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(upbeat music) (crowd laughing) - Good afternoon and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland, where we are devoted to conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

Come on now, enough.

Okay, there's a lot of noise here today.

It's very exciting.

Today is Friday, January 27th.

It is, today's actually the eighth day or the sixth program in eight days that the City Club has done.

And we're delighted to introduce today's forum, which is our Cyrus Eaton Memorial Forum, our annual Cyrus Eaton Memorial Forum.

And our forum today, I should mention too, is presented in partnership with our friends at Civic Genius, Beyond Conflict and Younify, Y-O-U-nify And it's my honor to introduce two international leaders who were instrumental in ending apartheid in South Africa, Mohammed Bhahba and Roelf Meyer.

In the past several years, we've been hearing a lot about polarization in America, whether it's in Congress or school board meetings.

America does seem to be divided in ways that are fundamentally damaging our society and our democracy.

Those divisions continue to deepen as the country faces the lingering effects of a global pandemic, economic woes, and heated debates about just about every topic that comes up in public dialogue.

However, there's hope and that hope comes in the form of lessons we can learn from nations that have faced their own challenges with political and social divisions.

From South Africa to Northern Ireland, other societies have struggled with intense divisions that frankly, nearly tore them apart.

They found solutions, they found processes that communities can put to work to bridge what might feel like impossible divides.

So let me tell you about our guests today.

Roelf Meyer served in the cabinet of former president Nelson Mandela, and later became Secretary General of the National Party.

In 1997, he co-founded the United Democratic Movement.

He consulted on international peace processes in Kosovo, Myanmar, Northern Ireland and Rwanda, among others.

With him on stage as Mohammed Bhahba, who was part of the 1991 African National Congress team at the Convention for a Democratic South Africa.

And later part of the agreements on the final South African constitution.

In 1994, Mr. Bhahba was appointed as a senator in Parliament.

Mohammed Bhahba has worked on transitional and constitutional support projects in South Sudan, Yemen, and Palestine among many other locations.

Moderating our conversation today is a great friend of the City Clubs, Carina Van Vliet.

She's CEO of the Cleveland Council on World Affairs and co-chair of the City Club's Global Issues Member Committee.

Carina has also served as a political affairs officer at the United Nations from 2006 to 2014, and served as a senior advisor to the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize Forum.

If you have questions for our guests, you can text them to 330-541-5794.

The number again is 330-541-5794.

You could also tweet your questions at the City Club and we will work them in to the second half of the program, members and Friends of the City Club of Cleveland, please join me in welcoming Mohammed Bhahba, Roelf Meyer and Carina Van Vliet.

(audience applauding) - Well, thank you Dan, and good afternoon everyone.

As Dan said, I am Carina Van Vliet, CEO of the Cleveland Council on World Affairs, former United Nations, but very importantly for the purposes today, a very proud member of the City Club of Cleveland.

I'm delighted to be here for this conversation, and I just wanted at the outset to stress how truly fortunate we are to have Roelf Meyer and Mohammed Bhahba with us here today to talk about the very hard lessons that they learned, about how to build bridges and reach across divides in a very polarized society and build a democratic transition process in their country, the Republic of South Africa.

And gentlemen, welcome to Cleveland.

It is your first visit to Cleveland, so I think they deserve a very, very warm Cleveland welcome.

(audience applauding) And so we're here to talk about lessons learned about overcoming profound divides.

But I think before we move on to the lessons.

I've noticed there's quite a few students and young people in the audience today.

And so I'd just like to make sure we start off by providing some context.

And I'm wondering if you could take us back to your experience of apartheid and perhaps specifically in those years right before the transition, so mid to late 1980s, what was it like at that time for each of you to live in this system of racial oppression and and division?

And how far apart did you feel you were from the other side?

How much fear was there?

What'd that feel like?

And perhaps Mr. Bhahba, we'll start with you.

- Thank you and good afternoon everybody.

South Africa, the system of apartheid was not only about geographical separation, it was about access to resources and as Roelf will say, a system that was based on superiority and inferiority.

So in our everyday life, the interaction with the person of another color, and by the way, you may adjust your glasses, I was categorized as black in South Africa.

So if you were not white, or if you were not Caucasian, you were non-white as we were categorized and within the non-whites, there were different categories.

