RFK IN THE LAND OF APARTHEID KENNEDY LIBRARY FORUMS PAGE 1

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1 PAGE 1 TOM PUTNAM: Good evening everyone. I m Tom Putnam, the Director of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. On behalf of all of my Library and Library Foundation colleagues, I thank you for coming. I m pleased to acknowledge the underwriters of the Kennedy Library Forums, including our lead sponsor, Bank of America, along with Boston Capital, the Lowell Institute, the Corcoran Jennison Companies, The Boston Foundation, and our media sponsors The Boston Globe, WBUR, and NECN. Our topic tonight is a historic trip made by an incredible man who spoke unforgettable words, having been invited by a group of courageous students to a country in the grips of a heinous system of racial supremacy. My wife often chides me for revealing too much about movies before others have watched them. So heeding her admonition and cognizant of the wonderful program to come and the little time we have together, in a rare act of self-restraint, I m going to simply explain how this evening will unfold and provide brief, and thereby inadequate introductions of this evening s wonderful speakers. More information on them is provided in your programs. We will first watch the film produced by Larry Shore, a native of South Africa, a professor at Hunter College and an anti-apartheid activist, who co-founded the South African American Organization. At the conclusion of the film and before the panel discussion, we will here from Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, former Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, distinguished author, civil rights activist, and the eldest child of Robert and Ethel Kennedy. We are indebted to her service here as a member of the Kennedy Library Foundation Board of Directors. She is the life force of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial, dedicated to promoting her father s living legacy.

2 PAGE 2 Following Kathleen s remarks our moderator, Sarah-Ann Shaw, a pioneer in television news, Boston s first African American woman reporter and a tireless community leader, will lead a conversation with Mr. Shore and the following two panelists, Margaret Marshall, the Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and one of those courageous students who invited Robert Kennedy to South Africa and who served as his primary student host during the trip. And Albertina Luthuli, the eldest daughter of Chief Albert Luthuli, whose meeting with Robert Kennedy is featured in the film. A physician by training, Dr. Luthuli was a leader in the ANC, both at home and in exile, and is currently a member of the National Parliament in Cape Town. She traveled here from South Africa to be with us here this evening. Please join me in expressing our appreciation to all of our panelists. We are honored by your presence here this evening. [Applause] I don t usually get to say this but... And now, for our feature presentation and Boston premier of RFK in the Land of Apartheid: A Ripple of Hope. [Movie] KATHLEEN KENNEDY TOWNSEND: Well, I want to thank Larry Shore for producing that film. That was really heart warming and inspiring. Where are you Larry? Thank you very, very much. [Applause] Thank you, really. I hope it has a wide audience. I want to thank Albertina Luthuli for coming all the way from South Africa to be with us this evening. I look forward to hearing from you. [Applause] Thank you. And I love that Margaret Marshall was there in 1966 and you are still here, doing great things and fighting for rights. It is really fabulous. It is terrific. [Applause]

3 PAGE 3 It s really, really great. I m not going to speak for a long time, at least in my own mind. [Laughter] This was very special. Obviously, this was an amazing trip for my mother and for my father. They came back from South Africa and they described the crowds, the excitement -- that was not what they expected. They did not know what was going to happen and they were very, very moved. I remember my father and my mother talking so much about the evening, about the speeches, the evening at Clive and Irene s house, in which I think my father normally would go to bed at 10:30. My mother would like to stay up to 3:00 in the morning. Couples are sometimes not the same. But that evening my father did stay up late because he had such a great time with the conversation and the dancing and the singing and the sense of camaraderie. He spoke especially about how he loved being with Helen Suzman, so I am so glad to see that Patty Suzman is here with us this evening. Patty, would you stand up? Really, really wonderful. [Applause] There were two other things that were not mentioned in the film and I just thought it would be good to mention. First of all, when my father and mother flew out of Cape Town, they asked the pilot to tip the wing to Robin Island and to Nelson Mandela, who was then imprisoned, as a respect for what he was doing. And I just learned -- we were talking about this a few days ago that the pilot was not allowed to fly again because he had done what my father had asked. Some of you may know that I actually wrote a book about religion and politics. I gave a talk here. And part of the inspiration for that book came from my father s trip to South Africa. Because during the question and answer period at the University of Cape Town, my father asked, Look at the Bible. People are divided in the Bible. Apartheid is Christianity in action. And how can you argue against?

