which is straight after this programme. welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. to fully commit to a cause is to put the political above the personal. it has lifelong ramifications, not just for the activist, but for those closest to them. and no—one knows this better than my guest today, the writer gillian slovo, whose parents, joe slovo and ruth first, were hugely important figures in south africa's liberation struggle against apartheid. from teenage, gillian�*s home has been in the uk and her recent writing digs deep into british culture. but how much distance is there from her extraordinary south african backstory?

gillian slovo, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. gillian, you have been writing for many decades, but your recent work, particularly your plays, have focused not so much on your own authorial voice, your imagination, they focused on real people's real stories. i just wonder if you're getting sick of making things up. i'm not, actually, because, you know, there's part of me that wants to go back to my desk to be on my own, to make stuff up, but i've really got a lot from working in the theatre and from

the collaboration that comes, not only from the crew and the directors and the actors, but actually the collaboration that comes from the people i've interviewed. and finding a way to magnify their voice onstage has been actually really a wonderful piece of work for me. i've really learnt a lot about it, and it also teaches you about dialogue when you want to go back to drama, to writing fiction. i mean, your most recent play, which has been on in the uk and indeed on in new york as well, is all about the tragic fire at grenfell, that high rise tower in london, where more than 70 people lost their lives in 2017. and you've relied on the witness testimony of people who were there. it's very painful. and would it be fair to say that in a way the pain is a very important part of the drama? yeah, i...

it's the story of these people who were a community before the fire, who saw what was going wrong in that tower block. and there were many things going wrong in the refurbishment of it and the way that they were treated, and then who had to find themselves on the night of the fire, basically getting out ofa building, a burning building on their own. but it's also the story of what that community is and how they helped each other — from the very beginning, when they were trying to change things and not succeeding to the time after the fire when government, both national and local, completely failed to come to their help, to their assistance and they had to help themselves, they had to help each other and form themselves again into a community without the place that they were living in, and since then have campaigned together to make sure this doesn't happen to anybody else. you've lived in england for a long time, but if we can go to your backstory. you were born and raised

in your childhood years in south africa. does south africa really still feel like home after all these years? i suspect i'm like many people who've moved country in their lifetime. south africa feels like home and england feels like home. you know, there are things that are embedded in me from south africa, which can be something as simple as the way that the light is, the way the landscape is, how it feels for me to be there. even with your voice, because i'm listening to your voice and it is a fascinating mix of very english, but also i can just detect little bits of south africa. you've clearly got a bad ear because i've kept the south african for a very long time. you know, and yet i've lived all my adult life, or most of my life in england, which is also my country. you talked about already the desire sometimes to be

solitary, to be alone to write. as a child, was that something in you from very early? no, not to write. i actually didn't start writing until i actually started writing fiction. i went to university, i did science subjects. it never occurred to me to be a writer. your first novel didn't come out, what, until your early 30s? yeah. but when i was a child, what i did was read. and reading was my escape often from the difficult things that were happening around me. so i read far too early most of the english canon. it's far too early because you have to be slightly older to really get it. but, yeah, i think that's where my urge to write came from, from thejoy i got out of reading. and you talk about the difficulties that were apparent in your childhood, i mean, difficulties that were all around you. because if we just go into the detail a little bit, your father was joe slovo, who was an active communist and active opponent of the apartheid regime

and a wanted man from pretty early in his adult life by the apartheid government. and your mum was ruth first, who was just as committed to the cause as her husband. she was a communist and she also was a very active participant in the anti—apartheid struggle. both, in essence, were enemies of the state, as it then was. yeah. and so my childhood was punctuated by the moments when the police would turn up and arrest them and haul them off to jailfor a certain period of time. do you remember those moments? absolutely. because i think, you know, one remembers in one's childhood the most traumatic of the times. those stick in the mind. so yes, i remember when i was about six years old, maybe i remember this because there's a beautiful picture of me and my sisters eating rice krispies. and the reason we were eating rice krispies was that our parents had been arrested, and the newspapers come to take pictures of these three cute children eating their second breakfast you know, with...

so that was the beginning of my memory. but i remember each time that they were arrested and, you know, locked up for a while until finally in the last period when i was in south africa, my mother was arrested and held under 90—day detention, and she was held incommunicado for 117 days. after that is when we left and came to england. yeah. so there was... there was a lot of separation and i imagine a lot of anxiety in your childhood. there was a lot of fear, ithink, yeah. yeah. and because they disappeared, they were continually disappearing. and there, they were in danger. they weren't in the same kind of danger as their black compatriots, because at that point of time, white people, even in prison, were treated differently if they were politicos. but, yes, there was a lot of unknown happening. it's what turned me into a writer, i think.

