[applause] >> well, thank you. this is a real treat to be here today with doug. doug and i are old friends. for those of you not familiar with doug's work, doug was formally the editorof mther >> we are old friends. magazinet lain -- atlantic, washington post, l.a. time, and we are colleagues in the school of journalism. it's a thrill to be here to talk about his recent book, "after mandela," which i think is a beautifully rendered and beautifully written account of contemporary south africa and profoundly important book. we can talk about that. it's profoundly important because not only does it help us understand what's taking place in south africa, but there's many less --

lessons for us in the u.s. and countries elsewhere as countries emerge from years of tyrannical regimes and trying to find their way into a democratic government, a democratic system. i thought we'd begin talking about mandela. as you know, he's in the hospital now. it's fair to say to say he's, you know, near death, and i always found it interesting that to doug that he titled the book after mandela, not after a partide. a couple days ago, an activist in south africa asked the question, would we have been much better off if he served a second term? >> right. so we would have been better off if he had had a second term because, quote, because he was a committed democratic, unquote, and i think it raises all kinds

of interesting questions about the history because, of course, mandela was old by the time he was released from prison. he had been in prison for 27 years, and that kind of delay in a transfer of power to a new in a nonliberated liberal south africa meant he was in a position he only wanted to serve for five years. the question about the legacy is raised and an assumption that everything since mandela stepped aside from power in 1999 has been a devra devra -- and it's o that, the book, and it says, yes, a lot was lost, both by the fact that there was depression

led to cop straint on what south africa could become, but it's a more complicated story than that, and there's a new generation emerging that will shape the country opposed to par tide post transition. >> i'm curious, you know, i mean, in reading the book, it's clear that they have had very troubled government of the aid epidemic and poverty and crime, and what's interesting to me is the difficulty people have in one point being the opposition and next being in charge. and we think about southern georgia, a book about the civil

rights movement coming late to the county, and those who sort of really were in opposition took power, what difficulty they had once they had any kind of power, and so i guess i wonder why, what happened? >> well, i mean, it's the big question in a place like this. obviously, people came back from 30 years in exile. in the case of the successor to nelson mandela in 1999, and mostly leaving a country he didn't know as 19, coming back, and representing a place that went bankrupt. he describes former president describing walking into the office in union buildings after being sworn in and finding nothing, no computers, no

pencils, no pens, no paper. in which to manage the developing country, and so i think part of it is that that generation came back from exile to run a country they didn't know, and now the presidency is in the hands of hands who is skilled, where largely shaped by having been part of the gorilla army, the formation, the armed wing, and being chief of intelligence, and there's a succession of people from different parts of the liberation movement taking over, and who have been out of the country for long periods of time, and to a certain extent that shaped some mistakes made in the last -- >> do they talk about what surprised him when he came back after all those years? exile? >> what you quickly learn if you

interview people who are politicians and in political power is nothing surprised them. [laughter] the main thing that upset jacob every time they interviewed him is i would, you know, that's the typical journalist question; right? what surprised you? what's up usual, what jumped out at you? every time i said that, he would lean back from the table and look at me as a lizard-like look when you know you irritated him, and that would come. no, my brother, never surprised. you know, never admit you were surprised. i think the things that surprised the second president of the liberated south africa was the extent to which division of people in rural areas and those people who had migrated and were part of a hybridizing, modernizing, urban experience that divide, had if anything,

grown deeper while he had been away for 30 years, the differences between the so-called kaba, people from rural areas who have indigenous beliefs and the cull pa, people who were more westernized and christianized, that that kind of dividing line really posed huge challenges in the coming a governing of a liberated country that had a goal announced in 1994 of becoming a nonracial, nonsexist, nonhomophobic society of the southeastern tip of africa, big dreams for a very troubled place. >> and so just to be clear, why was it that they didn't like the idea that they could have been surprised by what they saw? >> well, because if you come up in markist, len nonnist thought and did the correct study about the objective conditions that

are, you know, shaping history, then the last thing you would ever want to admit is something caught you by surprise. >> you know, you got this wonderful line early op in the book, and i'm going to just read it in which you right you were intrigued by how a society stitches itself together in the wake of horrific traumas, and for me, it's resident. i think a lot about the violence in this country. i think about the western and south sides how individuals and communities win their way after experienced such trauma, and i want your thoughts on what that's meant for south africa coming out of what was really an incredibly violence period. >> you know, i came to the story after maybe 25 years of covering stories like it in my native california and in latin america, particularly in central america, and peru, argentina.