4 PAGE 4 And my father s response was, Well, just think about this. Suppose you die, and suppose you go up into the pearly gates and you open them up, and once you get in, suppose God is black. [Laughter] You laughed louder than the audience at Cape Town did. And then he came back and wrote an article that was on the cover of Look magazine saying, Suppose God is Black. It was, I think, a terrific response to what we ve seen in religion in our own country today, which is to narrow God and to privatize God, rather than to have a supreme being that asks us to look at others as ourselves, rather than make ourselves think that we are the special and selected few. In 1985 I returned to South Africa with my uncle, Senator Kennedy, and he was supposed to speak at Regina Monday(?), which Tony Lewis said was where he first heard the African national anthem. My uncle was suppose to speak there but at that time it was a very violent moment in South African history, and Teddy decided not to speak because he was fearful of the violence that might occur. But throughout our whole trip, we kept hearing that African national anthem. But what I heard -- and I just want to end with this -- over and over again, wherever we went in South Africa in 1985, people could recite, almost word for word, the opening of my father s speech about, I m here from a land that was conquered by the Dutch, settled by the English and still has problems with the native population and those who were slaves. Of course, I m speaking about the United States. And I thought that people could recite 25 years later the opening of a speech indicates that to give a speech and to try to tell other people what to do doesn t work, but to share and to say we can learn from one another does work. And I think that is what my father very much tried to do. And I thank Larry

5 PAGE 5 Shore for showing us how to do it tonight. Thank you so much, and thank you for being here. [Applause] SARAH-ANN SHAW: Good evening everyone. Thank you all for coming. We are going to get right to the questions. And, of course, I m going to first ask Dr. Luthuli, you said the film gave you hope. What else did it do for you? How did it change your life? In what ways? DR. ABLERTINA LUTHLUI: It was such a great visit at a very difficult time in the whole story of apartheid in South Africa. One felt that something totally different and inspiring had happened. And that was the visit of Robert Kennedy. And the most important thing that one was left with was that great feeling of hope. It was a time when you lived with depression. You couldn t think beyond the difficulties and the suffering that apartheid was raining on you and the rest of the population of South Africa. But that visit really inspired us beyond anything that I had ever experienced in my life. SARAH-ANN SHAW: Justice Marshall, how did your other relatives, neighbors, etc. Clearly, you must have had the approval of your parents to be involved with this student association. [Laughter] JUSTICE MARGARET MARSHALL: No. I didn t have the approval of my parents. SARAH-ANN SHAW: Oh, you didn t. Tell us a little bit about that. JUSTICE MARGARET MARSHALL: I will answer that question, but could I just say one thing first about Larry Shore. One of the things that I don t think is clear from the film is that when Senator Kennedy was given a visa and Mrs.

6 PAGE 6 Kennedy, there were two, I think, Kathleen, or three other people who were given visas. And all the American media were prohibited from coming to South Africa. And so that visit has really almost been lost. And Larry Shore has spent 15 years, Larry? LARRY SHORE: Not quite that long. JUSTICE MARGARET MARSHALL: A long time carefully going around and finding from different places and different sources and put together this wonderful, remarkable film. And I have to say, one reason I m talking about Larry is because I ve been so moved by seeing it all again. And I just want to pay public tribute to everything that he has done to make this possible. So thank you Larry. LARRY SHORE: Thank you very much. [Applause] JUSTICE MARGARET MARSHALL: The reality for me was that my parents were not political, and it was extremely difficult for them. Of course, as a white South African I had many, many privileges. But women -- other than Helen Sussman, who was a great mentor and I loved Helen -- if you think back to those pictures and you think of the stage, wherever you saw the Senator, I was the only woman. And I don't know whether my father objected to my views as much as the fact that he objected that I was a woman carrying out those views. It was a tough choice for him. One made a choice. You really had to make a choice. SARAH-ANN SHAW: How did you come to that choice? JUSTICE MARGARET MARSHALL: Well, this is really a story about Robert Kennedy. But the United States really changed me. I came as a high school

7 PAGE 7 exchange student to the United States in And I cannot explain to this audience -- although I think Dr. Luthuli has touched on it -- that when you come from a place of no freedom and you taste freedom, it is very difficult to forget that taste. And part of what Senator Kennedy s visit did in South Africa was to remind us or even to introduce us to the notion that one could have a different life. And I think of everybody who spoke who said what an impact he had on their lives. These were people with very different political views, very different ages, very different races, very different circumstances, and each one of them was touched. And he had this extraordinary capacity to communicate fundamental values. Do not underestimate the risk to which he and Mrs. Kennedy put themselves. There was no security, no security provided for them. The South African government declined to provide security and the United States government was not permitted to provide security. There was a moment at the beginning when, at the airport, somebody threw a garland over his head. He had just watched his brother -- not literally watched -- but he knew that his brother had been assassinated. It was a very exposing time for both of them. So there was really true courage. The crowds We started in Cape Town and you got a sense of it. There were almost no Africans in the crowd at Cape Town. His visit to Dr. Luthuli s father, Chief Albert Luthuli, was extraordinary. And I think Larry tried to capture that. Chief Albert Luthuli was not only the first Nobel Prize winner from Africa, he was the great person among black South Africans in particular. SARAH-ANN SHAW: I m going to ask Dr. Luthuli to talk about that in just a minute. But first I wanted to ask Larry two things. I m sure everyone asks: how did you get the young men, all of them named Kennedy, at the beginning?

