A failure in international humanitarian law: A 20 year conversation on South Africa's racialized reconciliation

>> Hi everybody. Welcome. Welcome to today's event on de facto and De Jure apartheid in South Africa. We're very happy to have you. I feel like we've actually, with a bunch of warm bodies in this close [inaudible], transported ourselves climatologically, to South Africa for a few hours. But we're going to go there intellectually, historically, politically, in a moment, with our distinguished mini-panel of speakers. Yazier Henry and Heidi Grunebaum. I'm John Ciorciari. I'm a Professor at the Ford School. And I also am an affiliate of a couple of the centers and initiatives here at the International Institute. We at the International Policy Center, are grateful for the support from the African Study Center here in the International Institute. As well as our Center for Public Policy and Diverse Societies in the Dean's Office, for cosponsoring this event. We're very lucky to have two people who are extremely experienced, both as scholars and as advocates for reconciliation and justice in South Africa. We're also especially privileged that they have a long experience of working together. And the discussion that we're about to participate in, is one that's been going -- as the subtitle for today's events suggests -- for a couple of decades, now. As the country continues along its arduous path to a reconciliation, intellectual and leaders and advocates, such as Yazier and Heidi have been at the forefront of that. And they're going to share some of their insights and experiences with us today. Let me introduce them really briefly. Heidi is a scholar and a writer. She's a senior researcher at the Center for the Humanities Research, at the University of the Western Cape, in South Africa. Her work focuses on aesthetic and social responses to the afterlives of war and mass atrocities or violence. Politics of memory and memorialization. And also, the geographies of displacement of South Africa, Germany, and more recently, Israel/Palestine. She's the author of Memorializing the Past , a 2011 book about everyday life in South Africa after the TRC. She has also been involved in a number of other academic projects. And some of you had the pleasure and privilege of seeing the film and she did with Mark Kaplan yesterday. That's entitled The Village Under the Forest . If you weren't able to make it yesterday, I really, highly recommend it to you. And I believe you said it's available now on iTunes. And so, people can look for this after the event. It's going to touch on some of the same themes. And also draw connections between today's discussion and another of the of the, you know, sort of difficult processes of reconciliation that's underway in the Near East. Yazier Henry is my friend and colleague from the board school, who teaches there. He's a scholar, a writer, a strategist, and also a professional human rights advocate. Yazier has written and published on the political economy of social voice, memory, trauma, identity, peace processes, and transitional justice. His current research and writing are focused on how structural and administrative violence come to be institutionalized during postcolonial transitions. And so you can hear, both from the title of Heidi's book that I mentioned, and Yazier's current project. Both of them are working as intellectuals on the exact themes that we're going to be discussing today. He's got in-depth experience, Yazier, in social and political movements. In fact, that's where he's got a very personal connection to these issues, as well as a professional, intellectual one. As well as a lot of experience in political strategy and conflict management. So, what I've asked our panelists to do, is to start off by each helping to frame our conversation, speaking for about 10 minutes apiece. I'm then going to pose a couple of questions. Sort of feed into a conversation and dialogue between the two of them. And I hope that as we go along, you'll feed in with comments and questions. So we make this as conversational and informal as possible. So, let's all first thank Heidi and Yazier. And then we'll ask them to start with [inaudible].

[ Applause ]

>> Good afternoon. And thanks for coming in this briefly warm winter and January day. You know, my favorite place to spend my time during the winter. Especially when it's like this. Doesn't mean I'm not aware what El Nino is going to other parts of the world. Just, I'm not very sad about the fact that, you know, I can walk around without wearing five layers of garb. And this is a dedication to those of you that came from [inaudible] second-class. That you use this technology, [inaudible] because I talk too much [inaudible].

>> Oh, my God. [Laughter].

