Dr. Mamphela Ramphele – Interview Transcript
June 20, 2019
Cape Town, South Africa
Umbono Project – Mount Madonna School
Ward Mailliard: How do you introduce somebody who has such a large place in the history of their country? And the courage, the determination, the unwillingness to back down against superior forces. I mean these are the things that I hope my students- these students, will learn and commit in their lives. And who’s going to introduce the group?
Student: Well, this is our Values and World Thought class from Mount Madonna School, and on behalf of everyone, it really is an honor and a pleasure to talk with you today. And we were wondering before we start the questions if there’s anything you could say to us or you’d like to say to us.
Dr. Mamphela Ramphele: The one thing I can say to all of you, the young and the old in the room, is that humanity was created with one purpose, which is to promote harmony, harmony between people, harmony between people and nature. And that harmony is not just with the people you have today, but is also harmony with past generations, present generations, and those yet to be born. So for me this is a privilege to be able to participate in this intergenerational conversation. And I hope that to the extent that other people make time for you to talk across generations, you will continue to do the same as you go about in your personal development, professional work, your political work. Because every one of us is a political agent, because politics is about how we order relationships and how power is managed, distributed, and utilized, hopefully for good. But when it is not, how you measure up to resisting abuse of power at all levels, that’s the measure of being human. In my language, we don’t say ‘this is a good person,’ we say, ‘this is a person.’ So the full humanity of each one of us is not measured by what we have, but how we handle being human in relation to other human beings and in relation to nature.
Student: Are you willing to take a first question?
Dr. Mamphela Ramphele: Yeah.
Student: Alright, well you said once in an interview that the success of the black conscience movement was captured most poignantly by the Soweto uprising first mobilizing the university students and the wider community including high school students. Can you talk about the basic principles and goals of the Black Conscience Movement?
Dr. Mamphela Ramphele: I think before we get to the goals, we need to understand the why. Why was it necessary at some stage in the history of our country- and I hate to tell you, continues to be the case – that we need to develop a higher level of consciousness about who we are as people, and what that means in terms of our rights, our responsibilities, to ourselves, to others, and I told you this responsibility doesn’t stop with present generations; it goes back and forth. We grew up at a stage of our history where color-coding was used to distribute power and privilege. And you come from a country that has made an absolute – in fact, if you go back to the history of America, slavery included black and white people. People were taken under terrible conditions from here across the Atlantic. But also from Ireland and other parts of Europe where there were poorer people. And they were taken to America as slaves. And then there was the first attempt to free slaves- I say ‘attempt’ because the slave-owners regretted that decision, because once those slaves were freed, there was no color-coding at that stage. Even the term black and white was non-existent, it’s a construction. Because when God created us, he didn’t say ‘I’m creating a black person, a Euro person…I’m creating people in my image.’ Of course we know scientifically, that was an evolutionary process which took millions of years for us to be who we are today. But when you use a construct to allocate power, privilege, you have to confront that construct.
So the Black Consciousness was there to confront the color-coding of the Apartheid and the colonial system and it was done in a way that primarily aimed at the people who were being discriminated against. We were in this African country, on this soil, called non–people, non-white, non-European. Imagine someone crocking up in your home and you are the (can’t understand) and he says ‘well, the non’- what is this person? Let’s call him Smith. ‘The non-Smiths are only going to be confined to the maids’ room at the back, and the new people, we, the Smiths, are going to occupy this place and you guys are all going to serve us at your pleasure,’ and heaven forbid that you depart from that. Some people are acquiesced to that, they try and fight and when they see that they can’t win, they are acquiesced. So, yes, most of the people in this country had acquiesced to being called non-whites, non-Europeans, including ourselves. I mean when we started the Black Consciousness Movement, we started as a student movement; the South African Student Organization. But in the preamble of the first constitution, we said, ‘we, the non-white South African…’ Now what does that tell you? How deeply embedded enslavement is. That when someone humiliates you, you end up being complicit in the humiliation because you accept the terms of the engagement that are set by someone else. Right?
Imagine the European daring to come to Africa, steal our land, abuse us, and then also steal our identity. So this process of freeing ourselves in the first instance, freeing our minds, our psyches, our spirits, from the sense of ‘less than.’ Because if you define yourself in terms of ‘because I’m a woman, I must be less than the men,’ you’re done. You can’t actually be fully who you were created to become. So that was the first things about Black Consciousness was about psychological and spiritual liberation of the people who were being oppressed on a color-coding basis.
