welcome back to the big picture i'm sam hartman in washington d.c. coming up in this half hour we'll revisit a conversations with great minds conversation that i had back in february with kumi naidoo the international executive director of greenpeace an economy tells the

story of his extraordinary life as a human rights activist growing up in apartheid south africa and what changes we need to make starting right now to turn back the tide of global warming enjoy. fertilise conversations with great minds i'm honored to have joining kumi naidoo a human rights activist environmentalist road scholar now serves as the international executive director of greenpeace international comit welcome thank you very very happy to have you here with us to be. the first i'd like to talk about your your early life and what brought you to where you are now you were you were born and grew up in south africa under apartheid and at the age of fifteen

became an activist in that country can you tell us about that what that was like and what what motivated you to at that young age to get into that. it was that national student uprising against the quality of education and i school students throughout the country these programs together with you know with the students to be honest we didn't understand you know the big politics of being for example so that with the front of the march was if you want the quality of the time the slogan go to the back of the box that was we want the color t.v. goes because kids in white schools of color as you know what it is that are the bull's populist slogan was you pay our teachers peanuts the one the they give us money. and so from and with all of these cases because of the states responding with brutal repression and we were expelled from

school as a result of. those of us would lead is that actually been kind of enabled one's movement sort of into passionate activism and then got involved in. community organizing against the system as well as joining. the liberation movement . what how old were you when apartheid felt. i was in my i was about thirty and so it was after you had left the country no so in one nine hundred eighty expelled from school in punting you to try to finish school by starting from textbooks and so on and then a few teachers you know from our school i came to our house and teach us one to one so that we could register for like a second chance examinations and finish school teachers were very scared to appear to be supporting us those of us with leaders because the depression was so much you

know this is the clerk this was p.w. botha. and you know and so. you know the reality of that time was that we were every weekend at funerals getting no friends and activists that killed we lived with that mentality at that time that you know our lives lost any time. you know somebody like me and i was 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 out to complete it to the struggle. you know they lost their lives. in nineteen eighty six a national state of emergency was declared you know has the resistance was growing stronger and stronger and. i was. the first name.

charged with you know violating the state of emergency the same thing happened again in eighty six but during this time. of living underground and still continuing to organize so for example one look at what's happening in egypt in the middle east right now food with deep admiration and pride to see the what's happy but it's a sense of deja vu so eventually though by one hundred eighty seven when i was twenty two i had to flee south africa because i had. some of my close activists friends. who were already arrested. about how much they knew i was the police knew based on the interrogations of the code as i was studying law and i had finished the first part of floor and i moved on to political science and if anybody else we would you ever go back from the war used to say it really. means well i do know if i get

a prison sentence i'll study lord prison and so the news came out to me the prospects for your legal career look very promising. idea that you're enough about on the ground activity and so i fled to think that and and you got a rhodes scholarship if you can well that was a funny story because i really didn't know much about what that would scholarship and so on but i had a very progressive professor and she helped she gave me these application for asylum well while actually on the run. and in december eighty six i went to cape town i live in the. cape town and. in the interview for the first time i flew for. twelve finalists you know for that old scholarship for ford scholarships and i was the only black.

in the whole panel was pretty much white. i got asked by the supreme court judge at that time it was the chair of the broad selection committee now this is still apartheid africa took place of the old and not only was it a puppet it was when the resistance was a bit speak it was you were known to be a part of oh yeah i mean i was i was you know a student leader had a reasonably high profile in my city but not you know national profile and the question was you know if you had made the minister of education i would you stop the education problem so was. that with all due respect that's a very very eve cristen because that assumes education system we separate from the overall political crisis we have which is the lack of democracy and so on and the thing was i was really relaxed i never thought it was kid it was quite surprised that he got the call that i did offer the old scholarship which was the seventy six

so i called who told my brother if. these people had been stupid enough to offer me the scholarship. so that i would i did eventually get back to cape town. from cape town to the underground for about four months and eventually i was encouraged by my friends and we present to get out of the country because they said you know if you get it it's going to just have a long prison sentence so much of a seven tops and i'm wondering what your thoughts are of how that transition well and what lessons might be learned from the transition including the reconciliation commission. and the current. i think that one of the things that's most inspiring about the resistance to me dictatorship that missing in the middle east he's. committed folks to maintaining

a peaceful way of actually it was a state. when in fact people have actually when there has been violence on the protests aside it's been very minimal and it's been more in terms of the fence anything like south africa and say i do think that you know someone that's inspired leadership. trying to ensure that we understood what we were fighting about even more was really helpful because you know as a young activists at the age of fifteen you will see things in black and white but what is it that you are fighting a war is that that you are not well personally at the age of fifteen you thought you were fighting white people and. the white power structure and the why pose well with what ease is you have to actually make a distinction between the people and the system and we're not fighting white people we are fighting a system of rueful institutionalized racism and then you know very soon once i got