There were those whom we called African, largely indigenous.

The second category were those that were the progeny of relationships over the years between black and white, and we called them colored.

And then the third people who were of Asian extract, which I fall, in that category.

And depending on what category you fell in, that determined the access to resources, the quality of your schooling, where you lived, how you lived and what kind of employment you would get.

And geographically, we were also then divided.

So my interaction with the white person was minimal.

It was based on suspicion, on hatred and seen as my oppressor.

There wasn't any opportunity for me to interact, to understand what, why and what they were doing and what were the reasons for this.

All we felt was oppression.

So the schools I went to were very limited.

In the state I was, I had access to only three schools.

There was only one university I could go to.

And unfortunately for Roelf, that became a little nursery for our politics because we were all put in there.

Though I think that was an unintended consequence.

And just to give you a sense, it was worse for people of African or people, the indigenous people.

Much worse than I had to go through.

To give you an example, the system was based, gold is what made south Africa, but the system was based on black people providing labor for the gold mines.

So the spacial planning, what we call the apartheid planning, was based on that as well.

So you had this unusual situation where the poorest lived furthest away from the city center, and they could only come in during limited hours.

And at nine o'clock in the evening, an alarm would go on, right?

Hooters for black people not to be seen in the streets.

And if they were, they were arrested.

And literally hundreds of thousands of people who were arrested for that.

So just to give you a sense of that, the most important thing there, and we live with those consequences now, was what we called Bantu education.

If black people were only seen to provide labor, it was important for our oppressors to make sure that they don't educate themselves.

And I mean Zimbabwe, which is north of us, fortunately for the Zimbabweans, Ian Smith did not get into that and didn't adopt that policy.

So education was the issue that really hurt us most, to make us functional and even after the fall of apartheid, we are going to live with that for many, many decades to come.

I'll leave that though.

- Mr. Meyer, you were a member of the government, the National Party, which was the Afrikaner party.

What was that experience for you like and how much fear did you have with the forces that were building against your government?

- Yeah, like Mohammed was saying, and thank you very much for this opportunity, thank you for giving us this platform unexpectedly.

But like Mohammed was saying, you know, apartheid was a system, it was an institutional divide that was created through law, specifically after 1948.

But racial separation or segregation existed forever in South Africa.

The first white settler (indistinct) sailed in Africa, our part of the continent in 1652.

And ever since then, it was racial separation, but it was institutionalized by 1948 and thereafter.

So I personally grew up in a remote part of the country on a farm.

I had one friend and he looked like Mohammed, he was a colored boy.

We were the same age, but then when we went to school, we were separated.

I went to a white school and he went to a colored school, like it was at that stage.

This was in the early 1950s, and I lost contact.

We never saw each other until I decided by the late 1990s, I wanted to go and see where my friend is.

And I fortunately picked up with him before he passed.

But that was the state of affairs in South Africa.

Did I question it when I was a kid?

No.

Did I question it when I was even a student?

No.

It was only later that my mind said to myself, "This is unfair.

This is unjust.

We can't tolerate this."

But that is how the system delivered us.

- Well, I'd love to know more about that turning point moment.

And so just for some context, you know, the negotiation process to a Democratic transition lasted roughly from 1990 when Nelson Mandela was released from prison and the parties were banned to 1994 when they were the first universal, non-racial democratic elections in South Africa and Mandela became president.

So sort of, how did it all start, right?

And from each of your parties, the National Party and the ANC, what was the political calculations behind the decision to come to the negotiation and perhaps even more importantly on a personal level, what was, how did you come to that decision to sit down at a table with some people and someone that you'd felt so far apart from and maybe we'll start with you, Mr. Meyer.

- You know, one can argue and say there should never have been apartheid, so let us not go back into that argument.

It's clear.

But once apartheid was there, it was a question, when was it going to end?

By the middle of the 1980s, I think the conditions were quite ready and ripe for that change to start, to be in instituted politically.

But unfortunately, it didn't happen.

The National Party leader at the time, the president of the country and the apartheid constitution was not willing to make that move.

When he fell ill in 1989 and was succeeded by F.W de Clerk, de Clerk immediately acted and decided it's time to make the move.