The second principle was to promote solidarity amongst those who had been- because of the most effective weapons of an oppressor, a dominator, is that they take charge of your mind, and they take charge of your relationships. So the color-coding was also done in a way that divided and ruled. So, ‘you are a little lighter so you are better than the all-dark ones…you are this.’ At the end of the day, it’s not about you, it’s about fulfilling the purpose of dividing so that you can keep (can’t hear). So the second point, or the principle was to build solidarity among all the oppressed people. And once you have psychological liberation, combined with solidarity, no one, no one, can keep you in bondage.
Are you familiar with John Henry Clark? He’s your country, your fellow citizen who used to be a professor at Hunter College. I suggest you go and find his work. He’s – one of his most poignant quotations, which you can find on Google, is that ‘once you allow the oppressor to take charge of your perspectives and gets you to be ashamed of yourself, your history, your culture, they don’t need chains, they don’t need prison wall, you are sorted. You are just going to do what they want you to do whether or not.’ So for us, that process of psychological inspirational liberation, and building solidarity, not only amongst university students, but students in high school, workers, our parents at home, faith-based organizations, that’s what builds the resistance that exploded on June the 16th and never stopped until the end of Apartheid.
So the power of the Black Consciousness Movement was in liberating people’s minds. But it wasn’t just the black people whose minds were liberated. A lot of white people started- because we challenged our fellow white students who were saying ‘but we are in the struggle with you.’ ‘No, no, no. You can’t be in the struggle with us during the day, at night you go and sleep comfortably, and you go and abuse our mothers who are your domestic workers. No, you’ve got to also go through a consciousness process and asking yourself what is the meaning of white privilege that comes at this cost to the rest of society.’ Now, unfortunately, that problem has not been resolved in South Africa, nor in your country. So this is your generation’s mission and challenge. You have to be that generation that consistently and determinately challenge this color-coding, because there is only one race; the human race. Color-coding is simply used to distribute and withhold assets and resources of our nations.
JT Curland: Hi, I’m JT. What was the effect of Steve Biko’s death on the people who fought against Apartheid?
Dr. Mamphela Ramphele: What is the effect of a death, period? Particularly one that was a violent death. I said to you at the beginning that humanity was created to live in harmony with one another, and once you- someone is killed, the disrupts that harmony. So, the first point of any death is that it’s a disrupt. Of course, there is a natural cycle- life cycle- when our grandmothers or our parents die, we are not disrupted, we are sad because you know a mother is a mother always. But when a young man like you is killed in cold blood, that is disruptive. Now, in his case, it was even more disruptive because it was done in such a brutal way and done with intention to kill an idea, and so it was vicious. And so the first impact of course is anger, sadness, rage, and the sense of utter loss and confusion. That’s applied to everyone. But then imagine what the impact was on his son, a four and a half month fetus at the time. Or his other sons were young children. And his mum was an elderly woman who was just told, ‘well, we’re here to tell you your son has died,’ just like that, right?
So, I don’t think there is any way you can describe the impacts in a full enough way because it’s an unfathomable pain. And the scars of that wound may look like they’ve healed, but each time you think about it, it’s like you remove that scab and it starts bleeding again.
But, in terms of what I said at the beginning, that we have to think about intergenerational relations, the disruption was also that it disrupted his ancestors had hoped he’d be able to do in this country as a leader. It disrupted the Black Consciousness Movement because it deprived it of the most incredible thinker. And of course, for the current generation, not just his children, but the country as a whole, it’s lost an incredible leader who could have contributed to a very different way of managing our transition to democracy. And so, the loser in the end is the country, but it’s also the globe, because your country’s struggling with the same problems that he was talking about, working through resolve. And in his own worlds, he believed very deeply that the humanity that was meant to be the natural order had been disrupted, not just in South Africa but globally, but it was Africa that had that deep sense, again, tapping into that generational pool of wealth and wisdom, that it was Africa that would give the world a more human face. We’re still working at it.
Haley Kerr: Hi, my name’s Haley. We read that in 1977 that you were banished to Tzaneen. Can you talk about that experience and how it changed you, and also how you coped with the hardships of being in such a remote place that was so unfamiliar to you?