other people, i think, are much better at being war correspondents and being under fire. i tend to be the keep of person who comes in after story's been forgotten for a while or -- and the thing that intrigued me is just this point. what is it that takes the -- that it takes for people to figure out after horrific trauma in which up believable things have been done, and find the social pace, economic and social justice space in order to gain traction to make something better? that's what i was interested in looking at here. think back to friends of mine who were correspondent in 1994 in south africa sent to cover the election who went fully expecting they would cover.

i don't know how many people in the room remember what the runup to the election was like. there were 12,000 people who were killed in violence between the ifp and the anc, and the full expectation was that there was going to be huge amount of violence, and that it was going to be a disaster, and, largely, the election came off largely non-violencely, peacefully, and i think that moment is one of the things that sets the tone in addition to the truth and recop -- reconciliation commission and those places in south south africa life since then where people really expected explosions and huge amounts of violence, and they didn't have it. i think every time there's an expectation of the cat tas trough fee which media is really good at predicting and covering when it happens.

we're not quite as good as getting into the inner systems of what make people turn away to create a new way of being. >> talked about the place of truth and reconciliation commission. it's the part was the most exciting and exhilarating and most difficult to understand. >> yeah, you know, the truth in recop -- reconciliation commission got a lot of attention from around the world and got oprah-like treatment of what was going on in south africa. contrast that with the way people in the township talk to you if you asked them about the truth in reconciliation commission. they might say we got the truth, but not justice. we got truth and not necessarily

reconciliation, there was the protection from criminal charges of people who committed or risk crimes, and so i think it is -- that is a contested part of history. it is true, though, that if you travel around the country, you'll meet people, you'll meet family members of people who disappeared who said i was able to talk to the arch bishop and others on the commission, and i found out where my son was, where my son's body was, so there are -- you know, it's a difficult, complicated history and hard to sum up in a line or two. >> but when you talk about wanting justice, i mean, part of the whole conceit is that, in fact, it was not until after justice; right? in some ways, people have taken issue with just the notion of the truth in reconciliation

commission, and it was not how it operated or functioned, but the notion of having this idea of forgiveness, ultimately, what it was about. >> right, but there was a provision for compensation, and they are the condition that largely failed, and so there -- i think there was an expectation, still is an expectation on the part of lots of people who are involved in the struggle that those who were part of the former regime and whites who benefited, would at some point express some kind of grief over what took place, and i think that quite has not quite happened, so the process of the truth in reconciliation commission is people came and spoke their pain and discovered a lot of information because police officers, those part of

the army unites who killed people came forward and gave details, but there's a certain kind of undi jeesedded quality of it, but maybe because because it's under justice. >> the notion of truth in reconciliation is a difficult concept. it's about ultimately about forgiveness, and forgiveness, as you say, there's something oprah-like about it, facile, and yet it's difficult, and i'm not -- it's something i grapple with a lot in my work as well. i want to talk about the main character in the book, one of the favorite characters, and that's john, a young -- he's 16 when you meet him? >> 15. >> yeah, he's 15 years old, and what's interesting is 40% of the population is under 18 which has a number of implications, but one of which is obviously that notion of nation's history is

very compact and do not experience the struggle, and the other part, of course, in south africa, like so many other countries has been hit by the globalization of their economy and so it's led to, as it has here, this incredible divide between those who have and those who don't, and those who don't tend to be the young people, and john is this young boy who when you meet him is essentially homeless. >> yeah. he's living on the street, sleeping in an alley when i first meet him, having run away from a township nope as atlantis, not the mere rack cue louse place, but a real place part of the formal process of appartide, removing people, eliminating the black spots from places like cape town, and people were pushed out, in this

case, about 40 miles away from cape town, concentrated in areas where there was no industry and the rest of it, so we understand what it looks like, and the separation was imposed by law, and as a result, the drug economy, which john came up in his step dad was a big dealer, and he ran to the streets, so he becomes, in a way, the story intended to explain to people why south africa's still such a violence place, and what it is the logic that takes somebody who is a decent kid with a big struggle with his moral conscious about what he will do and won't do, but we see him go from being a run away, homeless run away, to becoming a beggar

