hello i'm john martin in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight are the big picture it's friday which means it's time for conversations with great minds and i we have kumi naidoo executive director of greenpeace international will discuss his mission around the world and small truths passed as a young activist in south africa are you ready to rumble and tonight's big picture rumble will break down the top stories of the week what's the endgame in wisconsin for governor scott walker and why is the g.o.p. all launching an assault on women's reproductive rights and later

a daily take on who's really over paid. for through his conversations with great minds i'm honored to have joined me kumi naidoo a human rights activist environmentalist road scholar now serves as the international executive director of greenpeace international community thank you were three happy to have you here with that some of you. first i'd like to talk about your your early life and what brought you to worry you are now you were you were born and grew up in south africa under apartheid and at the age of fifteen became an ad. mr

mack country can you tell us about that but that was like and what what motivated you at that young age to get into that. there was a national student uprising against the quality of education and i school students throughout the country organize together with university students to be honest we didn't understand you know a big politics of being for example the slogan at the front of the march was we want equality but the time the slogan got to the back of the budget was we want the color t.v. because the because kids in white schools had color as you know what it is in fact the most popular slogan was u.k. i would teach is peanuts no one think of us monkey education and so from. all of these cases because of the state responding with brutal repression. and we were expelled from school as a result of need those of us will lead is that actually the kind of

enabled one's movement sort of into passionate activism and then going forward in. community organizing against system as well as joining the on the ground of the liberation movement. what how old were you when apartheid felt. i was in my i was about thirteen and so it was after you had left the country. in one nine hundred eighty expelled from school. continued to try to finish school by studying from textbooks and so on and then a few teachers you know from our schools to come to our house and teach us one to one so that we could register for like a second chance examination to school teachers are very scared to appear to be supporting us those of us with leaders because. that oppression was so much you

know this is the clerk this was p.w. botha yeah and you know and so. you know the reality of that time was that we would be candid funerals having no friends and i was that we killed we lived with them in tallahassee at that time that you know our lives could be lost at any time and you know somebody like me now is still alive and still struggling in you know for justice i often think about my life now is that i'm living on borrowed time because so many of my close friends and activists even people i recruited into the struggle. they lost their lives. been in one nine hundred eighty six a national state of emergency was declared you know has the resistance was growing stronger and stronger and. i was. the first maybe five.

charged with you know violating the state of emergency the same thing happened again in eighty six but during this time one at some of the tricks of living underground and still continuing to organize so for example of a look at what's happening in egypt lebanon but the site now full with the liberation and pride to see what's happening but it's a sense of. so eventually though by one thousand nine hundred seven when i was twenty two i had to flee south africa because i had a code would some of my clothes after this friends. who were already arrested. about how much they knew i watched the police knew based on the interrogations of the code. i was studying the law and i had finished the first part of floor and i moved on to political scientists and if anybody asked me would you ever go back to laurie's to say that my late. teens were allowed. the law if i get

a prison sentence i'll study what would possess and so the news came out to me the prospects for your legal career look very promising. idea that you know about on the ground it's a pity and so i fled a page of twenty two to that end and you got a rhodes scholarship to give account of the funny story because i really didn't know much about what the rhodes scholarship was and so on but i had a very progressive professor and she helped me she gave me these applications forms to sign them while while actually on the run and in december eighty six i went to cape town i moved. into cape town and for the interview for the first time my first stop was over to. twelve finalists you know for that old scholarship for scholarships and i was the only black rhodes scholar you know of the whole panel was pretty much white and i got asked the

question by a supreme court judge at that time who was the chair for. selection committee this is still apartheid africa focus of their poll and not only was it a part they did it was when the resistance was at its peak and if you were known to be a part of. i mean i was i was you know a student leader i had a reasonably high profile in my city but not a national profile and the question was you know if you have made the minister of education i would you sort of patient problem announcer was. with all due respect that's a very eve question because that assumes the education system is separate from the overall political crisis we have which is a lack of democracy and so on and the thing was i was very lax i never thought it was good it was quite surprised that evening i got the call that i had been offered the old scholarship which was the seventy six so i called home to tell my brother