8 PAGE 8 LARRY SHORE: Well, it is really a filmmaker s dream. As it happened, I knew that people named their oldest sons after famous people. So what I did was take out an ad in the Soweto newspaper, looking for Kennedy s. If you were born after June 1966, we think you were named after Robert Kennedy and we would like to interview you for a film. And I hired someone in Soweto with an answering machine, and within a week he had had 50 phone calls from all across South Africa. And we said we would bus in anyone within an hour of where we are. So there are literally hundreds of Kennedys all over South Africa. SARAH-ANN SHAW: Why this film? LARRY SHORE: Well, I will give you the short answer. I was a junior high school student when Robert Kennedy visited South Africa. And it absolutely amazed me. I didn t attend any of the events but I read about it in the Rand(?) Daily Mail and The Star, particularly the visit to Soweto because you never saw white people go to Soweto, let alone openly. They didn t ask permission. They just went. And the way in which they were received -- they were just absolutely amazed by the enthusiasm and excitement. Then I went to Vitza(?). I was a student there, and I was a NUSAS(?) student. And I was from the generation that had heard about the great moment in the sun that had happened before. And I was involved in anti-apartheid things in South Africa. I left South Africa in 1973 and I remembered the visit, all those years. And I remember someone said to me, You know, when apartheid ended, that kind of story that Americans would be interested in apartheid needed to have an American connection. And I thought that was probably true. The thing that

9 PAGE 9 finally got me going was an Op Ed piece that Anthony Lewis wrote when Mandela was inaugurated, about all these Americans who had contributed to the anti-apartheid struggle. And he had a very beautiful paragraph -- Mr. Lewis is sitting over here -- about Robert Kennedy s visit. And that said to me I should begin to really research it. And I found that Americans, particularly baby boomers, they knew that the visit had happened but they had no details and it was worth sort of doing. And when I went to South Africa to do some initial research I was quite amazed at how people across the spectrum -- black South Africans, white South Africans -- they all remembered the visit. And I thought it really had ingredients of a wonderful story because it opened up to all these other people as a chance to tell the story of Chief Albert Luthuli that had never been told that I thought, in this country at least, that I thought was really, really important. And the fact that he didn t just visit with the white university; he went to Stellenbosch, which I thought was important, and really engaged black South Africans. SARAH-ANN SHAW: Tell people what it is. LARRY SHORE: Well, Stellenbosch, the Afrikaans University, and that he met with Chief Luthuli and visited Soweto was really quite remarkable. I just thought it was a wonderful story that really deserved to be told and needed to be told. Then I found all these great photographs and archives, and you work along and eventually you finish. SARAH-ANN SHAW: Well, you ve done a very moving job with it. LARRY SHORE: Thank you. SARAH-ANN SHAW: I would like to ask Dr. Luthuli: tell us a little bit about your father and the ANC and his role with the ANC. As I said, everyone knows

10 PAGE 10 the name Nelson Mandela. But they don t know what your father contributed. Tell us a little bit, please, about what he did and what he contributed. DR. ABLERTINA LUTHLUI: My father was actually born in Rhodesia -- now called Zimbabwe -- because his father had left South Africa with a missionary group, and he was one of the few who were educated and could speak English as well as Zulu. And they wanted to go and inspire the people of Machabilliland (?) with some religious stuff, so they asked him if he could go along with them, and they remained at their point of work. But his wife visited him, and that is when my father was born. Now, this has some relevance because when he started being deeply involved in the politics of South Africa and, of course, at some point as leader of the African National Congress, he was enemy number one. He was the leader of this movement that was at the frontline, the first line of fighting apartheid. They used to say, Well, he needs to be deported to Rhodesia, to Zimbabwe, because he is not a South African. I mean it was mind boggling. However, his main interest in earlier years was education. He was a teacher at Adams College. It is a college which was set about by the American missionaries, and he loved teaching and he was at the training site of teaching, producing teachers. That is when he and my mother met and started the affair that ended up producing people like me. [Laughter] And I ve got six others in the family. He was a man who was not satisfied with just himself. He was dedicated to the cause of those who were oppressed, those who had nothing, the poor, the deprived and all of that. Now, this came clearly out of himself when he became chief of Groutville when he left teaching at Adams College. Because he was then involved