to becoming a chief and then an armed thief and worse. he becomes our window in to how that happens for so many young south africans. >> and i'm curious, i mean, how are you able to win his trust the way you were? he talks about things that could get him in great trowel. >> yeah, you know, i had the -- i know you've had this experience too where you go and see somebody and you wonder how much of what they told you is true and weather you'll see them again. with each of the main six young people who stitched the narrative together for me, i probably had ten who i was thinking about playing a certain role, and john from the beginning, since i gotten to know street kids in johannesburg and capetown was one of those

kids whose story kept taunting me because of where he came from and the way in which he talked about the choices ahead for him, and it really probably was the fourth or fifth time i went and just hung out with him, which is always a challenging thing. you know, you're an older white guy from america hanging out with colored street kids, and as a result of that, you probably have to spend more time doing it until you fall into the background. with him i think he told me the whole story because i kept coming back and because i asked, because i kept asking. i remembered what he said the last time, and when he lied, i caught him out because i knew enough of his friends that i could say, you know, but that's not what colin says.

i caught him out enough times, and i checked up on his story enough times, and i think he was, you know, at a certain point astoppedded -- astownted -- astounded i was patient enough to come back, and he knew i cared about him. he knew that i had some respect for what he was facing, even as he also knew that i had deep concern and judgment about what he was deciding to do and the bad things that he was doing. >> i remember the part in the book where he talks about holding people up, and held up in cape town; right? by gun point, saying it could have. me, and he reflects on it more a moment, and, yet, still continues to justify what he's doing. it always astonishes me, i think, when you spend time with somebody like john that the natural reluctance and distrust people have, but i think in the end not a willingness, but no

one asked them anything about themselves, and so for the first time, they are forced to reflect on their own lives, and i sense that with john. >> yeah, and just as you were talking, i'ming this point when i went to see him, and there was the long, what i would do, always 15 -- i'm quite a bit older -- >> not much. >> i go to the dormitory, and i don't know what experience you've had talking to teenagers, but you don't sit across like i'm facing you. you sit sideways like alex and i, and probably i would be mostly looking at the ceiling asking him questions because that is the way i get the most interesting information, and that was the day he told me that we he killed people, and that he killed people for hire, and i

had a choice, you know, of either responding the way i was feeling, which is to be freakedded out, and i think there were, you know, in my relationship with him over time, there's been all kind of ethical questions that came up that i don't have bright line answers for. you know, one of the things that's a big challenge about doing this kind of story and this book is it plunges you in nuance difficult ethical questions that are not easy to answer, and the only way you escape them is by being deft to them or by pretending that they don't exist or by never including somebody like john in your narrative. >> right. no, it's interesting. i mean, both of us teach, and it's when you teach ethics,

clear ethics, but you are right in dealing with john. you are faced with conundrums and questions that you would never have considered. a couple questions, and we'll take them from you guys, but i'm curious what the reception of the book's been like in south africa. >> i expected that i would really get slammed in the reviews because, you know, there's a pattern of people coming from outside south africa to tell the south african story, and either to do the miracle story, you know, nelson mandela, the miracle leader of the exceptional place, the rainbow nation, ect.. you know, we tell the story and sing, do a little dance. one version, and the other version is it's all crap; right? it was all soiled and terrible tricks that the nc played, and

so i kind of figured that i would get pegged as one of the other, milan said i was immune to pessimism. that was criticism. i take that as a point of pride, kind of pessimism, but not soft headed or soft hearted about what i see. that's the kind of trip that i tried to make so the reviews had been quite good, seems to be selling, and sort of bracing for that first really brutal review. it has not happened yet. >> have you heard from zuma? >> indirectly from president zuma who gave he a lot of time, eight interviews, more time than anybody else ever had from him, and i expected, i don't know, actually what i expected.

he's still trying to absorb what he thinks of the -- it's the best way to put it. >> and my final question is, as i read the book, i couldn't help but think of the arab spring and sort of what it means to come out of the, you know, very difficult period as a nation and try to find your way to some kind of democratic rule, and i guess given your experience in south africa, what are the lessons that you see for a country like egypt, for instance? >> yeah, i think there's a whole bunch as we think about parts of the world where particularly there's a generational cleanse, a big generational agreement on cultural grounds, economic grounds, and the rest. one is that it's not -- revolt is not necessarily driven by economic hardship. the unemployment rate in egypt,

among young egyptians was much better than the unemployment rate among young blacks in south africa that the likelihood of an explows eve reaction is based on any expectation that there's some traction and that people are going to be able to get somewhere without a massive revolt. that's aless sop. the second lesson is is this generational question. is there a place for a generational voice and people to be allowed to shape their future without being dragged back into debates of the past? we see things developing in a sustained way in south africa partly because it occurred largely peacefully.

