The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Plot to Save South Africa: The Week Mandela Averted Civil War and Forged a New Nation by Justice Malala

Episode Date: April 3, 2023

The Plot to Save South Africa: The Week Mandela Averted Civil War and Forged a New Nation by Justice Malala A riveting, kaleidoscopic account of nine tumultuous days, as the assassination of Nelson Mandela’s protégé by a white supremacist threatens to derail South Africa’s democratic transition and plunge the nation into civil war. Johannesburg, Easter weekend, 1993. Nelson Mandela has been free for three years and is in power sharing talks with President FW de Klerk when a white supremacist shoots the Black leader’s popular young heir apparent, Chris Hani, in hopes of igniting an all-out war. Will he succeed in plunging South Africa into chaos, safeguarding apartheid for perhaps years to come? In The Plot to Save South Africa, acclaimed South African journalist Justice Malala recounts the gripping story of the next nine days, as the government and Mandela’s ANC seek desperately to restore the peace and root out just how far up into the country’s leadership the far-right plot goes. Told from the points of view of over a dozen characters on all sides of the conflict, Malala offers an illuminating look at successful leadership in action and a terrifying reminder of just how close a country we think of today as a model for racial reconciliation came to civil war.

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That thing grows crazy. I don't know what's going on over there you'll see a lot of our cool uh interviews with authors on it uh so check all that stuff out and if you haven't i hope you feel guilty for not no i'm just kidding that's some shaming going on don't do that chris to your audience don't shame your audience we love you guys remember we're the family that loves you but doesn't judge you at least not as harsh as your mother-in-law. Today we have an amazing author and journalist on the show. I'm excited to have him here. He's going to be talking about his newest book. This is coming out on April 4th, 2023,

and it's called The Plot to Save South Africa, The Week Mandela Adverted Civil war and forged a new nation. Justice Malala is on the show with us today, and he is a famed journalist. He is an award-winning journalist, television host, political commentator, and newspaper columnist. He writes regular weekly columns for the Financial Mail and Times Live in South Africa. He's a political consultant to Lafica Securities. Did I pronounce that right, Justice? Absolutely.

You're South African, man. There you go. I watched a lot of The Daily Show, and we used to have, up until recently, a great host who was a comedian from South Africa and a brilliant one, too, as well. He is a regular contributor to The Guardian in London. His work has been published in The WAPO, I like to call it The WAPO, The Washington Post, The Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Times of London, and others. Welcome to the show, Justice.

How are you, my friend? I'm very good. Thank you for having me. It's such an honor and a pleasure, and I hope we have some laughs and some fun. We will. There will be laughs. It's kind of like that movie There Will Be Blood, but there will be laughs. And there might be some blood. I don't know. We'll talk about it.

Maybe there's some blood in the book. But it is an honor to have you as well. Thank you for coming and congratulations to the new book. Justice, give us a.com or wherever you want people to find you on the interwebs to get to know you better and stalk you maybe. People can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Justice Malala.

I try to tweet every so often, particularly seeing as you mentioned a South African on the Daily Show. There's another South African on Twitter. The jury's out, but hey. So I'm on Twitter. You can find me at just malala.com uh you can find me on instagram justice malala sa um uh and yeah and just google as well there you go trevor noah the prior daily show host i was i was uh i was definitely uh i i did i didn't like that he had to step down but you know he's done it for 13 years.

He's done an excellent job, brilliant mind, and a great emissary for South Africa, I think. I don't know, maybe you guys hate him down there. Do you guys like him? Oh, we love him. We love him. He's one of those that say, oh, you're going to America. Are you going to be like Trevor Noah?

Seriously, that's a thing down there? Wow. There you go. They love him in south africa he really is his mindset and some of the things he thinks about are brilliant and so let's get to the brilliant uh writing that you've done now this isn't your first book correct you've done other books i've done other books uh published in south africa i haven't been published elsewhere um the world has missed out a Lord there you go well people can sort

of those books on Amazon which is the beauty so I've written a a political overview of South Africa just called we have now begun our descent and looked at our former president Jacob Zuma who, who was a controversial figure, divisive figure, in and out of court. Yeah, a very controversial figure. And before then, I'd done a compilation of my satirical columns. I used to be, in my other life, a restaurant reviewer, but I always kind of laughed at politicians instead of writing about the food. So that was in a book called Let Them Eat Cake.