Dr. Mamphela Ramphele: How many years have we got? How many years have you got for that? Well, one of the weapons that the Apartheid government had was to banish people. So like John, the trouble maker here, they will just bring an order signed by the Minister of Police and Security to say he’s a danger to the security of the state and from this day onward, he’s going to be confined to a particular area, never mind that he knows the place or not, and will only leave an even closer ring of control if he has the permission of the local monastery. Now this was done to me in ’77 when I was in King Williams Town in the eastern cape and I was taken to the other extreme of the country, in Tzaneen, which is in the northeast of the country. The impact is indescribable because it’s so bewildering that someone can come and yank you off and they didn’t even give me a chance to go and pack because I was in an office. Like, I’d come to work in town and the clinic where I was working was about seven or ten kilometers- in fact seven kilometers away. And so after they read out this order, I said ‘well, can I go and pack my clothes?’ They said, ‘nope, give us a list, we’ll go and pack for you.’ That’s the (can’t hear).
The purpose was disrupt. You’re an activist, you’ve got a network and a base, and they disrupt. It’s like yanking a plant off the roots and you hope it will die, that’s what they were hoping. But, the beauty of having been part of the Black Consciousness Movement was that I understood why they were- what they were trying to achieve. And I was absolutely determined; it’s not going to happen. And the good thing is that, as a medical doctor, I told them ‘you can take me to a cave, there are baboons; I’ll be at work, so you really are wasting your time. This is not going to stop me, ever.’
And again, they take you to a place where there’re very few educated people, very few activists in the whole lands. They can isolate you and see you wither. So I’m very grateful that as a medical doctor, that’s exactly where you have a lot of work to do. So as soon as I had recovered from the trauma of loss, enough to be able to say ‘OK, the struggle goes on.’ I was able to work with the local Catholic Priest to support me to set up another health center. And the beauty of being a doctor, which means a healer, is that you’re not only healing the physical bodies that were broken by poverty and powerlessness, but also the spirits. And I don’t have to educate people through Marxist literature and so on. No, just affirming their dignity. And when I got there many of them had names like Beauty, Serena…I said ‘where did you get these names from? You’re grandmothers gave you names, didn’t they?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Why don’t you use them?’ ‘No, because the white people can’t pronounce them.’ ‘You live for white people? As a healer, I need your grandmother to be in the room when I heal, so you’re going to use your name that she gave you. Then, everything works.’
And so that way, you are able to engage people at a very deep, philosophical level without lecturing to them. But also, the gift of being a healer is that you can have an immediate impact. When I arrived in Tzaneen, children were dying, it was an inevitability as far as people were concerned. If you have six children, you’ll be lucky if three survive. So you can imagine what that does. It’s a vicious cycle because the more children you have, the less resources you have and so on. So by just looking at what was the root cause of the children’s’ deaths, it was poverty, ignorance, lack of health services, and most of those children died from dehydration. Completely preventable deaths. So we move from hundreds of children dying to very rare children’s deaths- unless the child had a congenital abnormality or whatever. So what happens? (can’t understand)
And of course, the mothers- we also work with the mothers who’re working someplace- at the brickyard and being payed nothing while they were living in (can’t understand). No, use your knowledge of making bricks to make bricks for yourselves to sell to the community, improve your homes. When I visit there these days, they say ‘you see? If you come during the weekend, our nails are polished. And then on Sunday night we remove the polish because we’re going to be doing the hard work’ These are people who didn’t think they were anything. It didn’t take any lecture, it didn’t take anything. Engaging with people in a way that affirms their dignity and addresses their acute means, they become their own liberators.
Tabitha Hardin-Zollo: Hi, I’m Tabby, and I have a question. You once said, “The double-jeopardy of being black and female in a racist and sexist society may well make one less afraid of the sanctions against success.” Can you speak to how this double-jeopardy affected your life and what important steps do you think should be taken now to remove the roadblocks in women’s advancements?
Dr. Mamphela Ramphele: Here, I mean we talk about- I talk about the double-jeopardy in the general. I was fortunate to be born in a family with very strong women. So my great-grandmother was totally illiterate, but she was wise enough to educate her son in-law, and through that, made sure that my father and his siblings were educated. This is a woman who had absolutely nothing, but she became a very successful peasant farmer and she would go to the railway station and say ‘I can’t read, I can’t write, I’ve got children who are in some place, there must be a way of getting these beans, these (can’t understand), these dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, to them. She did. And when I grew up, she was our nanny. At that time, she was already in her late 80s, 90s. And she would tell us stories and she was just a great statement of a power of knowing that everything is possible even if you’re uneducated.