and. these people have been stupid enough to offer me that scholarship. don't couple. so that i did eventually get back to cape town. from cape town to live underground for about four months and eventually he was encouraged by flames and we in prison for get out of the country because they said you know if you get arrested going to just have a long prison sentence so much of a seven talks and i'm wondering what your thoughts are. how that transition ranch what lessons might be learned from the transition including the reconciliation commission. and the current status of it. i think that one of the things that's most inspiring about the resistance to take a trip that we see in the middle east is how committed folks to maintaining

a peaceful way off actually it was a state. when in fact people have actually when they have been violence on the protests the side it's been building with ability it's been more in terms of defense in egypt and likes of that and say and i do think that you know nelson mandela was inspired leadership. trying to ensure that we understood what we were fighting about we would not was really helpful because you know as a young activists at the age of fifteen you see things in black and white terms what is it that you are fighting and what is it that you are not. well personally i think of kenya talking about fighting white people. and the white power structure and the white power as well what he said is you have to actually make a distinction between the people and the system and we're not fighting right people we're fighting a system of rueful institutionalized racism had been you know very soon once i got

more actively involved i found some of my closest to the sprints were actually white south africans and i'm being inclusive and you know obviously you had to spin it because you know people were worried about with this some of the folks might be spies and so on but i also think that the challenge of healing after the major major struggle is very gritty and the trip and we can see nation commission process was not perfect it happens weaknesses but he did try to create the enabling environment for healing between our place in our place to actually happen by for example that close friend. young woman calls on the who was arrested in. was kidnapped from swaziland brought to south africa she had a young child a child then left the child even if like with the rest of the courts to south

africa be tortured and the pipes turned into estate agent and she refused and we didn't know what happened to her and actually in that time you know paranoia was a big thing in fact you say just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not looking for you. and you know i knew that there's no way she could have sold out i mean she was one of my leaders in a way. we never knew what happened you know there was like just confusion about what happened the little boy was growing up and so on and the person who killed it came forward in the. it took them a consolation commission process. and said what happened it was exactly as i had some of the closest friends they tortured or they tried to kill or i mean that they said they were killers at the bench and she said i'm not going to kill me look at me i'll look you in the eye when you shoot me and the bullet went right through

the head when the took out the skull from that they took it to the. equally to help with it bury the. remains riggs you the bullet was actually right through the. you know through the center forward and so but the important thing is. we need to recognise that the people that pull the guns people actually execute the violence in the frontline. often acting on the instructions of people with power people who make the policies and people so my best friend was murdered in. something called the night he was murdered. in a ambush with three young women from my home city and the person that killed him. he. actually because i see them but it's not something because you are acting under the policies of the government and by that very often those people

themselves are very weak and i had friends who went off to vietnam and came back carrying the burden of having killed people to the point where they couldn't go with that one committed suicide so we're talking with with coming into the international executive director of greenpeace international and we're back with more with come in just a. what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions. made who can you trust no one who is in view with the overall mission to receive where we had a state controlled capitalism and school session when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question more. than here broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture.

for flimsy low and. rachel that isn't limited to nothing people are suggesting she's told her no she says she can't stop. the. leak case.