And he immediately released Nelson Mandela from prison where he was for 27 years.

So that started the process effectively, I was fortunate, I was part of the team that negotiated the end of apartheid right from the start, which means by the end of 1989 I was in that team.

If you ask me personally, how did it feel?

I think I can say that once in my own mindset, realized apartheid had to go, which was in the 1970s already.

I became a politician thereafter for the National Party.

So I associated myself still with the party in power, which was the National Party.

But my own trajectory from there onwards was to try and contribute towards the change.

And as early as the early 1980s, I publicly said apartheid must go.

So it was a question of how, how to move forward at the fastest possible pace.

And we can say, and I have said it many times, we should have started that process in 1985 already, all the conditions were ready, but nevertheless, we started in 1990 and the rest is history.

- And from your perspective?

- Do you mind if I speak on his behalf?

- Yes.

(audience laughing) - I understand you do this quite often, so ... - Well, can I just say, the other day in Buffalo somebody came to me and said, "Are you brothers?"

- So I think Roelf is being a bit modest in my view.

And as we have this discussion, you'll see why he played a very important role.

The fact that he was able to change minds within that oppressive government gave us a break, and we were able to reach out to him.

And it was very important.

It's a lesson we learned, that your enemy is not homogenous.

Try and pick out those personalities who you think you can work with.

But to come back to your question, South Africa was the last country in Africa that was waiting for its independence or its freedom.

And that in many ways gave us an advantage.

We were able to see the mistakes that were being made in the rest of Africa.

The second very important thing was that in South Africa, the system of apartheid tried to elevate ethnic identity above the patriotism to one state.

As we see in Libya today, in Iraq, when your ethnic identity is elevated above your notion of a state, the minute you take the strong person out, it degenerates into several identities and it goes into a civil war.

So the Apartheid government was really playing on the ethnic card and we had that difficulty.

So your question about our political calculations, the second thing that made South Africa extremely unique in the rest of Africa, was our decolonization process was not like the rest of Africa.

Our oppressor had no homeland to go back to.

In Zimbabwe, the British went back to Britain.

In Mozambique, they went back to Portugal.

Our enemy was here to stay.

And our enemy at the time was war ready, was battle ready, had one of the best militaries in the world, was an atomic power.

And they had the capacity to enter a civil war and destroy whatever there was.

What we had, and we had made the country ungovernable, we had attacked the apartheid regime on three fronts.

One was on the international front and people like Senator Kennedy, and people in Congress assisted us a lot in that regard, despite the fact that it was the Reagan era, and he had a particular view about South Africa.

The second front was the military front.

And I'm the first to admit that there was no way we could defeat them.

It's not gonna happen.

And the third was our people power.

We made the country ungovernable to the extent where economically, South Africa was no longer sustainable.

So internally, we mobilized, people out in the streets.

And during the eighties, there wasn't a day there wasn't a march, there wasn't a day that there wasn't some kind of disruption.

But what we had realized is that we had reached a point where there were two parties unable to defeat each other, and they both will be negotiating from a position of weakness, not strength.

- So in that, so in that context, so challenging, you're on the brink of a civil war.

You decide to come to the negotiation table.

How do you build trust, especially when all of these other forces in society are trying to pull you apart?

- Yeah, I think that was a critical feature of our successes in South Africa, that we managed to build the trust, to cross the divides.

Like Mohammed was explaining, you know, we started off completely on a basis of mistrust.

It was nothing, it was no reason to trust each other.

In fact, we were enemies when we started.

So, the process of how it evolved, you know, looking back at it, I think it was simply because we had to look each other in the eye and say, how are we going to take this forward?

But we had one common thing, and that was, Mohammed said the other day, we had the love for the same country.

And that was overwhelming on both sides.

I will never forget that day when for the first time, Nelson Mandela and his small team and FW de Clerk, and his small team came together for the very first time.

It was in May of 1990.

All of these happenings, dates, events are ingrained in my mind.

It's almost as if I get goosebumps when I just think about it.

And here we were sitting for the first time at the table like this, across each other and looking each other in the eye and knowing that we have to do something.

We didn't know exactly where we were going to, quite frankly, but yet we are, but we were delighted to see each other, to have the opportunity to exchange for the first time like this.

