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• Article on Mr. Harris
• Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela on PBS

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Tavis: Thomas Allen Harris is an award-winning filmmaker who has a very personal connection to his latest project. His stepfather was one of the twelve men who risked their lives in order to spread the gospel of Nelson Mandela. Beginning in the early 1960s, the story of these twelve men is told in the acclaimed new documentary, "Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela.' The film makes its television debut here on PBS September 19 as part of the award-winning "P.O.V." series. Here now a scene from "Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela.'

[A film clip is shown]

Tavis: Thomas Allen Harris, nice to have you here.

Thomas Allen Harris: Thank you, Tavis. Good to be here.

Tavis: Glad to have you. Congratulations on what is a powerful documentary. Tell me - well, obviously, you knew this at some point, but let me just ask, when did you learn of your connection one step removed from Nelson Mandela, of all people?

Harris: Well, you know, when Lee first joined our family, it was 1972. That was before "Free Nelson Mandela" became a kind of global campaign, so very few people in the United States knew about Nelson Mandela because he was in jail at the time and he hadn't ever come to the United States before that.

So Lee, being part of the African National Congress, came with the news that, you know, Nelson Mandela was the imprisoned president, so one of their objectives was dismantling apartheid, but also freeing Nelson Mandela.

You know, I knew who Nelson Mandela was before, let's say, 1980 when all of a sudden "Free Nelson Mandela" was on everyone's lips, so I watched that whole kind of trajectory and watched these guys he came with, men and women, work really hard mouth to mouth in getting the news out.

Tavis: Tell me more about Lee and then I want to talk more broadly about these twelve disciples. But tell me about Lee, one of the twelve disciples.

Harris: Well, he left South Africa with the group of twelve and his mission was to use media as a tool for education and to fight apartheid. Some of the other twelve became soldiers in direct combat, but he came to use media. He first went to East Germany and learned journalism, went back to Tanzania and published several newspapers and then came to the United States on a scholarship to Lincoln University which is an historically Black university and learned journalism there.

Then after that, he transferred to Temple and got a degree in journalism there and then came to NYU and got a degree in journalism and later on a librarianship. His whole mission was to become a political television journalist. You know, back in the early 1970s and the ANC at that time was viewed as a communist terrorist organization and he had a thick accent. Even as a nine year old kid, I knew that wasn't likely.

So he struggled like many of the people in obscurity until 1976. All of a sudden, the world's concept of South Africa shifted and the United Nations opened up an anti-apartheid division, a radio division, and he was hired to create scripts and tell people in South Africa what was going on in the United States and worldwide in terms of the global anti-apartheid movement so it would be broadcast in Botswana, so he ultimately fulfilled his dream.

Tavis: When did you know - recall for me your earliest, not even remembrance, but understanding, I guess - one and the same - your earliest understanding of the courageous and righteous work that he was engaged in to put the world spotlight on apartheid in South Africa?

You know this uncle of yours has a heavy accent. You hear about this guy named Mandela. He's in prison, the president of the ANC, but when were you consciously aware of the courageous and righteous work that they were engaged in around this issue called apartheid?

Harris: Well, I think I was aware immediately as soon as I met him because my mother was involved in Pan Africanist politics, so I had read about it. Even as a young kid, I knew about the liberation struggles in various African states and how it was connected to our own civil rights. When I met Lee, I would go to bed and dream that I would become like invisible and go to South Africa and go and fight, you know, the evil racists there.

You know, my grandfather's dream was to go to Africa and he passed that down to all of his kids. My mother ultimately, you know, eventually met an African man and we went to Africa together. That was in Tanzania in the 1970s after we had met Lee. So I think that I was very much aware of that.

Tavis: Tell me what process you have to go through, which I figure had to be daunting at some level, to put together a documentary like this where you're trying to piece together all of the elements that you need to make a documentary about a people and a project many, many miles away. How did you pull this all together?

Harris: Well, a lot of it came together. I just did a lot of research. You know, I worked on the film for about five years. I had interviewed all of the disciples. I interviewed the guys who trained them before they left.

Tavis: You tracked down all of them?

Harris: I tracked down all of them because most people didn't know about the story. I mean, I decided to do this film when I went to my step-dad's funeral in January of 2000. I heard these same stories that I heard when I was a kid and I said I have to make this film. I have to, you know, create a eulogy for him.