I like the concept there. And before that, I'd written a small fiction book. It won a small award in South Africa, but it didn't really go that far. But actually, it's something I enjoyed doing, and I loved it. And I was a kid then, so yeah. So what motivated you? What was your interest in writing this book, The Plot to Save South Africa? So this book, it's a bit of a roundabout way. You know, you do something, you're 22,

something happens to you and you live your life. And then you say, but what actually happened there? So for the listeners out there, here's a date, 10 April, 1993. I'm a 22-year-old kid. I get offered a job on the biggest newspaper in the country. It was called The Star. I'm an intern. I'm not even in the newsroom. I'm an intern. I'm, you know, learning the trade and so forth. And Easter weekend, and Easter weekend in South Africa is a bit like Thanksgiving in the US. Everyone who can gets out of the big cities and goes to their, goes home, goes and has their fight with their uncle about politics. Ah, so we call that Thanksgiving here in America. That's exactly it.

So Easter weekend 1993, Nelson Mandela gets out of town. Nelson Mandela had been released for three years. Democracy had not come to South Africa. So this is the transition period we're talking about. And is apartheid still in place? Is that something we're fighting over here? We've got like all the economic blocks? Exactly. It's being dismantled. It's falling apart in that period. So Mandela's been released. All the apartheid lawyers are going, but we don't know what's coming. It's still being spoken between de Klerk, who was the president at the time and Nelson Mandela at the time.

But they're not reaching a settlement. So Mandela started off, you know, saying de Klerk is a good guy. And de Klerk started off saying, oh, this guy Mandela is a good guy and de cleric started off saying oh this guy mandela is a good guy i can work with him the two have been going at it saying how do we build this democracy and by by 1993 easter uh april 10 they it's this guy doesn't want to work with me this guy doesn't want to work with me and they they're basically, they're fighting. So that weekend, Mandela goes off to his, he built himself a house in the village where he grew up in Kunu in the back of beyond in South Africa.

Diklerk did the same, went to his grandmother's farm in the desert in South Africa, a bit like sort of going off to, yeah, in the semi-desert out there. So Johannesburg is empty. Most anyone who can has left town. On that Saturday, the most popular political leader after Nelson Mandela was a youngish guy called Chris Hany. Chris Hany was charismatic, was charming. If he went into, if he went into, if he came on the Chris Voss show, he'd say, Chris, what do you like? And he'd say, oh, I love Greek mythology. And he'd start banging on about, you know, whatever Greek mythologists talk about. He said, I love leadership. And he'd say, oh, what did you think of the leadership of Julius Caesar as opposed to blah, blah, blah. He was erudite. He dreaded

the classics and he did a thing on one of the clerics guys at the first. They feared him because he was the leader of the ANC's military outfit. Sounds like a very smart guy. Very smart guy.

Incredibly smart guy. He must have been smart, right? He was. So he walks over to this guy on the apartheid side of the negotiations, and he knows that this guy studied classics at Oxford University. Oxford and Cambridge held a PhD in that thing. He goes over and says, oh, yeah, I read your PhD write-up on Sophocles, and I wanted to say, I think you got it wrong on blah, blah, blah,

whatever it was. This guy is sitting there thinking, this guy, I thought he's a terrorist, and here he is, he wants to talk about Sophocles with me? Who is this guy? So he was that kind of guy. Popular with the intelligence here, popular with angry, radical, young, black South Africans who said, you know, apartheid is bad, we've got to destroy the system and so forth. He was the one guy, and Nelson Mandela did this a lot. When Nelson Mandela went to speak to angry young black kids, youth, he would take Trish Honey with him because Trish Honey was the one guy who could

talk to them, essentially. So on that day, Trish Honey is the only, not the only, one of very few ANC leaders who don't take off to see relatives and stuff. He stays in Johannesburg at his home. He's left home with his 13-year-old daughter. He gets up in the morning, he goes on bus, newspaper, comes back home. He's being stalked by a right-wing um um right-wing radical who's organized himself a gun and and so forth and the guy follows him into his driveway calls out to him mr honey when his honey turns around he shoots him uh two times uh in the chest um he shoots him two times in the chest, then shoots him in the back of the head twice, and the man dies in front of his 13-year-old daughter. Jesus. Now, this happens.

I, because I'm a rookie, because I'm an intern, I've been told, you must come to work that day. No Thanksgiving for you. No Easter weekend for you. Wow. So I'm sitting in a newsroom in Johannesburg, and my news editor comes running and says, get a car, go out and go to Chris Haney's home. I say, what's happened to Chris Haney? She says he's been murdered.

And I run out, I get a car, I go to his house. By the time I get there, other ANC guys are there, the police are there, a crowd has built up. And I kind of, you know, take notes, interview people, what's happened, da, da, da. I'd send in my story, my notes, and so forth. But it was my first day as a reporter. Wow. That's incredible. I mean, it's a sad day, but you're there for history. Exactly. But what happens is that over the next two, three hours, the top reporters, the experienced guys get the call, you got to get back. Trishani has been murdered. And they all come back. And, you know, I follow the story, but I'm pushed off. I'm not there.