more actively involved some of my closest friends were actually white south africans. and being inclusive and that you know obviously you had to skin it because you know people what do you know about with this some of the folks might despise them and so on but i also think that the challenge of healing after a major major struggle is very big and the consummation commission process was not perfect it had its weaknesses but he did try to create a enabling environment for healing between our place in a place specially happen i think example that a close friend. younger. in close 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 in

a flat with the rest of the daughter to south africa tortured in the tried to turn into a state agent and she refused and we didn't know what happened to her and actually you know at that time you know paranoia was a big thing for you to say just because you paranoid doesn't mean we're not looking for you. and you know i knew that there's no way she could have sold out even she was one of my leaders in a way. you never knew what happened you know that 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 truth and reconciliation commission process. and said what happened and it was exactly as some of the closest friends they tortured or they tried to kill i mean that this is a deal killer and eventually she said i'm not going to turn kill me i don't look at me i look you in the eye when you shoot me and the bullet went right through your

head when the took out a skull from the. he pointed up with. the. remains riggs you know the bullet was actually like through. you know through the center of a forest and so but the important thing is. we need to recognize that the people that pull the guns are people who actually execute the violence in the front. often acting on the instructions of people with power people who make policies and people so my best friend was murdered. somebody calling i was murdered. in a ambush with a young woman from the city and the person that can. with the conviction. he. i hold no hate for me because i see them as much as the because he was acting on the policies of the government and well and very often those people themselves are

very weak but 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 bear with it one committed suicide so we're talking with with coming into the international executive director of greenpeace international we are back with more with come in just a. few . what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions

it's breakthrough it's already been made who can you trust no one who is human view with a global mission would see where we had a state controlled capitalism is called sasha's when nobody dares to ask we do our t.v. question more. and more back in 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. in a movement against and not just apartheid but unrighteousness or or i like

a word you know. why green peace how does that translate into green peace after. nelson mandela was of the east worked what the of poland had me up at the set up they can see is an evil political party to prepare for the elections. in the course of the process that began more than the freedom struggle was one thing but preparing for formal caltex was something quite different i decided to stay out of the civil society and took my energies into actually. adult education and deal with nonprofit work and work in the nonprofit work strengthen civil society and also try to define the relationship between civil society and the beautiful credit government. most of her personal friends although in the cabinet. and so we all of the so called political some of that you know that we would sort of attitude is that we create a government but we want that civil society to be able to have the space to be. critical and so also and then for the last ten years i was working at the global

level for some because well the alliance for citizen participation which is looking at strengthening. the role of civil society globally and my focus is being more human rights democracy and poverty activists and make policy but over the last you know between three. thousand and five and two thousand and ten all these struggles were coming together and increasingly you couldn't address property without understanding how in fact environmental destruction was exacerbating poverty and so on and vice versa and vice versa so i saluted and then i began to use the whole range of the islands here would work with them by the people second by serving on boards of environmental groups including greenpeace africa but the truth is. i got the call from lead peace when i was. on the nineteenth day off a hunger strike to put pressure on my government in south africa to change its

support for the occasion shipped him off robert mugabe in zimbabwe. so the call comes that i say to folks reg somebody on it but the timing is really bad just me the water from nineteen days ago at a big such a big choice but that evening my daughter. was fourteen it was forty that i called from the from the u.k. she had seen me on b.b.c. and she thought it was like looking a bit skeletal so she corset why are you still doing interviews and so on. i'm getting so why do you do it so you look so good and then i said oh darling very holy spirit speaking to you and i spoke to the folks from greenpeace and she said. what they want to see with the birth of the talk about the strobe and support you say bad timing is that i won't talk to you. every game if you don't get me see this to consider this when you finish

a strip of hunger strike. but from the mouths of babes and i say why didn't you said well greenpeace is about the future of this world it's amazing. you know not only talks but takes action with us so peacefully it's it's about my future and i think it was a real shock came composition in some ways because i didn't realize how concerned she has many other young people about the future because when we talk about you know addressing climate change and putting a catastrophe. you know it might sound like a job you're talking about the security of your future for children and grandchildren you know and the truth is even though some people get upset the reason over two million pieces because my daughter sociable you know that's marvelous i i'm going to countries is one piece operating but when every continent we have the 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 colombia but we have a virtual office you know. we have fallen through the groups and so on we truly global. you know we have a big office in china with one hundred staff and the problem and growing number of volunteers. right now given the. nature of the mud a mental challenges that we face it's important for us to be truly global innovation what what in your opinion is the greatest threat to humanity. well without any doubt a catastrophic climate change is the biggest threat because it threatens the very existence of this planet as we know it not withstanding the climate denial is funded by the fossil fuel industry by the likes of the pope and mistress and so on compare many to the public debate the ending. it states that reality is that the