11 PAGE 11 with the people in the community around him and he traveled way beyond Groutville. He was a chief then and chiefs were not very well educated. So he would go around trying to help them. He felt that chiefs have got communities, and being leaders of communities they could actually change the lives of the people that were under them. SARAH-ANN SHAW: What did he say to you after he met with Robert Kennedy? What did he say about the visit? Because unfortunately all of that could not be captured? But did he talk to you and to your siblings about it? DR. ABLERTINA LUTHLUI: You know, when Robert Kennedy visited him, he was a man who had been silenced there. This was right at the height of apartheid oppression. And he had learned to be very, very quiet and keep things. But, for instance, they sat under the tree to talk, not in the house because they felt the house might just pick up, the telephone and things like that. But one thing that came out of him clearly was that he was talking about a man of acute, keen intelligence and an ability to read a situation very quickly and of great understanding. He was highly impressed with Robert Kennedy. And for some days you could see that there was a twinkle in his eyes, and he was a different man. He was inspired, just like he had inspired everybody at Groutville and beyond. But my father was greatly impressed and inspired by Robert Kennedy. He was a wonderful man. He touched everybody that met him. SARAH-ANN SHAW: Justice Marshall, did he touch you? You were the only woman in this group. What was your interaction with him as he traveled around under the auspices of your student organization?

12 PAGE 12 JUSTICE MARGARET MARSHALL: Of course, the president had been banned. You saw Ian Robertson. I went with Senator and Mrs. Kennedy from Johannesburg to Cape Town to Durbin and back to Johannesburg again. I want to tell Kathleen that her parents got me into a great deal of trouble, because of this wonderful party, which was a great party. I was at that party, and it went late into the night. And as you ve heard from Dr. Luthuli, whites didn t go into Soweto but it went so late that there was no transportation back into Soweto. And I mean it was pretty scary times, really scary times. And we knew that the security police -- Special Branch, by the way, is the name for the security police And there was no transportation. Black South Africans, by and large, didn t have cars. And so I was one of the people who was persuaded to drive people back into Soweto that night. It was pretty scary, Kathleen. Thanks a lot. [Laughter] It was a great party but it had an aftereffect. I want to read to you just a little bit, if I can, the last speech that he made in Johannesburg because it will tell you a little bit about the difference that it made to my life. Larry had some of the wonderful pieces. But talking about the students that he had spoken to, he said, These young, spirited people are like young people in my country and all over the world, seeking to build a better future, to make their mark on the tablets of history. They are restless, impatient with the past, with the vain quarrels of the day. That is gone. And in this, too, they are more closely joined with their fellow young people than to the older generation anywhere. And those who seek change and progress in South Africa are very special. Well, you can imagine if you are 19 or 20 and somebody says that to you, you feel two things. One is that you are special in some kind of way but that you

13 PAGE 13 spend the rest of your life making sure that you never let somebody down who has taken the trouble to come to you. And I think, if anything, my life and the lives of so many of us are etched from that wonderful speech -- that if you each just make a small difference, together it makes a huge difference. And I think this book of speeches is in my office, and as my wonderful assistant Ginny Thurler knows, it is pulled down almost -- not quite daily -- but a lot of the time. I go back and read his words. So it had an enormous, enormous impact on me and on the country as a whole. As Alistair said, we went back into very, very dark times, but there was that moment, that flash of light, that brilliance, that I think kept alive things again and resparkled a whole new generation. SARAH-ANN SHAW: You thought there was a possibility, a possibility existed and it faded. JUSTICE MARGARET MARSHALL: Well, it faded but it didn t really fade because I remember You know, one of the student leaders who was part of my generation was a man called Steven Biko, who was subsequently murdered by the police. The fact that Robert Kennedy had gone to see Chief Luthuli made a huge difference. The United States was, to put it bluntly, supporting apartheid. I mean we were not exactly pro-the-united States at that time. They were on the wrong side. And so to have Senator Kennedy come and reach out and meet. I don't know who the functional equivalent would be in the United States, but as Dr. Luthuli said, her father had disappeared and Senator and Mrs. Kennedy essentially brought him back into the minds. And Chief Luthuli couldn t be quoted, but Senator Kennedy could be quoted. And so Senator Kennedy saying, This is what he looks like. He is healthy. He is vibrant. We had a wonderful