and we're back with conversations with great minds i'm speaking tonight with human rights activist environmentalist and international executive director of greenpeace international community do. we talk in the first segment about your own personal history in south africa and as. an activist and leader and in a movement against not just apartheid but unrighteousness or or i like

a word you know. why green peace how does that translate into green yes well. i don't know some of those at least i work what they have voluntarily out there to set up a and c. is the legal political party to prepare it for the elections and in the course of the process felt that you can vote in the freedom struggle is one thing but preparing for thoughtful politics or something. and i decided to stay out of the civil society and took my energies into actually. at all to education and deal nonprofit work and worked in the one part work state and civil society had also tried to define the relationship between civil society and i do democratic government because i'm out of most of her personal friends of it all with the cap of it and so we evolve the call critical still about you know that we've been sold out of view this democratic government but we want the will to sight and to be able to have. the space to be critical and so on so most of them for the last ten years

i was working at the global it will force the because we're the lions for citizen participation which is looking at strengthening. the role of civil society globally and my focus has been more of you know human rights democracy and poverty activists and they probably think but over the last you know i mean say two thousand and five in two thousand and ten all these struggles were coming together and increasing the you couldn't address poverty without understanding our in fact environmental destruction was exacerbating poverty and so on and vice versa and diceless i salute you and then i began to do this the whole range of volunteer work work within the environmental sector by serving on boards of and by them in groups including greenpeace africa but the truth is. call for greenpeace but i was. on the nineteenth day hunger strike to put pressure on my government in

south africa to change its support for the occasion ship him off robert mugabe in zimbabwe. so the call comes that and i say to folks peg somebody on it but the timing is really bad i'm just being a lot of days ago at a big such a big choice but that evening my daughter. who was fourteen was forty of the time called from the for the u.k. she had seen me on b.b.c. that was like looking a bit skeletal so she called why are you still doing interviews and so on. i'm going so well you know you look so put i mean i said no darling great i'll be. speaking to you and i spoke to the folks from greenpeace today and she said. what they want to say about the offer to talk about the story and support you say no bad timing it's that i won't talk to you every game if you don't get the seeds to

consider this when you finish a stupid hunger strike. but from the mouths of babes and that's why when she said well greenpeace is about the future of this world it's good organization that you know not only talks but takes action and does so peacefully it's it's about my future and i think it was a real shocking proposition in some ways because i didn't realize how concerned she as many other young people are about the future because when we talk about you know addressing climate change in the adverting a catastrophe. you know it might sound like a job or good not be a talking about securing the future of our children and grandchildren yes you know and and the truth is you know something that upsets the reason i would mean peace is because my daughter said i should go to that now that's marvelous i m how many countries is one piece are very well. in every continent we have physical offices but we actually work in places where we don't have offices as well so for example

we don't have on the ground presence in venezuela in colombia but we have a virtual office you know and we have fallen to groups and so on we truly global. you know we have a big office in china with one hundred staff in the problem and growing number of volunteers and. right now given who makes all of them by the mental challenges that we face it's important for us to be truly global in our intention what what in your opinion is the greatest threat to humanity. well without any doubt to be catastrophic climate change is the biggest threat because it threatens the video existence of this planet as we know it notwithstanding the climate the nihilists funded by the fossil fuel industry by the likes of the pope in the streets and so on we have contaminated the public debate here in the united states that reality is that the climate scientists predict that we have to get

emissions to peak as soon close to twenty fifteen and. if we are to have to start a club or change the reality that people don't understand the climate impacts happening now right already about three hundred thousand lives in two thousand and eight we can show a loss that it can be through climate impacts as some elements in the cia and the pentagon quickly say that in fact the biggest financial clicks to peace and stability is going to come from climate change and in fact resource wars are going to be put off to be if we don't get this right now it's just that we're already having exactly duffle use of resources here i mean if you look at the facts i want to scarcity and you have been i was i was a go to charge i'm a sub on. sudanese border with star four yeah we had the door for the refugees coming across with the immense because that the young does that the few cases and

then you add to that that it was the discovery of oil down the road and the chinese coming in and sort of there it was it's a. great one of the knocks on greenpeace has been that you hear from mostly governments is the greenpeace doesn't respect national sovereignty the japanese think about this a particular with regard to whaling but but many other issues. what's what is your notion or if you'd rather speak as a spokesperson for greenpeace what is the official notion of. what national sovereignty ism and to what extent it has legitimacy and should be respected or shouldn't be or should be challenged. you know. if there was a slogan that said think globally act locally what was behind it so it was us because the issues we were trying to address at the national and local level we needed to understand better process global institutions for mobile discourse global