>> right. it's interesting, the rebel yon in south africa was not -- it was not necessarily driven by youth, up like in egypt or now as we see in turkey or syria -- >> but led by an older generation that was once young. >> all were once young. >> when you think about the uprising, that was 1976, so forced goo a guerrilla war, so you hope it doesn't take three decades for the airplane spring to yield more sustainable steps towards a fully democratic society. >> are there lessons you take from your time in south africa for here? >> absolutely. i think the biggest is 11 official languages.

and over the battles, the idea that we should be dealing with each other in two languages, well, i've just been bending a ton of time in a place where i only speak one of 11 official languages; right? you go to a place that's a wonderful place in newtown in johannesburg that represents a modernizing cultural place, a kind of african place, a place called cafe, and they do spoken word, and except in five or six or seven languages, and they'll walk in there and somebody begins a poem and then lapse into english, have a little

zulu, go into africon, and somehow that entire group of 300 people gets enough of the just what's going on to have the experience of that kind of cross cultural exchange that means people who come from -- who grew up speaking 11 different languages are in the room together and having one conversation so i think there's a ton that we have to learn about that. i think even though it will sound odd to say, i think we have a top to learn about how to talk about race from south africans, even though they are much more recently out of politics defined by an extreme, strange form of racial segregation. there's much more open conversation about race in

johannesburg or cape town or durbin or if you're in a township outs johannesburg than we have. we have two conversations going on. one in our head and then what's actually being said, and there's a big gap in that conversation. i don't think that's so true, at least in the circles that young people that i've been traveling in in south africa. i think those two things are big, and then the third thing that's important to say is that memorialized in the south african constitution is a commitment to social and economic justice to nonracialism, to nonsexism to making sexual orientation as protected as any other category and to social justice, and so there's a way in which at least the goals in the country and

party certainly falls short of the goals, but the goals are codified and understood as the core values of the country. >> i think we like to think that those are the core values here, but as you say, they are not often articulated in any real way. with that, opening it up to questions from the audience about what doug talked about, about the book, about south africa. meze. >> hi. >> hi. >> i'll go first. it's been said that the reason for the transition of power, the republican it was peaceful is because it didn't bring about any real economic reform, that ab sent, like, real lap redistribution, the unequalities were doomed to continue, and the poverty in the violence, could you comment on that? >> sure. thanks for the question.

the big accommodation that was made by the anc and the negotiations that led to the first election as you know were to keep the terms, private property rights, and the basic struts of the economy protected. that was the tradeoff. the crude way of putting it is the vote and the right to have an effect in politics in exchange for a no radical change in the economic structure, no radical redistribution of wealth so 80% of land, 80% of wealth is still held by whites, minorities of about 9%, and that entwining of race and class constrained the eight to feel political liberation followedded by economic liberation, and that's the biggest challenge for the government and for the society

of figuring out legal ways in which to alter dynamics, and, now, at the same time, in the last 19 years, 2 million black people have moved into middle income stratus. we want to be careful in terms of evaluating what's going on there, but certainly, that -- the entire thrust of the liberation movement was to disentwine these two things, race and class entwined for so long by law, and that that disentwining is a work in progress, and after 19 years responsible for, of course, the resentment among people who have a right to expect better and more progress.

>> hi, doug and alex. for those of us not following south africa that closely, we saw the photograph in the newspaper of mandela and zuma and mandela looked like he wanted to hit him over the head with a two-by-four, and i want to know what's behind that. is it that mandela doesn't like zuma? is it that he is disgusted or disapproves of the way he's governing in the direction of the south africa, or is he just a cranky guy who wants to be left alone. does anybody know what he thinks at this point about the direction of south africa, and does that photograph tell you anything? >> wow. [laughter] i guess i should say thank you for that question. [laughter] i think the people who i rely on

to tell me what he's doing is one of the informanets, and as a result of that, has given me good access into his thinking and what's happening in the family. the truth is he's a 9 had 4 -- 94-year-old man about to turn 95, and to a certain extent -- and very ill for the last couple years -- the last time i saw him in 2010, he said as my sop and i came into the room, it's nice that young people still come to see an old man who has nothing new to say. he's been trying hard for a long time to retire. he retired, retired from