14 PAGE 14 conversation. I can t remember exactly what he said. Larry, you probably do. But that was really important. SARAH-ANN SHAW: He reawakened people s consciousness. JUSTICE MARGARET MARSHALL: He really did. SARAH-ANN SHAW: And reintroduced him to the broader audience. JUSTICE MARGARET MARSHALL: It was Nelson Mandela and all of the ANC leadership had just been sentenced to life. The Pan African Congress, all the leaders had been sentenced to life imprisonment. All the political parties had been banned. It was, as Dr. Luthuli said, a very, very difficult time in South Africa. So the impact was powerful. SARAH-ANN SHAW: Dr. Luthuli, did you ever lose hope. Given the situation in South Africa, did you dream that you would be a member of Parliament some day in South Africa? DR. ABLERTINA LUTHLUI: Yes. One lost hope sometimes. I mean apartheid was brutal. It was vicious. So once you were targeted, like my family was targeted because of my father, things that happened to you were not pleasant. So, yes, you did lose hope. But at the same time we were very hopeful. We knew that one day we would be free. We had songs. The ANC sang songs of freedom, you know, that all this was just buying time. The apartheid government was just buying time. And we just knew that no matter what it took, how long In fact, people would say, Freedom in our lifetime. My father said, Freedom in my lifetime. But he did not live to see that freedom. But he knew that we would be free one day. There was no question about that. And so, you know, it was a combination of

15 PAGE 15 sometimes losing hope when the vicious system was hitting you hard. But then, also, it inspired you. That hitting you hard sometimes inspired you that, well, I ll fall and rise because it has to change. That system has to change. It can t go on forever. So, really, the answer to your question is the usual: yes and no. [Laughter] SARAH-ANN SHAW: What it is like for you being a member of Parliament of South Africa? DR. ABLERTINA LUTHLUI: As I said, it is what we are looking for that one day we could even be members of Parliament in that Cape Town, Pretoria and all that. But, you know, it was overwhelming in 1994 when we suddenly found that in fact we were governing. We have to govern this country, which is like a broken down, Humpty Dumpty that you could somehow quickly try to put together. And we had no experience of governing. And our previous government had no intention of assisting in anyway. So we had great difficulties at the beginning but we prepared that we are going to govern in a different way and that South Africa had reached that point of change. And I think we ve done it, because many changes have taken place and it is a different South Africa all together now. SARAH-ANN SHAW: Larry, what do you hope your film, what kind of impact do you hope your film will have on people, particularly young people who have no memory of apartheid and don t buy kugerrands and the other things that were rampant here in the States. I mean when people decided that they needed to come together to fight apartheid in a country thousands of miles away, many young people don t know about that. What do you hope this film will teach them? LARRY SHORE: Well, the one thing I always hoped it would do for American students was to make the connection. Obviously, there were big differences, but

16 PAGE 16 there were great similarities between the civil rights movement and anti-apartheid movement. I remember when I first came to this county in 1973, I was struck how American students were so concerned about South Africa, of all the problems in the world. You know, Yale students built shanty towns on the campus and we had divestment. I don't know of any other country where American interests were not directly involved where Americans cared so much. Remember the and Senator Kennedy played a major role, that whole debate and all of the discussions and stuff. Clearly, Americans saw South Africa through the lens of their own history. And I thought it was a valuable thing to make the connections. I think Americans don t know about those connections. And I thought that it really opened up this question not only about Robert Kennedy, this really important visit that he made, that it would both be about South Africa and they would learn about apartheid as well as the connections. And it would also open up to other stories. I thought it was important that people knew about Chief Luthuli. He was an unknown. Most Americans don t know about organizations like NUSES(?), people like Helen Suzman that were a small but important Whites played a significant role in the anti-apartheid movement. So it had all those ingredients that I thought people needed to know. Other than that you, you know, you put stuff out there and you hope people learn something about history and that it informs the present. SARAH-ANN SHAW: Justice Marshall, have you been back many times since you have come to Boston to be our Chief Justice. JUSTICE MARGARET MARSHALL: Well, it won t surprise you to know I was not allowed to go back until 1990 when that amazing moment when Nelson Mandela and Mrs. Mandela came, walked out and the South African government waved all the bans and everybody was allowed to go back again. And I think

17 PAGE 17 Tony and I were back within about three weeks and had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Mandela very soon after he came out of prison. And since then we ve been back, I ve been back many times. It is a remarkable story. SARAH-ANN SHAW: What is different for you when you go back? JUSTICE MARGARET MARSHALL: Oh! What is different? [Laughter] SARAH-ANN SHAW: I mean given the fact that you were with a student organization that was going against the grain of the government. JUSTICE MARGARET MARSHALL: I think for me the most impressive thing is how seriously the rule of law is taken in South Africa. South Africa has a great constitutional court. There are many, many, many difficulties, economic. There has been almost no redistribution of the wealth. There has been almost no redistribution of land. But we have a judicial system that works and judicial orders are obeyed by the government. I think that is one significant difference. South Africa has experienced two transitions of power since democracy. President Mandela was succeeded by President Mbeki. And when his time was up, he was succeeded by President Zuma. Those are not insignificant achievements for new democracies or for old. And so every time I go back it s wonderful. My husband and I were back in August. And Dr. Luthuli talked about a jacaranda tree. Jacaranda trees in spring have wonderful purple blooms. And it would be like a purple umbrella sitting underneath that and the Jacaranda trees were in bloom in Johannesburg. And it is the most beautiful country in the world. Wait a minute: I ve become a United States citizen. Let s see. Let me modify that. It is a beautiful country. It is