And I think that is what helped us to start to grow the trust.

We knew we had to go in the same direction, the how we had to put together.

If I can put it in simplistic terms, I think it was a matter of, and I think back about it in my own memory.

It was about starting to know each other.

Secondly, to understand each other and thirdly, to respect each other.

And once you have that base, you can develop trust.

You know, it's like a relationship at the personal level for all of us.

You have to put yourself in the shoes of the person on the other side, make that move, then you can start to develop.

And whether it's your partner or a political opponent, it's the same thing.

- The other thing that has always struck me about the transition process in South Africa is that there seemed to be a lot of intentionality about the kind of society South Africa wanted to build for itself moving forward.

As you said, love, love of country was the commonality at brought you together.

And then when you look at the outcomes of the process, right?

The 1996 constitution, which is widely regarded across the world as the gold standard for an inclusive, progressive, constitution, grounded in human rights.

And then also the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was set up in 1995.

And it had that very specific mandate that it would, it would hear out anybody that felt that they had been a victim of violence, including the perpetrators.

And I'm wondering if you can both talk about that intentionality and the importance of building an inclusive process.

Why was that so important that all voices be heard?

And in fact, looking back, do you feel that all voices were actually sufficiently heard?

- Okay, what made the South African transition remarkable was, perhaps you could guide me, but I've never seen in the history of the world such a powerful, oppressive government abdicate power voluntarily.

And likewise, from the part of my party, I've never seen a party, and I may be wrong, knowing that it's going to win the election, subscribe itself to a constitution that'll check its power in the future.

And that was crucial.

So with regard to the constitution and the abdication of power, we had to address the very real fears that our oppressor had.

One, that we will be vindictive when we get into power.

Secondly, they were a minority and they were subject, we understood what drove them.

It was fear, because they were subject to some of the most atrocious crimes at the hands of the British concentration camps.

And the funny thing is that when they got into power, they did exactly the same thing.

And that was driven by a fear.

And we needed to understand that fear.

They had a cultural identity, and we needed to put provisions in the Constitution firstly, to ensure that it addresses their fear, but not only their fear, what was it that made us equal before the law, right?

Constitutions are written and they sometimes collect dust.

But in the last 30 years and in the last 10 years, we've had a very difficult time in South Africa.

What has saved us are the institutions that protect the values of the Constitution.

And it's that strength of those institutions.

But to answer your question, I'm hoping, and I think Roelf would agree with me, that it's the guarantees that the constitution gave, which was the product of an inclusive process that incentivized them and us to enter into negotiations.

- If I, if I can add to what Mohammed said, and of course, I tend to agree with him.

What I think is important to realize is that, you know, we were coming from a certain paradigm, a paradigm of racial separation.

Like he said earlier, of superiority versus inferiority.

That was the foundation of apartheid, of racial segregation in South Africa.

And that paradigm had to be changed, otherwise we would not have been able to go into the future.

And it happened during the negotiations at a very specific point in 1992, where we had to break down in the negotiations, which forced us to go back to the drawing board and say to ourselves, what is it that we want from the future, instead of what it is that we want to protect from the past?

And that was a fundamental moment of change because that enabled us to scrap the old paradigm and look at the future and say, what is it that we want from the future?

That new constitution?

And what we say to each other is, we want a constitution that guarantees individual rights on an equal basis for all black and white, not as black or white, but individual rights.

And that is the foundation of our constitution, like it should be.

But once we achieved that moment of change, of scrapping the old paradigm and adopting the new one, it was really a matter of a settlement.

That was the real moment where we could then work together in finding the details about that constitutional framework that you spoke about.

- Well, this will be my last question before entertaining.

I'm sure there are many, many questions that you all have our two guests.

So since your work on this democratic transition and this paradigm change in the constitution, you have both together worked on many, many other conflicts around the world, sharing your knowledge and your experience just like you're doing with us today.

And I'm wondering, what are the commonalities that you see in all these societies that are divided by hatreds and violence and social media today and even sometimes war, and how do you see that relating to us here in the United States today?

I'll give it to you.

(all laughing) - Now he's passing the most difficult question.

- Yeah.

- So, you know, all conflict situations that we have been exposed to and we're working together now doing this kind of thing, sharing experience for 15 years or more.

