:00:00. > :00:10.Now on BBC News, HARDtalk looks back at an interview with the late author
:00:11. > :00:13.Nadine Gordimer, recorded in 2011. My guest today is one of South
:00:14. > :00:16.Africa's greatest writers. Her fiction offers a compelling insight
:00:17. > :00:27.into the country's troubled past. Nadine Gordimer has faced harassment
:00:28. > :00:29.and condemnation. Several of her novels were banned by the apartheid
:00:30. > :00:43.regime. Her personal commitment to the liberation struggle never
:00:44. > :01:08.wavered. But is South Africa today what she hoped it would be? Nadine
:01:09. > :01:11.Gordimer, welcome to HARDtalk. Let me start with something that you
:01:12. > :01:18.said some time ago. You describe some of Africa as having been
:01:19. > :01:30.deformed by its history. Is that still the case? Yes, I think so, to
:01:31. > :01:33.a certain extent. We're living the morning after. We celebrated when we
:01:34. > :01:36.all voted together for the first time, in 1994. And as we all know,
:01:37. > :01:44.when you wake up the next morning after a celebration, you face the
:01:45. > :01:47.reality. During the years before that, we were so concentrated on
:01:48. > :01:51.getting rid of apartheid, of defeating that regime, that we did
:01:52. > :01:54.not really have the time or the mind to think of the problems that would
:01:55. > :01:56.inevitably be there afterwards. But disfigurement is an interesting
:01:57. > :01:58.metaphor. Because disfigurement can be permanent. It would be
:01:59. > :02:04.extraordinarily depressing to think that South Africa were forever to be
:02:05. > :02:08.disfigured? No, and this gives me the opportunity to say what I always
:02:09. > :02:12.liked to tell people from overseas. We have now had 17 years, that's
:02:13. > :02:23.all, not even a generation, to put right what started in the 17th
:02:24. > :02:28.century. Not just with apartheid. In the 17th century. As far as you are
:02:29. > :02:33.concerned, 17 years is just the beginning? Yes, I am not excusing
:02:34. > :02:37.the fact that there are many things that we should have done in the 17
:02:38. > :02:44.years. But I am saying, please remember, we have not even have one
:02:45. > :03:07.generation. I do want to talk about what has happened in those 17 years.
:03:08. > :03:10.Before that, I want to go much further back. In all of your fiction
:03:11. > :03:14.and all of your writing, race is such a dominant issue. The morality
:03:15. > :03:17.and psychology of it and what it does to human beings, to have racial
:03:18. > :03:20.division at the heart of a society. I want you to tell me how you
:03:21. > :03:24.yourself, first became aware, growing up as a young girl in South
:03:25. > :03:27.Africa, of the central part that race played in the lives of South
:03:28. > :03:30.Africans? I'll tell you an event that happened in my childhood. I was
:03:31. > :03:35.of course in a white neighbourhood. And black people of course, they
:03:36. > :03:44.were not allowed to live there. One night, I was alone with my parents.