18 PAGE 18 thrilling. It is absolutely thrilling to see this country that was so riven with hatred for so long. You walk into a restaurant. You walk down the street. You know, people always ask me about violence. There is violence. I m not naïve. But there is a lot of violence in other parts of the world as well. We have lots of friends whose children have taken time off to spend time in the course of college, in particular, and who go back. I think it is an enormous achievement. And with people like Chief Luthuli as heroes, that s very important. It is not surprising that there have been two Nobel Prize winners out of South Africa. That is no small achievement. And many other Nobel Prize winners as well there are two. There are three. SARAH-ANN SHAW: Four. JUSTICE MARGARET MARSHALL: Four! Four Nobel Prize winners, Chief Luthuli, Archbishop Tutu, President Mandela and President De Klerk. Four! SARAH-ANN SHAW: We have a very short period of time for question and answer. If there are people who would like to pose a question, you can go to a microphone. But I beg you, please do not make statements. Please ask a question. If you do not ask a question, I will cut you off. I promise you. [Laughter] Would you tell us who you are and who your question is directed to? QUESTION: Yes. Good evening. My name is Steve Goode, and I m a teacher of AP government and politics and US history at the John D. O Bryant School of Math and Science. My question for you tonight -- and I guess maybe all of you could answer it -- you had mentioned earlier that in South Africa they had a justice system that actually you were very proud of, that actually worked. But yet there is not a redistribution of wealth. So how does the system work if you don t

19 PAGE 19 correct the problem? If you take the wealth from me and you keep it and then you institute a system and you say, What a great system. It is good if I m on the top, but if I m on the bottom, what then? SARAH-ANN SHAW: Who would like to tackle it? Anyone? JUSTICE MARGARET MARSHALL: Well, I suppose as I made the statement Let me try very quickly. Judicial system that works in the sense that people can go to court and bring their grievances. And there have been very significant court victories where the rights of people are being enforced. The judicial system is not the only system of how you deal with inherited disparities in the society. And that I think is what Parliament is dealing with. So I m going to toss the ball right into Dr. Luthuli s lap. [Laughter] If she enacts a law that is viewed as unfair, people who are negatively impacted can go to court and challenge that, and that is not an insignificant thing. So it is not that everything can happen through the court system, but that everybody in the society has rights and those rights are being protected. And over time I think that will make an enormous, enormous difference. Now, how are you doing in Parliament? DR. ABLERTINA LUTHLUI: I think that the beginning, you know, the statutes have been made. Because as Margaret is saying, we ve changed the laws that made it not possible for people to do whatever they dreamt of doing. It is a free country. It is a democracy. And really, truly it is a vibrant democracy. South Africa at the moment is truly a democracy that is working. And people are enjoying the freedom, you know, the freedom of doing whatever it is that you want to do as long as it is not hurting others or causing violence against another person. So you have a situation now in South Africa where there is a fair starting

20 PAGE 20 point for everyone. And government, also, of course, by changing the laws puts into place ways and means, which can be used by people to improve their lives wherever they are. And government assists in that process. One has to say that apartheid did so much damage. I mean, if you take the majority of people in South Africa who formed 97% of the population, they had absolutely nothing. You would look at education. There was nothing. You looked at health, nothing. Welfare system, nothing. Even the justice system, it was just to put them in jail. That s all and do whatever was necessary to do that. But all that has changed. And it is a great impact on the people in making them feel that, I can stand up and cut a piece of the cake for myself. It will take time. But the beginning is there. SARAH-ANN SHAW: Thank you. QUESTION: My name is Ellen Peskin and I am from Philadelphia. And I was wondering to what extent the young people of South Africa today, especially those who are growing up in the post-apartheid, know anything about this trip of Robert Kennedy. And are there any plans to show this film in South Africa? And to use some of the inspiring talk, speeches to get through some of the difficult days that are happening now as the bloom is coming off the rose of the euphoria. SARAH-ANN SHAW: I think that is your question, Larry. LARRY SHORE: We hope to show it on the SABC next year, South African television. And we are planning to screen it at all the places where Robert Kennedy visited next September. We were going to go in June, but that is World Cup time. [Laughter] So don t mess with the World Cup. But in September, I was