your father was, was a revolutionary. i mean, he believed, quite clearly believed in the legitimacy of the armed struggle. he was one of the senior leaders of the armed wing of the anc. and i believe for a time he was literally the most wanted man on the list held by the apartheid government. because white south africa and the apartheid government couldn't bear the fact that a white person had chosen to throw their lot in with the black struggle. so, yes, my father was, he was a communist. he was at some point the general secretary of the communist party, he was also the chief of staff of umkhonto we sizwe and the person who, after mandela came and after the settlement, during the period between mandela coming out of prison and the first democratic election in south africa, my father was one of the people who suspended the armed struggle. you say, you know, even as a young person, you were aware of the danger surrounding your parents.

but i guess in a funny sort of way, you couldn't have anticipated that, in the end, your mother would be the one murdered by the apartheid regime rather than your father, who on the face of it, was the one they really wanted. but it was your mother who was killed by a parcel bomb when she was living in mozambique in 1982. it was. yeah, and i suppose i didn't go through my childhood thinking, which one of them is going to be killed? but, yeah, my father would have been the more obvious candidate. but my mother herself was a very strong voice in britain, actually, in particular, against what was happening in south africa. i will never know, did they kill her to get at my father, or did they kill her because her voice, she was so vocal in her

criticism of what was happening in apartheid, under apartheid? if we fast—forwa rd a little bit, the truth and reconciliation commission that was set up by the post—apartheid government in south africa, led by nelson mandela, it was supposed to give people like you an opportunity to confront those who committed terrible acts against your loved ones. the idea was they would tell the truth, and in return for telling the truth, they, if it was deemed that their actions were part of the wider struggle, they would be given the chance to go on with their lives. liberty. what happened to you when you confronted your mother's killer? well, i actually confronted my, the two men who were involved in the killing of my mother. i don't think that they were the only one, before the truth and reconciliation commission, which is, because i had written a family memoir, and i made a documentary that was sort of went through, you know, some of what had happened in my childhood. and i actually went,

as part of this, as part of the memoir and later on film, to actually talk to the two men. one was a bomb maker, so he did the physical stuff of making a bomb. the other one was the person who presumably instructed him or said he had instructed him to make the bomb. i think there were others, but they never said. so before the truth and reconciliation commission hearing, i had already met these two men. the bomb maker had retired from the police force, as had all those old apartheid police, and he was working in a mattress shop. and i went in with a film crew into a mattress shop and told him who i was and asked him who he was. and then i said, "i gather you made the bomb "that killed my mother." and i was prepared for all sorts of things except for the thing that he said, which is, "no, i didn't." so it was really impossible. but, you know, six months later he applied to the trc

for amnesty, because he did. and... you say, sorry to interrupt, but i'm just thinking about your reactions then when, having met him once and he was in denial, you met him, or at least saw him again testifying before this commission. and as i understand it, he didn't specifically say, yes, i targeted ruth first with the with the parcel bomb. he sort of implied that he didn't quite know whether it was sent to your father or your mother. well, hejust said, "somebody asked me to make a bomb, "i made it. i didn't know who it was going to." but the point i guess that i'm getting to is that you very candidly then said you were consumed with rage by what happened at that testimonial, at that truth and reconciliation commission meeting. and it seems to me that you didn't accept what south africa was trying to achieve. that is, a sort of a way to account and do truth—telling

in a way that wouldn't rip south africa apart going forward, that would somehow allow these people who'd been fighting the most terrible war to find a way of living peaceably together. but you didn't find a route to forgiveness? i did accept the process. i didn't find a route to forgiveness is true. but i accepted the process. and i accepted the process for the same reason that my father, who was involved in those peace talks, who was, you know, beside nelson mandela when they made the compromise that was the truth and reconciliation commission, did say at the time, "i realise that i have made a compromise "that means that the people who killed ruth "will never be brought to properjustice. "they'll never be jailed for it. "but for the sake of the country, "that is the compromise i have to make." and i accept that. i think it was necessary to bring peace to that country. there was more people killed in political violence between 1990, when mandela came

out of prison, and 1994, that democratic election. and it was really important to end that violence. so i completely accept the compromise that was the trc. i certainly don't forgive, no. but i don't think i need to forgive. right. you wrote a powerful fiction about it, red dust, around the year 2000, and it reflected on some of the complexities of all of this. but i suppose i wonder whether you look at south africa today, whether you think the healing that was the aim of that truth and reconciliation process has been achieved? i think south africa is still a very troubled country, and i think the past has got a lot to do with that. and the trc and the election enabled people to move forward, kind of, together. but i think there is still a lot unresolved, and some of the push towards forgiveness, i think, was slightly fake, because people can say that they can forgive killers,

