and we have a black Asian vice president
Speaker 1: and we just had a black president. My mind thought
Speaker 1: a lot more about the relationship of black power in
Speaker 1: South Africa to black power in the United States. And
Speaker 1: I felt very disappointed by understanding from Noma and from
Speaker 1: others how the current leadership of the A and C
Speaker 1: and the current president are failing to deal with the
Speaker 1: legacies of a Parteake.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, let's talk more about this after the break.
Speaker 2: Let's actually talk about Nelson Mandela. Hey, Khalil, so we
Speaker 2: are back. Yeah. I wanted to talk more about Nelson
Speaker 2: Mandela because in nineteen ninety four when I was there,
Speaker 2: I mean, I thought of him as a hero. He
Speaker 2: had survived twenty seven years in prison and here he
Speaker 2: is running this country and leading it through this peaceful transition.
Speaker 2: And I know he's kind of an icon in the
Speaker 2: symbolic sense that it doesn't have to do with necessary
Speaker 2: his policies. But he has started this thing. He's jump
Speaker 2: started it, and he's everywhere. He is a sort of
Speaker 2: avuncular like grandfatherly figure. You know, he somehow is the
Speaker 2: embodiment of the new country and the sense that a
Speaker 2: new beginning and even of a peaceful new beginning.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, there is something miraculous about Nelson Mandela
Speaker 1: assuming the role as the first president of a free
Speaker 1: South Africa. I mean, I guess the closest equivalent would
Speaker 1: be if Martin Luther King Junior wasn't assassinated in April
Speaker 1: president of the Right and being Richard Brexitt and being
Speaker 1: Richard Nixon in nineteen sixty eight. I mean, so, you know,
Speaker 1: this is this is a big deal because even to
Speaker 1: this day, I mean, most Americans myself included, prior to
Speaker 1: going to South Africa, just you know, had this had
Speaker 1: this imagination that Nelson Mandela was a figure beyond reproach
Speaker 1: whose legacy merits all of the adulation that people heap
Speaker 1: on them. But the truth is, the opinion on Nelson
Speaker 1: Mandela has changed. His image has changed over time.
Speaker 2: Interesting because there's always this sense of both reconciliation and
Speaker 2: maybe conciliation in a negative sense, So tell me about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, there are statues of Nelson Mandela everywhere. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are photographs, larger than life photographs in almost every
Speaker 1: public space. In fact, if you go to the Union Buildings,
Speaker 1: which is home to their parliament in Pretoria, which is
Speaker 1: north of Johannesburg, there is a twenty foot tall statue
Speaker 1: of Nelson Mandela with its arms outstretched looking over his country.
Speaker 1: Because the Union Buildings were built basically at the top
Speaker 1: of a hill, and his arms stretched nearly eight feet wide.
Speaker 1: It is breathtaking.
Speaker 2: I just want to say, I think I think of
Speaker 2: Nelson Mandela as both Martin Luther King, and it's more
Speaker 2: like and Abraham Lincoln. You know, he is the president.
Speaker 2: It's all those statues in one.
Speaker 1: In the case of the statue at Union Building, this
Speaker 1: larger than life one, it did remind me of the
Speaker 1: Doctor King monument on the Mall, where he's emerging out
Speaker 1: of a stone of hope. After all, Doctor King is
Speaker 1: the only non president to be memorialized in the nation's
Speaker 1: capital in the National Mall. However, in the same way
Speaker 1: that Doctor King has become a kind of whitewashed historical
Speaker 1: figure who believed only in color blindness and individual merit,
Speaker 1: and whose actual radical commitments to redistribution, to solving for poverty,
Speaker 1: to changing the structure of American societ Nelson Mandela has
Speaker 1: been turned into a similar saintly figure who had no
Speaker 1: radical edges and who ultimately is smiling everywhere you see him.
Speaker 1: In fact, we went to one of the wealthiest suburbs
Speaker 1: in Johannesburg. It is home to more millionaires it's called Santon,
Speaker 1: than any square mile on the African continent. And there
Speaker 1: there's this massive mall called the Nelson Mandela Square. It's
Speaker 1: actually a really beautiful mall. The man I have to
Speaker 1: tell you. Down the hallways of this mall, you see
Speaker 1: images of life size images of Nelson Mandela smiling at you,
Speaker 1: almost in a coonish manner. I mean, I hate to
Speaker 1: say it that way, but that's what it felt like.
Speaker 1: It felt like his image was being used to sign
Speaker 1: off on like hyper capitalism, like you know, make Nelson
Speaker 1: Mandela prout, spend as much of your money in this
Speaker 1: mall as possible. And that was deeply disturbing to me.
Speaker 2: Hmm. And even when he got out of prison, I mean,
Speaker 2: he had been he was in prison so long, and
Speaker 2: he was he was old. He had this this grandfatherly manner.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well this brings up a really interesting point because
Speaker 1: I was able to talk to see young people and
Speaker 1: I asked them, in particular, how do young people understand
Speaker 1: Nelson Mandela's legacy? Uh? And dude, they were like, they
Speaker 1: were really critical, I mean so much so that they
Speaker 1: they basically said that Nelson Mandela sold out the country
Speaker 1: when he negotiated the post apartment apartheid agreements with the
Speaker 1: Afrikana Party. The generational divide, you can tell what generations
Speaker 1: I want blom to how much they actually admire him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the younger you get so what so what not messed
Speaker 1: with him at all? His Rainbow Nation.
Speaker 2: You can see it was a it was a wrong.