The story builds up. Nelson Mandela says when he got the call that morning that Trishani had been murdered, he writes in his memoir, Long Walk to Freedom, he says, if ever South Africa was going to go into racial warfare, this was the day. F.W. de Klerk, who was the president of South Africa at the time, says exactly the same thing in his book. He said, it chilled me when I got this call

because I knew that this was it. This was the moment we were all dreading we could face racial warfare. And basically the day proves that the both men were right in that assessment. Right wingers drive past the ANC head office, shoot it up. afternoon, I was sent out again to go into Soweto, the biggest black township in Johannesburg. I couldn't go into Soweto because there were barricades, cars were, you know, looted, bent on the streets. It was

maybe not apocalyptic, but semi-apocalyptic. Is that a big word? So it was pretty, it looked bad. It looked like South Africa was about to implode. So your question is, why did I write this theory? In a way, I wanted to go back to that moment in history and say, why didn't we go to war? Why didn't South Africa implode in that week when the racial divide was so huge, when the words of war were so heightened, when the one side was

calling each other names and the other, and it looked bad. And the pain, the pain of people who, you know, in the ANC, a lot of the leaders I spoke to at that time and in interviews for this book was, you know, we thought we were building something. We thought this was going to work. And now they kill our hero. I mean, a survey, in fact, an American outfit, Gallup, had done a poll just months before then. And that showed that Trish Honey was the most popular leader after Nelson Mandela in the country. So, you know, essentially Mandela's natural successor was assassinated.

And so the book is, I tried to write it from that moment when Trishani is murdered and the next nine days as the country basically blows up. And what happened then? It's a sad fact that we don't recognize maybe how bad things are until someone dies i mean would this be similar to the american experience with martin luther king when he was assassinated you know we had a lots of other very youthful brilliant minds bobby kennedy jack kennedy or i'm not jack but john kennedy um you know and and it looks like Bobby Kennedy, Jack Kennedy, or not Jack, but John Kennedy. You know, and it looks like from what I understand about Chris Haney is even 30 years later, people are asking that question.

You know, what if he had lived? What if he had become a leader in South Africa? You know, the what ifs of a better prospect of a better future were kind of placed on that person because their ideals and their, and their progressiveness and suddenly they're, they're slaughtered in a, in a horrific assassination and those dreams die. And as I think as a collective of people that believe in, you know,

people and, and the ideas and okay, we're finally going to move past them. Is that a good comparison to some of the things that happened with him? Yeah, it's a very good comparison. In a way, you know, people would say, whether it's JFK, whether it's Martin Luther King, people would say it's the death of the vision, the death, the killing of that vision, that here are people who believed in a better world, in a higher, in humanity's higher being, ability to reach, to rise above hate and all these small, small things that make us lesser people. And so, and so Chris Honey showed some of that.

You know, Chris Honey, you know, this is a kid from a very poor place where he came from. He literally, you know, pulls himself up by the bootstraps, goes to Catholic school, learns Latin, does extraordinary things, goes to university at a time when Black South Africans couldn't get into most South African universities, becomes the, you know, one of the ANC's first kind of guerrilla fighters, in all the time calls for peace, speaks peace. Just before his death, he was talking about there are so many young kids who missed out on an education. they're out on the streets, we've got to find a way to get them to believe in this thing that we're trying to build. So the dream and the way he articulated that dream, if you say to South Africans, what is the meaning of freedom? What is the meaning of freedom after apartheid? You know, Chris Haney articulated that idea better than most, more than most, and more eloquently and more inclusively than most did.

And so to your point, the question about what would have been, what South Africa would have looked like with a Chris Haney still in leadership maybe not the president whatever that the outcome would have been but it probably would have been a better place um you know you can't say for sure what power does to people but but what he stood for and articulated was a kind of values-based leadership that isn't spoken about a lot in the South African is at its hardest, in its hardest moments, that's when that comes up and it's spoken about and remembered. And yeah, so the comparison is apt. It's the correct one. There you go. One of the saddest part, and I think you nailed it when you said basically the death of dreams.

You know, throughout history, we have these charismatic leaders, these people who capture the imaginations, the dreams, the ideals, the future, the progressiveness. And there are times, sadly, where the ugliness of humanity claws that back or attempts to cause that back. And was the, you know, we have this in America still. we have people that, uh, try and incite what they call race wars to create, you know, some sort of war where a civil war will happen and, and, uh, you know, racism will take power once again and retain power. And, you know, there, I, I, there was the baptist church killing of the of the uh young man who killed a bunch of baptist parishioners um and people there at the church you know and and we have this a lot going on in america recently with a rise of white supremacy where they're you know trying they have this some sort of fantasy about creating a race war um to regain power and so was that uh the intent of