Daughter, my grandmother, was obviously very- she learned from the best. She had the added advantage of being extraordinarily beautiful. At that time, as a child, if you were a girl child, beautiful, you’d be married off to royals. So my grandmother, this uneducated woman, dressed her up as a boy to protect her. And at a good time, she went to find a distant relative to marry her. I mean, so you know, you see that? This is ingenuity in the face of real male chauvinism. And then my grandmother on my mother’s side, after whom I’m named, was another incredible woman. Her husband was (can’t understand), like the short man. She was tall, and beautiful. And she had a brain like a computer, so she knew the birth dates of every child in the village, exactly what it was raining, it was this…incredible.
So I had no business to allow any man of whatever shape to oppress me. But then that’s me, what about the general? So when I write, I’m writing from a place of security, because I had this lineage. You see that inter-generational story again coming back? That I could drink from that well of wisdom in my family. But that should not make me say, ‘OK, get your act together, this is how we do it.’ No. We have to work together to deal with the structures that make male chauvinism the norm. I mean your beloved president-
Students: (laughing).
Dr. Mamphela Ramphele: It’s incredible that a nation like yours, so advance, can have a man like that as a president. We had the same thing here. I mean I’m not trying to look like we are beyond this, we had a man who should never have been allowed within 1,000km of the capital of this nation, but he was there. And what happened is that these things, whether it’s sexism, racism, abuse of power, happen because you and I, as citizens, allow it. Trump didn’t vote for himself, and Zuma didn’t vote for himself, and those who continue to abuse power, whether here or anywhere, are there because the citizens of those countries allow it. Look at Sudan, for years- 30 years- that man was ruling over. What got him off? A young man wearing a full Sudanese outfit at the back of a truck every day to say ‘enough.’
So, when we look at the double-jeopardy as I call it, it is actually a description of the interrelationships of the systems of power and structures that oppress in order to create privileges for others. And you cannot say that ‘as a man, I’m okay because I’m not a racist,’ but you abuse women, you are just as bad. And of course, women who play into this sexist and toxic masculinity game are also complicit and are also part of the problem. So it goes back to where it started. The double-jeopardy can only be addressed through a higher level of consciousness, of what it means for you to allow a man to do things to your body, or to other women’s bodies with your complicity. And of course as young people you see bullies in the school; call out the bully. Call out that bully because that bully is going to be an abusive husband, father, mother, and so on.
And don’t say ‘it’s not my business.’ It is very much your business. Everybody’s dignity is your business. It doesn’t matter how old, how young; it’s your business. And imagine if we made the affirmation of human dignity our business, imagine what kind of world it would be.
Paola Jacobs: Hi, I’m Paola. What kind of response did you feel from your family and immediate community around the time you became active in the Apartheid struggle, and how did it affect you? Or how did it impact you? My bad.
Dr. Mamphela Ramphele: I’ve already given you a little hint about my family, it’s not the kind of family that would say ‘what the hell are you doing?’ They said, ‘OK, can you just explain to us what’s happening?’ And so they allowed me to take responsibility for what I was doing. And also, I wasn’t just doing it, I was explaining, I was sharing, and I was engaging. And so I never had any push back from my family, I had every support. When my mother heard that I’d been dumped in some place, she didn’t say ‘oh, gosh, what was she doing?’ Or in fact, it started with being detained for four and a half months in 1976. They didn’t say, ‘oh, what was she doing?’ No, they came and made sure that they support me in prison, they support me wherever I was. And in fact, if it was not for my family, I wonder how I’d been able to handle 1976 with the loss of the man who I love so dearly. I would’ve probably kind of lost it.
So, I have a very loving, very close family. We come from a tradition of extended family connections that are so powerful that you can’t distinguish who’s the child, who’s the cousin, who’s the whatever, we are one. And that’s the beauty, and that’s the human face that here on this continent- we don’t have to say it takes a village; it takes a continent. And everybody expects that every village will do what they’re supposed to do. Of course we have lost a lot of that through disruptions of the migrant labor system as well. But the roots are there. It’s like a tree that has been cut down. If you water it enough, you’ll see the sprouts coming out.
Paola Jacobs: Thank you.