21 PAGE 21 talking to Dr. Luthuli about showing it in Groutville for the community. So it is very much a strong desire of mine to show it, really, throughout South Africa. And, yes, young people, I mean even in South Africa, they don t know very much about Chief Luthuli, let alone over here. So it is very much something I m working towards and I hope it will happen. And I ll let you know when it does. QUESTION: Hi. I m Janet Herd. I m a South African journalist currently on a Newman fellowship at Harvard. My question is to Dr. Luthuli. Your father and Robert Kennedy were great visionary, inspirational leaders. Who do you look at and who can we look at for today among the emerging leaders who can take South Africa forward? DR. ABLERTINA LUTHLUI: Julius Malema, have you heard of him. QUESTION: I wondered if you would say him. Who else? [Laughter] Or was that a joke? DR. ABLERTINA LUTHLUI: No, it isn t. I think you ve caught me off guard. You know, leaders, they just emerge. And I think we ve got many young people now who really are so politically active and clear about what needs to be done for South Africa, that at any time we will produce a leader from the youth of today. You know, people used to say to my father, What will happen if you die, Chief Luthuli dies? What will happen now? Who will lead the people of South Africa? They would say to him, thinking he was the only one that can lead. And then he used to answer and say, There are many leaders out there. You will not know about them until I am not the leader.

22 PAGE 22 LARRY SHORE: I just wanted to add, people like Chief Luthuli and Nelson Mandela and Robert Kennedy, people like come by very rarely. SARAH-ANN SHAW: But they do come. LARRY SHORE: They do come. SARAH-ANN SHAW: They do come. We are going to move on. Over here. QUESTION: My name is Bernard Minga(?). I m a South African. As a colored South African who suffered under that system. I have a question for Dr. Luthuli. Dr. Luthuli, to what extent is this re-energizing of memory coming into the educational systems for young South Africans now? So that not just on the SABC but in terms of learning a new, rewritten history because, as you know, the history in the past was a racist history. Is this type of approach entering into that system now? DR. ABLERTINA LUTHLUI: Yes, it is. You know, the education is changing. There is the Luthuli Museum, for instance, which tells the history of the past. And all the schools around are really educated regarding the history and their past. And this is happening not just where I come from, for instance, in Groutville but in other provinces as well. You know, the ANC government put up strategically in every province somewhere, something similar to the Luthuli Museum so it can help the young people tell the story and tell the history. So we are getting now a fairly well educated young population who know where they come from and where they should be going. QUESTION: Thank you.

23 PAGE 23 QUESTION: Hello. My name is Elizabeth Rich, Libby Rich. I m from Cambridge, Massachusetts. I ve always lived here. My question is for Dr. Luthuli. What was it truly like to be the daughter of a man who was most clearly, probably, killed for his beliefs? And what inspired you to continue on in that when you returned to South Africa when it was freed and become a political leader again yourself? All I can say is that I admire your bravery. DR. ABLERTINA LUTHLUI: I ll answer you very simply. You say, what was it like to be the daughter of Chief Luthuli? To me, he was just a father. He was a father, indeed. He was a simple man at home. I think like in any other family where a father is important to you as a child, that is it. My father was a very simple person and very, very easy to get on with. So from that point of view, it never imposed any feelings of being different from anyone else when we were children. But, of course, as I grew up, you know, as I grew older and also started being active in politics, I would attend meetings where he would address people, rallies and all that kind of thing. And that is when, I began to get a sense that this is truly a different person. People seemed to love him. So it made me feel that he is special in many ways. But otherwise, he was just my father. JUSTICE MARGARET MARSHALL: If I can butt in. The notion that I could talk to my father, I think Dr. Luthuli said, I think she actually said the word sex. I mean the notion that I could talk to my father about sex! [Laughter] That was a jaw-dropper for me. [Laughter] SARAH-ANN SHAW: Thank you. DR. ABLERTINA LUTHLUI: People do pose the question, and it has happened many times in my life, What is it like to be the daughter of Albert

24 PAGE 24 Luthuli? I have always found it very difficult to answer that question, I must confess. SARAH-ANN SHAW: You did a very good job. We have two more questions. QUESTION: My name is Abe Neill. I am a student at the wonderful University of Massachusetts, Boston, across the street. I m not sure who this is directed at, but I m curious if anyone knows why the visas were issued initially to Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy in the first place? Did they not expect the uproar this would cause or did they not expect Robert F. Kennedy to say what he was going to say? And was there a backlash immediately after his speech? SARAH-ANN SHAW: Just one question. LARRY SHORE: I m sure Justice Marshall could answer as well, but no. They realized that he was just too important a person to turn down. The previous year NUSESS had invited Dr. King, and they refused him a visa. South Africans, as much as they knew Americans criticized apartheid, they wanted to keep something of a relationship. And they thought that Robert Kennedy was going to be President, and they didn t think that they could turn down Robert Kennedy, a Senator from New York, and maybe the future President of the United States. They couldn t do that for diplomatic reasons. And they just thought they had to give him the visa. Then they thought they would be able to ignore him completely. SARAH-ANN SHAW: Justice Marshall, do you want to take a crack at it, too? JUSTICE MARGARET MARSHALL: I would give the same answer. We were very disappointed that Dr. Martin Luther King was denied a visa. But,