the the killer of chris honey yes so so um what we know is this um he he didn't act alone at the time um this this relatively young man he was 39, 40 when he committed the assassination. He was heavily influenced by a far-right member of parliament at the time. This man, Clive W Lewis was his name, had been in the party of Apartheid National Party. But when it started reforming and saying, this is unworkable, we might not believe in integration, but we have to find some way of making this a bit better. And, you know, across the world in the 1980s, the United States, the anti-apartheid movement

there was pushing hard, pushing Ronald Reagan to do something, adopt some measures, sanctions and so forth. So in that time, he and others walked out and formed what was called the Conservative Party of South Africa. They pushed essentially the messaging that you speak about now, a white supremacist, far-right ideology, and they pushed it through in Parliament. He said some pretty straight-up racist stuff. But they did a lot of work of recruiting, getting their message out,

inviting right-wing speakers from all over the world to come and speak to them and say, you know, this is the end of the white race and so forth and so forth. So he was a big influencer on the shooter. is the end of the white race and so forth and so forth. So, so he was a big influence on the on the shooter. And, and their plan was that what you had with South Africa and what we you know, it's not spoken about hugely, is that you had a huge black South

African population, but you had a massively sophisticated army run by the apartheid government. People assumed that, oh, Nelson Mandela came out of jail and, you know, the power of the anti-apartheid movement would have subdued the apartheid government. But to be fair and to be honest, these were evenly matched forces. The people will always time over time, but many, many, many people would have died fighting against the apartheid government. Yeah.

Because it had a vastly you know people don't talk about this now but south africa was a nuclear power um built up a nuclear arsenal and so forth and so forth so so you know this they're sort of blown up. So their hope, their aim was that as they killed Chris Haney, young people, people my age at the time, 22, in their 20s, say, you've killed our hero. We're going out on the streets. And they get angry. They would then have triggered the army to get rid of F.W. de Klerk, who was seen as a reformer and so forth, get rid of the civilian leaders and take over. The army takes over and says, we're going back to classic apartheid, white only benches, basically Jim Crow. We go see that and that's South Africa and forget the rest. That was their plan.

That was their calculation that whatever happens, this is what we want to trigger. And so in that week, on that Saturday morning after Chris Haney was murdered, that was the vision of what South Africa was becoming. It looked anarchic. For them it was, yes, the plan is going according to plan. It's working. It's working and working perfectly. So that was the key thing. They wanted to trigger a racial warfare, the army to take over and impose martial law using the laws of apartheid and restoring apartheid to where we were basically in 1989 before it all came tumbling down. Wow. You know, the important thing about books like yours

and learning about history and studying history, and I'm pretty sure my audience appreciates this, but it's an important point. When politicians use, need to be careful in the words they use because there are people that are outside of reality or outside of whatever that will go to violence. And so we always need to be careful in any country.

And we experienced this recently where somebody posted pictures of using violence against a local prosecutor who's investigating them. And they removed it, took it down. But the penchant for using violent language or inciting violence in any way, shape, or form is something we should never have in any politics. And so it's just… This history is absolutely that. You see… Sometimes it's uncanny.

You look at some of the modern-day stuff, and you say, I've seen this movie before. And you're absolutely right about the lessons of history here because we have seen it before and the consequences are dire and can lead to huge harm. Especially, I mean, Civil War is not,

we've been through that in America. It's ugly. So you titled the book, The Plot to Save America. What happens next? What's the plot that comes in to keep the country from descending into chaos? So the key thing, and Chris, I was so happy to be asked to come and speak to you. But mainly, I'll tell you honestly, I wrote the book to look at myself and not just myself, but at South Africa and that moment of huge, huge jeopardy, huge fear and being on the brink. question was always, I seem to have personally forgotten just how close we were and why we didn't tip over the edge. In a way, as I got older, I have kids now, and I wanted to say,

yes, we came close, but how did we pull back? What pulled us back? And so part of it is, was to examine some of the key acts by those present. So Nelson Mandela in particular, and I follow him through the book, and F.W. Diklerk, who was the president. These were two men who, when Diklerk released Mandela in 1990, Mandela said, this is a man of integrity. Diklerk said, this is a man I can do business with. And they said, we're going to build this thing. By 1993, they disliked each other intensely. Mandela said Diklerik is not stopping the political violence that was sweeping across South Africa. Diklerik was saying Mandela is not stopping his supporters from participating in the violence. And they were at loggerheads

all the time. I follow the two of them and what they do in the wake of this thing. And, and, and, you know, I know you, you, you, you focus a lot on leadership. And so after first concluding that look, what saved South Africa in that week were acts of leadership, not just one act, but acts of leadership that cumulatively pulled this thing back from going over the edge. And so I tried to look at those. So the first thing, Nelson Mandela is at his home. He gets a phone call. He says, this looks like war. And he starts making calls. And one of the first calls he makes is to FW De Clercq. De Clercq gets the message at his grandmother's farm.