:03:45. > :04:05.My elder sister had already left the house. There was a hullabaloo. My
:04:06. > :04:08.mother and father got up and I got up and we went out into the
:04:09. > :04:12.backyard, where our maid, who had been with us for a long time with
:04:13. > :04:15.us, and who was like a second mother to me, there the police were. Black
:04:16. > :04:30.policemen, with a white policeman in charge. And they had gone into her
:04:31. > :04:34.room, they had turned over her mattress and her bed and they had
:04:35. > :04:37.pulled out all of her possessions. Why? It was a time when blacks were
:04:38. > :04:40.not allowed to buy liquor. So naturally, everybody brewed their
:04:41. > :04:44.own. And in the backyards and in the quarters where they lived. I do not
:04:45. > :04:47.know whether she did brew or not. But fortunately she had not been
:04:48. > :04:50.brewing that day. And then it occurred to me, merely a child with
:04:51. > :04:52.a lively mind, reading newspapers and things, why haven't my parents
:04:53. > :04:58.said anything? This worked and worked on me. I began to think, what
:04:59. > :05:10.is this? How do we live? Who are we? That is my first old story. ``adult
:05:11. > :05:14.story came about. And you have said that white South Africans in a way,
:05:15. > :05:17.they are born twice. They have the wide world, which they are born
:05:18. > :05:22.into, and then as they grow up, they develop an understanding of the real
:05:23. > :05:25.South Africa, the real Africa. And you say that if you had in
:05:26. > :05:30.intelligence, you began even as a child, to question everything about
:05:31. > :05:33.the way that you were living. I have given you the true example of when I
:05:34. > :05:42.first began to ask myself these questions. Of course, it was a great
:05:43. > :05:45.process that went on slowly. For me, the most important thing was that I
:05:46. > :05:48.was a member of the local municipal library. And once I was grown`up,
:05:49. > :05:52.and becoming a writer, I realised that had I been a black child, I
:05:53. > :06:01.could not have used that library. And I wonder whether I would ever
:06:02. > :06:07.have become a writer. Because you have to read in order to write. Here
:06:08. > :06:10.we have you, growing up in the 1930s and the 40s, becoming a young woman
:06:11. > :06:13.in a deeply racially divided society, and you started writing
:06:14. > :06:15.your fiction, and the very beginning, there were all of these
:06:16. > :06:33.characters, who were well meaning white people. For example, just one
:06:34. > :06:37.of your short stories about this group of ` it is an early story of
:06:38. > :06:40.yours ` about a group of theatrical players to go into a black
:06:41. > :06:44.community, and they think it is worthwhile to put on a share for
:06:45. > :06:47.poorer black people. But it does not really work because there is such a
:06:48. > :06:50.mis`comprehension. I was one of the actors, so I know. It was Oscar
:06:51. > :06:53.Wilde. The question is, even for you, a young Nadine Gordimer, was it
:06:54. > :06:56.actually very difficult to communicate, to reach out to the
:06:57. > :07:05.black community that you wanted to reach out to? The point is, I did
:07:06. > :07:09.not really reach out into that black community, living in the segregated
:07:10. > :07:12.part. But I took myself off briefly by train, for one year, to the
:07:13. > :07:29.English university, doing occasional courses. This was 1946. And there
:07:30. > :07:33.and get people coming back from the war. Young male South Africans. With
:07:34. > :07:51.a lot of ideas about what was wrong with our country. And there were
:07:52. > :07:55.people, they were troubled as I was. There and also people politically.
:07:56. > :07:57.And for the first time, not as servants, but as young people just
:07:58. > :08:15.like myself, black people. And especially, they were beginning to
:08:16. > :08:19.write. And I found that I had much more in common with them than I had
:08:20. > :08:26.in the small town where I lived, the white people. Fear is a big theme
:08:27. > :08:30.between your writing. Between the races. It strikes me that some of
:08:31. > :08:33.the things that you wrote back in the 50s about fear, personal safety,
:08:34. > :08:37.they are actually still true today in South Africa? Very much so. Yes.
:08:38. > :08:45.But I was not talking about myself. I did not suffer from personal fear.
:08:46. > :08:56.I was mistaken in fearing. Here, everybody has a lot of fear. The
:08:57. > :09:03.fact that I live in a house that has electric alarms that I set at night.