>> Maybe not. So I want to get [inaudible] this panel, and talk to the mothers and the families of those who lost their children during the anti-apartheid war. And too many of them today continue to live the consequences, not only of apartheid, but the defense of apartheid. Locally, as well as globally. And remain extremely vulnerable today, as we speak. The title of my talk is Apartheid South Africa: A Climate Endures. And the framing, of course, is in the title that you have before you. I was born in South Africa at the time it had become infamous. Both in South Africa and the rest of the world. Not only because it actively created and enacted, and also defended violently the system which it became to be known as apartheid. But also, because there were so many who actually thought it was a good thing. At the same time, this word, apartheid, was associated with a growing movement globally. Inside South Africa, as well as elsewhere, for the stand taken by many people to end it. Oftentimes at great risk to themselves and their families. Making illegal and political distinction between the material realities produced by different forms of political and social apartheid. As practice, is a very important one to make intellectually. Such conceptual understandings of human rights travesties are crucial for mediating. And also coming to terms with a global moral responsibility to engage oppression and the human devastation which such oppression -- oppressive systems cause. Especially for those of us who consider ourselves global citizens, and we care, also, for humanity. Such oppressive systems should affront all of humanity. This seems obvious. But as you -- as many of us know, it is not always so. In order to fight such crimes, understanding that such systems are created, offer assistance of benefits and systems of loss in the social structure. Under meta-ethical spheres of our everyday life is important. The discourse and discourses which justify and allow for legal, social economic and political damage to be perpetuated and learned as normality, has to be apprehended. Documents which form the basis for global moral ideals sometimes, not only, are not always curated by the United Nations organization. Too often they have useless documents. Because the material realities of the present seems always at odds with the human and moral ideals experienced by those of us engaged in human rights advocacy. And too, oftentimes, argued as future impossibilities. The system of apartheid in South Africa was labeled a crime against humanity by the United Nations organization general assembly, on the 16th of December, 1966. Which was endorsed by the United Nations Security Council in 1984. And in November 1973, the General Assembly adopted the apartheid convention. Declaring -- and this is very important, for those of us who live in South Africa, as well as those of us who live in the US. Declaring systematic oppression of groups, and persons, groups of persons, as an international crime. Now I have many pages here. I printed them in 14 font. So that I can read, because I lost my specs. So I don't think I'm going to be speaking for too long. I know I'm very serious, so I wanted to break that seriousness a little bit, as part of my New Year's resolution. [Laughter]. The South African state's political failure to adhere to the model precepts contain not only the universal declaration on human rights in apartheid 1948. But also in Charter the United Nations in 1945. I will argue, and have argued, essential to causing the civil conflicts in South Africa. Which endured formally and legally until 1994, and continues to endure socially, today. Despite, you know, for nearly 15 years, there has been a global acceptance that apartheid as a crime has been settled. It has not been settled. Negotiations, political settlements, and peacemaking during war always exist within very complex interplays of politics of law and of morality. Such inherent and intersecting relations of power include the persistence of structures of dominance related to the initiating instance of violence. And these should be regarded as pivotal in understanding how the conflicts of political transition, are the context of resistance to oppression [inaudible]. The nature of conflict, as well as the nature of conflict management, and the nature of settlement. Colonial settlements, especially in Anglo [inaudible] Africa, but not only, have almost always include a moral paradox. Seamed into the peacemaking process and into human rights settlement questions. This moral paradox is crucial to understanding the political and legal settlement of conflict. But it does not necessarily -- and for me this is important. It does not necessarily lead to longer-term social and economic settlement. So important in terms of social and economic rights. In constructing and manufacting [phonetic] the idea of a sustainable, and a longer-term peace after war. So initial statements as ongoing social dialogues need to be constantly managed. In policy frames legally, as well as in society as a whole. The role of foundational justice mechanism are just two commissions and acts of a people public apologies are important in shaping [inaudible] and attitudes which follow some national citizens of the conflict and civil strife. But unfortunately -- and I don't mean to be just be the harbinger of doom. But I think it's important to understand this conceptually. They do not settle all the questions [inaudible] for the conflict, nor to broader model ideas and ideals of human rights. Such questions and challenges remain a part of the democratic state's quest for greater social cohesion of the conflict. Such historical dialogic processes may continue unofficially, long after constitutional democracies have been inorgonated [phonetic]. They do not provide for human rights settlement miraculously, neither. And just as wars do not just occur out of the ether. The consequences of systems like apartheid, whether du jure or de facto, all find their genesis in the law. You and I speak of the law as a constituting and a constitutive law. The law, in this sense, is political, and it is historically, and it is morally constructed. It is not natural. It is administered by states. And it is administrative. And it is learned through complex governmental procedures and policies. In complex societies, legal and political professionals can make and mediate the law. As the concept of law has a responsibility to regulate the peace based on the model precepts inherent to the constitution of the law. Now universally applicable. The carvers of individuated, organizational, or institutional opinion. Therefore, the law, as well as those who curate the law, are responsible to the live and material conditions which such consequences produce. Feeling, thinking, and speaking human rights ideals as a responsibility of the public domain beyond the moral, social, and political paralysis sometimes experienced both inter-cyclically. As well as exercise the largely and the social, political body, or generally, a social political psyche of the collective body of a people. Of the people. Of a global people. Article 56 and Article 55 read very easily. But they relate to the softer elements of politics, law, and morality. And this is articles of the Charter of United Nations. Article 55. With the view to the creation of the conditions of stability and well-being, which are necessary for peaceful and friendly relations amongst nations, based on respect. With a [inaudible] of equal rights and self-determination of people. The United Nations shall promote higher standards of living, full employment under conditions of economic and social progress and development. Section B, Article 55. Solutions to international, economic, social, health, and related problems, and international cultural and educational cooperation. And the universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all. Without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion. Article 56 says, all members pledge themselves to their joint, separate action, in cooperation with the organization for the achievement of the purposes set forth in Article 55. Therefore, the public representation of witnessing of recovery, and of [inaudible] of legal, historical, and political violence. As I said before, always exist within certain socio-cultural, structural economic and interpretive, as well as narrative settings. The production of the official voice, fielding systematic processes claiming to settle all human rights questions, is thus imbued with such inherent and intersecting relations of power. Which mediate all such claims. An important secondary part to the actual settlement process of always, and are the ways in which violence during conflict, along with the experience of human rights abuses and atrocities. Come to be publicly represented, accepted, and accepted by the multiple parties previously involved in the war. Now, the legacy and live as the legacy of war. Those able and capable to articulate themselves systemically, voice in the political party politic of society. And voicing articulated legally, officially, and publicly. And you've [inaudible] and silence. Especially social, legal, and political silence, as well as the process of silencing. The experience and articulation of vulnerability in the context of social violence is not innocent. These consequences are learned as experience in society, local, national. And as part of the global public's experience. A complex and simultaneous experience that has the context of loss, of benefit, of perpetration, of victimhood. And is thus made possible by those of us who stand by, as if we are not also beneficiaries. And yeah, I speak of myself as a global citizen. And therefore, it's important for me to distinguish first, between the first and the second and the third order of beneficiary and perpetration group experience. Because these allowed actors, who are engaging in the discourse of domination and human rights to address this ideal of psychic impossibility. As a cure to the ills of society, to the ills of war, and to the ills of violence. Silencing this possibility, this ideal, this willingness to self-particulate as individuals and as groups. I'm arguing here, is the ideal of both imperialistic practice, as well as imperialistic discourse. How much time do I have?

>> It starts with a negative, so [laughter] you know, maybe a few more minutes.

>> Okay. I'm nearly done. So the questions -- and you have these questions before you -- is the official record of human rights violations abuse. An atrocity enough to ensure systemic and administrative change in accordance with human rights claims. Before and during civil processes after violence and conflict. What does it mean to give up that right, once the conflict has ended, and the peace has just begun? For me, what's important to note, so that I'm not just depressing. Okay, that was supposed to be funny. [Laughter]. Is that official ignition and an acknowledgment of pain and abuse is crucial to the ending of atrocity. But it is only the beginning of the recovery of the reparative and of the restitute process. It does not end with a peace settlement. Apartheid systems are administrative. They -- therefore, they are also social and political systems. And they are constructed ideologically, as well as legally. They are not simple aberration -- aberrations to human ideals created by bad human apples. It is expedient for people like myself, who benefit from such instance to think. So -- and here, I -- like I said, I've included myself. And I want to speak that categorically. I don't see myself free of the beneficiary classes. For these systems to be engaged effectively, they have to be addressed at every level where they exist. Including the post-legal structures which live on as de facto apartheid. Even in the case of South Africa, as resolved human rights miracle. In the US, for example, as a fantasy of post-racialism. As intellectuals, it is crucial for us to explore and reflect critically on the social, political, the psychosocial. And the socioeconomic inflections contained in the processes and processes of testifying to pain. Caused by such systems in which I lived, both unofficially and officially in the public domain as normal. Now, I want to conclude. How are the conflicts meanings and framings attached to such articulations by multiple communities involved in South African conflict during apartheid? In South Africa, as well as in the rest of the world, because South Africa was an international crime. It did not only exist on the land, the geo-specificity, and the geopolitical sphere of the nation called the Republic of South Africa. It was supported, enabled, and articulated elsewhere. And it has a history deeply rooted in the colonial practice, and the theft of our land. Doing so will directly impact this violence. Legally, administratively, socially, politically, morally, and economically. So the local and global framing of the dominant, those groups directly are responsible for perpetrating and defending atrocity, as well as those who benefit from the conflicts of atrocity. And the ways in which human rights violation come to be legally and morally framed, during and after official process of transitions from atrocity to democracy. Now lived as normality. It is not normal, in my opinion, intellectually. Both as advocate and as scholar, to live, dare as social experience as normality. So it is my opinion that such an analysis and theoretical endeavor may contribute to the historical understanding of why specific groups may come. May over time come to feel that the benefits of the peace process do not adequately account for a perceived loss, real and intellectual. Long after the transitional process of managing what is a crime against humanity has officially ended. And I want to say that this needs and continues to be managed in the policy sphere, and in the legal sphere. In the political sphere, after the transitional phase. So that the dream of a democracy -- the dream, the possibility of a lived peace may live.