retirement, retired from the private retirement trying to send the message both to south africans and the rest of us that he was done. he staged that event in which the leadership of the party was, you know, allowed to be photographed with him tells you how in secure some of the leaders are about whether they are seen as caring the man tell of mandela. there's a big struggle going on in south african politics to latch on to the legacy of mendel la, the spirit, about by the opposition, democratic alliance, and by the anc, and i think the reaction they got to that, those kind of staged photographs means that luckily for mandela and the rest of us, it won't happen

again. >> talk about the reaction because it was a controversial photograph. >> yeah, no, i mean, the video is just painful, you know, it's painful. it's the video of leaders including president zuma keep of trying to get his attention, trying to get him to smile, you know. that's the money shot. that's the shot they wanted, and i suspect he had the same kind of feeling towards them that he had to other visitors which it's amazing that younger people keep coming to see an old man who has nothing new to say, so i think that the public reaction, if you follow the blogs and the online reactions and also just listen to the chat shows which i do, you get up early, and you listen because it's seven hours ahead, there was a revulsion against the political class for this

crude, raising the banner of mandela, trying to use it to anoint themselves. you know, mandela was a disciplined member of the african national congress his entire life giving his whole life to the party and struggle. i'm sure when they toll him that morning what was going to happen, he agreed to it, but the point when somebody's 9 had 4 and 95 is people should know not to ask. >> when you talk to young people in disstress like john, what, if any programs were institutions do you hear that are doing them some good, whether it's government or faith based or other? >> i would say all of the above, and john, himself, has been reached by a small ngo in cape town working with homeless

street kids. i think during the points where he's in a struggle with the morm conference and getting off the street and not doing robberies, it's because of the amazing group of outreach workers. some of them are faith based, some simply, other young people who banded together and got funding, there's many, many great programs involving building. this particular ngo trains young men to be bakers, and he has succeeded in educating and placing in decent jobs dozens of people in similar situations like john. john's a limit difficult in that he doesn't want to be under anybody's thumb so it's hard for him as he goes to work at eight in the morning and some boss is telling him what to do.

i think there's -- in a way, it's a stand-in for some of the difficulty in the country in moving on. there was a, you know, an understandable call by the liberation movement to make the country ungovernable, to create a generation of people who were so rebellious that the old system could no longer survive, and what we are seeing partly in the maturation of things in south south africa is the new generation coming along for which rebellion is not enough, knowing when to rebel and when to build skills in order to construct a new country becomes more, a bigger part of the agenda. >> thank you, doug, and thank you, alex, and, you know, you

were talking a little about the -- what's -- the young people in south africa might have to say to the chern growing up in the arab spring. you know, i'm wondering if you have any comments for those palestine yaps growing up in a system which many identify as very similar to south africa, looking forward to what strengths can they find and draw of what's going on as young people mature, you know, are able to find in growing up. what words would you have to say to the young palestinians growing up now? >> yeah, i mean, there's a deep identification in south africa with the palestinian struggle. partly because during the years when the nc was deemed a terrorist organization in the

u.s., the plo was one of the biggest supporter of the dnc so because of the history and also because of the way the conflict is reported in south africa, there's a kind of deep identification, and i think to the extent that the interview subjects i had talked about it is a kind of identification around the possibilities of seemingly ire recon siebl differences potentially being bridged because you'll be in townships or parts of johannesburg where people are suddenly in school with an afr africon speaking white person whose parent probably supported a division, and people are in schools, socials situations,

networks together, and i think to the extent that they are thinking about the middle east opposed to what's happening down the treat, the mdges is message is sometimes it's reconcilable where they can peacefully tolerate one another. >> thank you. >> time for one last question. anybody who? >> well, doug, thank you very much.

[applause] [applause] >> richard baker and neil mcneil, the former chief congressional correspondent for "time" magazine, provide a history of the united states senate. stephen king argues that continued economic growth is a historical anomaly in the collapse is eminent in when the money runs out, the end of western influence. and across the pond, this literary critic provides a humorous look at american culture. jerry dewitt recounts his struggle with identity. look for these titles this coming week in bookstores, these

books are coming to a bookstore near you. the book is a chain of thunder. this is a little over one hour. >> i wanted to talk about this. this is part of the story. it is a story that is so important that many of us don't know. but i needo