And he speaks to a few of the people around him, his key advisors. And he says, this is a moment when, you know, Chris, until 1990 in South Africa, in fact, even 1993, that day, television was very, you had what was so-called white television and you had black TV stations. Nelson Mandela was hardly ever mentioned on the white TV stations and so forth.

And on that day, Mandela calls Dikler say a word to a young black person, they're going to turn around and say, you are the president of South Africa and my hero has been murdered. And you, what did you do to protect him? over the previous three years, you know, people had said, this man is in danger. Protect him. Give him a police detail. And that had never been done. No protection whatsoever. So on that day, for the first time, the two men agree that, okay, Nelson Mandela will go on television that night, will not go for an interview, a hard interview with Chris, or he'll go in and he'll address the nation as the leader of the country, not as.

So it's a historic moment in South Africa. Nelson Mandela, until 1990, if you or I were a television reporter on South African television, you couldn't mention his name. You were not allowed to mention his name. Wow. comprehend that this man whose name was unmentionable, you got sent to jail for quoting Nelson Mandela. Holy crap. It's like the Fox News of South Africa. Exactly. But this was state television.

So in a way, then Nelson Mandela that evening appears on national television and says, my people, this has happened. I'm calling for peace and so forth and so forth. It's the first thing that that act of leadership, Mandela saying, I'll step up, Diklevich saying, I'll step back. And because I can do anything, you can do something the people will listen to you they won't listen to me it's it's so i look at that act itself and what it meant in south africa at the time um but i also recognize that these are people they are like me like you and and they have they don't always do they they are human, they are fragile. And Nelson Mandela actually does go on television

that evening, but Nelson Mandela couldn't read the autocue properly, for example. He gives probably the worst speech of his life. It was a dad. So this is the moment, this is the big moment when Nelson Mandela addresses the nation as the president, not the president, but in the place of the president of the country. And yet the speech was poor, was bad. Many elements about it were not great. He only got to the studio, he was supposed to be on Pantone News at 8pm at the top of the news. He was late getting there,

he only did it after 10pm. Most people, you know, those who were not scared hadn't stayed up for that. People didn't know what time he was going to speak so they hadn't kept their television sets on all the time. So many people missed it. And so I asked about that moment, his own moment of not weakness, but of not stepping up the way many people think, oh, Mandela, da, da, da. And in fact, in historical terms, D'Iclair writes in his book that, oh, Mandela went on television that night and he gave the speech of his life. He was amazing. And it's not true. Mandela in his own book says, yeah, I went on TV that night and I gave a message of peace and peace descended on the land. Actually not.

The violence got worse. It looked the next day, the Sunday, just looked even worse. Easter Monday was even worse. And that's when Mandela said, I've got to give another speech. I've got to give another speech. I've got to write this speech. And this time he wrote a second speech and it was, he wrote the first five lines himself. And those lines, even today, are quoted across South Africa as the moment when Mandela essentially became president. He gave the speech of his life three days late.

So the first one wasn't, but in my memory, I'll be honest with you, Chris, in my memory, and if you ask many South Africans, what actually happened after Chris Honey died? What stopped it? They'll say, oh, Mandela went on television that night and he gave the speech of his life. Actually not. He gave it three days later when many, many people had died. And even then, there are other things that I look at in leadership terms that happened that week that we can point to. But the great speech of that week was actually the second speech three days later. That's amazing. And this becomes the seminal moment in the transfer of power from de Klerk to Mandela

and in the transition to a non-apartheid government. Is that correct? Yes, I mean I'm making that argument and I would agree with you. So two things happened in that week. First of all, you know, so Mandela gave that speech and he writes the lines, the assassins, the killers, the plotters had wanted to frame this whole thing as whites have killed a black man and black people are angry and are fighting white people and white people are going to restore apartheid and it will all be fine and they they were very keen to make this a racial war and so mandela in his speech says um no hold on he says um i'm reaching out to all of you South Africans at this moment of pain.

A white man full of hate came to our country and murdered our beloved son. A white woman saw the killer, memorized the registration plate, and called the police. Within 30 minutes, the police had arrested the assassin. And in that moment, he did something that in South Africa at that moment was absolutely necessary to say, look, yes, a white man killed a Black leader, but a white woman saw this happening and said, that's my neighbor. And so identified the killer and got him arrested. It was her presence of mind that did that. And so those who want you to go into racial warfare don't want you to know that a white woman saw this guy and a white woman called the police and made sure that this guy got arrested. So he used, throughout that speech, he used language like that, that contrasts and undercuts the racial message, the racist message, and said, this is not, don't do what they want

you to do because they're trying to manipulate you. And that was a big moment but but as you say those moments on television people started saying where's the leader where's the leadership here and the leadership lay in mandela's hands uh while while the church was not this and and that was the beginning of seeing where it was going how it it was unfolding. The second one is something that hasn't been written about. You know, I know a lot of your listeners are history buffs. They'll be interested to know that part of what the apartheid government did on its way out in 94 was to order that all government minutes, archives,

during the apartheid era be taken to, excuse me, the phoenices of the Iron and Steel Corporation in South Africa, big, massive steel manufacturer. And those documents were destroyed tons and tons that's actually a number of the tons of archives archival material that was that was destroyed so so we don't actually know what kind of discussions went on in in the dying days of the apartheid government. We have no records.