AnMei Dasbach-Prisk: I’m AnMei and OK, in 2014 when you ran for the Democratic Alliance, directly against the ANC, what motivated you and what gave you the courage to run against that dominant system?
Dr. Mamphela Ramphele: Yeah, I guess you are using an American conception of what was happening. What happened in 2013- in fact it started in 2012 to 2014. It was not running against, it was challenging the political system. And the issue didn’t start with running for the democratic party, it- or the alliance- it started with challenging young people like you who are saying ‘well, we haven’t registered to vote because there’s nobody to vote for.’ No, no, no, you have to create a movement that will allow you to be able to shape the nature of the politics in this country. ‘No, but how do we do that?’ So, in the end, I did what I did from 2012 to 2014 in order to (a) challenge the system, (b) set the tone for a different type of politics. And the name of the party we started was (can’t understand): let us build. But what I have to say is I was very naïve. I assumed that in the same way that we started the Black Consciousness Movement in the late ‘60s, being a very few people- there were about 15 of us and we sparked a national movement. I thought it would be the same. No, dead wrong. And the reason is that after 1976, and the clamping down of the Black Consciousness organizations, people went into exile, others went underground, and a different form of politics was then birthed which was the politics of anti-Apartheid. The politics of opposition. So with that kind of politics, you are either with us, or against us. It’s not about what is the message, it’s not about what we need, what’s the goal, what’s the- where are we working towards? Because then you can have different people on different paths but all working towards the same goal. But when it’s an anti-something struggle without a clear values based formulation, you have a problem. And that’s the problem we ran into. That people were married to this ANC which was at that stage already off track, already captured by a few for their own benefit. Already corrupt in the country to a point where we are now, we are in serious economic trouble because we have destroyed the commonwealth of this country through the ANC that ended up focusing, like many liberation movements both here and everywhere else, that the people who were the activists- many of them feel that they have to be awarded for the freedom that they have brought. In our country, it’s completely wrong, because the freedom of this country was achieved through the efforts of many ordinary people. I described to you the people in Tzaneen- everywhere. The armed people who were, in 1976, fighting against the system.
So, South Africa is now at a stage where we have regressed from where we were in 1994. We have a political system- what do you call it? Political settlement which is embodied in the constitution which we have which is a really fabulous constitution. But that constitution is not having any positive impact on ordinary people. So ordinary people have yet to experience the freedom we’re talking about. Like in your country, right? So as far as we are concerned, South Africa has succeeded in getting a political settlement. It hasn’t yes managed to deal with the wounds of people who were humiliated- including those who are sitting in parliament who think that the way to deal with the pain they’re feeling, the humiliation they’re feeling, is to steal and to have. So being a human being has been replaced with having a Mercedes Benz four by four and what.
And there’s also the socioeconomic system which has not changed substantially for the majority of people. When you fly into Cape Town, you can see it. Fly into Joburg, you can see it. So to the extent that we still have people imprisoned by the wounds of the past, by the humiliation of socioeconomic deprivation, and the huge inequalities between those who have and those who don’t, we are not free. So that’s what that 2014 effort was about. But it was a failure. And so now, I’m spending more time back to the issue of consciousness, back to the need to rebuild the foundations of a more human face.
Rowan Davenport-Smith: Hi, I’m Rowan. In an interview with Rupert Taylor you said, “for me, the personal, the political, and the professional, became one thing. My whole life is engagement in trans-formative action.” What are the benefits and the costs of committing oneself so wholeheartedly to trans-formative action?
Dr. Mamphela Ramphele: The benefits are that you live a real, full life and you are in harmony with yourself. Can you imagine having values of one type for your personal life, and another for your professional life, and another for your political life? So you can steal as a politician and then you say to your children, ‘thou shall not steal.’ Where is the logic? Those are prisoners, which is why they become so brutal. Because the undermining of your spiritual life in that way makes you ill at ease, and the only way you can calm those storms inside, is to indulge. Materialism, drugs, alcohol, whatever: abuse of power. And so the benefit of having a values base that governs every aspect of your life is that you’re a person at peace with yourself. That doesn’t mean you don’t have problems. It doesn’t mean you don’t face conflicts. But when you do, you can apply the values base to say ‘how do I address this?’ Right? There is no such thing as a convenient murder, a convenient theft, or convenient- it’s not possible.