but they can't necessarily forgive the fact that they're living in penury, that they have lost so much, and that other people are fine and managing to get on with their very privileged life. so i think that has created some kind of trouble. but you had to do something in south africa, and as a political compromise it was necessary. i want to bring it back to the deeply personal now, and partly because you've been very honest, you did write a memoir which you, you know, referred to the secrets in your family's past. and you also used this interesting phrase. you said that you felt like you'd been raised amongst giants. and i guess that alludes to the moral stature, notjust of your own parents, but people like nelson mandela, who obviously was very well known to you, he was a great friend of your parents. but clearly also living with these people who had this

crusade, this cause, it wasn't easy for you personally, was it, and for what it meant for you as a daughter of your parents? no, it's not easy to be the child of revolutionaries and they make decisions... i don't think it is easy to be a revolutionary with children, actually. they make decisions that they know will impact on their family. but actually, in the end, i'm really proud of what they did. and it was, i lived in a very traumatic childhood, at the same time, an extremely privileged one. but do you think, i mean, do you think they were selfish in a way? selfish? selfish in the cause of other people? maybe. and did you resent it? did you at times feel anger toward them, even though you could appreciate the absolute commitment to the righteousness of the cause? at the time, no. i thought they were wonderful. they were my parents and they were wonderful people. and later on, yeah, a bit of therapy to deal with the impact on me.

but, you know, this is, this is... they made decisions that were important for them to make. and in the end, when i went back to south africa for the first time in 1990, i felt an acceptance from the majority of south africans that many white people did not experience until much, much later. i really felt the pride in what my parents had done, and they taught me that it's important to worry about other people, that justice is important. there's an extraordinary moment, i think, in your life when your father died, he'd actually served as housing minister for a short time in the first south african liberated government. he died in post. yeah. and you describe how mandela came to visit, and you and your sisters were there in the house, and he talked to you very frankly about the problems he'd

had in his own personal life, his own relationship with his own daughter. i think perhaps in a way, trying to empathise with you. yeah, i think that whole generation understood what, how their decisions had impacted on their family. and nelson mandela came, it was actually in the early hours. my father died at about 2am and mandela was there with us at around three. and when he came, he sat me and my sisters down opposite him. and what he said was, there had come a time when he had gone to hug one of his daughters and she had sort of moved away from him, and he'd said, "what's the matter?" and she had said, "you're the father of the whole country, "but you have never been a father to me." and that was his way of saying, i understand what you've had to pay for our political... what your whole generation have had to pay for our political commitment. you said to me, that, on reflection, you think it's not easy to be a revolutionary and most of all, a revolutionary with children. is that why you've taken a very specific decision in your creative life, not so much to be

a revolutionary, but to use the power of your voice and your writing to give voice to the voiceless in a different sort of way? yeah, i don't think it was a choice between revolution or that. i don't think we're having a revolution in this country, and you have to have other people around you to really change the system fundamentally, which is what a revolution requires. but, yeah, i think that's why i write about the things that i write about. and it's why i also do verbatim plays, because that is precisely about giving voice to people who are not listened to in the world and who have so much to teach us. how do you persuade people to truly open up to you? because you've talked to people who've been involved in, families who've had loved ones recruited by isis, the islamic state group. we've talked about grenfell, where you went to a community which had not been used

to being heard, and you persuaded them to talk about the meaning of that tragic fire. how do you win the trust and confidence of people who are not used to, to this form of expression? by being trustworthy. i think people know if you're trustworthy, and by making sure that what you do does not betray their trust. and then a track record also helps. if people have seen my plays before, they know what i do with the verbatim, and also giving certain guarantees to people that i talk to, which is, if they tell me something that they then change their mind, they don't want to put on the stage, i will not put it on. and having them take part in various drafts to give feedback to see... it's not that i give them control, and certainly nobody ever seems to want control, but what i do do is make sure that i am amplifying their voices in a way that is true to what they want to say. your mum and dad definitely wanted to change the world.