They've all been destroyed. But I managed to find a set of a summary of the minutes of the meeting of the apartheid government led by de Klerk at that time. And in those days, in that week, because of the pressure that was coming to bear because of Chris Honey's murder, they agreed that they would give Nelson Mandela an election date. They just had to sit down and agree on one. And secondly, that they would agree to a transitional government, so a body that would oversee the days, the months before a non-racial free election

was held in 1994. And so those two things happened in that week. So Chris Hanegas murdered Mandela and the cleric have their chewing and throwing. And that meeting of apartheids, it wasn't actually the cabinet, it was called the State Security Council. And it was a body that, it was the war council of the apartheid government.

And they said, okay okay we'll give them the the two demands that the that mandela had made and that that was the tipping point in my view oh you know that's my argument that that was what turned south africa then brought back the elections the process towards democracy there you go one of that one of the horrors that I look at in life and I try and talk about, and I talk about this sometimes on my Facebook, one of the horrors is it's sad that as human beings we have to hit such a bottom, such a dark place

before leaders emerge. And the beauty of human nature is that leaders do emerge usually at these times and save us from ourselves. You know, I'm reminiscent of what you talk about, Bobby Kennedy's speech in Philadelphia on the eve or on the night of Martin Luther King's murder. And, you know, even his security details going, you can't go out there. There's riots all over America that they're going to write here. You can be killed. Um,

and he goes out and gives an incredible passionate speech, um, that makes Philadelphia, one of the few cities that didn't riot, uh, in anger over Martin Luther King's assassination. And his speeches, uh, very moving very moving, and it's very powerful, as is his other speech, the Ripples of Hope speech, that actually was in South America. And so it's sad for me. I think it's glorious that South Africa finally reached a moment that it could make this crossover.

But I wish we would learn from history that why do we have to go so dark? Why do we have to wait till violence and ugliness, and we have to hit such an ugly bottom to recognize, to look in the mirror and go, my God, this is horror that we're doing, and we should change and progress and become a better people. But it's beautiful that leaders save us in these moments, and you've documented this in your book. No, absolutely. And I have to agree with you. You know, I look at our politics today,

and by our politics, I mean the world, not just the US, not just South Africa. But, you know, why did we get to the point where we are with Russia invading Ukraine and the many, many hardships that are already cascading through the world in terms of food shortages and so forth, and the crises that have been unleashed by that. But the saddest part of the entire thing is that leaders are allowing themselves to go to that bottom. No one is stopping and saying, we've seen this before. Why are you going there?

To de-escalate as much as possible, as quickly as possible. So, you know, I was hoping, you know, I said earlier that, you know, I was hoping that there would be some leadership lessons from this book, but sadly, we don't seem to do enough learning from history when it has a lot to teach us. There you go. And you interview a lot of different players and people that are in there.

Let me ask you this. People should buy the book and read it to understand the depth of it. But what was mandela's you know there's sometimes reluctance to be pushed into these moments because you don't know how they're going to play out either politically or civil war or danger what what is what is mandela's thought process this time is he a reluctant leader does he want to step in? Was the heir apparent this Chris Haney gentleman? Or, you know, what was his thoughts at that moment where you're like, holy crap, I have the mantle that's been could be the start or the end of it to wrap this up and save the world I mean it's a hell of a pressure you to put on a man yeah it's a huge pressure you know there's a I had some lucky breaks in

writing this book is I got at some point while writing this book I asked a gentleman called Richard Stengel who had helped Mandela write Long Walk to Freedom which is Mandela's autobiography and he at time, was a young American reporter who got, you know, contracted to go help Mandela write this thing and finish it off. So he kept a diary. And one of the things he writes about in the diary is one of the days in that week when Mandela, he goes along and Mandela goes and speaks at this, it's not a stadium, it's an amphitheater, it's a small stage. It's like a Roman kind of, like, you know, where the Romans would have their big fights in the middle and people surrounding the thing.

