30 years ago,  Nelson Mandela became the first black president of South Africa - video Dailymotion

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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.

30 years ago, Nelson Mandela became the first black president of South Africa

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