Now, the costs; huge. The costs are very high, because you forego a lot of comforts, material things. But, when you do the sums, I always come up tops because I think there is nothing that can replace a life that is governed by Ubuntu, that values base which we- you know when you talk human rights is one thing, but when you talk Ubuntu it’s more than just a set of rules that you obey, it is part of your DNA because it governs your spiritual, your psychological, your mental, and your physical body. So my body, for example, weak as it is, it can withstand a lot of things. When I was in jail and they used to give us food that even the pigs will turn their noses on. I just tell my body to shut down. So for something like three weeks, I was living on a mug of coffee- they’ll bring one in the morning, and it’s that kind of coffee that you wouldn’t drink. But I’d pour out half water from the tap, so I’ve got my calories for the day, then I’d drink water for the rest of the day. It won’t kill you because there is nothing that gives more resilience than that piece of mind of knowing that you’re doing the right thing for the right reasons. And at the end of the day, the truth shall triumph.
Ksenia Medvedev: Hello, I’m Ksenia. You once said, “after a massive Soweto uprising in 1988, I was invited to meet Mandela for the first time.” You said that “I didn’t understand why he would want to talk to me, and it was a meeting that changed my life.” You then went on to say that “he wanted to see me because he was fascinated by the Black Consciousness Movement, and wanted to understand the thinking of the times and the motivation. He knew that we needed all the talent to bring the country together.” Do you feel that you are continuing his work of trying to bring the diverse elements of South African society together in common purpose?
Dr. Mamphela Ramphele: Well, I think it’s not his ideas, I think we found each other to be fellow travelers. And in fact, it is true to say that Mandela’s own political life was shaped by the Black Consciousness Movement. So he learned from us and we in turn learned from him. So it isn’t a question of his ideals versus our ideals, it’s a question of the confluence of ideas that came to the fore in him having- I think it’s very important to remember that Mandela went to jail as a very angry liberation struggle person. He was deeply pained by personal tragedies and it is fair to say that he went through a consciousness process that enabled him to get to the point where he realized that he has to liberate his jailers because the struggle for freedom was not going to be done on the battlefield, it was a struggle of the mind, the spirit, the soul. And by allowing himself to forgive- not in a flippant way, but to understand. Forgiveness comes from an understanding that the abusers of power are doing so because they’re afraid. And they’re doing so because they are unconscious of the benefits of a different way of relating to human beings that promote harmony and, in the end, creates greater prosperity. We know from studies today that inequality is bad for both the rich and poor. So he understood all those. And so the beauty of meeting him on that day- it was a Sunday, I still remember. I didn’t sleep the night before. And was simply the essence- you know when you’ve read about someone and now you finally meet that person, and that person is so human. And of course he was about- he was a year younger than my father, and I had lost my father when I was in first year at university. So it was like reconnecting with my father in a physical way. And he basically adopted me because throughout the rest of his life, we were very close. And so yes, he was a remarkable man, a man who overcame enormous challenges. And a man who never became hot because he was such an icon. He remained grounded in this idea of Ubuntu: our inextricable connectedness as a human race.
Milana Beck: Hello, my name is Milana. Since we have been here, we have seen how talented and passionate our peers at Leap School are. What other additional steps do you feel are needed to put more opportunity in front of the talented youth of South Africa?
Dr. Mamphela Ramphele: Well, LEAP for me is a real leap into the future of what is possible. And again, it’s an example of what each and every one of us can do if we put our mind to it. That man could have been retiring on a huge pension as a principle at some big hotshot school somewhere. But he chose the economically very expensive root of living his dream. He too has got the same approach; the personal, the professional, the political, are governed by the same approach, same values. And what Leap School is demonstrating is that it takes so little at one level to make life-changing possibilities open to every child. And most of the students of Leap, if you hear their life stories, you wonder how did they end up here? And yet Leap is outperforming even the private schools. Why? It’s the way in which they approach the process of education. Not just teaching and learning, but as a development process. And I believe that the focus on values that they start with from the get-go. And fortunately, in South Africa we’ve got life orientation as a curriculum subject and that- Leap has used that space in the most innovative way.
What shocks me is why the rest of the South African education system is not using it. It shocks me when I shut down my other consciousness elements to it because it is so clear that even the most broken communities, the most broken families, children who come out of those places with love, support, determination, focus on excellence, and getting those young people to really (can’t understand) themselves in who they were created to be; absolutely incredible things happen. I can only suggest that the reason why there is always a gap between what we know we need to do in order to do, is the fear- fear of change.
And in our country, I’m absolutely convinced- I didn’t believe it in the beginning, but I do believe it now- that it serves the ANC very well that you’ve got a number of- or millions of uneducated, or half educated people because citizens who are critically conscious of who they are, and are critical thinkers, and are active citizens, cannot tolerate this nonsense. And so, like mushrooms- you know you don’t grow mushrooms in the sun, it’s got to be very dark, and then they get very big. That’s what they’re doing. And I think your generation, both in your country and here, have to fight the system like we did. And don’t say, ‘well, you know, that’s happening in the inner-city, that’s happening in the south’- no, it’s happening here. Because wherever you are, and you know that there is work to be done somewhere else and you turn a blind eye, you’re betraying yourself. You’re betraying your mission as a generation. You are betraying your humanity. Because to the extent that someone else’s humanity is undermined, yours is too.
Ward Mailliard: Dr. Ramphele, thank you very much. I know we have a time limit here, but I- in the interviews we do, I like to take a moment and have some of the students say back to you what they heard that had meaning to them. So – and that includes everybody and anybody. So in a brief statement, could you just say what you heard that had power for you?
Student: Right at the beginning you mentioned how like it was important like that human being are here to live in harmony with each other and then how we asked you how Biko’s death influenced the movement, that like you said the fact that the harmony between people was being thrown out of balance, that that was something that propelled the change. Just the idea that we’re here to live in harmony with each other is something that I’ll take away from this.
Student: You mentioned when you were talking about your time in Tzaneen when you were a doctor- well my dream is to be a doctor and you mentioned that doctors should not only heal bodies but spirits as well, that really struck me and I think I’ll take that away, so thank you very much.
Student: What struck me is how you said that if you’re the one being oppressed by somebody else, the only one who can liberate yourself is you. And you have to find like the inner-strength to overcome anybody who’s trying to push you down, you just got to do it, it’s all inside of you.
Student: You referred to many- you referred to the Anti-Apartheid Movement and the oppression and all of the deaths that happened as disruptions along the way. They weren’t lifechanging, they weren’t like life-stopping, they were just disruptions, and I think that’s a very useful way of thinking of things; little disruptions along the way.
Student: You said that the women in your life from all your grandmothers and your mom and everyone shaped you and really molded your life with strong female role models and how that left no room for men to oppress you. And I thought that was a really great way of looking at life.
Student: I agree with Tabby, I was about to say the same thing, I feel like me personally, I take so much inspiration from all the women in my life and especially my mother and I just think it’s really great that someone like you, someone that’s had such an impact on your country and the history of your country- it’s just so nice that you look up to those people and you know, I can relate to that- it’s just really great.
Student: You said ‘there’s only one race, it’s the human race.’ I really like that, it kind of opened my eyes to realize that we all can live in harmony and live together as one. So I really liked that.
Ward Mailliard: And for our Leap students that are here, I heard yesterday when I was at the school, I asked – I put my kids and their kids in small groups and I asked them to talk about if they were President, King, Queen, Prime Minister; what they would do to improve education. And one young woman who’s in the room, I overheard her saying we need to be taught our history by the people who essentially lived our history. Does she remember that she said that? And I was impressed by that. And I’m wondering, of any of the Leap students, what did you hear that had power for you today? We need to bring your voices into the room. Yeah, you’re on, what do you got? You started this. If you did know, what would you say?
LEAP Student: I think- I heard everything, but one thing that I take from this is that I’ve always thought to myself- I always hear people telling me that we are the future of tomorrow, the youth are the future of tomorrow, we are the leaders of tomorrow, and I always ask myself what should I be doing next? What is expected of me to do? And yesterday, we had like a panel discussion and it wasn’t really on (can’t understand), it’s just not a matter of being answered the question, it’s just knowing, and it’s just tackling the smallest things. And I think I heard the fact that I’m one person who feels as if they’re a bystander. I’m a person who feels as if it doesn’t affect me, especially in this country, then I won’t deal with it. And what I heard from you is that me doing that, I might as well be the perpetrator, I might as well be the person doing the same thing but in the same level as well. So I feel like as a young human being, I should be able to understand the things going on in my country and be able to lay down and think about how to change it. It might not be- it might not make an impact right away, but it will make an impact to anyone, even my neighbor, anything. But just to change people’s mentality about what has changed. So that’s what I took away.