And it's a very intimate venue. So as the speaker, you're right in the middle. And right next to you, there's no kind of stage. Right next to you is the crowd and it goes up. That place was built for 8 000 people on that day 25 000 to 35 000 people were in there wow standing there his bodyguards are around him and he says we've got to stop fighting we've got to work with the cleric our enemy um to to to diffuse this moment. And the crowd goes nuts

and says, boo! They boo him. It's your talking nonsense here. And Mandela says, I said to you, sometimes you have to work with people you don't like

to achieve your own goal. And they boo him. And afterwards, you know, a militant leader of some other organization comes up and gets rapturous applause because he says, let's go and kill the whites and so forth. But Mandela stood by. You know, one of the people I interviewed was Bob Amasikela, who was Nelson Mandela's chief of staff and famously a sister of the jazz musician Hugh Amasikela, who was very famous for all kinds of music and anti-apartheid music, music with anti-apartheid lyrics. And she said to me, at that point, Mandela felt the burden of leadership, but saw it as one of his key missions to deliver democracy to South Africa. So he was prepared to work with anyone

if they were agreed on where they were going. And him and Dittlert, one thing they did have was that the detail didn't match, but they wanted a new settlement for South Africa. So he felt the burden, and I think he felt the pressure to deliver quickly. He was in his early 70s by then, he'd been in prison 27 years. He wanted to end this thing, he wanted to deliver. And I think he was a reluctant leader. He never really wanted high office. When he became president, he wasn't one of those guys who wants the Mercedes-Benzes and the big cars.

And he was a nightmare for his protection services. But he wanted to deliver this one thing. And I think in that week, it's the one thing he wanted to get through and do and you you talk about leadership in your book uh and i'm sorry to go ahead and finish no no now i was saying no and and i think in that week even when he was tired when he was being booed when when it looked bleak and and a lot of times, you know, he was there. People wanted war. There were lots of people in the ANC, leaders of the ANC, who were saying, stop the negotiations. We don't want to go on with this. We need to reassess. We need to go

back to the bush. Mandela didn't think that was the solution, and that's why he pushed so hard for an alternative and peaceful conclusion to the negotiations. And what's interesting to me, you talk about leadership in your book. The pressure, the power, the thing that takes men into a point where they... It's a forging of... I don't know another way to describe it. A forging of fire and of crisis that makes some men save the world and make a difference in their leadership. There were times where... I remember one of the stories, I think it was about Ted Kennedy, or maybe it was Bobby, where someone had gone after John F. Kennedy was killed. And they could hear him crying behind the door and upset with the

loss of his brother. And then coming forward and being a leader and speaking out. And this is evidently one of Mandela's most important moments where he is in the crucible. And not only is it a forging of his mind, but the importance of it in history, the importance of it in changing everyone's lives in the world by taking South Africa from one point to another and moving forward and progressing as a nation are so important. And again, what I want to return to, and I hope it's not lost in the audience, the readers of your book, is that in the future, can we not reach the bottom of having people assassinated?

Can we not have people killed and destroyed that we finally look upon ourselves in the mirror and go, Jesus, what have we become? And we should stop doing this. Why do we have to reach this bottom? You know, can we just give a damn now and care about the future before it has to get so ugly that we have to go, yeah, maybe we should change. Yeah. You know, you and I are totally at one on this one.

You know, you see it. You see it every day. You read the news headlines, you watch media, and you see it going that way again. We're waiting for another Chris Haney, another Jeff Kaye, another Martin Luther King Jr. We're waiting for this to happen to take us right to the bottom. We don't need to go there. And this repetition is, quite frankly, it makes us,

what is the meaning of learning? What is the meaning of history when we don't take the lessons? It's an indictment on all of us. It's a quote that I use a lot on the show. People have heard me use it. It's my quote. The one thing man can learn from his history is that man never learns from his history. And thereby we go round and round.'s tough that's one on what you said about the the sort of going through the

tough moments of the placebo you know Nelson Mandela and I think uh I I mentioned it in the book um you know his son who who he really loved from his first marriage to Evelyn Marcy, died in a car accident while he was in prison. And the prison authorities, the government did not allow him to go to the funeral. Even in chains, he applied and said, you know, you can chain me. I just want to go to the funeral. And they he applied and said you know you can chain me i just want to go to the funeral and they said no and he he writes about his honey that when his honey died it was like i lost the sun and he knew what it was like to lose a son and not be able to go and mourn that son. And so the story you tell me about the Kennedys and trying through that door in that bedroom

is what Mandela went through. You know, that's went through several times with his kids in those 27 years in jail when his wife was detained, his children were arrested, and so forth and so forth. So, you know, why do we have to, why does humanity have to go through this for us to see a pathway to solving our problems? It's really, it's quite depressing. There you go.