I mean, part of it was fueled because we had such a difficult relationship. I was an American kid and he was a traditional South African father. You know, he was into this kind of discipline and I was like saying, no, these are my boundaries and talking back to him and even using first names as opposed to like calling him Dad or Uncle Lee or whatever. So it was a culture clash and when I got to South Africa, all of a sudden I realized at his funeral that I loved him as a father and he was my father.

In South Africa, there's no such thing as step. You know, if someone's in the house and raising you as a father, he's your father. I mean, Tavis, it was like looking in a mirror and all of a sudden, you know, the mirror shattered and there was my identity. Part of doing this film was also kind of about opening my heart, you know, to him.

You know, I actually followed his footsteps, so I had to like understand what was going on in all parts of Africa at the time because the South African liberation struggles connected to all the liberation struggles that were going on in Africa in the 1950s and 1960s. You know, if you study African history, you realize that all those countries became free and had to become free before South Africa, the last country in Africa to become independent.

So I spoke with all the disciples and kind of got the nitty-gritty about why they went to Tanzania, for instance. Initially, they were going to go to Ghana, but they couldn't go to Ghana because there was a war in the Congo and the plane could not refuel to continue its trip down to Botswana to pick them up.

Finding out all this firsthand, I had to do it because, you know, these guys were old. They had spent thirty years in exile. They'd been through traumatic experiences like not eating for weeks on end. I made the film and, since making the film, three of the disciples have died and that knowledge has died with them, but for the film.

Tavis: Given your point that three of them are now deceased, was there or is there a universal feeling about Nelson Mandela today? If so, what is that feeling on the part of these disciples?

Harris: Well, Nelson Mandela, along with the other leaders of the ANC, created the vision that they were executing. You know, he inspired them. He met them several times and he inspired them so much so that they kept up this dream for thirty years. You know, to do something and not get support, but to keep the vision alive for thirty years, and he was in prison for twenty-seven of those years, I think it takes a tremendous amount of discipline and it takes a tremendous amount of commitment. I think he inspired this in them and it allowed them to, you know, carry the sword until independence when apartheid was dismantled and South Africa became free.

Tavis: I know you learned many things. I want to give you time to think about this for two seconds here. I'm curious as to whether or not there was a particular thing that you learned about the ANC, about the struggle or about Mandela in putting this documentary together that just jumps out at you.

I ask that because, you know, I, like a lot of students when I was in college - those of us who were conscious - were involved in protesting outside of the Embassies in our respective cities and being a part of "Free South Africa" and "End Apartheid" rallies and marches. I did a lot of that and was relatively well-versed about it, etc., etc.

I thought I knew a little something about the apartheid struggle until apartheid ended and I went to South Africa. I've been any number of times since then, of course. But every time I go - and I've had the occasion to meet Mandela and talk to him - but every time I go, I learn something new like the moment of going into the cell on Robin Island where he stayed and having the tour guide tell you about something you could not have even imagined that they had to endure on Robin Island.

My point is, I learn something every time I go back or every time I read about it. You are up close and personal with this thing, so there had to be, I'm sure, something that you said, "I cannot believe that this was happening or this was a part of this and I didn't know anything about it."

Harris: Yeah. Well, there are a couple of things like that. One major thing was realizing the tremendous cost that is involved in being in exile, you know, to be away from your family, to be away from your home, to give all of that up for the movement. That was really traumatic. It took tremendous discipline and commitment.

Also what I think was amazing as well was the kind of embrace that the African National Congress had for all different colors and all different people. It was like a very inclusive movement. When those folks, the exiles, came to this country and went all over, they took that vision with them which is the vision of Nelson Mandela. You know, we're not going to revive with anger. We're not going to revive with resentment and with revenge. To experience brutality at that level and to be able to forgive, you know, is phenomenal.

Tavis: Thomas Allen Harris is the filmmaker behind the new documentary, "The Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela" coming to PBS, first on "P.O.V.;" so check it out. Thomas, nice to meet you and congratulations on your work, man. Glad to have you here.

Harris: Thank you, Tavis.

Tavis: Up next on this program, Oscar-winning actress, Geena Davis. Stay with us.