Wherever we are being called upon, it's taken us to strange places and difficult places.

Just by the way, we were in October in Palestine, working there for 10 days at the request of a third party to come and observe, to learn, to share.

I think one thing we have to say right from the start is that all conflicts are unique.

Every situation is unique, every country is unique, and there's nothing we can prescribe to others to say we did it, follow our example.

It doesn't work that way.

And that is, we would never even try to mediate as far as that is, or to facilitate even.

Just to listen, to hear, and to share experience is the most we can do.

I think all conflicts have definite characteristics in terms of it's origin.

It's either ethnic or religious or greed, political greed, economic greed that determine conflicts.

So it depends on what are the driving forces, as far as the current situation in the US is concerned, we hear there is choices that people are making that leads to factionalism.

That's a concern.

I've often said during the last week while we were around, I came to the US the first time in 1982, and since then I've been a very regular visitor.

And love it to come here because you are the biggest democracy, working democracy on earth.

And that is one of the reasons why we can tap into this all the time.

So what I would like to plea with you is to stay that way, to be a democracy that others can learn from.

If you don't, you let down the world, not yourselves only.

- Yeah, it's a great reminder.

(audience applauding) - We had a two part to this answer.

I gave him the first one.

- If there is something that I could share, is what helped me, was to try and understand what was driving Roelf and his people.

What was that fear?

So before taking, you have this visceral reaction, but then you dig down and say, well, what is it that, so understand what your adversity is going through.

I'll give you an example, and this is where we were so blessed with such good leadership.

I remember Nelson Mandela telling us, "Look at your oppressor as a victim of a system.

Look at him as a victim."

That dehumanization takes place on both sides.

And if you can see that how dehumanized your oppressor has become and why that happened, you'll understand why they're reacting in a particular way.

So as a very young person, I learned that before I act and comment on something and use language that increases the temperature, try and understand what your, what your opponent is going through and then address that in a methodical way.

I thought I'll just share that with you, thanks.

- That was a wonderful thought.

(audience applauding) - Anything else?

(audience laughing) - No, there isn't act three, scene three.

- We're about to begin the audience Q&A, I neglected to mention earlier that I'm Dan Moulthrop, I'm the chief executive here.

Today on our stage we're joined by Mohammed Bhahba, Roelf Meyer and Carina van Vliet discussing lessons from South Africa that may be able to help us move past polarization and the intense divisions we experience here in the United States.

We welcome questions from everyone, city club members, guests, students, and those of you joining us via our live broadcast on WKSU or the webcast at cityclub.org.

If you'd like to tweet a question for our speakers, please tweet your question @thecityclub and we'll work it in.

You can also text your question to 330-541-5794.

The number again is 330-541-5794, and we will work it into the program.

May we have our first question, please?

- There's often a debate about competing theories of change, whether it is better to demand change from the outside or to work on evolving an organization from the inside.

Please talk about how you see these competing principles.

- I'm not so sure they competing, is it either or?

If I understood the question correctly, there's a role for both of them.

If Roelf did not stay in the system itself and demand change and work for change, we would not have achieved that.

Likewise externally, if we did not force the change, so it was a bit of both.

It wasn't just mutually exclusive approaches now.

- Working here in the neighborhoods of America, one of the things that you see very clearly is that beyond the political integration that we have achieved, the problem of economic divide and the racial wealth gap remains.

And that's the cracks of the work that I try to do here in this country.

If you look at America right now, whites hold as much as four to five times the wealth that blacks hold.

South Africa remains one of the most economically unequal countries in the world.

In all this work that you've done, in all the engagements you've had, and in the times that you've been in government yourself, I'm interested in hearing your reflections on the subject.

How do we make progress?

I know we are still fairly young in this journey, but how do we make progress in this regard?

- If I can start, I think one of the mistakes we made at the end of the constitutional negotiations, once we adopted the final constitution at the end of 1996, we should immediately have sat down and say to ourselves, how are we going to implement this socioeconomically?

And we didn't do that.

It was left to the new government.

We thought that would be the right thing, the new government to actually implement the constitution with regard to those desires.

If you look at the Constitution, chapter two is probably the most liberal set of rights that you would find in any constitution.