Speaker 1: The younger generation, they just straight up see it and
Speaker 1: they call it, especially the two thousand kids. Gensens are
Speaker 1: savage and they call him Nelli M. And you know
Speaker 1: how Africa in respect is Nelli M Nellie M. Yes,
Speaker 1: what does that mean kind of a well, kind of
Speaker 1: a euphemism for like some dude, right, like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's Nelly M. Nelson Mandela. In other words, she was saying,
Speaker 1: for ging Zers, they don't see him as a revered
Speaker 1: historical figure. In a way, the failures of the TRC
Speaker 1: have come home to roost in a younger generation who
Speaker 1: are very skeptical of the ruling party, the African National Congress,
Speaker 1: and they're skeptical of all of the presidents, including Nelson Mandela,
Speaker 1: who they essentially accuse rightly so, of truly a failure
Speaker 1: to deliver. And just to make sure that I wasn't
Speaker 1: hearing this from just you know, kind of radical young people,
Speaker 1: I also asked our host, who's a generation older, what
Speaker 1: to make of what they call the failure of the
Speaker 1: Rainbow Nation. And here's what he said, No one cares
Speaker 1: allan if you critique that, yes, we know it failed.
Speaker 3: So what so because we've spoken and we've spoken nothing.
Speaker 3: It's it's happening. So what's the point of saying, does
Speaker 3: people did us wrong? I mean, what you've done, what
Speaker 3: you're seeing now, it's a proper demonstration of why the
Speaker 3: truth and reconciation permission never both foot.
Speaker 1: The inability of this country, through this democracy that's been
Speaker 1: held up in the world as like a shiny example
Speaker 1: of going from you know, a terrible system of oppression
Speaker 1: to having one of the best constitutions on paper, and
Speaker 1: yet people don't believe in it anymore.
Speaker 2: I'm so glad you got to go there and do this.
Speaker 2: I'm jealous. And to think about this being there, I
Speaker 2: don't know, years into this democracy and to see it
Speaker 2: at this moment. Maybe I'll ask you one last question,
Speaker 2: because we started up by talking what you would bring
Speaker 2: back to the United States from this trip and think
Speaker 2: about our country and think about memorializing and so this
Speaker 2: young democracy and our much older one. What is it
Speaker 2: that you brought back? What is the lesson that you
Speaker 2: think you learned from going to South Africa.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great question. So I think it's pretty
Speaker 1: straightforward that truth telling in many different ways has to happen.
Speaker 1: And although the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a limited
Speaker 1: process and didn't tell the entire truth of a Parte
Speaker 1: eight only told a limited truth of a particular kind
Speaker 1: of political violence. The truth telling that needs to happen,
Speaker 1: both in South Africa and in the United States is
Speaker 1: the whole story. It's about colonialism. South Africa also hit
Speaker 1: chattel slavery. All of these things to be told in
Speaker 1: a fulsome way, both in that country and ours, in
Speaker 1: order to even begin to have a conversation about the future.
Speaker 1: And then the second thing, which is the one we've
Speaker 1: been talking about about reparations, is that you really can't
Speaker 1: have truth telling without some form of reparations, without some
Speaker 1: form of redistribution, because once people understand the fullness of
Speaker 1: the harm done to people, the oppression, the centuries of it,
Speaker 1: then their actual lived experiences have to be made better,
Speaker 1: have to be made whole. There's no way around it.
Speaker 1: One last story, I just have to tell you this
Speaker 1: because it was one of the last things I heard,
Speaker 1: So I asked, like, where do white people sit in
Speaker 1: this story, Like, do white people do reconciliation work? Are
Speaker 1: they learning these histories in their schools, because a lot
Speaker 1: of white children go to private schools, not the public schools.
Speaker 1: And overwhelmingly, people said, by and large, white South Africans
Speaker 1: have opted out of telling the truth about a partake.
Speaker 1: And so as we were leaving, I heard from this
Speaker 1: white guy who we were interviewing who said that basically
Speaker 1: he does the work of reconciliation with white people today
Speaker 1: and it's really hard, but he is committed to bringing
Speaker 1: white people to the table and white people along, no
Speaker 1: matter how heart or how long it takes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, country like that, everyone becomes implicated in the atrocity.
Speaker 2: Thank you, man. I'm glad we finally had this conversation now,
Speaker 2: so now we can talk about it all the time.
Speaker 2: Now I can look at photos. Now I can well
Speaker 2: and maybe maybe we'll maybe we'll get to travel together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hope.
Speaker 2: So all right, love you.
Speaker 1: Love you men. Some of My Best Friends Are is
Speaker 1: a production of Pushkin Industries. The show is written and
Speaker 1: hosted by me Khalil Dubron Muhammad and my best friend
Speaker 1: Ben Austin.
Speaker 2: It's produced by Lucy Sullivan. Our associate producer is Rachel Yang.
Speaker 2: It's edited by Sarah Nick with help from Keishel Williams.
Speaker 2: Our engineer is Amanda ka Wang, and our managing producer
Speaker 2: is Constanza Guyardo.
Speaker 1: At Pushkin thanks to Leitol Molatt, Julia Barton, Heather Fain,
Speaker 1: Carly Migliori, John schnarz Retta Cone, and Jacob Weisberg.
Speaker 2: Our theme song, Little Lily is by fellow Chicaguan the
Speaker 2: Brilliant Avery R. Young from his album Tubman. You definitely
Speaker 2: want to check out his music at his website, Averyaryong
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