021 What two South African geographers learned from Nelson Mandela about rugby, restitution and removing monuments

So we adopted a protest, you know, these other statues are fine, but they cannot dominate. Because, you know, cream Victoria was a colony, some of these other guys were. Yeah, they had slaves. One of the problems with the Confederate statues, they're on pedestals, and they demand your attention. You have to look up to them, whether you want to or not. You got a Richmond Virginia down the street, that's it. You can't miss it, it dominates. Yeah, they're part of their history, but frankly, I don't want to look up at them all day. I don't want to be forced to look up to them. So yeah, they can survive, almost as reminders of what you probably shouldn't do. So we were able then to add things. So we have sites of international. You can walk in the footsteps of Gandhi and Mandela in the city. You don't have to demolish anything else. You simply build up those two iconic figures on what they meant. From Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, this is sound effect. Here's your host, Megan Hayes. On this episode of Sound Effect, we have two guests who share a common history and interests. Robert Haswell was a senior lecturer in geography at the University of Natal, Peter Maritzburg, between 1974 and 1989, before entering Parliament in South Africa, first as a member of the Democratic Party, and then as an African National Congress member of Parliament, from 1989 to 1994. Between 1996 and 2010, he served as the municipal manager and senior executive manager of the M. Sunduzi Municipality. He is a board member of the Amgangan-Bulavu Economic Development Agency. As a geographer and as a political activist, he has written extensively on the cultural geography of place and memory, racial landscapes, racial and social justice, and sports as mediators of political antagonisms. Haswell speaks on meeting and working with Nelson Mandela, and he's on our campus to share this lecture as well as to engage more deeply with some of our students and faculty. Robert Haswell, welcome to our campus and welcome to Sound Effect. Thanks very much, it's great to be here. Darrell Krueger began his tenure as Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor at Appalachian State University in July 2015. Krueger came to Appalachian from the University of New Orleans, where he was dean of the College of Education and Human Development. He holds a doctorate in geography from Louisiana State University. In addition to the University of New Orleans, he has held administrative and faculty posts at Illinois State University, and has been on faculty at the University of Louisiana at Monroe and Louisiana State University. Krueger's historical geography research, publications and presentations focus on South Africa and the United States. And his fellowship appointments include the Harvard Graduate School of Education's Institute for Educational Management, the American Council on Education, and the Fulbright Group Project Abroad, South Africa. Darrell Krueger, thank you for joining us on Sound Effect. Glad to be here, thanks Megan. So I'd like to start with you Darrell, could you take a moment to talk about why you invited Rob Haswell to our campus and what you hope our campus will gain from his visit? Certainly, Rob, first and foremost, as a geographer, as you mentioned, is an exceptional teacher, and I had the privilege of studying with him nearly 30 years ago. And I think given Appalachian's commitment to teaching and learning, I thought him coming to campus and interacting with some classes, which he did, would be very beneficial as a teacher. But equally importantly, Rob also is worked in local government, and I think if much of his work is kind of a plaid cultural historical geography, and given some of the things we continue to wrestle within the United States, I think we can learn from his experience as a academic geographer working in an applied sense. If I can give you a specific example, I think right now, nationally we continue to speak about Confederate monuments and memorials, and there's lots of discussion around those, and I think some of the work that Rob and folks in Peter Merritt'sburg worked on, it's been possible for them to be more inclusive and take more of an additive approach rather than a subtractive approach. So I think as a campus we can learn much from Rob's experience, and I think the students did in the presentation and discussion last night was informative and fruitful. I'm looking forward to hearing more about that. Can you talk a little bit about, I know you'd share a professional history, can you talk about how the two of you met and how you got to know Rob? Yeah, Rob and I met back in 1988. I just finished a bachelor's degree and was looking at either study geography or town planning, and I remember going to the University of Peter Merritt'sburg where Rob worked, and I'd never heard of what cultural geography was, and I said to Rob, what is this cultural geography? And he said, "Don't worry, come here, you'll enjoy it." And so I went to Peter Merritt'sburg in 1988 and studied with him and three other faculty, and because of that experience I decided to come to graduate school at LSU to work on a master's degree and eventually a PhD. And as Rob also mentioned, he does have some connections with LSU, so that's sort of our academic connection. And so we've known each other for about 30 years, and it continues to be a fruitful and enjoyable relationship. Rob's been a very, very good mentor, so thank you for that again. So Rob has, well, I'm interested in your work at LSU, and in particular I read an interesting anecdote about how the LSU Rugby Club came into being, so can you tell us a little about your work there, and particularly talk about the Rugby Club and how it came into existence. Okay, how did I know this would come up? You know, if you born white in South Africa and you have two arms