>> Thank you, Yazier.

[ Applause ]

>> [Inaudible] Hi everyone. Just to thank you again, to reiterate, John Ciorciari, Yazier Henry, and [inaudible] for working so hard. And what incredible kind of positive energy to, you know, to invite me here to Michigan. It's a huge honor. And I'm very grateful to be here. About 20 years ago, Yazier and I began a conversation. It will probably end when whatever is written in the stars for who of us goes into our [inaudible] first, I think will be the end of the conversation. And I think maybe that's important, is to question the normality of beginnings and ends. So, let me start with -- I suppose, something that should have been a beginning, but that was actually an end. Which began 20 years ago. It was the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It's generated a whole industry. Scholarly industry, global kind of policy transitional justice. I mean, it's the, you know, the South African Truth Commission was a major event. And events have beginnings and ends, right. So that was 20 years ago in April 2016. The first public hearings of the human rights violations committee took place in East London, in the Eastern Cape. Which is, geographically, for those of you know South Africa, was also the point -- the first. One of the first kind of earliest points of encounter, of engagement, of resistance, and of colonial segment. And ongoing wars of resistance. So it wasn't, you know, an accident that it took place in the Eastern Cape, these [inaudible] hearings. And 20 years later, just, you know. There's been a counter-industry that has basically critiqued the Truth Commission to death. And 20 years ago, when Yazier and I were having a conversation, we were having a conversation against reconciliation. And I'll try and explain a little how I've understood that. And maybe we can all engage together. I think we have very different understandings of what against reconciliation means. But just to say that, as much as I've been, and I think that a number of us in South Africa. On the continent, in other war context, have been critical of the Truth Commission, and of the industry of Truth Commissions. It was a very -- it was something noble in that experiment. And I want to hold onto the fact that its outcomes weren't return in advance. There've been two dominant narratives about South Africa, both within South Africa. But I think it's also one that kind of comes from abroad. It comes from this global discourse on South Africa. And the one is the miracle transition. That in which Nelson Mandela was, you know, never picked up arms. Was a nonviolent, kind of an icon of nonviolent resistance. And all white people embraced and loved him. And he was the key to a peaceful transition, as if there wasn't already a civil war. On the one hand. On the other, there's a story about South Africa that is the kind of fail stream. And so it's being written. It's got a beginning, a middle, an end. It's got a moral. It's the post-colonial story of Africa. And somewhere between that is two utterly unrealistic, simplistic, reductive, and -- you know, for me, insulting versions. There lies a much more complex and contradictory reality. And I think the way in which the Truth Commission unfolded and got kind of interpreted and packaged and disseminated. Has contributed to the kind of edifying of these two mutually exclusive, and yet completely, already married versions of the post-apartheid South African story. In the South African scenario, and I think this has now become a very normal, kind of almost commonplace observation in public discourse in South Africa. Where things are much more contested. Much more edgy. It's not so -- you know, it's a much more, kind of interesting and difficult space, particularly for, I think, for the beneficiary classes. Impunity is not granted anymore by the sociality of South Africa. But it's worth restating, forgiveness was the kind of, the go to, to -- for, as a discursive term. As a moral, as a theological, and as a political term. You know, the question of forgiveness was very important to the way the Truth Commission was understood. And my argument has been, and our conversation has kind of been around, what kind of closures did that lead to. In terms of a thorough going reckoning. And still hasn't, you know, continues to lead to, in terms of the thorough going reckoning, with the multiple forms of administrative dehumanization. And in particular, its after lives, that separate colonial apartheid produced. And because, you know, because this kind of fetish, which I don't think was only a South African kind of a construction of South African beneficiary classes. This fetish of reconciliation and forgiveness meant that any responses that didn't fit the kind of frame, were not admitted. They were delegitimized. Especially politically, which has been a great pity, because intellectual and political traditions in South Africa, on the continent and other places. That have been kind of intentionally erased. You know, scholars now, and new generations of younger scholars. More and more, are kind of reclaiming those traditions. At -- the problem with erasure is that you never reclaim anything intact. You find traces and shards. You have to kind risk reading into the future. You can't, kind of, put a total, a whole, a complete intellectual tradition back together, after it's been erased. I think that work is happening. And that is incredibly important and hopeful. But that's hard work, and it takes generations. It's begun. The other, kind of, rush to impose a language of forgiveness meant that what should have been a beginning, was cast as an end. An end of apartheid. An end of secular coloniality as -- which, which in a sense, formed the very matrix on which apartheid was shaped, including its laws. Apartheid laws were not a kind of invention of the white supremacists that took power in '48. They grew out of a kind of a global, colonial, and often liberal jurisprudence. So, you know, I think that's just important. Even though that's not at all my area. And I can't talk about law. A lot of scholars are making that argument, and I think it's an important one in the context of our conversation. Where you would probably have much more to say, as would Yazier. And then, that -- and this brings me to the question of complicity. With the kind of imposition of an official discourse of reconciliation, the space is narrow. So there were very clear moral and political roles ascribed to actors -- to citizens. Perpetrator, victim. Very early on, vocal critics of the process. People like Mandani [phonetic] are very important. Interlocutor, intellectual, in this conversation, argued that beneficiaries have been left out. And that was, you know, putting South Africa and its political reckoning with political change, at risk. You know, and he marked that the Truth Commission was never established to engage with anything other than political violence and political transition. And I think that was an important point. Because he alluded very early on to the limitations that the South African Truth Commission presented. So with, you know, with these kinds of very reductive roles that were described in apportioned out. And that had to do with political violence. In which both invisibilized [phonetic] and normalized structural and systemic violence. And structural racism is an integral part of how systemic violence plays out in South Africa -- in post-apartheid South Africa. Was -- in avoidance of engaging the question of complicity. Complicity as -- with its moral messiness, its multiple modalities. That include the agency of individual subjects in its direct forms. But also, that extend beyond the individual subject, to including indirect systemic and structural implicatedness [phonetic]. And this is new work that's coming from a very well-known North American based scholar of James [inaudible]. And I think it's really important, because he's asking me, at least, how I read in this, to think about the slippery place between individual agency and indirect and structural implicatedness. Why it's important in South Africa is, because the perpetrators, it kind of gave -- you know. There was a picture of the baddies who led us. Who got their hands dirty and led us. And we can talk about which us I'm alluding to here. Could sleep at night. May violence was easy to identify and to name, to morally admonish. And to kind of displace self-introspection onto the skewed condemnations of actions taken by those who police the system. And I think that did contribute to some degree to disconnecting the historical links between beneficiaries and complicity. And structural inequality and violence that -- it doesn't just persist as a question of the post-apartheid. It's being reconfigured in the post-apartheid. Because with the erasure of intellectual and political traditions of resistance. But not only of resistance, of imagining other forms of being human. Of being -- of cohabitating, of freedom. When that is erased, it's almost as if the alternative seems like what we have. Not that there were other alternatives. And that part of those alternatives were being debated, contested, and put forward by different parts of the anti-apartheid liberation movement. Which they insist hugely important part, but not only, right? And then, finally -- and this is a point I want to put on the table. Do I have two minutes?