:09:04. > :09:05.Frankly, every house in this neighbourhood and most wealthy
:09:06. > :09:16.areas, they are surrounded by security. Even in Soweto, if you go
:09:17. > :09:19.to a black neighbourhood, you will find that anybody who has anything
:09:20. > :09:23.like a home, it protects it in some ways. Which brings me back to the
:09:24. > :09:25.opening question. One is tempted, 17 years after liberation, to assume
:09:26. > :09:37.that so much has changed in South Africa, but in these detailed ways,
:09:38. > :09:40.maybe not so much has changed? It has changed in the sense that people
:09:41. > :09:44.are now free. That is something. When I was growing up here, a black
:09:45. > :09:47.person could not move from one perk up the country to another. They were
:09:48. > :09:51.working in Johannesburg, they wanted to move to Durban. They could not do
:09:52. > :10:09.this. They could not move from one province to place or another. You
:10:10. > :10:12.had your passbook here that showed where you were living and where you
:10:13. > :10:16.were working. So now, one has to see ` it is an enormous sigh of relief
:10:17. > :10:19.for the black population. A friend of mine in the last few weeks, a
:10:20. > :10:32.wonderful writer, he and I were talking and his boy of about ten was
:10:33. > :10:36.there. And we were talking about the passbook. And this child did not
:10:37. > :10:39.know what this was. This is wonderful. You don't have to carry
:10:40. > :10:41.it any more. In your fiction, you have always written about stories
:10:42. > :10:50.which involve different people from different races. You have central
:10:51. > :10:52.characters who are black. You have had central characters who are
:10:53. > :10:55.Afrikaner, as well as English`speaking white. How easy it
:10:56. > :10:59.has it been to get inside the end of a black man or woman, and be really
:11:00. > :11:07.confident that you are writing in a way that is effective? You are
:11:08. > :11:19.asking a question that all writers ask. And it cannot be explained. I
:11:20. > :11:31.can only say, if you think of people who become opera singers, they are
:11:32. > :11:33.born with certain vocal chords. You can train them. But that certain
:11:34. > :11:38.ability, which is congenital, that is there. I presume that you do not
:11:39. > :11:41.sing. I wish, but I do not. I don't either. I know that I have not got
:11:42. > :11:45.those vocal cords, I could not sing. But we writers, we are born with
:11:46. > :11:48.something, I do not know what it is, and there is an attribute or
:11:49. > :11:51.something in the brain, most likely something in the formulation of the
:11:52. > :12:08.brain, that from early childhood, we are unusually observant. We are
:12:09. > :12:11.always taking in what it is to be the other. The other person. Do you
:12:12. > :12:14.sometimes wish that you could have been this intense writer that you
:12:15. > :12:18.describe to me, in a country other than South Africa? Perhaps would not
:12:19. > :12:20.have been so involved with the issue of race, race relations and race
:12:21. > :12:31.politics that hangs over everything in South Africa. I think that people
:12:32. > :12:38.concentrate on the political aspects. In mind any baulks,
:12:39. > :12:52.personal relations or rye influenced by them. `` In my many books.
:12:53. > :12:55.Because to me, with my mind or anybody else's, writing is a
:12:56. > :12:59.discovery of life. It is an attempt to discover what human life is
:13:00. > :13:03.about. And if you live in a country where there is a lot of political
:13:04. > :13:07.conflict, of course, that will be a part of it. But if you are a real
:13:08. > :13:14.writer, you can make it a bit of a canary. I am going to talk to you
:13:15. > :13:18.specifically about the politics that have surrounded you in your life and
:13:19. > :13:20.I want to ask you about your relationship with the African
:13:21. > :13:30.National Congress, the ANC. You have been a loyal supporter of the ANC. I
:13:31. > :13:39.am a member. I know, but even before you were a member. You could not be
:13:40. > :13:40.a member. I worked for the ANC in my humble way, before it was possible
:13:41. > :14:00.to be a member. In this house you have sheltered
:14:01. > :14:03.activists who were on the run. You took risks? Did you ever consider
:14:04. > :14:06.that you might be on the brink of making sacrifices that, perhaps,
:14:07. > :14:10.were going to stretch you too far? Well, there was always an element of
:14:11. > :14:12.fear there. But you live with it. You didn't know. Suddenly people
:14:13. > :14:22.were detained and it was somewhat the normal life at the time if you
:14:23. > :14:25.were a really responsible being. And that was the era of the liberation
:14:26. > :14:27.struggle. And as you said, 1994, the liberation was achieved, at least
:14:28. > :14:30.politically. Power was transferred to the majority. Nelson Mandela
:14:31. > :14:33.became president. But some south Africans looking at what's happened
:14:34. > :14:39.in the last 17 years have expressed grave disappointment. I just quote
:14:40. > :14:42.you one fellow south African white brighter, Justin Cartwright, who has
:14:43. > :14:54.written a lot about you and glowing tributes to you. ``South African
:14:55. > :14:57.white writer. But he said, "I've often wondered she would one day not
:14:58. > :15:02.become disillusioned with her South Africa?" I am disillusioned, of
:15:03. > :15:09.course. Particularly in the matter of corruption. To me, perhaps it was
:15:10. > :15:12.naive to think that our people who were heroes in the struggle, who
:15:13. > :15:16.were terribly brave in the bush, who were terribly brave in prison, that
:15:17. > :15:31.some of them now have turned out to be corrupt. Some would say that it
:15:32. > :15:35.is not just about individuals, it is about the corruption of the party,
:15:36. > :15:39.that it's become institutional? The party is made up of individuals. Any
:15:40. > :15:49.political party is made up of individuals. But this party... It is
:15:50. > :15:52.not a body. It is not a creature in itself, the party. No, the party,
:15:53. > :15:55.though, does demand great loyalty. And when you say things, as you've
:15:56. > :16:01.said to me, there are people inside the ANC who begin to get very
:16:02. > :16:04.resentful. Yes, but as we know, within the ANC, as in all political
:16:05. > :16:11.parties, there are people who take loyalty. Now I will speak for myself
:16:12. > :16:14.` real loyalty is the right criticise your party, yourself,
:16:15. > :16:25.because we all do things that seem to be dubious sometimes. I wonder
:16:26. > :16:28.whether you feel Nelson Mandela perhaps blinded South Africans, the
:16:29. > :16:39.wider world to some of the terrible problems that remained after 1994.