and two legs, you play rugby. Let me give you an example. In the South African High School, you enter high school, let's say you're 12 years old, that school will fill an under 13 A, B, C, D, E, F team, under 14, the same, under 15 the same, and then senior teams, first, second, third, fourth, fifth. So in any good rugby play in high school, on an average Saturday, 15, 16 rugby teams will play against the teams from another school. So rugby for white South Africans, particularly of Afrikaans background is pretty much a religion, which may be under 18, it's important incidentally. So I had played rugby at high school, I had played rugby at the University of the Tv, to Artists Rundin, Johannesburg, got to LSU in 1970, I'd finished a master's degree at Sunnidol in Neu, so I had a three year period where I fiddled around with flag football, basketball, there was no rugby there. And I'd actually thought, well, basically my rugby playing days are over. Two guys walked into my room and said, "Are you the white South African guy that's just joined the faculty?" And I said, "Yes, they said, "You play your interest in rugby?" And I said, "Yeah." And the one guy pulled out a rather battered, rather round rugby ball and said, "Well, we'd like you to start rugby." And I said, "Wait a minute, wait a minute." And turned out the one guy had played some rugby in Maryland. The other guy was a real southerner, and he told me, "Yes, we tried a couple of years ago, we had a game, but it ended in a brawl." So I immediately said, "Well, look guys, I love rugby, it's part of me, but who are we going to play against?" No, he said, "Don't worry, there's a team in Hammond, Louisiana, there's a team in Tulane, there's Loyola, Bring Hill College, Alabama." I said, "Hey, you mean there's three or four clubs, you know?" "Yeah, there's clubs in Texas, blah, blah, blah." So I said, "Okay." So we put a little notice in the daily student newspaper, anybody who likes football is going to like rugby. It's a crazy heart contact sport, no pads, no blocking, but you'd knock the hell out of each other, and then you drink beer with together after the game. I think that caught their attention, maybe the beer, but the first meeting I get there, I've got this bad rugby ball, over 80 students turned up. When's the first practice? So that was it. I then scratched around, I still had an old pair of rugby, because rugby is played in shorts. I walked out and I could see the Americans were looking thinking, "No, no, no, no, this cannot be a rough game if you're going to wear short." This is the club, actually, on the beach, what are you talking about? So they got over that, and as the turned out, I was quite lucky, because in rugby there's four or five key positions. It's like if you get a sort of football team, if you don't have a quarterback, it's pretty difficult. So I could play that kind of quarterback, the playmaker role, and a couple of big guys who'd been in a scrum before, so they could stand up. And then there's no shortage of big tall American guys who've played basketball. We were ideal for winning lineouts, rebounds as in rugby. And of course, for backline runners, they, you know, Louisiana's full of them. I found it very easy to teach Americans, because I learnt that, in fact, American football didn't just fall from the sky. It was actually adapted from rugby, Harvard and Yale used to play rugby against each other in the 1870s. Harvard played a 15-man game, based on the game rugby in England. Yale happened to prefer an 11-man game of rugby on a narrow field. So when Harvard and Yale played, on the Saturday, they played the Harvard game, on the Sunday, they played the Yale game. Cut a long story short, in the end, Walter Camped Yale became a leading light. So if you ask me why are the 11 players in American football on the at-size field, it's because Yale played rugby with 11 players on that field. So, Yale then looked at rugby and said, "This is a massive body, it's all clamoring, resting for the ball." The ball's in amongst there somewhere, one team keeps it, so he said, "Hey, we've got to separate this." He took a rugby scrimmage and he created a line of scrimmage between them. And he then systematically said, "Okay, one team cannot have the ball for 30 minutes, so you've got four downs to make 10 yards." Okay, so then you got to mark the cross line so you get the grid iron, football. So, from those beginnings, and it really struck me, you know, that the goalposts, the width and the crossbow in football are identical to those in rugby. It's a tell-tale, it tells you this where the game comes from. So there are one or two relics of rugby left in football, but obviously football went it. I don't know whether to be happy about Walter Camp or curse him, because but for him, America probably would now be the world best rugby player in country. And they will be one day. There's no question about it. So to cut a very long story short, I was able to print something almost like the 10 commandments. So in rugby, you may not pass the ball forward, you may not block anybody, you can only tackle the person who has the ball. And if you scared, get rid of the ball. Pass it, pass it, laterally, to the guy next to you. So it was very easy. In two practices, I could take a guy who played football. You're playing on a field, the objective of the game, advanced that ball and crossed the opposition's line. If you can run through people, so much the better. But use the ball, lateral, pay three, four lateral balls. And it's nonstop. There's no downs. And of course, you've got to learn how to tackle. Because you don't have pads. You know, I look at football now, football is in a crisis because of all the concussions and brain damage. They need to look at rugby. We tackle big people every day of the week. Because we know how to tackle. We know how to use the shoulder. We know how to use the arms. We don't have helmets on, so you learn where to put your head. Because if you put your head in front, you get kicked. You get concussed. On that score, the Seattle Seahawks are now employing rugby coaches to teach their defensive teams how to do it. So within two, three weeks, we were romped all over to Lane Loyola, Hammond. We whipped all of them. So I think we won four or five games. It got very popular. In the first two years, we produced two guys who went on to play rugby for America and in different parts of the world. Because Louisiana's football country, and you have a permit. You've got hundreds of students who played high school football who thought they'd make the LSU side who didn't get on. What do they do? And so rugby filled that vacuum. So we had guys coming out and literally I'd see a guy on a Tuesday and say, "Listen, I want you out to two, three days because you're playing in my team on Saturday." And he said, "I don't know the rules. I said, I don't want you to know the rules. I just want you to get the ball and run." And add American Flay to do what another rugby team's not going to expect you to do. And, yeah, so rugby got big on campus. We actually played a couple of curtain raises to football in Tiger Stadium. So yeah, the club will be 50 years old in 2020. And it's still going strong. And rugby is a brotherhood once you start playing. You know, you go to war with people. Without the ammunition and the protective clothing. So once you've sweated blood, sweated tears of the rugby people, on your own team, you develop enormous respect for somebody who clubbers the hell out of you, legitimately and fairly on a field. So rugby is a, it's unlike any American sport. It's a rough tough game, but sportsmanship is the order of the day. You listen to the referee. You don't argue with him. If a guy hits a, could's a big hit on you, you get up, you wait for him to get the ball. You give him one back with interest. So yeah, it's been an amazing success story that it's still going. And I think as you've seen, now that rugby sevens got into the Olympics, I look forward to the day when America's able to see that they indeed have so many surplus football players that could be playing rugby. And they'll beat the world. They'll beat the rest of the world because you've got the best athletes in the world. Well, look at our game this weekend a little bit differently than I think I would have prior to this conversation. You've talked about this a little bit, but I want to dig a little bit deeper into the power of building, of sport in building community. Can you talk about your personal experience with sport and how it allows communities to come together? Yeah, I look amazingly, and I mean, I guess 90% of the credit of what happened in sport in South Africa must go to Nelson Mandela. Miley was on Robin Island, 27 years, not entirely all on the island, but obviously having nothing but time to think. One of the many things he did was he learnt the offricanth language because the offricaners were the ruling party, they were the architects of apartheid, and he knew that when he came out and let's see, can speak their language how the hell is he going to negotiate a solution to the country's problems. So having learnt the language, he then also began to appreciate that rugby was very close to offricaners heart. The next to that Dutch reform religion, rugby was number two, and South Africa were very good at rugby. It was the only sport in which South Africa could play the rest of the world and triumph. So again, if you offricaners who've been beaten by the English way back, lovely to get one over them. Rugby international games, when South Africa plays England or Wales, you sing the national anthems of each country before the game. So it's all conflict with good rules. I cannot overestimate the importance of rugby to white-offricaners. This was their moment. Mandela realised that and South Africa just happened to be able to host the World Cup in 1995. That's the year after he became president. And he saw exactly what this meant to the offricaners. And against his own party, he said, "Hey, and the South-Kentime is known as the Springbox. The emblem is the Antelope, the Springbox." And the ANC said, "No, that's an apartheid symbol. It must go. It has to be replaced along with the flag, the anthem. Let's reject it." Mandela said, "No. It's an important symbol. You elected me to unify the country. Don't now take decisions that divide us even further. We've got enough divisiveness in this country. It's a time for healing." He said, "I want us to keep the Springbox. And I want people to support the Springbox. Because it's no longer an all-white team, it's now South-African team, get behind it." And he prevailed. He stuck his neck out because in the ANC you can be the leader, but if the collective says, "No, no, no, no, it would have been a mess of humiliation for him to do that." But he stuck to his guns. South Africa got to the finals of the World Cup. In South Africa he comes out wearing the Springbox jersey. Hey, I'll get choked up. Think you have it. Wow. Yeah. Anyway, I think almost within a minute. He turned the whole country on its head. So yeah, on a smaller scale, thanks largely to the effort of one of my sons. Because a lot of whites are Africans, they also believe, "Well, it's fine, but black people will never like rugby. They love soccer." And we've shown on our local campus in Peter Mansburg, the exact opposite. That rugby can be exciting, can be attractive. So that university, which is now 90% of black student body, now feels a rugby team which will have 10, 11 black players. And we often, we joke, we say, "Yeah, there's a white quota. We need two or three tall white guys to win the ball for us." And it's now the most popular sport. It exceeds soccer in terms of its appeal. So if you go and watch those games, you watch rugby, they are being played and enjoyed by black people. You sit there and you think, "It's almost as if a part they had never existed." Because these are things which people said will never happen. So yeah, sport as we're able to. Yeah, who are quires? It's really amazing to me because I think about rugby as such an aggressive and competitive sport. And yet it was such a unifying factor in times of real turmoil. Absolutely. So, how and why did you get into politics? You. That's a good long answer. Yeah, let me cut to the chase. Yeah. Look, I think by the mid to late 1980s, there was reason to be optimistic. The winds of change were blowing, not just across Africa, but inside Africa. One could sense that at last some kind of realism was coming into the scene. Mandela was not just in jail for 27 years, he was a banned person, banned organization, which meant that nobody could print a picture of him or quote him. So I had to come to America to learn about who the hell this guy was, what did he stand for. So I've got a lot to thank America in that regard. The more I read about him, I said, "Gee." He says, "So that belongs to all the living at Black and White, man. What's so terrible about what do we put a man in jail for saying that?" So I got involved in local politics on environmental issues, but very soon realized this in environmental is a side show in relation to what needs to be done. So I began to introduce motions about calling for non-racial elections and so on and a local level. That attracted the attention of some guys who were forming a new political party. They got hold of me one day, "No, we want you to be a candidate." I said, "No, no, no. I'm not going to get involved in white politics." No, no, no, no. This is not white politics. This is the last white election. Once we're in, we're going to push like mad for the ANC to be unbanned. As soon as they're unbanned, we're going to seek to work closely with them. We want to avoid what's happened in the rest of Africa. Black government comes in, whites pack and leave. So we've got to become the passport. We've got to be the bridge that the chose we can work, we can use our expertise to help usher in a sensible, sane majority government in the country. I said, "That sounds good, but I don't believe you." They said, "Well, you can write it into our constitution." So I wrote that clause. So on that basis, I get elected to Parliament in 1989. The first sitting on the 2nd of February 1990, the then president F. W. DeKlurke announces, "I am today unbanned in the African National Congress. I will be releasing Mr. Mandela in due course." Bang, alleluia. It's happened. So a mass of celebration. Because I thought, "Okay, hey. This is exactly what I wanted." Go to the caucus meeting of the party and say, "Okay, now what? Now we have to move cautiously." I said, "Hey, our constitution, we got elected to now start talking seriously to the ANC. Yana, we will, we will." But clearly, the leadership was stalling. They didn't want it. This carried on. 1981. We more or less forced them. Then we had a two-day session, 15 from the Democratic Party, 15 from the ANC chaired by Mandela. The end of the two days, he said, "Look, I think we have more in common than separates us. Let's not play semantics." He said, "I think we should form joint working groups." He said, "I'll be perfectly honest with you. We can learn a lot from your experience expertise. We're going to win the election. Make no mistake." He said, "But we are naive when it comes to finance, running a country, budgeting, context with business, economic advice." He said, "That's your guys, bread and butter." So, let's work together. We don't have to merge. You don't have to lose your identity, but let's work together. And of course, we were about to go into serious negotiations about a new constitution. Again, I thought, "Halla, Lutie, again." It very soon became clear to me that the Democratic Party had, despite signing the joint agreement, it would rather work closely with the apartheid government party. And I said, "I know, then. I feel totally betrayed." Because I didn't stand for parliament. I didn't get elected on the basis. So, in April of '92, five of us just said, "Hey, it's no good fighting and organ with these guys every week." So, we made an appointment. We went to see the ANC. We met Mandela and we said, "Here we are. We are offering our services to the ANC, take us to leave us, but that's who we are." He said, "Look, I need to consult with my regions. I don't know you from a bar of soap. Let me see what kind of, you know, are you good guys? Have you got any standing? Come back and see me next week, which we did. Came back the next week. He walked in. He said, "Generaman, you're welcome to join the ANC. We welcome you with open arms. One condition. You must pay your $12 membership." I jumped up, I had a 20, I slept in his Andy, said, "Now I said, "Beest." And I said, "You can keep the change." So, I've still got my original membership card that he signed. And then Andy Warhol said, "Everybody has to be famous in their life, even if it's for only 15 minutes." So, yeah. So, I became instantly famous, hated by a lot of white people. I was, you know, what lover? I was this. I was that. I was a turn coat. I was a traitor, whatever. But for every white person, I probably gained a thousand black admirers. So, it was a whirlwind. Democratic Party, if you had a meeting, you'd have 30, 40 people. ANC, you get 30,000. Well, made international news. I mean, that's awesome. Yeah. So, that whole moving around then with Mandela going to rallies, introducing him, having to give a vote of thanks off to him. I mean, how do you do that? How do you introduce this guy? How do you speak off to him? He's left. Everybody's walking out. He's just being. Yeah. So, very quickly. And then, at local government, I became the first ANC mayor of my city and the first city manager. And in the run up to the 94 elections, ANC asked me to organize one day with him. You're the Geographer? You know where to take him. Urban rural, big, small, blah, blah, blah. So Mandela came down and I said, "This is what we have." He said, "Will you the boss?" I said, "I'll be your pardon." "What is it you, the boss? You tell me, I do whatever you do. What do you tell me to do?" So I had incredible quiet moments with him where you get beyond the mosque, the smiling, lovable, fantastic guy that he is. But do you see him in quiet times when he's not so certain? When maybe he's emotional or whatever. So that was an incredible experience. And then Peter Maritzburg and Darrell touched on this. We were a typical British colonial city, statues of Queen Victoria, the Dutch founders who laid it out. Victorian architecture, that was it. I stood up one day and said, "You know, this city is famous for one thing only and it's actually infamous. This is where Mahatma Gandhi got thrown off a train because although he had the ticket, he had the wrong color." I said, "That's a sight of international significance. The station is there. We can mark that spot. We can mark where he spent the first night and decided there and then that he would launch a nonviolent resistance campaign which changed the course of history in India, the Africa and inspired the civil rights movement in this country." So I said, "Hey, we've got a sight of international significance. What have we got statues of Queen Victoria for? Nothing against Queen Victoria, I never met the lady." So I managed to convince the council then that we should have a statue of Gandhi, that that was easily the most famous incident in the history of the city. So the most prominent statue in the main street, right outside the colonial buildings that he peppered with petitions and letters and so on, symbolically that's where he stands, he occupies pride of place. So the other statues stay but they're almost incidental. You post them. They don't stop you. And you're just imposing one of the problems with the Confederate statues. Whatever you think is, they're on pedestals and they demand your attention. You've got a Richmond Virginia down the street, that's it. You can't miss it. It dominates. So we adopted a protest. No, these other statues are fine but they cannot dominate because Queen Victoria was a colony. Some of these other guys were, yeah, they had slaves. Yeah, they're part of their history but frankly, I don't want to look up at them all day. So yeah, they can survive almost as reminders of what you probably shouldn't do. So we were able then to add things and then, so we, with Mandela's assistance, I asked him if he, because he was arrested, we knew somewhere north of our city, outside the city, on the 5th of August 1962. And I said to him, one day, look, if I drive you down that road, would you find the spot? Oh, yes, you said, I said, whoa, whoa, whoa. He described the whole scene and as a geographer, I knew I could, I said, hey, I can narrow it down out to two or three miles. So we Julie took him down that road and he said, yeah, this is where it all happened but it's so the Mandela capture site has become an international. So the city now has the railway station, the Gandhi statue, the Mandela capture site. He was captured there. He was brought to Piro Verisberg. He spent one night in our prison. He appeared in our magistrate's court the next morning. So we have sites of international, you can walk in the footsteps of Gandhi and Mandela in the city. You simply build up those two iconic figures and what they meant. And I think that's also crucial. I mean, I was in New Orleans once and I'm thinking, was Robert E. Lee ever in New Orleans? How come he occupies on top, yeah, I mean, and I'm not being disdnergined towards, I'm sure he was a wonderful general, et cetera, et cetera. But the reality is, to me, totally out of place in New Orleans. And so we've said yes, the others are part of the history. But our parks, our street names and our most prominent statues must surely reflect people who are ahead of the time, people who we admire to this day. Yeah, so I've had incredible experiences with Mandela. And as I said, for two days I was actually his boss, which was quite funny. because he would be quite humorous. He'd say, "Well, you the boss, but he'd have a twinkly in his eye." [LAUGHTER] Well, I want to ask both of you this question. You know, one of the criticisms of Mendel, I think it was really interesting for me to hear you talk about coming here to learn about him because I was a teenager at the time, and I remember being in high school. And stories about Mendel and our part, I were in the daily news. And that was something that I was relating to and trying to find my place with in terms of, you know, where did I stand politically on that and how could I make a statement about that being, you know, a kid that grew up here? Well, one of the things, you know, one of the criticisms of Mandela, which I do think is common for activists who work within government or other structural systems to affect change. It seems like the people who are working within those systems, you know, whether they're government or whether they're academic or whether they're corporate. They are often criticized by those, you were outside that system. You know, you're not being bold enough, you're not doing enough. We want you to do more. At the same time, those inside that system are saying, you're being too bold, don't go so fast, slow down. So I'm interested in both of your perspectives as an academic, someone who, you know, holds leadership position in academia, Darrell, and also positions of power within government. And you've touched on that a little bit already, Rob. So can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, I'll go first. First of all, it's been a delightful conversation. You can see why I wanted Rob to come to campus. So this is going to be, this is a great podcast. I think two things, as I've been listening in the time that we've been together, we've spoken about rugby and respect. I mean, everyone is sort of generalised. And I use those two anchors, if you wish, because rugby as Rob Shed is, it's more than a game. You learn to work in a collaborative way with people. You're not the most important person on the team. Everyone has a role to play. And then we've been speaking about respect. You know, the fact that Peter Marrow's Burgers are cities, are Africa as a country, one group had political power. But in order to bring about that change, you have to be able to respect other people and listen. So those two anchors, the way they're translating to my work in the current role that I mean, is I don't have a great deal of power. People think I have positional power. I have a title. But the only real power I have is the power to persuade people that I have a good idea or two. And the way you do that, drawing on sort of the teamwork with rugby and respect of people, is you have to be a good listener. You have to truly listen to people. I think I was sharing the other day one of my favorite bargrapies, as Meetrim's bargrapie by Thomas Jefferson, because Jefferson was president at a different time. But he opened the White House and just listened to people and what people had to say. And so I try and model that in the work that I do, knowing that we have to have a great deal of respect for the institution in this case, for the history of the institution. And as we try to cause forward to bring about change, we have to build on the strengths of the institution in a respectful way. And when we make decisions that may seem radical, the purchase from our institutional DNA, we have to, as leaders, take the time to explain to people why we make those decisions in the way that we do. And the glue that really keeps us all together, at least in higher education. And as I've been listening to Rob Tudan over the course of the last few days in politics, I think you have to consult with people and share governance is what we value and pride in higher education. And so John Lombardi wrote a great book a couple years ago called "How Universities Work." And one of the points he makes in the book is that universities change very, very slowly. And I think probably political systems do, to some extent, as well. We are just here for a moment in time to be able to influence the course forward. And so people who are not in those roles and not because they know more or because they cavalier, they oftentimes look at the work that's done in higher education or in politics. And they may be critical and say, you're not moving quickly enough for you moving too slowly. But at the end of the day, we stew it for a particular point in time and can advance things and really history over a longer period of time will be a better judge than sort of trying to see change in a month or a few months or a couple of years, even. So I think the shared governance piece is a critically important one. And then in my role, it's my responsibility with the slow and steady growth that we continue to have is to advocate for the requisite resources to ensure we can add faculty positions and we can add the physical facilities to ensure that we can remain a strong institution. We can serve our students as best as possible. So they can be successful and go on to transform other people's lives in society. Mm, let me start. Obviously, I'm a great admirer of Mandela. I don't think I hear a worship him. And I think we often make a mistake like that. Politicians are not worthy of heroism. Because politics by definition is the art of what is possible. So you can have a campaign. You can dream about, take the American system. It's built on chicks and balances. So you can have a Democratic president elected by a huge majority and a Republican controlled Congress. So how revolutionary can you be? No names, no petrol. Or you can have a president that doesn't-- even if he's on the same party-- doesn't necessarily get along with him. And I think it's applicable. If one looks at the South-Kin situation, no good saying what it was a political miracle, it was this or was that. Mandela recognized that in order for us to go from not just a part, but from a parliamentary system to a constitutional system with a bill of rights. So that voting, whether you were black or white, yes, you had the vote, but the Constitution protected. So we have 11 official languages. So nobody can feel left out, hey, I'm a foreigner. This is my country, but I'm not allowed to use my mother tongue. So if you go to court, you can speak your mother tongue, and they have to make adjustments so they can understand you, rather than you have to go and speak broken English and maybe get their life sentence, because your English wasn't so good. And then we have a human rights commission, a gender committee, all those kind of institutions, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association. So whether you're a minority or not, if your language is protected, your language, your religion, your whole culture, then it really doesn't matter who's the government, does it? You've just got to be good neighbors, get on with respect people. I live in a block in which there's two Christian churches and a mosque. People say you live in here a mosque. I say, yeah, it's five doors away. I'm surrounded by people of all religions. I have the world's religions in one block. I can hear 10 or 12 languages every day. Just sit outside. Students are walking past from all over Africa. So that whole idea of getting unity and diversity, and he brought, he recognized that. Yeah, you can come up with all these radical ideas. Let's do this. Let's do that. You could have prompt a really bloody civil war. People say, hey, we're going to fight to the death. And if you threaten people, if you say, listen, you either give up power or we kill you, well, then you're going to have a war. That's very simple. So I reject almost with contempt when people say, oh, Mandela wasn't bold enough. Let me tell you. The guy spent his resolution, his defiance, 27 years. He came out of jail saying exactly the same thing he said when he went in. He didn't compromise on one issue. He said, every person in this country of adult age, regardless of create, color, should have the vote, non-negotiable. They had 48 meetings with the government in secret. It's coming out now. And they kept trying to say, well, we'll never accept that. He said, well, then there's no basis for further discussion. So they'd come back and say, OK, how do you protect us? He said, well, I've learned it. It's a wonderful language. I think it should be one of the official languages. So suddenly the Afrikan is main fear. We're going to get wiped off the face of the earth by this black majority. Boom. You say, no, no, no. That's why you have a Bill of Rights. So one by one, so in the changes he brought, not just freedom, but to create a new society, a constitutional democracy. There's probably only two in the world, you know? Other than the US and South Africa. Yeah, there's Canada's often described as a constitution that's looking for a country. You know, a bit of a simplification. So yeah, I think people should-- it's fine in campaigns and rallies. You know, this is a movement that's going to do this. It's going to do that. Once you get into power, as Darryl was saying, this is a big institution with the history. Your ability to change course is there, but it has to be incremental. It's not going to be, hey, from tomorrow, The National Land. languages Arabic or all classes will be an Arabic way. What are we talking about? That's chaotic. So as you grapple with diversity issues, whatever, whatever, I think as they're all saying, there's a reaching out listening process. And Mandela again, how do you address people's fears? Well, for a start, understand them. If you can't speak their language, how are you going to communicate with them? It sounds fundamental. But if I asked now, how many Americans speak Korean? Not, I don't expect you to speak Korean, but how many in the diplomatic call? So how do you deal with North Korea if nobody can speak their language? It's not a political statement, I'm just saying. If you want to be interactive reaching out, having alternatives to war, then you've got to be able to talk. So I think I'm correct. As we sit down, so Africa does not have a consul general in South Korea. So what are we going to communicate? I don't want to be so caustic. Are we going to conduct this by Twitter? What are we going to do? There's got to be somebody. You've got to reach out as repugnant and ridiculous as we see what's happening in North Korea. I don't think I'm apologizing for them for one second. But there's got to be that basis for discussion. That's the only way to overt it, the kind of crisis. Yeah, so I think we ought to see what Mandela did in that, what's possible? What are the key elements at that time? Maybe there's been a rallying cry for 30 years we need to do this, but at that particular juncture, what do we do? And as he recognizes rugby, I can wipe rugby out. I can say, hey, rugby's banned. I can do what my predecessors did. I can ban things I don't like. And you're just going to alienate large sections of your population. So I think in fact, that's his gift to the world. I wonder if you'll indulge me one final question. I'll leave it to Darryl. I get on my horse of foot. No, I'm very much enjoying this. It relates so much, as you said, Darryl, to the conversations that are taking place across our campus every day, in multiple times a day. This is actually related to a book that some of our high school English classes are reading. So they're reading Just Mercy by Brian Stevenson. I've been tuned into that because I have a daughter in high school. So I heard him recently in an interview talking about how in America we're burdened by the history of genocide and slavery that we haven't addressed. And we're burdened by it because we haven't addressed it. So his point is that until we, as a nation, can address this, we can't become a society that values our citizens equally. And so he referenced Rwanda and Germany and South Africa as nations that their societies have recognized that they can't make progress without this process. And he calls it giving truth a hearing. Talks about how you can't have justice without truth. And so his point is that we first have to talk about slavery. We have to talk about lynchings. We have to talk about segregation. And I was thinking about that more when you were speaking earlier about not wiping out some of these monuments that you have, but providing the fuller story for people. So from your experiences in South Africa, I'm interested in both of you and in you speaking to the value and the process of that truth telling on a very large societal scale. You know, let me be brief. Yeah, another one of Mandela's genius ideas was to establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Yeah, chaired by Desmond Tutu. That afforded every individual in South Africa. If you believe that you committed a crime, it was politically motivated. Please come forward. And if you tell the whole truth, nothing but the truth, that commission can grant you amnesty. You'll never be charged. We want the truth to come out. And they held hearings around the country. And it gave an opportunity for many of their or part aid killers to come forward and say, "Hell, please, I'm sorry, I killed." Yeah, it was me, I opened fire that night, I killed 11 people, we cut them up and we buried them. I know where they buried. And if need be, I'll take you and show you the spot. And you say that in front of the families. Yeah. Anyway, that, so I don't want to say that, sold all of the issues. But certainly for, it took a burden of people on both sides. It allowed people, families to achieve closure. Particularly for Africans, if they're deeply spiritual values, but not knowing where your child or relative is born. Actually, the child ever lived in. The child has no hope of getting any spiritual relief off the death if you can't. So, yeah, it's important for anybody to know. But in Africa, it's doubly important to you. Your very being, it's as if you never existed. If we don't know how you died, where you buried, you're nothing. So, that process was very important. And of course, we took that idea. Mandela played a key role in Rwanda Burundi as well on that basis. It didn't solve all of the problems. I sometimes still be a bit, biter into it, so I know people who were killed. I've got a pretty shoot idea who killed them and they didn't come forward. But I've had to, I've had to get over that. That was the process. It's not for me now to try and forment anger and violence. That was a moment we closed the chapter. And I think, yeah, I think there are lessons from America to be learned because, you know, you could, as I say, you can look at the civil war purely as a military exercise or you can dig deeper. And I think it would be very important for Americans to do that, to deal with it. What was this war about? South Canisity is riddled with, oh no, this wasn't about slavery. This was about land. Rubbish. Absid rubbish. It was about maintaining relationships between the boss and the underling, the master and the slave at the end of the day. And the British did the same. Both the Africaners and the British tried to wipe out the Zoolination on several occasions for a very simple reason. They wanted the Zoolies to be laborers, nothing else, to help grow the economy. And for that, they have to subjugate them quite simply. But if you read the Anglo-Zoolo war, these famous battles, the highest number of Victoria crosses are ordered in a single day. It's a glorious military exercise. Oh yes, it is. I can admire their bravery, but what the hell they're doing in the first place. And then you realize, well, okay, well, the other wars were fought between the English and the Dutch because suddenly they found diamonds and then gold. And then they produced a day. We didn't draw this map properly. It's just changed the line. We need that gold. We need the diamonds. So now you know, you've got a conqueror somebody else. So again, the wars in South Africa are not glorious events. Very difficult to regard those people as heroes. And I mean, some of them were very brave. But the reality is the wars were fought for some very dubious reasons. And of course, the politicians don't openly say that. And unfortunately, the histories are written by usually the people who won the war. So you get a very slanted view. Enough said for me. As folks now, I really like quotes. And I'm kind of a quote collector. And as we've been speaking, I think one of the quotes I think that's a tribute to Nielselm and Delar is, he said in terms of language, he said, if you speak to a person in a language that they understand, it goes to their head. But if you speak to them in their language, it goes to their heart. And so in a literal sense, you're looking at language, but sort of applied to the question you posed. I think you can also look at language in a metaphorical sense as well. And I think again, truly the ability to understand when people are speaking about their perspective and their experience and the way you truly move anything forward is by truly listening to people and truly understanding even if you don't agree with their perspective, understanding where they come in from. The other quote, of course, is by a chairbeer, junior chairbeer is now deceased, but probably most famous for the book Things Fall Apart, which was translated into many, many, probably a dozen languages. And he said until the lines produce the only story and the story of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. And so if you plie those quotes to our current context, whatever the perspective is and whatever the polemics are, we have to go in as human beings truly listening to other people's perspectives and then trying to forge a way forward. If we don't, we then just live in echo chambers where you just got one group's positive and extreme perspective or their perspective and the other group positive and their perspective and you just will remain locked in those positions and so I think it's the listening piece can't be can be overemphasised. Well thank you both very much for your time and your thoughtful answers. I appreciate you're bringing your South African perspectives combined with your perspectives of people who have lived and worked in the Southern United States in particular. I think that has really it's made for a very rich and engaged in conversation and conversations that I know you know they're going to continue on this campus. There's so much more for us in this regard to discuss you know on our campus and you're giving us this great you know I was going to say jumping off point but it's you know we've been jumping off for a while. It's just it's continuing the conversation. Yeah so you know we've got this endeavor and it's challenging and it's difficult this work of building a campus that's welcoming to diversity of you know thought belief and community and these conversations are so critical to that work so thank you very very much for your time and for being here today. Oh thank you. Thank you and good luck. And I only took us 20 years so you got some catching up a little bit. Yeah I think so. Today's show was written and produced by Troy Tuttle Dave Blanks and me Megan Hayes. Our sound engineer is Dave Blanks with assistance from West Craig. Our web team is Pete Montaldy Alex Waterworth and Derek Wycoff. Research assistance comes from Elizabeth Wall and video and photo support come from Garrett Ford and Marie Freeman. Our theme song was written and performed by Derek Wycoff of Naked Gods. Our podcast studio is dedicated to Greg Cutty. Special thanks to Stephen Dubner for the Inspiration, Advice and Moral Support. Sound effect is a production of the University Communications team at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. Thanks for listening. For Sound Effect, I'm Megan Hayes. [BLANK_AUDIO]