>> Yes.

>> And I think for people who were at the film screening and our discussion last night, will [inaudible]. But, the question of an ethical obligation to engage the experience and the remains of mass forced displacement, or forced removals, was set aside. And forced removals, to my understanding, and to my own everyday engagement with living in the city of Cape Town. Although that plays out in every single city you would live in, or step onto, as a visitor to South Africa. Is that these are -- they constitute the matrix of the post-apartheid of our human, social, spacial, and economic geographies. And so, you know -- just from 1960, this is not even, kind of between 1913 and 1960. But just from 1960 to the mid-1980's, more than 3 1/2 million people were forcibly removed by a state administered project of organized mass displacement. And Laurene Platsky [phonetic] and Cheryl Walker, and -- who were researchers in the Surplus People's Project in the 1980s. Wrote that that was, in their estimate, the biggest modern forced state mass displacement that hadn't been conducted during times of hot war. But, so -- and there's no discussion of that. There's no discussion of the right of return as an ethical question. Not -- I mean, reparation and restitution, these are huge and important issues. They're political issues. I'm not saying as a political question. The right of return as an ethical and moral question as something that, to kind of hold onto in one's conscious mind, through every day encounters in the little itineraries of my own small life. There is no space that has not been marred by forced removals. And so, in our avoidance, or in the avoidance to raise these questions, that relate to how think about ourselves as human beings who inhabit the same geopolitical territory. But utterly disjunctural [phonetic] live worlds, there's a -- I'm not speaking this. I think there's -- we -- there's a contribution to -- I'm striking to find a pronoun. I contribute to thickening the spatial and social erasures and silences that persist in public discourse, and in the social architecture. At a time when these questions are refusing to be ignored. People are refusing to have these -- I mean, South Africans. People who have lived the experience, every -- and continue to live the experience that Yazier spoke about. Are refusing to let these questions be deferred any longer. And therefore, they cannot remain unaddressed. Or, yeah, so. I'll stop there. And ask John to take us to the next moment of yeah, I'm [inaudible]. [Applause]

>> So before we pulled everybody in the conversation, I just wanted to follow up with a question or two. There are so many insights that -- of interest in both of your presentations. Maybe I could ask a question of you, Heidi, and then have Yazier respond to your remarks. And that is, both of you have discussed in various ways, how while those of us studying in Western universities like UM, tend to regard the TRC process as a kind of political, maybe even immoral, and certainly illegal watershed in South Africa. That there are all kinds of ways in which the same structures -- political, economic, social, racial, and otherwise. That created the problems and the abuses in the first place, continue after that institution closed its doors. And you started your conversation historically, as people who were engaged in that process. And as a conceptual point of departure, I'd like to use it as well. Thinking about, are there things looking back, that you think realistically could have been done as part of the TRC process, that would have begun to address some of these questions? The silenced voices that both you and Yazier spoke about. Obviously, TRC can't cure all of the socioeconomic grievances of a society. But are there things that you look back on, that as a learning experience, for those of us who look back at some [inaudible]?

>> That's a great question. Thank you. I think that it could have been much more effective tool for the beneficiary communities to begin to -- to become a way, that there are normative ways of being in the world. That require unlearning. Not to start, even begin, I'm learning. That's a lifelong journey. But to become -- somewhere, and I'm interested to hear what Yazier has to say. Somewhere in that process, I don't think that beneficiary communities who've been raised white realized that the gift of equal citizenship was bequeathed on us, not the other way around. That -- I mean, that realization could be a moment. Could bring profound humility, profound gratitude. And some way, a kind of very clumsy. Because, you know, the process of unlearning privilege and -- sorry, I hate that word privilege. No, I don't hate it. I just dislike it. [Laughter] Supremacist ways of [laughter] of being in the world. Which, of course, well, means that I'm becoming a way that there's something to unlearn, is going to come with failure, mistakes. That's par for the course. But to some kind of pedagogic process, that would have enabled those communities -- the communities that I grew up in, to register that everything wasn't fine. That everything wasn't just fine. That let's not speak about that and let's move on, is actually a profoundly -- if you know. If middle-class psychotherapy refuses that as a healthy human response to the things that trouble. Then surely, kind of, one should extrapolate that into a more, kind of a collective -- an assumption that that would work for a collective. I don't think that there was a way in which beneficiary classes also got to name and speak their fear for themselves. I mean, I know I'm -- I think I'm speaking quite in an abstract, maybe. In a slightly -- what's the word? Cryptic way. And I also don't think beneficiaries should be put into the center of the story. I mean, I think there's a much more complex relational -- relational tensions that need to be [inaudible] out in there. But I do think, you know, that is a worry, that in other contexts when, I mean, I think about other contexts where that question will be raised. How do you -- how does a society, how does a kind of institutional process bring many more people on board? To -- not necessarily to beat oneself morally, but to have that little insight. That there's a gift here. There's an actual profound generosity that's been offered by people that you have been socialized to dehumanize. What -- just think of that as a point, so just be humble to that as a question. That is a huge question. And I -- that doesn't happen. [Inaudible] And how to do that, is -- that's a whole, you know, research project, or whole team research project on itself.

>> I think I spoke as -- as response and engagement to your question John, but also to Heidi's response. It is very important when, in addressing these questions, to disambiguate and understand the meaning of the concept of anger. Because in popular discourse, oftentimes, these conceptions, or these conceptualizations are very simplistically conflicted. And especially when there are very narrow narrative arguments in terms of settlements and peace processes. That lead one to a very quick acknowledgement of a small part of the devastation that such systems cause. And then, allowing for a moving away from. And a very quick distancing from what it means to be morally and dialogically responsible for the context of the constitutional framework that guarantees humanity and human rights for all. And when I say for all, I mean for all. Not simply narratives which say for all, but only guaranteed for a few. And I'm -- So, at the same time distinguishing [inaudible] at the level of mapping the time frames. The multiple time frames of a conflict historically, as well as understanding that in each and disparate -- each disparate temporal frame, the moral responsibility of each of us as citizens shift. So in the context of the apartheid war -- and I want to call it that. Of legally, as well as socially, because oftentimes, it's conflicted and collapsed. Or I think the war that maybe speaks of in terms of displacement point, is a social war of devastation. That those of us who lived in [inaudible]. Just think of Detroit, for example. That brings up some of the principals that it can no way be compared in the same way that I'm speaking. We -- one just has to drive through across the highways and to see trees growing through houses to understand that, these are concepts of social devastation here. You know, that might not have been immediately articulated and enforced in the same way that apartheid displaced several generations of too many families, including my own. So when I come into this conversation of complicity and in anger, it's from a very different place. And so, when I engaged and we -- myself and Heidi engaged intellectually, at the beginning of this conversation, it was a charged conversation. And we had to learn to hear each other. Because I, at that time, and today. I refuse as an intellectual, to accept the discourse of moving on quickly. Without pausing to understand the devastation that such administrative and policy framework. And as I administer to you, I don't mean administrative in certain organizations. Because oftentimes, people confuse me when I say, when I use the language of administer to violence. That it's, you know, this word that we're just administering this [inaudible]. But the principle is linked at the larger systemic sphere, that these laws had to be carried out by people. And defended by the executive arms of the state. And they were beneficiaries. So, understanding that apartheid was defeated is important to mark. It was defeated. It did not simply evaporate. It was defeated by many in the movement abroad, and it was defeated by many in the movement locally, as well as legally. Who committed their immoral lives to its defeat. And we're happy at its end. I have still lived the consequences of the devastation. War is devastating. You see pictures all around you. It is devastating. Somewhere, sometimes, you can speak too easily about the -- about war. You know. It's just, deal with the bad people and everything is fine. No, it's much more complicated than that. Ask me. I live the legacy of war in my skin. But I think this point of anger, of understanding it, you know, when those who are officially rendered voiceless. Meaning -- and what I mean by this is that there is no -- there is very slight capacity to legally articulate your voice in the terms of manufacting, administer to frameworks that promote and enable human rights over time. And this is the basis of the long-term peace, when those volatile groups speak of -- how do you -- what's this word? Vociferous -- is there such a English word as --

[ Multiple Speakers ]

-- Vociferously is what I'm looking for. When one articulates, not only in the social movements, vociferously, but it rings only as their echo. Yeah. Into the social, legal sphere, it produces a different tomatic [phonetic] anger, than the tomatic anger that the beneficiary causes experience, once they've lost the war. Because they voted and supported for that. And in South Africa, there's an act of denial. And there's a pain of having lost the supremacist war, which is -- you know. Which for most people across the world, is like, oh my God. Really? Yeah. And a lot of students and a lot of individuals here, who only encounter South Africa's discourse once you land. And I've spoken to many of you who've been there. Once you land, you are confronted with the violence of an apartheid structure that lives, and continues to live as normality. And that is a different anger. And we were both angry when we met. I mean, I worked at the Truth Commission. Although, I was not very -- I mean, I was from the, you know. I come from the early movements that were ideologically saying, no, we do not want to make peace with you. But, I was humbled, you know, during that process. Just reading the testimonies of the families, who had experienced the war actively, and was tired. Tired, tired, tired of this constant running. Being run over by the law, constantly. And wanted to believe, I think, to some extent, that peace and the ideal of a human rights possibility could be. And wanted to have the conversation. But immediately when people said that our land, our houses we removed. Then people from the more stronger economic section, but no, we don't want to talk no more. That's the past. Let's just move on together. Now, it's in this hope, where the possibility of having a difficult dialogue, that ensures a mutual peace. That says, yes, you are responsible, and you have a responsibility to that benefit. To accept this generous offer that some of the most pained and most honorable people were prepared to commit to, in the name and the hope of a peace. Yeah. And if we look at the -- and now in the question title, which is a broad question mark. The failure is -- leaves us with another question, which is who is responsible, when the most vulnerable cannot really articulate. Who is responsible to curate this promise? Is it the state, when the United Nations says no, it's your problem, now. It's now a local problem. But it's an international crime. What is the role of the international community? And in our case, everybody was very happy. Including -- and it was our fault. Yeah. As the liberation movement, to quickly work out legally enshrining responsibility to the atrocity and the atrociousness of our past. To want to be included into the international community without an official apology, firstly. And secondly, without an effective acknowledgment that goes beyond the narrow prevalences of actual physical violence against the body, by the arms of state. Those legal and those hated. So, yeah.

>> Something that's fascinating about your two responses put together, is that we get the -- we learned that this process of creating an official narrative about what happened. And a particular, for lack of a better term, I'll sum it up in just sort of a decapitation narrative. In other words, identifying some of the most lurid atrocities and some of those most responsible. And in a sense, pinning a disproportionate amount of the blame for historical abuses on a relatively narrow segment of the population, ends up silencing both sides again, in quotes. And I do, we have a silencing effect of those who were complicit, who no longer feel pressured to discuss their roles. And you also, of course, the silencing of those who were told that you're meant to now reconcile. And that means that you're no longer supposed to -- according to social norms -- express anger in public spaces. That that's something of the past. And what I'd like to ask you guys before we open up to further discussion is. Have you seen a lot of change in the 20 year period, in terms of civil society or academic space? Is it seen as more legitimate, less, or the same? To be able to narrate the perspectives that each of you has described?

>> Should I answer, should I?

>> Sure.

>> Okay.

>> I won't talk too much.

>> I don't know who -- I think we were talking last night about 20 years in the university of talking about talking about transforming. [Laughter].

>> We're good at that here, too.

>> Yeah. You know, the -- what's really interesting is that, my own perspective is so shaped by generation. I mean, that's becoming clearer and clearer to me. In the last year in South Africa, another generation of young intellectuals, scholars, academics, students, have said, enough talking about talking about transformation. Here's how we're going to do it. We are removing statues. We're demanding the removal of statues of colonial pillagers and war criminals. And then we're going to look at a range of other things from what do we -- what do we study when we study humanities disciplines? Who teaches us? Why? I work at the University of the Western Cape, which is a historically black university. A very interesting and complex university. Very much an institutional creation of the apartheid state. But if -- when I leave the university, I look up the main highway. And up on the hills of this very beautiful, very wealthy, very, you know, prestigious university, called University of Cape Town. Which is actually where the student movement calling for the, you know, the beginning of transformation with the statues, that also wasn't a [inaudible]. It really wasn't the end. That university has one black South African female professor in the entire teaching faculty of the university. This is 20 years later. There have always been intellectuals and scholars. That's not new. I mean, Shaluk Moctakae [phonetic], who is a foundational intellectual in South African intellectual history, from the early 20th century, studied. She was a student of W.E.B. Du Bois. You know, she touched people's lives. She taught students. She's one of hundreds of people who -- well, not only in South Africa, across the South African diaspora. The South African black diaspora. There's been centuries of flourishing life. Artistic, intellectual, creative, political. And yet 20 years after the end of apartheid. You know, so students are saying, well, you know, this is how we're going to do it. And we're making demands. And we're not actually -- we are [inaudible]. We're renaming. We are going to seek the terms of a new agenda. And I think we have to -- you know, for those who've been holding the door open for other ways, for other possibilities. It's time to say, okay. They've arrived. And we need to be, or not. I mean, it's very contested. And the role that anyone has to playing it is kind of seems to me -- from my experience, defined on a case by case basis. It depends on the relationships you have, and the networks you. You know, how you -- if I've been kind of present and working quietly in the little corners of my life. Then those are the spaces that I can participate in. You know, it's not automatic that everywhere is my space, anymore. And that's how it must be, personally. Academically. Yeah, so that's in the university. Maybe I'm oversimplifying. And maybe I'll just leave it at that, so we can -- I mean, of course there are changes. There are always changes. And a huge, huge change has been the centrality of education. You know, restating of education. Heart of the making of a kind of, you know, of a new citizen. At the heart of re -- kind of opened discussions and debates of what is freedom? What is a human being? How do we think about the human being, when the human being in western philosophy was shaped through the question of race? How do we un-think that? You know, so yeah. I think, this is a long walk. But I definitely think that some of the slow change pace is -- we need to buckle up for some fast change. It's a train at the station.

>> I'll try and be brief, but this --

>> Sorry.

>> I'll have Luke try to engage us as well. No, I wasn't really [inaudible] of your time. I was just thinking to myself. I think something that when one grows up, inside of an oppressive system. Especially when you live as the [inaudible] of it. Can you hear me in the back?

>> No.

>> That's why I've been trying to speak so loudly. But I was -- I stopped because I thought I was going to scare people. [Laughter] So I can -- I'll just project again, okay.

>> It wasn't you. It was someone outside speaking, so I apologize.

>> No worries. I was saying, as someone who has survived -- who survived. I mean, I consider myself a survivor. And not in any negative terms. In fact, I wish to, and I had, and I have done this, since I've come to the United States. As my own responsibility to the experience of those who have -- are the most vulnerable in my country. And I'm not one of them any longer, as you can see. That's why I chose a [inaudible] tie, to make sure that [laughter] when you see that, you know, I've come to a place where I can actually wear that publicly. And I'm -- okay, that was a joke. [Laughter] Otherwise, I'm too serious. But what's not a joke is that it's true. I've had to overcome the meaning of surviving apartheid. As an intellectual, and as a human being. And not many people have been that lucky. And so, it's important to recognize that both the ideal of human rights and democracy, as well as the systematic creation and construction of atrocity takes place over time. It doesn't just occur, and it doesn't just end. Which is -- which is some of the fallacies of the dominant narratives that try to move on too quickly, without addressing what people are living with after these systems end. And this is the only thing that I want to say next. Is that it's so important to mark the fact that the system that dogged us for so long and so many generations. Contribute to their intellectual and their physical bodies, to its ending, ended. It's -- you know, I don't just want to complain about its legacy. But it's important to mark that it ended. Yeah. Because if we don't mark that it ended, it's easy to forget all of those who contributed to its end. Yeah. And it's this legacy that is at risk, as well. And -- Too many people -- and I don't want to be one of them -- say that there's no difference any longer. You know, between apartheid and post-apartheid. And that's not true. And it's easy for that to be articulated, and to become public resonance through a beneficiary in a second order experience. But when that we lived it, you can't articulate that. And I was -- I'll tell a very quick story of an activist, intellectual, who never went to school. And died when she was 60 -- in her mid-sixties. Not too long ago, in one of townships outside of Cape Town [inaudible]. And she was asked this question: what is the difference? And I was sitting there listening to her, and was humbled. I mean, I was humbled. And I'm not always humble. And she said, when someone asked her -- actually, the person articulated that it's the same now that it was then. And she was an activist as a teenager, a 13 year old running pamphlets in the 1950s. And, hopefully, my math works out here. And she said that for me, you cannot compare the two. You know. I'm suffering economically, now. I'm experiencing a worse pain even, 15, 20 years later, than I did at that time. Because then, at least, we held each other together. But the police, and there will be no white person again, that will walk on -- and she pointed to the suite. Because we were in a sort of ram shackled space when we were having this conversation. And she pointed out, and you could see the pavement, but there was no pavement. And in the brochure that you have, I mean, and this articulates the extremities of Cape Town, for example, if you [inaudible] divided. And she pointed to the pavement, and said, no one will just push me off that pavement again. And get away with it, and think that it's okay. And it was in this letter for, that she articulated, you know, the memory of the difference. And I think it's important to remember that. And too many people, including myself at the time, you know, forgot. Yeah, forgot. And so yes, the change is immense. Immense. But for peace to really be articulated in the long run, there needs to be more. In terms of the law, in terms of the policy frame. Because apartheid colonized not only the our land. It colonized our hearts, our minds, our central nervous system. It wrote itself as into our blood. And I see some of the things here, but in different ways [inaudible]. And so, I am not saying we are unique. It wrote itself into our blood. And another person -- and I'll finish, said to me. And she wrote a very interesting paper on this, recently. And I'm just blanking on her name, although I know it very well. And she said, you know, when she was explaining the post-apartheid form, she said that there is a saying. Was -- sorry, [inaudible] that correctly. But, she said sekazin [phonetic], you know. Meaning that it's in the blood. Yeah. The pain, the [inaudible], the experience. It's lived. And if we, as intellectuals, and activists, and professionals, do not hold those who are legally responsible for curating difference and ideal of change. We do not hold them responsible both locally as well as internationally, this type of pain and [inaudible] will endure, despite the enormity of the change.

[ Inaudible Comment ]

>> I'm from South Africa. And I'm going to try and ask you my question, and my name is Von Guille [phonetic]. I'll try and ask my question in the context of education. Basic education is obviously [inaudible] in high education. I was born and raised --

[ Inaudible Content ]. But I had to walk to south of Johannesburg to [inaudible] education. And now that they've been [inaudible]. And those spaces are so different. And I have memories of those spaces, but I continue to struggle for those spaces. My question is this. Memory and recovery can be recovered, individually, collectively, alongside state narratives about what. Possibly -- state narratives because of power players and their contributions. What can be or must be recovered. I [inaudible] dignity. [Inaudible] the dignity of the people at these space and apartheid. And forgiveness. And I'm deliberately listing those in that order. Memory, courage, and dignity. And forgiveness. And well, of course, when there have been the [inaudible]. In education, how do you practically do this well? They say that this is erasure. And I think in many ways, the silencing. But also, it's sanitizing. How do you work with this? With young people that I work [inaudible]. And every day I can walk in there, I'm confronted by this. But now, and oftentimes, these multiple spaces. How do you deal with it? How do you [inaudible] practically. I'm working in a high school, I have to confront this. I teach at a historically, African's university. How could you deal with this practically? This messiness. Because, I wanted to end it, end the legacy. But I also need to think about where we're going.

>> Do you have a preference who replies?

>> No.

[ Inaudible Content ]

>> I'll be very honest. There is no answer. It's been to act as a silver bullet, in terms of this issue. [Inaudible] When I say there's no answer, it doesn't mean that there should not be multiple answers. I think the answer is in the multiplicity of our response. And the openness to allow for such a multiplicity. Which I think is the problem generally, after the apartheid system [inaudible]. And firstly, it's a larger instance. Second issue, you know, is to understand that -- I mean, and I think, based on what you said, it's clear that you're very, you know, you know this. I'm not acting as an expert on this issue in terms of the question. But -- -- Until the education system, and those education professionals, intellectuals, and practitioners during the apartheid moment, are apprehended. Politically, and legally, there will be -- well, and I think about it's easier to say that now than it was 20 years ago. There will be a very difficult accounting. For the centrality of the education system in creating and -- not only apartheid mentality. But one, educating those of us who were not supposed to be legally treated as equally human, to live our lives as secondary and third-class human beings. And then, to educate at the same time, those who were supposed to be the beneficiaries, you know, of this -- of such a genesis paradigm. To them, as normality, to live out their supremacy with dignity. I mean, I live and teach in the United States, because I cannot live and teach there. I was kicked out of the university, kicked out [inaudible]. I'm an earlier generation. My graduate work was in the late 90s, after the earlier generations of our people who went into higher education. I got kicked out. We fought in such a way. And I was too immature, at the time, to understand the consequences of me wanting, as a -- and I continue to self-identify in black consciousness terms, as black. Now, as I did then, and I do now. And I do not accept the narrow pigeonholing of what the meaning of my skin color. I will not carry my skin color. And I will not walk my skin color in any context here or there, as burden. And a consequence of that is me -- which is a good consequence in this case. Now teaching at the University of Michigan. I consider myself a self-imposed intellectual exile. And I don't say that easily. Because I come from -- I was exiled when I was 15. Even at -- when 1980's as part of the 1995 uprising, as well. So exile is not new to me. But I do think that, until it is dealt with at its very root, even one of these conflicts -- concepts -- will continue to then bold these systems around it that fail. And I understand this failure. And I don't know how many of you the years apartheid at 17 to 18 different education systems of [inaudible]. We were divided, and very narrow, in very, very destructive ways. And that legacy continues to be lived in the minds and the hearts of too many people. And so, it's very difficult to articulate. And so I -- I mean, I, again, I conclude there is no simple answer. But we have to engage on our terms. Those of you in this newer generation. Those of us in my generation. Us in, you know, every generation. As we begin to inhabit the intellectual spheres in such ways, that our thinking has the possibility of becoming social reality.

>> I can only reflect, [inaudible] I thank you for your question. I don't have an answer. But I, if I can, reflect on a kind of personal like anecdote from. Well, by our sheer synchronicity today, on Facebook, a friend posted a PDF. I don't know if it's a book, or a long article. But, by I. B. Tabata, from an intellectual, anti-apartheid intellectual, from a very different kind of political tradition than the congress movement. With an interest in education. And it's an article called -- and if I can send it to you -- it's called Education for Barbarism . And it's a critique. And it looks almost -- I haven't read it -- but it looks almost prophetic. Like, it's almost a -- if this, you know, if -- there's certain kinds of archaeologies and architectures that persist in institutions beyond '94. And I -- and education is one of them. And no amount of technocratic kind of, like, immaculate technocracy, or bureaucracy, or policy, and [inaudible] more information. You know, kind of like, precisely defining your target group and target population. None of that kind of policy language can actually undo the deep kind of matrix of the system. And I'm not -- you know, I'm not an educator in the [inaudible] sense. I work in the university. I work in a very particular university. It' also where I got my PhD. So, and I say that because I thought because of who I am, if I got a PhD. If I studied for PhD at a historically black university, I would kind of have, you know, that I wouldn't be punished for that. That didn't turn out quite true. I -- you know, I have a devalued -- I mean the way in which white supremacy works isn't only person by person. It's systemic. I don't have a doctorate from a white -- a [inaudible] white university. And there's a certain kind of -- you know, I have to work harder than. You know, and that's really interesting. Because that was a shock. Was, okay, it works like that? But work, you know, my experience is that, in the center I work at, we started a critical education project. And the argument is that community arts projects were really central to nourishing the creative intellectual political life of people. In areas that were not allowed -- so, that were prohibited from the infrastructure and resources. To develop those parts of the human being that characterizes all human life. And it was this flourishing community arts. A movement in the 1980's. Actually, Yazier introduced me to one in particular, when we first met in the late '90's. And subsequently, and through kind of coincidence, the same to where our work has established a critical arts education center. Not on the community arts model. Because after '94, anything that has the word community and usually means developmental. And it usually means somehow bereft of the intangible alchemistic magic stuff that happens when you put people together and let them think. Free, and without imposing how they should think, because they work. How they should think because they're in a community. I mean, sorry if that's being too harsh. And I don't mean to ink anyone who does development work or community work. But there's a way in which something of the magic of encounter. When you put people together to think together, without imposing a program on what should be thought, what should be painted, what should be imagined as a future. It just, you know, something else just happens. And we wanted to go with the something else. The what can't [inaudible] be imagined. Let's try and do something without knowing what it's going to be. And put people together. And so we've got a group of artists who are brilliant in their field. They are accomplished in their field. And we're saying, put together a set of courses, and let's, you know, and let's raise money. And we've done that. And bring students from -- there's a school in Khayelitsha that's participating. There's a school in Woodstock [inaudible] the others, that are participating. And let's see -- see what happens. Let's experiment. And I'm sorry I'm taking a long time to talk. But the anecdote is about being willing to experiment. To say that maybe, you know, the one thing that I've learned from the anti-apartheid struggle. Because I wasn't in the anti-apartheid struggle, is that people risk imagining things that couldn't be imagined. People imagined freedom. They imagined a post-apartheid society that didn't look like the one we're living in. But that means it can be done again. And I think there's something in the ways in which the arts, or creativity, or the classroom can become a laboratory for that. At least, that's what I'm seeing. I don't know how it's going to turn out. But I think it's worth risking the experiment of putting people together to re-imagine something that can't even be imagined. I don't know if that's an answer that satisfies you.