:16:40. > :16:41.When he came to power and he said those wonderful words, "We shall
:16:42. > :16:45.build a society where all South Africans, black and white, will be
:16:46. > :16:48.able to walk tall, a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world,"
:16:49. > :16:56.do you think we became somewhat hypnotised by Nelson Mandela? No, I
:16:57. > :17:05.think we wanted to believe it, but we stumbled. Stumbled would suggest
:17:06. > :17:11.that it would be hard to get back on someone's feet. You may break
:17:12. > :17:19.something when you stumble. What you have now is a democratic one`party
:17:20. > :17:23.state. The ANC is entirely dominant. Yes. But isn't a democratic state,
:17:24. > :17:27.isn't it a contradiction to say that it is one`party? That's where it
:17:28. > :17:29.gets interesting. And there are certain areas where you have
:17:30. > :17:33.expressed grave concern about what the ANC is doing and it does get to
:17:34. > :17:38.the heart of whether it is a truly democratic institution. For example,
:17:39. > :17:41.this protection of information law that they're trying to pass. Many
:17:42. > :17:44.critics, including yourself, have suggested that it is a dangerous
:17:45. > :17:51.encroachment on freedom of the press, freedom of speech?
:17:52. > :17:55.Absolutely. So I come back to the point ` are you really confident,
:17:56. > :17:57.despite your years of loyalty to the ANC, that they represent the values
:17:58. > :18:04.that you, personally, really believe in? The original values of the ANC
:18:05. > :18:12.are being betrayed in many areas of our political life and our social
:18:13. > :18:17.life, yes. And if you... But I have... I maintain the right to
:18:18. > :18:24.criticise my own party. I feel that it is a duty. But in the ANC, we who
:18:25. > :18:28.are in the ANC must say what we think when the ANC goes wrong. Why
:18:29. > :18:31.do you have to stay in the ANC? You're also furious about Thabo
:18:32. > :18:34.Mbeki and his approach to the HIV/AIDS problem. Many people in the
:18:35. > :18:37.AIDS movement say that his policies and his reluctance to embrace the
:18:38. > :18:40.anti`retro viral drugs and his reluctance to accept the scale of
:18:41. > :18:49.the problem in the country costs hundreds of thousands of lives. At
:18:50. > :18:55.what point would you say to yourself ` if this is the ANC, I no longer
:18:56. > :19:01.want any part of it? So where should I go? For my political allegiance?
:19:02. > :19:06.There is an opposition party, the Democratic Alliance? The Democratic
:19:07. > :19:12.Alliance, yes. But unfortunately, it hasn't yet become truly
:19:13. > :19:19.representative. It does not represent enough of the black
:19:20. > :19:28.majority. The ANC was the very brave architect of our freedom. And until
:19:29. > :19:32.the end of my days, I will be grateful for the chance that I had
:19:33. > :19:38.to play a very small part with them, to join with them in that. What I
:19:39. > :19:42.would like to see and many of my comrades would like to see is that
:19:43. > :19:51.we need and we have for a long time needed a good opposition. If we
:19:52. > :19:56.could have a good opposition, then that is the corrective, I think, to
:19:57. > :20:00.what's wrong in the party. And they have to wake up and see that they
:20:01. > :20:06.can not carry on the way many of them are. Could you be part of that
:20:07. > :20:12.good and effective opposition? In what way? Well, you are a very
:20:13. > :20:15.important...? Yes, but I'm not in politics. You're a figurehead.