climate science is pretty clear that we have to get emissions to peak as soon close to twenty fifteen and. if we are to catastrophic perpetrators the reality that people need to understand he's applied with impacts happening now right already about three hundred thousand lives in two thousand and eight so we can calculate and show the loss that it can be through climate impacts as some elements and with the pentagon quickly say that in fact the biggest future threats to peace and stability is going to come from climate change and in fact resource was going to be the order of the d. we don't get this right no it's just that we're already having exactly duff food is that we sort of i mean if you look at the water scarcity and you have been i was well i was a go to insurance on the sub the sudanese border with star for you know we had the jar for the refugees coming across and what this has immense because that the young does that if occasion and then you add to that what is the discovery of oil down

the road and the chinese coming in and absolutely it's a. great one of the knocks on greenpeace has been that you hear from mostly governments which is that greenpeace doesn't respect national sovereignty the japanese secret about this in particular with a greater 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 is him and to what extent it has legitimacy and should be respected or shouldn't be or should be challenged. you know even. if there was a slogan that said think globally act locally what was good that's what was it was the issues we were trying to place at the national or local level we needed to understand. processes global institutions global discourse global power had an

impact on what you could or could not achieve at the local or national it would however one of the ironies of the moment of history that we are living in is precisely with countries like north south africa the successive states of the former soviet union were getting democracy for the first time in one thousand eight hundred ninety s. the real power was moving from the national to the global you know certainly on the environment free. currency management even an issue not only does the pandemic not respect borders but life saving promise if you can drugs is not the pricing it's not the national level it's determined at the global level through plate and then bodies and so on so today if we are to address some of the big challenges that we face we have to address them it's global child at this stage many of the governments who say you know we are for national sovereignty and so on that in fact we as greenpeace respect the rights of people in their own countries much more than

the actually would suggest and therefore in all the countries we're operating it's people from those countries that. leading our fight so in japan for example the people that are on trial and trial for exposing corruption i'm willing to see a japanese colleagues. so i'm very committed to ensure that we build a very diverse presence on the ground in many countries and ultimately will be people from those countries as we're seeing already that are putting the pressure on governments to show the can see the stepping in such as you know pollution snow that they have president obama for example in every speech that he gave in the election always use the phrase a planet in peril you know. yes we can but a planet in peril was a crisis consistent so he gets it a lot of the political leadership. in the world get it now we need greenpeace and

other organizations and necessary to keep the pressure for them to see the situation calls for so that we can actually secure the future for future generations so there's no. political anecdote or metaphor or whatever that. when the parade gets large enough going down the street then a politician will jump out in front of the flag and say this is viable or parade it is you're creating the parade and the politicians presumably will follow although they will claim that they're leading what what are the what are the major areas where greenpeace is working what are they. not now physical or is it. you know a big challenge is. defending the oceans because the because of overfishing we have destroying the biodiversity in the oceans and b. actually we. will ensure that certain species that i would children in future generations will never be able to enjoy but also it will actually destroy the

health of the oceans especially when the increase carbon in the which is not being absorbed by the thought of since landing in the oceans and turning those are the i should. occasion this book in defending your forests. the all of these things and the way to prime the change with the filming the photos the photos in the past you know it's just i mean we talk about picking the city which is important but today we can talk about the force being the lungs of the planet and that makes the connection between filling forests and the my view of people who live in forest but also everybody as you know quite connected but we also do a lot of work. right now. you know we are doing a lot of work. in the u.s. coal. and and also we are promoting cesspit in the agriculture and i'm going to be in a position to make the modified. foods. are those are the main strands of it

whether the fasting started it was just. largely being distributed today about a new microorganisms seems to be 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 he said you was the carry on message that you want to share with our viewers but all of us have to get involved this is not about lying on politicians or activists like myself or you know inspired leaders that this is a life and that struggle all of us need to find ways in which we can participate right now but a campaign against facebook play in college mark zuckerberg and this could lead to . a data center that is based on. 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 if. we didn't insist targets to use carbon emissions and turn climate change into an opportunity we can generate millions of decent jobs in the new green economy that does two things that it actually helps development helps perspective the human one it also addresses the challenges the plan by the mint and the other and we all of the choice we can either be part of the solution or part of the problem and silence would be choosing to be part of the right spectacular world part of it coming into effect thanks so much for being.

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