CAFE
COM:PORT
CHAT JOCKEYS
EVENTS

South Africa, where Gandhi became Mahatma; and his disciple Nelson Mandela destroyed apartheid non-violently to become the country's first non-white president. South Africa, with riches incalculable, yet filled with poor black people, who for years were denied the right to their own land and its abundance. South Africa today, where violence makes it one of the unsafest countries in the world.

What does the future hold for South Africa? What happens when Nobel laureate Nelson Mandela hands over charge to his designated successor, Thabo Mbeki, whom few know about? Will Mbeki be able to control the poor people's angst when Mandela's benign presence no longer looms on centrestage? Will the country's wealth flow to the masses, or is violence the only way out to undo the injustice of the past?

Dr Fatima Meer, director of the Institute of Black Studies, University of Natal, Durban, will attempt to answer these questions when she chats about South Africa, its past, present, and future.

Meer has been closely associated with the African National Congress and its charismatic leader, Nelson Mandela. She has written Mandela's only authorised biography, Higher Than Hope, which she began writing when he was still in prison. She has an active participant in the years when South Africa abolished apratheid, and thus had a ringside view of the momentous changes taking place.

Meer, a sociologist, has also authored Apprenticeship of a Mahatma, a book on the transformation of Gandhi into Mahatma, and which was made into a movie by Shyam Benegal.

This then, a lady who is both academician and activist, deeply involved with South Africa, yet able to discern the country's travel down the road to freedom and into tomorrow. A believer in the Mahatma, and friend of his disciple, Mandela.