:20:16. > :20:18.You're not in politics but one of South Africa's great writers. You're
:20:19. > :20:25.someone who has chronicled South Africa's journey. It would be
:20:26. > :20:28.important. If I saw, if I saw some of the smaller parties getting
:20:29. > :20:30.together and forming a really good and realistic and intelligent
:20:31. > :20:43.opposition, then I would obviously vote for them and throw my life in
:20:44. > :20:48.to them. Before we end, I want to bring it back to the little girl
:20:49. > :20:54.growing up in the mining town. Here you are now, you've lived in this
:20:55. > :20:59.house for 50 years. Yes. There's been an awful lot of history in this
:21:00. > :21:02.house. Yes. Do you think that South Africa is now on an irreversible
:21:03. > :21:13.track to that rainbow nation that Mandela envisaged? Perhaps that
:21:14. > :21:21.rainbow nation is a very difficult thing to achieve. I deplore many of
:21:22. > :21:25.the things that are happening. You mentioned the information law. To
:21:26. > :21:30.me, this is very, very important. This is one of the keys to a
:21:31. > :21:35.democracy, absolutely. You have the vote, but you must have the freedom
:21:36. > :21:41.of education as well. But we have... One can not give up. I call myself a
:21:42. > :21:44.realistic optimist. I still believe that South Africa can be made a
:21:45. > :21:56.liveable place with less division between having and have nots than it
:21:57. > :21:59.has ever been thought of. But I don't know how long it will take and
:22:00. > :22:05.how much suffering might be on the way. And on a philosophical level,
:22:06. > :22:10.do you believe that the idea of a rainbow nation is ever attainable?
:22:11. > :22:18.You spent so long thinking about relations between the races, about
:22:19. > :22:21.common humanity between the nations. Even with the colours of the
:22:22. > :22:25.rainbow, the colours are separate. And as my friends pointed out `
:22:26. > :22:31.there's no black in the rainbow. Let's forget about the image of the
:22:32. > :22:34.rainbow nation. Let's be realistic. But indeed, there could be a more
:22:35. > :22:43.equitable society and more acceptance and tolerance. I also
:22:44. > :22:54.think that racial mixing, that we shouldn't all be white and black.
:22:55. > :23:00.Let us mix. This, I know, is an absolutely terrible thing to say...
:23:01. > :23:04.No, it is very interesting to say. You say that you want to go out in
:23:05. > :23:08.the streets of Johannesburg... No, I'm saying, let white and black
:23:09. > :23:11.produce colours. You want to go out to the streets of Johannesburg and
:23:12. > :23:14.see white men hand in hand with black women and vice`versa and a
:23:15. > :23:20.generation which isn't white and black, it is every colour between
:23:21. > :23:24.the two? Yes. Yes. I think it is a great pity that we have this obvious
:23:25. > :23:31.difference in our skin and eyes and what not. So the final question is `
:23:32. > :23:37.will there come a time when the colour of your skin genuinely
:23:38. > :23:41.doesn't matter in South Africa? Not only in South Africa, my dear, but
:23:42. > :23:44.all over the world. Certainly, it will be long after the present
:23:45. > :23:52.generation and even the old people like me are all dead and even the
:23:53. > :23:55.young ones. Let us hope that that is a long time from now. Nadine
:23:56. > :23:57.Gordimer, thank you so much for being on HARDtalk. You're welcome.
:23:58. > :24:31.Thank you so much, Nadine. After a night where there have been
:24:32. > :24:41.further torrential downpours, strong winds and hail and flashes of
:24:42. > :24:43.lightning. The pattern is set to continue on Saturday. We begin in
:24:44. > :24:44.Northern Ireland