power had an impact on what you could or could not achieve at the local or national level however one of the ironies of the moment of history that we're living in is precisely where countries like my own south africa the success of states of the former soviet union we're getting the mark received for the first time in one thousand eight in one thousand is the real power was moving from the national to the global level you know certainly about the environment around free. currency management even if. only there's a pen mimic not respect borders but life saving promise you take all drugs is not the pricing is not to tell them that the national level it's determined at the global level through patenting bodies and so on so today if we are to address some of the big challenges that we face we have to address that mr lobel challenges. really a pro-government who say you know we are for national sovereignty and so on but in fact we as greenpeace respect the rights of people in their own countries much more

that they actually would suggest and therefore they are in all the countries we are operating it's people from those countries that. leading our fight in japan for example the two people that trial. trial for exposing corruption and waiting to see our japanese colleagues so so i'm very committed to ensure that we build a very diverse. presence on the ground in many countries and ultimately it will be people from those countries as we're seeing already that up. the pressure on governments to see this at thing is as you know politicians know that they have to place a noble for example in every speech that he gave in the election always use the phrase a planet in peril you know if you're searching to see if you can get a planet in peril was a constant consistent so he gets that a lot of the political leadership in the world get it now we need them and

greenpeace and other organizations and necessary to keep the pressure for them to act with urgency but the situation calls for so that we can actually secure the future for future generations so there's an old. political anecdote or better for whatever that. one the parade gets large enough going down the street got a politician will jump out in front of the flag and say this is michael or parade or you're creating a parade and the politicians presumably will follow although they will claim that their leading what what are the what are the major areas where greenpeace is working but it. will not physical or is it to you know a big challenge is. defending the oceans because the because of overfishing we have destroying the biodiversity in the oceans and we actually. will ensure that certain species our children in future generations will never be able to enjoy but also it will actually destroy the health of the oceans especially

the increase carbon in the which is not being absorbed by the forests landing in the oceans and turning those sort of i should say the ocean acidification is in defending your father's. all of these things and linked in a way to climate change with defending the thought was the photos in the past you know meant let's use them in we talk about picking by the diversity which is important but today we can talk about the force being the lungs of the planet and that makes the connection between the funding for the. and the livelihoods of people who live in the forest but also everybody that's you know quite connected but we also do a lot of work six right now you know we do a lot of work around. in the u.s. army hole. and and also we. are promoting sustainable agriculture and now i'm going to maine opposed to genetically modified foods yeah those are the

main strands of all others with fasting started it was just. largely being distributed today about a new microorganisms industry associated with genetically modified foods it was a very scary you know one of those in any case in the in the minute or so we have left what is the most important message that as the director executive director peter you both the carry on message that you want to share with our viewers that all of us have to get involved this is not about lying on politicians or activists like myself or you know inspired me it is that this is a life and death struggle all of us need to find ways in which we can participate right now we've got a campaign against facebook then coverage mark zuckerberg and this could be to. build a dot a center that is based on coal fired electricity you can go on to facebook for

example and send those messages in your own communities get involved in the issues that are around you but most importantly keep the pressure on our political leaders to ensure that we have a. stupid use carbon emissions and to turn climate change into an option if we can generate millions of these thousand jobs in the new green economy that that's two things that it actually helps development helps prosperity of the wanted but also addresses the challenges of the. we all have the choice we can either be part of the solution or part of the problem and silence choosing to be part of the parts were all part of it coming into effect thanks so much for the. question of coming up next we'll sit down with the panel political commentators to discuss the biggest stories of the week wisconsin protests to more republican hysteria about sharia law big picture rubble is next.

what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to . me who can you trust no one who is you know you with the noble mission we see where we had a state controlled capitalism it's called sessions when nobody dares to ask we do our tea question more. urban here broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture.