30 years ago, Nelson Mandela became the first black president of South Africa
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00:00 Exactly 30 years ago on May 10th 1994, Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as
00:06 President of South Africa following the end of apartheid. His party, the ANC, was
00:11 widely credited with liberating the country's black majority from the racist
00:15 system of oppression that made South Africa a pariah for nearly half a
00:20 century. Well to discuss that we're joined now from Johannesburg by Vern
00:24 Harris, Director of Archive and Dialogue and Acting Chief Executive of the Nelson
00:30 Mandela Foundation. Thank you so much for being with us on the programme this
00:34 morning Vern, we do appreciate your time. So firstly you yourself worked as
00:38 archivist for Nelson Mandela between 2004-2010. You helped set up the centre
00:46 of memory and you had the opportunity to speak with him about his release and
00:50 inauguration. How did he himself want this day to be remembered in history?
00:57 Well you know for us it's a bittersweet moment because that moment 30 years ago
01:04 held so much promise and for Nelson Mandela the top priority as he took on
01:13 the presidency was to make democracy stick. I think we can say democracy has
01:18 stuck but in many ways we have become stuck and for most South Africans, most
01:26 people who called South Africa home, freedom is not a lived reality for them
01:31 yet. And in terms of Nelson Mandela's legacy 30 days on from that historic day
01:38 he himself he didn't want it to be sugar-coated. You've spoken previously
01:43 of some of the directives that he had given you about how exactly he wanted to
01:47 be remembered. Well you know these were many conversations with him as we
01:54 assembled his private archive and the most important directives he gave us in
02:02 my view firstly was that he didn't want our work to be completely centred on him
02:08 as an individual. He wanted us to be harnessing memory resources including
02:14 his own archive for continuing struggles for justice and then I think also very
02:20 significant he told us that we didn't need to see it as a priority to protect
02:26 him. In other words we should be free to talk about the mistakes he made and the
02:32 things that his government got wrong and there were there were mistakes made. I
02:38 was in government the whole time he was president of the country. And how do you
02:43 think that his legacy has evolved over the past 30 years? You've said that
02:48 legacy belongs to all of us and I think that's something that he believed
02:51 himself as well. It changes over time. You say it can't belong to just one family,
02:56 to one institution, even to just one country. So how has it evolved? Well
03:02 obviously every generation has to interpret that legacy for themselves and
03:07 the contexts are always changing but we believe that his legacy belongs to
03:12 everyone who is passionate about justice and who is working hard to make a just
03:18 society. And so the legacy lives on through these continuing struggles for
03:25 justice in South Africa but in other parts of the world as well. Yeah because
03:28 you say that the priority for the country it's still transformation. What
03:32 exactly do you mean by that? Well I think we have failed signally to effectively
03:42 redistribute wealth and so we're dealing with a very resilient white supremacy
03:48 and patterns of wealth and other forms of accumulation that still bear the
03:56 imprint of the apartheid and even the colonial past. We've got to change that.
04:01 It's tough in a world where there's a powerful global economy which is
04:08 characterized by what I would call a neoliberal hegemony. It makes it very
04:13 difficult for countries like ours to implement progressive policies but we've
04:18 got to do differently because the levels of poverty and inequity in our
04:23 country are growing and we are now the most unequal society on earth. And the
04:29 anniversary as well it comes ahead of what could be very decisive elections in
04:33 South Africa. Mandela's ANC party it could actually lose its parliamentary
04:38 majority for the first time in a three decades. So what does that tell us about
04:43 the current situation in South Africa and for the party itself? Well I think
04:50 it's telling us that our people are running out of patience and there are
04:58 deep levels of alienation from formal political processes including elections.
05:04 You know we engage with young people, we have projects on many university
05:10 campuses. It's frightening the levels of disengagement. Young people just not even
05:16 registering to vote. This is our singular challenge and our message to South
05:23 Africans is don't give up on those processes but don't rely on elections.
05:28 It's not just about elections. You need to be telling politicians what you
05:32 want and then afterwards you need to be holding them accountable. We need a
05:36 participative democracy if we're going to get to where we need to be. And where
05:41 exactly does South Africa need to be in your view? Well we need to be that
05:48 country of Nelson Mandela's dreams and in many ways those dreams were
05:53 encapsulated in our Constitution which is one of the best in the world. But
06:00 again returning to the point I made right at the outset, that Constitution is
06:04 still not a lived reality for most people and that's our objective. That's
06:09 what we've got to change. Vern we'll have to leave it there for now but thank you
06:12 so much for your time on the programme and for joining us this morning. That's
06:16 Vern Harris, he's Director of Archive and Dialogue and Acting Chief Executive of
06:21 the Nelson Mandela Foundation. Thank you.