Today 1,500 activists and educators had the great privilege of hearing from Jay Naidoo, the former leader of the largest trade union federation in South Africa during the anti-apartheid movement, working alongside Nelson Mandela. Jay currently chairs the board of the Global Alliance on Malnutrition, and works with civil societies who are committed to ensuring human dignity and equality for everyone, regardless of where they live. I sat down with the acclaimed activist to talk more about his personal experiences, where he sees the world heading, and what we can do to direct it.
Hey Jay, thanks for sitting down to chat. You work with the Global Alliance on Improved Nutrition. Can you tell me a little about what your role is within that organization?
At the moment I chair a global foundation that is focused on tackling malnutrition and hunger in the world. It was launched at the UN Summit on children 2002, as a public-private partnership that brings together UN agencies like World Food Program and UNICEF together with governments and civil societies. I chair the international board of the organization, and give them about 30% of my time, on a voluntary basis.
And to what do you give the other 70%?
We have gone through a major global crisis in 2008 which was the perfect storm. It created the environment in which we see the crisis of food, fuel, of jobs, and particularly a crisis of the climate. All of these coming together in a way that takes the planet to the edge of the precipice. And I think today we need a new narrative. We need to find new voices. We need to have an inter-generational concept of justice. What is the planet we are leaving to your generation and those of my children and grandchildren? And I think that’s why I get up with a sense of urgency every morning…
What do you think this generation and generations before it can do to ensure that we’re moving the right direction?
I think the first is to do what you’ve done as Invisible Children. You know? A lot of people of my generation would have cautioned you against doing it. But you did it nevertheless. It’s the same with us. When I was young my parents said, “don’t talk about politics, you’ll get arrested or you’ll get jailed, you’ll get detained, you’ll get tortured.” But we decided to stand up anyway, and claim our human dignity which had been stolen from us. I think that’s what you’ve got to do. You’ve got to stand up and say what it is that you believe. And if you make mistakes it’s okay, you will learn from mistakes. but I think that you need people of my generation to support you – that’s why I’m here. I’m here to say that I support you finding your own voice, I support you finding you own struggles, finding your own version of the world you want. What really attracts me is the notion that we are one human race. On one planet. It’s a global village now because of new technology, because of social media. The differences are being reduced dramatically…So the rest of the 70% beside having a family, it’s trying to find a way to get organizations like Invisible Children and many others in the world to connect together around a vision of the world that puts at the centerpiece human dignity, social justice, ideal freedom, all intangible, but tangible if you notice Arab Spring and all the uprisings that we see in Istanbul, Sao Paulo – it’s about our quest for a shared humanity based human dignity.
You mentioned the Arab Spring and these huge movements that are happening right now, that we’ll look back on in history and read about. When you were alongside Mandela, leading the trade unions, did you realize the impact that that movement would have on the world?
No, absolutely not. We lived in a very brutal system which said we were inferior because of the color of our skin, and we actually believed that. It was a tremendous struggle internally to liberate ourselves. There was a great hero we had called Steve Biko who explained to us that in fact the road to victory is through your personal liberation. You’ve got to find your own dignity, and reclaim that. So that’s where we started. In 1976 we had millions of young people who went into the streets demonstrating against apartheid and we thought we would defeat them [the apartheid movement] because we were millions on the street. But they crushed us, and so we went back to organizing…It was only because of those struggles that we were able to put Mandela in power…The link between finding your passion? We had no business in that. We only knew the difference between right and wrong, justice and injustice, and because of that we had the passion. That’s what we harnessed. That’s how we build and learn. We built huge movements and we built global solidarity like you [Invisible Children] are doing. That’s what we need to do, and ultimately our role is in those places in the Congo and Central African Republic – to build communities that feel confident that they can take on Kony, that they can protect themselves. We’ve got to build the tools that help them get there…that is the key to it.
I spent half my life working with Mandela – always alongside him. I never once felt that I was working for him. I was working with him. That’s the approach to leadership that is what I call servant leadership – you are there to serve, not for people to serve you.
We have 1,500 people here this weekend who believe in human dignity and social justice. What will it take to get this entire generation to believe that our united voice is powerful?
I think it’s what we started. When we started there were a few of us that said we don’t accept that, we want to do something, but we weren’t the only group. Thousands of other groups were doing the same thing all across South Africa…we were all part of a movement. We’ve got to do that again…find a way to stir the passions of other.
You’ve said that your family is your greatest accomplishment. What is one thing that you’ve learned in your life that you want to pass along to your children?
It’s to be passionate about whatever you are doing and to know the difference between right and wrong. You don’t have to teach them anything else. Simply what is right and what is wrong. What’s justice and what’s injustice…They have to discover their own lives, it’s their journey, it’s not my journey.
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