Editor: Quick update… you’ll see if you have a look around here and the Bottom-line Bookclub, that we’ve completed the switch over to US Dollars. Thanks for your patience with this! Also, as I mentioned before, I’ll be pushing up the Bottom-line Bookclub Membership rates by 50% on 8 June, so if you’d like to join us and save on the monthly rate, then grab a membership before 5pm MST on 8 June.
Interview with Freedom Fighter, Thulani Mabaso
You all know how much of my work and the whole idea of Agile Living is focused on freedom. In my previous post, I talked about what the 7 different types of freedom and shared about Nelson Mandela’s perspective on freedom. Well, if you’re looking for interesting perspectives on freedom, who better to interview about freedom than a freedom fighter!
I interviewed Thulani Mabaso for the Bottom-line on Invictus and because it was such a moving interview for me, I wanted to share it even more widely than the Bottom-line Bookclub.
Thulani was a member of the African National Congress’ military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe. As a member of Umkhonto we Sizwe, Mr Mabaso worked closely with Nelson Mandela and directly under Jacob Zuma (our current South African President). He spent 10 years imprisoned at Robben Island alongside Nelson Mandela and other political leaders because of his role in executing the bombing of a South African Defense Force building in Johannesburg.
Mr Mabaso answered a lot of the questions I would have liked to ask Nelson Mandela and I think the interview gives a great peak into some of the world that Nelson Mandela operated in – and adds some further perspective on the uniqueness and greatness of Nelson Mandela’s leadership.
Beware: Thulani hasn’t sanitized his story for us and it’s a pretty hardcore story, so this probably isn’t suitable for highly sensitive listeners. But if you can bear hearing some of the horror he shares, this is an incredibly moving interview that will probably shift your perspective on your own problems in a big way.
I know very little of South Africa’s history, but I happened to just catch the story of Gandhi and saw that he cut his teeth fighting oppression in South Africa.
ah man, eating his own feces, being shocked, broken bones… brutal. BRUTAL. These were strong men. That kind of torture breaks you in every way.
Powerful interview.
.-= Mike Roberts´s last blog ..Elvia Rhodes: Big Goal Hunter =-.
Thanks for bringing us this real and at the same time shocking account of the attrocities the people of South Africa were subjected to, if they were not accepting the exploitation and racism during rhe times of minority rule.
Many of this is still very unknown (for example in Europe and America) and we should feel with the people who went through this barbaric system of Apartheid and Terror and actively fought against it.
Mr. Thulani Mabaso is one of many unknown heros of South Africa, and some have not even survived the mistreatment to tell their story or some are psychologically damaged for the rest of their life.
He and all victims of this unsolved terror reign deserve our respect and personal solidarity!
Hey Ike, I’m glad you found this post and interview enlightening. I tell these stories because I think there’s a lot we can all learn from it and because, having lived in the USA, Canada and UK, I think that the sentiments that inspired Apartheid exist all over the world, and I think it’s important to have these conversations so that we, as a whole world, can avoid ever creating something like Apartheid ever again.
Re your last sentence, “He and all victims of this unsolved terror reign deserve our respect and personal solidarity!” They do deserve our respect and solidarity, but I just want to point out that Apartheid is not an “unsolved terror reign”… Apartheid is very much over in South Africa and the left-over racism that we still need to transform into love is on no worse than anywhere else in the world.
@ CathD:
I appreciate your perspective! With the word “unsolved” i try to give expression to my feeling that the state terrorism that people like Thulani and millions more in South Africa were subjected to was so horrific and still the reconciliation process seems to have failed to deliver a feeling of justice to the victims, to punish the mass-murderers and to make the former “beneficiaries” of apartheid (those that enjoyed the benefits of the systematic exploitation of non-pale South Africans) aware of their role in society!
While i highly appreciate it that you feature an interview which gives your visitors insights into the horror of apartheid from a personal perspective of an affected person i slightly differ when it comes to your conclusion that apartheid is just over – because it still affects the society of today. For example: the former priviliged are almost the same today (=white) and when you search on the Internet for sites , blogs or forums that deal with South African society you will 9 times in 10 find some racist anti-black propaganda site by some apartheid lovers. If we were an equal society today that wouldnt be that much of a problem since internet users that were formerly negatively affected by apartheid would be able to present their perspective. But since people from the formerly affected groups often dont have access to the internet the racists can spread their lies…
I doubt that since apartheid officially ended in 1994 South Africa is now in the league of “average racism” – did the apartheid mindstate of those that supported the most institutionalised and systematic form of racism ever suddenly disappear when Mandela became president? When a society is willing to enjoy the fruits of a system like apartheid for the cost of massive exploitation of the labour and denial of human and civil rights of the affected groups – there has to be a above average acceptance for racist ideas, xenophobia and dehumanization.