Ward Mailliard: Wow. And what about the gentleman right next to you?
LEAP Student: OK, good morning to everyone. So, what struck me today was that during a time of the racist, fascist, and imperial system that was up, that was the Apartheid era. Personally, I would’ve been a person that most likely would’ve been a bystander, but what I took from you is that affirmative action had to be taken. Like what I took was that you would’ve most likely wanted to die on your feet then be oppressed and live on your knees. So that really struck me because we- in most cases, we get to hear acknowledgment- in most cases we get to acknowledge people like Steve Biko, Nelson Mandela- I’m not taking anything away from them, but we should acknowledge – I’m a feminist, I’m a feminist at heart, so I believe that we should acknowledge people like Mandela, because the collaboration of us all, of those political heroes, solidified and paved the way of the system that we have today. And because of that, we have this. We have a system where we can create more relationships with one another based on having the mentality that we cannot classify people based on the color of their skin. We are all one race, and we are the human race. And if you have that mentality in mind, that will perpetually benefit us all because in the future- because we as the future, have all the quintessential tools to go on in the future until the next generation and the next and the next. So that’s what I took from you today.
LEAP Student: OK, I’d like to first say thank you for actually being here and thank you Ms. Nomfundo for actually inviting me to be here. Well, I also feel the same way that if I was part of- or maybe I experienced the Apartheid era, I would also be like a bystander. I don’t believe in fighting for other people, I don’t even fight for myself. And that was before this meeting. But after that, like I also learned that it actually would- me thinking like that would be like betraying humanity as a whole and actually betraying myself in a way, because it actually means I am ignoring my identity which is I’m black, I’m proud. And one of the main things about black people is we like building families- I wouldn’t say friendships, more like families and brothers and sisters, and I believe that’s what we are slowly getting to right here.
And also what stood out for me actually in this meeting was that we should like stick to our identity no matter how much people embarrass you or how much people degrade you. You should stick to your identity whether your name is hard to pronounce. Because I have a name whereby some people can’t pronounce it, and sometimes I tend to like say to them they should like call me with my second name which is Lisa- which is some easy, so yeah, I mean it’s easy- I mean it is a bad thing in some way but at the same time, I feel like right now it makes me look like apologetic about my name which is what I do not want. Hence, I feel like today I will start embracing my name.
LEAP Student: I think my fellow peers have said it all but one thing I took from what you said is the fact that you said something about like broken families- you said that from broken families something good can come out of it because a lot of people tend to believe that if you maybe come from a broken family, that nothing good can come out of it. So I think it’s really good to have people that still believe if you come from maybe like a damaged family, or a broken family, that you can still be someone that’s very important in the society.
Ward Mailliard: Thank you. So John, we wouldn’t be sitting here with her if it wasn’t for you, and I hope in actually- I know you know this, but hearing the students and how articulate, and how well they speak, has a lot to do with what you created with this school and everything that came before. But my gratitude for you for standing up for us to give us this opportunity and for all that you’re doing. To me, this is the heartbeat of life when people commit themselves in this way and I just want to thank you for that. And I’ve been interviewing public leaders, artists, great people, for 30 years and I’m in awe of the thought process, the thoughtfulness, the clarity that you brought into the room today. I’m deeply, deeply grateful and now I’m feeling very assured in my unwillingness to let you get away. This is the fruit of several years of wanting my students to meet you, and I’m so thankful that you said yes and grateful to this lovely person over here, you’re assistant, who made it possible, and for John.
Dr. Mamphela Ramphele: Well, thank you.
John Gilmour: (can’t understand) about hearing my own voice because I sat for many years thinking my voice didn’t matter. So in every context I try to bring my voice into the space. You thanked me for making sure that Dr. Ramphele was here- I can’t say no to Nomfundo. But I have to just say thank you to you for your love, and your care, and your humanity, for demonstrating it again today, for showing us really what a life- examined life looks like. And I think it was Socrates who said ‘an unexamined life is not worth living.’ And I think it was Malcolm X who said ‘an examined life is extremely painful.’ And that combination is what you exemplify every time you’re drawn into this family. To the Leap voices in the room: don’t underestimate, and I love the way you were honest about the bystander tussle. It’s a choice, it’s a moment by moment choice, and you never get it fully right, but you’ve got to get the pattern to start to work so your activism is real, otherwise you will be working as hard as I am when you’re as old as me. Thank you for that.