i mean, do you believe in the power and capacity of drama and fiction to sometimes make a difference? yeah. not change the world, but make a difference, yes. i think people have walked out of some of those verbatim plays, which are notjust the product of my work, but the product of the whole team ,and felt themselves seeing the world differently. have felt themselves understand something that you can't really getjust by reading it in the newspaper or seeing it on the news. you're actually getting an experience of real people. and i think, just like people will talk to me because they can trust me, i think the audience can get to trust those people as well. they can hear what is truth. i'm just very mindful as we speak to each other today, that one of the most sort of preoccupying issues for many people in different parts of the world today is what's happening in israel and gaza, and the passions that have been raised around that conflict. you arejewish, you are south african.

you've seen your south african government take a case against israel to the international court ofjustice, based on a south african claim that a genocide is taking place. you've also seen students in campuses around the world take to their tents in protest at what israel is doing. you are somebody who believes in the power of art to make a difference. is this something which you are looking at right now, which is of interest to you, notjust as a person, but as an artist, creator? i'm looking at it as a person at the moment. i'm not thinking of making art out of it. i'm thinking of the terrible pain. it's not only, am ijewish and come from south africa, i've actually been to the west bank, and i've seen what apartheid looked like in south africa, and i've seen what apartheid looks like in the west bank. i've never been to gaza, and i am looking... you... because israelis refuse

to accept the legitimacy of this word "apartheid" for what happens in occupied territory. but you're saying... i don't know what you call, if the law is applied differently to different populations, if the roads and where you can walk are different, depending on whether you're israeli or palestinian, i don't know what else you call that, but apartheid. yes, i'm saying i've been to the west bank and i've seen apartheid, and i recognise it because i've seen it in my past. and you tell me that you absolutely still want to walk into difficult territory, give voice to the voiceless where you can. where is your attention focused right now, creatively? i'm involved in a whole lot of projects. but i don't like to talk about them in the beginning, because once you put them in the air, it seems that you've put them out there and labelled them and,

you know, it makes them more difficult to do, so... but my attention is focused on gaza in the sense of many people's attention, with horror at what is happening, you know, and with a real sense of pride that the south africans did what they did, although it hasn't made any difference so far. we must end there. but gillian slovo, thank you very much forjoining me on hardtalk. thank you. hello. it was an exceedingly mild christmas day. not a record breaker, but the met office reports that it was the mildest since 2016 overall, looking across the uk,

and the highest temperature was recorded in aberdeen 14.2 celsius, with similar values elsewhere across the country. how about boxing day? well, not quite as mild, but the temperatures will remain above the average for the rest of the year, and also a little bit of rain in the forecast. the satellite picture hasn't really changed much since yesterday. we still have this conveyor belt of cloud to the west of us, and ahead of this conveyor belt of cloud, a tongue, a stream of mild air all the way from the azores, spreading across the uk, western europe and into the baltic and also much of scandinavia. so we start the day with temperatures hovering between 5—10 celsius, so a little fresher compared to the last couple of nights. so here's the forecast, then, for boxing day. a weather front sneaks into northern ireland and scotland, so expect a little bit of rain here on and off, perhaps in glasgow into edinburgh. some sunny spells are possible in the north—east of england

around the pennines, yorkshire, maybe one or two reaching lancashire as well, but across the bulk of wales and england, it will be cloudy. and those temperatures between around 9—12 celsius, so certainly on the mild side. now here's friday's weather forecast — high pressure still very much in charge of the weather and weather fronts once again brushing the north—west of the uk. so, again, some rain possible in northern ireland, scotland, but elsewhere, it's going to be pretty much the same. so rather cloudy, odd sunny spell here and there, generally to the lee of high ground, so to the east. and those temperatures will be around 9—12 celsius. now, let's have a look at the weekend. here's saturday. signs of change. now we're starting to see the weather coming in from the west. so this low pressure moves into ireland. it brings some outbreaks of rain, once again to scotland too. no rainfall for england and wales, but there will be some bigger, sunnier breaks, i think, in that layer of cloud. temperatures won't change much, still hovering around 10 celsius. and then this outlook takes us into new year's. the weather is expected to turn more unsettled beyond new year's eve, and potentially quite stormy, maybe even colder weather reaching us. that's it. bye— bye.

live from washington. this is bbc news.

the white house slams russia's christmas day attack on ukraine — we're on the ground in kyiv. 1a people are dead as protests erupt in syria, where clashes continue between fighters from different rebel factions. and king charles uses his christmas speech to call for peace in world conflicts and reflects on his cancer treatment. ukraine's president volodymyr zelenskyy says a christmas day attack on his country's energy system was "inhumane." moscow launched more than 170 rockets and drones in the early hours, hitting power plants and electricity infrastructure. at least one person was killed. in a statement, us president joe biden called the attack "outrageous" and said he'd ordered the pentagon

to continue "surging" its deliveries of weapons to kyiv.