[ Inaudible Comment ]

>> Thank you both for your fascinating talk. So my question is for Heidi. So, you -- yes, I'm sorry for pronouncing your name wrong.

>> Okay.

>> You spoke briefly about the contemporary like, Rhodes Must Fall, [inaudible] must fall, movement. And I was wondering, how does that movement work to, I guess, reform your research questions? Also, you spoke about your strategies being generational. And so, I was wondering, what are the tactics that are different now with the Rhodes Must Fall? Which, obviously, is like action. And what were the -- what are the resistance struggles that you are using for, that encapsulate your own research questions? I guess I'm looking for a bit of comparison. And also, I don't know if you ever even possibility about this. But the collaboration with like, the Rhodes Must Fall, with other, I guess, social media resistance, like, [inaudible] Palestine. And they're like, transnational, virtual spaces of resistance. And so, how do you conceptualize this in your research, if you do at all [inaudible]?

>> I don't. I don't research. I don't -- I don't do any research on it. I kind of comment as a citizen. So, it's not a, like an object, focus, or area of research. I think, I for one feel that it's an emergent -- it's a beginning process. It's very, very, it's uneven from campus to campus. The issues are different from campus to campus. I mean, working-class black, and rural black students coming to a historically black university have very different kind of demands. Although, that isn't to say that they aren't starving students on other campuses. They are. There's also the question -- I know on our campus, there's a huge question. The whole funding structure is set to work against dignity, against conditions that make studying possible. They, I mean, the lowest possible common denominator is what even the national learn scheme is based on. It's not to, kind of, create conditions for thinking. Or for reading, for asking questions, for debating. For having a full daily and setting about, like exploring the -- this incredible gift of three or four years where you can. Yes, you have to, you know, do your studies, and get your grades. And they're all kinds of pressures that people have. But to also indulge curiosity. It's an -- there isn't space given for that in a lot of universities. So I think it's a very uneven. The politics. The party politics are very complicated and uneven, playing out differently from space to space. And university administrations responding differently from place to place. So that being said, I think students are also defining the kinds of alliances that they're wanting from support of faculty. And that differs from space -- from place to place. And lastly, yeah, I'm just kind of not reaching any completions. I'm just showing up to work, university, at work, was closed for two months last year. Our university, we go back to exams next week. Exams that weren't finished. And I really don't think we're going to start off the year with a regular registration. Because Fees Must Fall is also, you know, demanding no registration. So I know, I think -- I imagine Yazier has a very different take on education. I don't know if you want to. I think there's -- the important aspect you're raising that I'm not engaging with. But partly it's, I was very immersed. I mean, John knows before I came with, you know, the immediacy of the Fees Must Fall. So I haven't had time and space to reflect on it now.

>> Yeah.

>> And I'd like to, with your permission.

>> That's okay.

>> Yeah? Because I know that the question wasn't directed at me. There's a lot to be said. I don't -- I won't say too much. Two important points for me as, is. In terms of the two movements in South Africa that you mentioned. These are contemporary, very recent articulations, in a fairly -- in an important space. But it's very narrow, classically. Firstly, it's an important recognition. And these movements have managed to articulate themselves outside of some of the more narrow, ideological blinders of some other movements. That have not disappeared, and also exist in South Africa, firstly. And that's important thing to -- that anybody thinking through these questions, remember that successful movements that come to articulate themselves in the body politic of law, usually are trans-generational. They've been there for a long time. And they've learned from the defeats and successes of previous iterations of such movements. And that's important, you know. And I know this, what I'm going to say now might not sound politically nice. But I'm going to say it nonetheless, because I think I would be -- it would be irresponsible of me as an intellectual, not to. And if you're here, you're welcome to have a longer conversation outside of this space. Is that, and I was guilty of this. It's the only reason why I haven't saying this [inaudible] as a 16 year old. As part of the early iterations of the student movements of that time under apartheid. Is that, sometimes as young people, we want to think of ourselves as always the first iteration. And when there's a trans-generational gap between previous iterations. And I was having a conversation with someone earlier on W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington. And other intellectuals of the African-American liberation. Here, and -- but, when young people start to articulating themselves as the first iteration without -- and sometimes I understand why that is done. You know. Because we had to tell our parents in 1985, no, we will not expect this any longer. And we were at high school at that time. And I didn't finish high school. I actually, -- it was a funny thing [inaudible] to high school. And I said, I never went to high school. So, because at that time, our central organizing slogan was liberation before education. First, we will liberate ourselves, and then we will create the structures. But, that was also not complicated enough. Because we learned during that time that once you liberate yourself from these trusses, the building of the education structures is continuous. It's simultaneous. You cannot wait. There is no simple articulation of the past, present, and future. We are building at the same time as we are moving, in a sense. So, these organizations, you know, if they do not find an intellectual ability -- and I get tired of people who want to dismiss thinking. Yeah. All of us must act. No. You can't act without thinking. You can't think what you're going to do. You're going to act in ways that have failed. And so, it's important intellectually, as leaders of these movements, to think about that. And to begin to understand that the issues, as articulated, are your main issues. And others may be experiencing similar issues. They're [inaudible]. And that conversation has to happen. It -- the larger movements are to cohere successfully. Yeah, but if one movement imposes its issue as the main issue, and starts skipping on others, you are doing the work of imperialism. Yeah, and it is hard to have a conversation dialogically, to say, my God, you've got this issue. I've got this issue. How do we put it together, so that we can think creatively? We can envision together, and walk. Sure, sure, they're not as allies, but in solidarity with one another. Yeah, to a larger human appeal. And ideal of humanity. The hope. You -- now, these organizations, if they cannot build hope together, they will fail together, is my opinion, based on studying them. And I think, live too. But it's a longer -- that's a simplistic concept.

>> Thank you. I think we're just about run out of time. But I hope you'll all join me in thanking Yazier Henry and Heidi Grunebaum.

[ Applause ]

And I think I'm sure some of you have additional things you'd love to talk about. But I wanted to have that break, so that I know some of you also need to get going. So, if you want to stick around, then I'm sure we --