But the problem is the implementation.

And I think we have let ourselves down by not asking those questions right from the start.

So new government to take responsibility for that, they wanted to do it.

And in the first 10 years, it went fairly well.

There was economic development, there was economic growth and new jobs were created.

But then for a number of reasons, setbacks came.

And unfortunately under the administration of Zuma, Jacob Zuma, we lost about 20% of our wealth.

It's difficult to measure that, it could be more.

20% of the nation's wealth.

And that was a major setback in terms of the inequality gap where we are finding ourselves now.

President Ramaphosa when he took over in 2018, immediately initiated a number of steps.

But the problem is we were in a hole and we are struggling to get out of that hole.

And then on top of that came COVID.

So all of these add to a number of factors that I don't want to use as excuses, but it explains.

And then on top of that, South Africa is a major attraction for the rest of the continent as you might know.

We have within our boundaries between five and 10 million people without legal documents, out of a nation of about 60 million.

So that's a big proportion and it puts a strong pressure on the government to deliver in terms of social requirements, schools, health, et cetera, et cetera.

So all of this makes it a very complicated situation.

On the good news side, the biggest buying power lies with the black middle class today.

By far, by far.

So that in itself is a positive development, you might say that doesn't represent wealth, which is true, but I think out of that buying power capacity, in other words, out of the fact that there are people, the huge majority of people are able to start to look and take care of themselves, you can have a spinoff effect.

Lastly, I think one critical aspect that we have to look at is generating entrepreneurial capacity and capability.

That is what made nations in the east of the world, in Asia and elsewhere so successful over the last 40, 50 years.

And we are falling behind in that.

And you would know the rest of the continent, same wise.

So we have to do more in generating capacity from within to live up to the expectation.

- May I take a bite at this question as well?

From our side, from the ANC side, I sit back and look back and they are things that give me sleepless nights, mistakes I think we have made.

For Roelf and I to take credit for the transition in South Africa would be very, very immodest.

It was civil society that allowed us to tap into a constituency that enabled us and gave us the mandate to do the things we did.

So we can, we may have signed the documents, but we can't take the credit.

And that's where we became complacent.

Once we signed the constitution, we thought politicians are going to implement it.

No ways.

They find their own little power bases and it becomes less of a priority.

So mistake number one, that's what we did.

Secondly, it is true and I said, and I could blame it partially, but there are other reasons for it as well.

Part of it is as a post-revolutionary movement, we haven't quite separated party from state.

It's the curse of post-revolutionary movements.

And it's important that I say this because if you are unable to do that, you compromise the quality of your administration.

And we didn't think about this too well.

So in many ways, if you talk about land distribution, the intent has been there.

They have been land claims, which has been an awkward process.

It's been a tedious process.

Can you imagine families that go back centuries claiming, particularly many of the people in the rural areas are illiterate.

They have to find documents to stake their claims on land.

That has been done.

But guess what, the state administration, only 20% in the last 30 years I'm embarrassed to say it, have been processed.

And then on top of it, we distribute the land and we consign these people to poverty because it has to come with access to markets, access to finance.

And that is where if there is an achilles heel in South Africa, we didn't think about it.

We didn't think about it well enough, about creating an able state machinery and that could be more destructive than many of the elements of apartheid.

- If I may ask a follow up question, because I think that this question about civil, civil society is really relevant.

Where do you see young people in South Africa today mobilizing?

If they are, where is that gonna come from to finish the work that you started 30 years ago?

And I asked this because in Cleveland we have a very vibrant civil society.

It's one of the strengths of American democracy.

And I was wondering if you could share with us what's happening in South Africa today.

- I think it's a matter of ... See, there is a person who wants to ask a question, so I'll keep it brief.

I think it's a matter of education on one side, if the biggest damage that apartheid brought to South Africa was in education, separate schools, it's as simple as that.

And unfortunately we haven't succeeded in the last 30 years since the end of apartheid to recover from that sufficiently.

We have a school system that doesn't provide for education that is required really in the workplace.

It's a generalistic passing qualification at the end of your school period.

And it applies to all and everybody, there's no differentiation.

The problem therefore is that we don't have artisans in the workplace and there's a huge need for it.

Now people have to come from across the border to come and fill those gaps.

Huge numbers.

Half of Zimbabwe are practically in South Africa.

That's the reality, because of that.

So education is the fundamental source of how to restore the problem, I think.

And then secondly of course, job creation through economic growth.

The government has now stated, President Ramaphosa himself and others have stated this very pertinently in the last two years.

It's private sector that has to provide the jobs and job growth can't come from government.

There was a long time the belief that it's government who has to provide jobs.

And of course, we all know that is not going to happen.

It's impossible.

So that shift is, I think in the right direction, but it takes time.

- I appreciate your focus on the importance of education.

Here in Ohio and in the country, I'm sure you, you're aware that there is a movement to censor the teaching of black history in our schools.

Perfect example is Florida, what they're doing about the African American AP class and saying it cannot be taught in high schools.

My question to you is, can you talk to, especially the students here on why the anti-apartheid story in South Africa is so important for them to learn about in their classes?

- You want me to go?

Okay.

- Please.

(audience laughing) - There are so many aspects to that question, but let me try and identify one or two or three important things.

The one is never, never, ever, ever allow anybody to take your dignity away, regardless of what that system is.

And if I've learned anything, despite all the difficulties, your weapon is education regardless of what it is and regardless of who the enemy is.

And if you want to know why it is important to learn about the South African, the apartheid and anti-apartheid movement is that regardless of the harshness of a system, if you keep the moral high ground and you stick to your values, nothing can move you off it.

And never ever, ever do you give up hope.

That is one element that is a not negotiable because somehow, somewhere in the future, till today I pinch myself by the way, to believe that I am where I am.

I never thought I'll see it in my lifetime.

But life offers you windows of opportunity.

You need to develop the skill to appreciate that opportunity has come and take advantage of it.

And that's what we did politically.

But the issue is about dignity.

Nobody and nobody can take that away from you.

Secondly, you never give up hope because that's the one thing that'll keep you alive.

And thirdly is how systematically you can so easily become dehumanized that you can't recognize yourself, when you start living with hatred because hatred disorientates you.

And it's the lesson, and I don't want to throw Nelson Mandela's name, it's thrown a bit too often, but he taught us this, "Never ever reduce yourself to the level of your enemy because then your fight hasn't been worth it."

You keep your humanity when you do that.

So those are some, there's a list of them, but I think that that would ... - Yeah.

- Thank you.

(audience applauding) - Good afternoon.

Thank you for coming to Cleveland.

I had the opportunity to live and work in South Africa for National Democratic Institute.

We ran voter education programs for the elections in '94.

US government has funded programs like this in South Africa and around the world.

And Mr. Meyer, you talked about your hope, you know, with the US and our democratic history being the largest one.

I'm sort of curious given the events in the US around elections and election denialism over the past few years, have we diminished ourselves as a country in terms of what we can do to support elections around the world given what's happened here?

- Unfortunately, yes.

Because you were the beacon and now you have us in the eye to start working in your own facility.

I'm joking when I say that but the point is, you know, I think the democratic world has always looked up to the US as the example.

And suddenly through what has happened in recent times, and we don't have to be specific, we all know the facts.

There's a lot of questioning and you know, the work that Mohammed and I are doing is primarily aimed at promoting multi-party democracy.

That is the solution that we try to advocate to others around the world on the basis of good constitutional frameworks, et cetera, et cetera.

And now we have a problem because we go to other countries around us, in the region in particular, and we work in Central African Republic, South Sudan, Sudan itself and a number of others with their ongoing problems.

I don't want to even mention Cameroon.

So when we go to places like that, the question immediately arises, if America can do what they do, why are you teaching us, why are you preaching to us?

That type of thing.

So it comes back very bluntly to us.

And that's why I say yes, it's a concern, it's a concern for me and a concern for us.

And it's not only the US that is at fault in that regard.

One can say the same about other regions.

We do work in Myanmar right now where you know there was a military coup two years ago.

And that situation can be solved like this if we had the cooperation of the surrounding countries in that region.

But there's no one that stands up because no one has a strong democratic base from which to speak.

That's the reality.

So that's why I'm saying, you know, please don't let us down.

- My name is Snay.

I was born and raised in South Africa.

I'm from Durban and I moved to the US 10 years ago.

(speaking in foreign languages) South Africa is a country that encapsulates and lives up to the spirit of Ubuntu and togetherness much more than the US does.

And for those of you who don't know what Ubuntu is, it's a Southern African philosophy that simply states, "I am because you are."

So this is my question.

What practical advice and action steps, let's forget about the government for a moment and talk to the people in this room.

What action steps and advice, practical advice do you have for the people in this room to help this country and their own communities come together and realize their common humanity?

(audience applauding) - Can I, can I go ahead?

First of all, I'm disappointed that you're here.

(audience laughing) You're benefiting the US and not us.

First answer, don't rely on politicians, period.

Your fate lies in your NGOs, your community organizations and organizations like this.

They feed on what is given to them.

And they, many politicians, even including my own comrades, pedal on fear and in South Africa, we, as I said, it was the bishop Tutus, it was the faith-based organizations.

It was the civic organizations that helped us.

You have a very, very big advantage, something we learned from you and saved our country by the way.

Your institutions are still intact.

Yes, they were attacked, but you have that.

But politicians, don't rely on them.

Really.

And I'm one, I'm telling you that.

(audience laughing) Please, you have so much goodwill.

I mean, I'm here for four or five days.

You have resources, you have so much goodwill, and you have so much energy on the ground level, and it has to be built ground up.

And you can do it with the organizations that really care.

- It's good to to hear you.

It's wonderful to hear you, but I think Mohammed is absolutely right in what he said.

He's a bit hard on the politicians.

We can't go without them and I'm one as well.

But I think what, the point is just to stretch it a little bit further, the point that I think we must keep in mind, there are basically three pillars in society that keep a nation alive and successful.

The one is organized politics, we can't do without it.

The second is organized business, which is a very important contributor.

We have seen it in the South African case.

If they align in the right direction, they can be a forceful pillar of the state.

And the third one is civil society, like Mohammed was saying.

And if one makes an analysis of worldwide, successful countries and some of them are small countries, successful countries depend on those three pillars.

Years ago in 2001, Tim Phillips and I and others on the South African side organized a debate in South Africa where President Clinton came to speak together with Nelson Mandela, same platform.

2001, it was.

And from that event grew a lot of activity in South Africa to re-energize civil society and business and so forth.

And I think what you're doing here, Dan, Carina, I think it's excellent contributing to that space.

But keep in mind it's, it depends.

A successful nation, I think depends on those three things.

If they are in alignment, then you see a good result.

(audience applauding) - Thank you so much to Roelf Meyer, Mohammed Bhahba and Carina Van Vleit for our this wonderful, wonderful conversation today.

This forum was the Cyrus Eaton Memorial Forum.

Cyrus Eaton was a champion of free speech and a member of the City Club for more than six decades.

We're delighted to recognize him and his many contributions today.

We'd also like to thank our partners on this forum, Civic Genius, Beyond Conflict and Younify.

The City Club is very grateful for your partnership.

We would also like to welcome guests at tables hosted by Brush High School, Case Western Reserve University School of Law, the Cleveland Council on World Affairs, Global Cleveland, Hathaway Brown High School, the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, and Rocky River High School.

Thank you all for joining us today.

Friday, February, yeah.

Yes, we can applaud that.

(audience applauding) Next Friday, February 3rd, we'll be joined by two journalists, Walt Bagdanich, and Michael Forsyth from the New York Times.

They're also authors of an important new book called "When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World's Most Powerful Consulting Firm."

IdeaStream Public Media Jeff St. Clair will moderate that conversation.

And Thursday, February 9th, we welcome Ted Ginn Sr.

He's executive director of the Ginn Academy, head football coach at Glenville High School, and that'll be part of our local heroes series.

He'll be in conversation with Mike McIntyre of Ideastream as we continue the celebration, the much deserved celebration of the (indistinct) 2022 High School Football State Championship.

You can learn more about these forums and everything else coming up @cityclub.org.

You can also go there for anything you might have missed.

Our archives are available to you, and that brings us to the end of our forum.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, members and friends of the City Club.

Our forum is adjourned.

(audience applauding) - [Announcer] For information on upcoming speakers or for podcasts of the the City Club, go to club.org.

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