25 PAGE 25 frankly, we didn t expect him to be given a visa, and we didn t expect your father to be given a visa. And we were quite taken aback when Senator Robert Kennedy was given a visa. As I said earlier, they restricted it as much as possible, thinking that they would be able to contain the impact that he had. Was there backlash? Yes. There was a massive backlash. There was a backlash both against people like, for example, the young Afrikaans student, who when they found a picture of him with Robert Kennedy, he was immediately fired from his position. There were many, many student leaders who were banned and imprisoned in the wake of that. Almost anybody who was touched by Senator Kennedy was affected in one way or another. On the other hand, it was a very, very harsh time. So it is a little hard to know whether the backlash is greater or less than that. I think that everybody, including the South African government, was surprised at the impact that Senator Kennedy had. And when you don t have access to means of communication, and where what he said was not being repeated on the radio In fact, some of the clips Larry showed were from some of the journalists, those were for British and other audiences. There was no television in South Africa at the time, no television at all. So the only means of communication were radio and the press. And as you heard from many of the journalists, there was a repression. So I think people can have an impact, even if they don t have Twitter and Facebook and things like that. [Laughter] DR. ABLERTINA LUTHLUI: I think that, really, the South African government was just overwhelmed. There was no way that they could not recognize the fact that the Kennedys were very important in the world politics. And as Larry has also said, they were looking to America. America in those days was really sympathetic. I m afraid to use the word ally. Sympathetic, you know,

26 PAGE 26 to the apartheid government of South Africa. They were, to a large extent, supportive. But the Kennedy family was so powerful in the minds of everybody that they just had no way. In fact, the South African government did not want him to visit my father. They said, No way. That man is banned. He is finished. He has nothing else to give to you except bad stuff about South Africa communism and so on. But he said, I am going to visit Chief Luthuli whether you like it or not. And he did. SARAH-ANN SHAW: Thank you. This is the final question. QUESTION: My name is George Georgster(?). Madame Chief Justice, can you fill us in on your experience through all of this and your decision to go into the field of law? Can you tell us, was it always law? Did this inspire you to do this? You are very interesting so I just wanted to hear this. JUSTICE MARGARET MARSHALL: No. I wasn t always going to be a lawyer. I was going to be an art historian. So there is a journey there. But clearly, Senator Kennedy had an impact. And clearly coming to the United States had an impact. I want to say a little bit about who are the leaders today. When I think back, of course, Senator Kennedy was young. And he had an unusual capacity to connect with the crowd. I mean he really did. I happened to catch, on Martin Luther King Day, a wonderful documentary on PBS about the speech that he gave on the night that Dr. King was assassinated, which by the way is the other quote at Senator Robert Kennedy s gravesite, another wonderful quote. But, you know, Chief Luthuli, Nelson Mandela, all of those people, they are great heroes late in life. I think we are often very harsh in terms of people who inspire.

27 PAGE 27 And I always think that when I see really small acts of courage, immensely inspiring. When I go back to South Africa -- this is not the place to start naming names -- but when I spend time with people like Dr. Luthuli, who in her lifetime that she can be so open to me, is somebody who inspires me. I meet that countlessly in South Africa. It is not something that I take for granted. Her life was very different from mine. I had schools and music and theaters and I could travel. I could go to the beaches. I could go to the mountains. I could lead a life, which she didn t lead. And yet she sits here, and not here, in Cape Town in South Africa in an inclusive kind of way. I think that is a wonderful role model for all of us. And I see that repeated over and over again. It s not easy to be a Nelson Mandela or an Albert Luthuli or a Steven Biko. I mean Steven Biko was killed. He was murdered. The woman, Mamphela Ramphele, who is an extraordinary woman, would be one of the great role models for me. So I think there are plenty of role models and plenty of leaders. But maybe we don t always get them up into the pantheon until they are very old. [Laughter] [Applause] SARAH-ANN SHAW: Thank you. [Applause] Thank you. Thank you very much audience. You have been a wonderful audience. And I want to thank Larry Shore, Dr. Luthuli, and Justice Marshall for being wonderful. Just thank you, and thank you to the Kennedy Library Forums. [Applause] THE END