It is sad and it's depressing. In fact, in the Bobby Kennedy speech in Philadelphia the night of Martin Luther King's murder, that's one of the things he quotes. He goes, I too have lost a brother. I lost my brother,

John F. Kennedy, to an assassin's bullet, i think he puts it uh and um it's a real it's it's a crucible moment and when you study people in history and leadership and the things that forge them the things that make them and the things that make a difference um in the world the world and eventually move us to a better place. And as we've discussed, it's sad that it's darkness that we have to go through to get there. And we should really think about that. And that's why, and I think maybe from what you and I have talked about today and what you've written in your book, it speaks to how important the quality of leaders are and that we have leaders that bring us together instead of separate us. And we have leaders that call for peace instead of violence.

And that is the thing that I think takes humanity to the next level and moves the goalposts to a better place for humanity. I've always been moved by what President Obama said when he said, we're a country that zigzags and we move and we move backward, but hopefully over the arc of our existence and our history, we move the goalposts forward in the end, and we go that way. And I think everyone needs to recognize that. You know, Bobby Kennedy,

and we had Bobby Kennedy's son, or not son, his nephew on the show a couple years ago for his book. And, you know, he talks about each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes an injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope that crosses each other from a million different centers of energy and daring. And those ripples will occur, which can sweep down the mightiest of walls of oppression and resistance. And that was a quote from Bobby Kennedy's ripple of hope speech in South Africa when he was going there to call on leaders on apartheid and stuff.

So I think your book is important, and I'm glad you've written it and shared it with us on the thing. Anything more you want to touch on or tease on the book before we go? Not much. I'm so grateful and so moved by that quote from South Africa. I can't tell you how much hope that quote gave to people here. I have known of that speech and quoted from it, written, lifted that quote from it. And you know, this is what leadership does, throw that little pebble and create that hope.

And that sustained a lot of people, even when the U.S. was slow in, for example, condemning the apartheid government and so forth. It was words like those that carried a lot of people in this country. And, you know, the power of words and the power of leadership like that is crucial in a world like the one we live in now. The one last thing I'd say is, you know, there are many small little lessons that we all get from this. But my favorite one is one that I think all leaders should try to, at some point, use. Nelson Mandela had a thing where, you know, he got up at four. And this is a habit picked up in prison because that's when they got up they were made to get up but he always went for a long walk um and he'd come back energized with new thoughts new

it's you know say we must say this in a speech and so forth so so if there's anything i can leave the reader with it's uh it's remember to uh take a walk uh every so often in the morning uh clear your mind but the other thing he liked to do was he'd get tired from getting up at four and at about 2 30 or 4 3 if he was feeling tired he'd go and have a nap for about 30 minutes. In fact, he was insistent. He'd lock himself in his room, close the curtains, make sure it was dark, tell his bodyguard, wake me up in exactly 30 minutes, and he'd have a power nap. And the guys would wake him up in 30 minutes, and he'd work until late at 10, 11 at night.

I like that. And as I struggle with my next book, I might take a few naps myself and see how that works out. There you go. The power nap. I used to tease, I remember when I was a kid, me and my brother, we would tease my old man, who was in his 40s, for napping.

We're like, Dad, you're always napping. And now that I'm 55, I get it. I'm like, yeah. Welcome to my world, please. But that power nap's when I lose all my weight. I have my best dreams. I get my best sleep usually from that power nap. So there's something to that.

There you go. It's a nice reset. Well, it's been wonderful to have you on Justice and to talk about this important book, this important point of history that we all need to keep learning from. Because I mean, we're still having it here in America where people are trying to assassinate and kill people to start another race war. And you're like, we haven't learned from this yet. Why can we not learn? why can we not elect leaders and politicians who bring us together who set a vision for a better place and where we all uh rise together you know a rising tide

lifts all boats the sad part about history in in moments in history like yours and uh at that time in south america and then ours in in current times is we have this idea of scarcity, where if I help someone who's marginalized be lifted up, well, that takes away from me. And that's not the greatness of humanity or what America is built on. A rising tide lifts all boats. Everyone benefits. And we need to come from that mentality. No, absolutely. Thank you for having me. Thank you for this conversation.

It's been, it's been lovely. It's been great. Thank you so much. There you go. There you go. And thank you for coming as well. It's been an honor to have you in a, in an amazing story in history. Give us your.com so people can find you on the internet, please. JusticeMalala.com. The book can be found on Amazon and all the other bookstores

and so forth, so go out and get it. I really would like you to know the story. I love the story and I love telling it, so I hope you love listening to it. There you go. Learn from history, folks. The one thing man can learn from his history is man never learns from his history, so let's stop doing that. Let. Learn from history, folks. The one thing man can learn from his history is man never learns from his history. So let's stop doing that.

Let's learn from history and move to a better place as a human, his humanity, as it were. Order up. Wherever fine books are sold, it's available April 4th, 2023. The Plot to Save South America. The Weak Mandela Adverted Civil War and Forged a New Nation and Change the World, if it were. Justice Malala is the author we've had on the show today. Thank you very much for coming by the show, Justice. Thank you.

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