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This resource is hosted by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, but was compiled and authored by Padraig O’Malley. It is the product of almost two decades of research and includes analyses, chronologies, historical documents, and interviews from the apartheid and post-apartheid eras.

15 Dec 1999: Zuma, Jacob

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POM. First of all congratulations, Deputy President. When I met you first you were Deputy Secretary General of the ANC so you've leapt quite a long way in ten years and you have been consistent and I want to thank you for keeping your promise to see me. Those are the words in Zulu that are ingrained in my mind and I now use with everybody to extract promises from them.

. What I wanted to ask you about first is what I would call the war in KZN and I recall, having gone through Mr Mandela's autobiography in great detail, that he says that when he came out of prison that one of the first people he called was Chief Buthelezi to thank him for his support that he had been given while he had been in jail, that he wouldn't negotiate with the government until he was released, the ANC was unbanned and the political prisoners were also released and that he asked Buthelezi whether he could come and see him and thank him person to person. Buthelezi said that's fine. He also said, "I'd like to see the King", and Buthelezi said there is no problem about that. Immediately afterwards he flew to Lusaka where he put the idea to the NEC and it was voted down. Following that he raised the matter again with the King saying he wanted to come and lay a wreath on the grave of King Shaka and the King invited him and he went back to the ANC and they said, "You can't go alone, you have to go with your colleagues." And he rang the King and said, "I can't come alone, I have to come with my colleagues", and the King said, "I invited you, I didn't invite your colleagues", and that was the end of that meeting. Then the following February of 1991, February /March, there would have been a meeting in Durban between a delegation from the IFP and the ANC where both agreed that it would in fact be a good idea for Chief Buthelezi and President Mandela to make joint appearances together and I think their first was scheduled for Kings Park in Durban but that at that point Harry Gwala stepped in and said no joint meetings. Mandela used the phrase afterwards to say, "They threatened to throttle me."

. My question is do you think that had Mr Mandela been able to see Chief Buthelezi at that point immediately after his release, where there was still this warm relationship between them, that their meeting and their subsequently attending rallies together, both of them going from community to community saying the war between us is over, we must now unite in our opposition to the white government, that is the enemy, we are now entering negotiations united and together, do you think that would have made a difference to the rather ferocious turn that the war in KZN assumed between 1990 and 1994?

JZ. Well firstly let me just say something on the background you gave. When Mandela visited Lusaka he was not stopped from seeing Buthelezi. The leadership did not do so. I think what happened, long before that happened the discussion was we're keen to deal with this matter and even people within the country were in fact talking between the IFP and UDF people. I think the major thing was when President Mandela made a proposal to Minister Buthelezi that they should address a joint rally near Pietermaritzburg, at Taylor's Halt, that was a critical thing where Harry Gwala led a delegation to Mandela to try to persuade Mandela not to go and he ended up not jointly addressing that rally. It's an issue that the IFP has always pointed out as a big thing. Lusaka never said Mandela should not. Within the country the UDF and the ANC that was being unbanned, the issue about going to see the King and Minister Buthelezi, nobody refused that Mandela should go and meet them. It was these conditionalities that emerged. First it was Sisulu, because Sisulu wanted to go. The issue was the venue.

POM. The venue, he wanted to meet him in Ulundi.

JZ. That's the thing but people felt you couldn't have a meeting at Ulundi, that was the feeling of the UDF, all the progressive forces, and yet from the King's side it was that you can't determine the venue, I have to determine the venue, why not meet at Ulundi? Yes.

POM. That would be royal protocol wouldn't it?

JZ. It would be. The meeting got politicised. People found issues in one way or the other to politicise the meeting in a manner that there should have been no success because 1990 when Oliver Tambo, the then President of the ANC, came in for the first time I was specifically sent by President Tambo to go and seek, request a courtesy visit by him to the King and Minister Buthelezi took me to the King and I made the presentations. The issue had been devilled by firstly the issue of the venue with Sisulu in the main, and of course also with Mandela then because the meeting became very difficult. And Tambo therefore could not also succeed because you now had a number of things which had been put as obstacles. Then the King was saying we have got to clear these things first before I meet the President of the organisation. I was with Minister Buthelezi who did not say that should not happen, he was actually saying "Tambo has been out there, Tambo was not part of this", but the King didn't feel at that point, at least as they were talking to me.

. I think the critical point really that we need to look at is who was behind the violence in KZN and what were the objectives because the objectives and who was behind would have in a sense gone a long way to determine whether the meeting took place. If it was not the venue there would have been other reasons. I am as clear as anything because the third force in other words, which was actually manipulated and managing that violence, did not want peace. It was not to its benefit and therefore they trashed everything that moved that would stall, stop or frustrate the efforts to whatever. That is why in Sisulu the issue would be the venue. With Madiba the issue would be what delegation do you come up with. With Tambo it would be because he's President of this organisation his colleagues have not come to see me. So whatever way you would have found a new reason for some people were manipulating reasons from behind

. I think that's the crux of the matter whether it would have made change or not. If Madiba would have succeeded, for example, to go and address the same meeting with Minister Buthelezi thereafter there would have been something else. Because the people were managing, manipulating violence, there would have been a massacre somewhere which people would say - what's the use of these meetings? I think that's why we need to focus on the people behind violence in that province. It is just like if I just take an example. If you take the negotiations at the national level, whilst we concluded the first phase of CODESA and we were coming back and we were negotiating with the government, trying to seek a solution, the third force, security third force, conducted the biggest massacre at Boipatong whilst we were negotiating here, because somebody was manipulating and managing conflict in the country so they always tried to find a reason to destabilise, to undermine, to do everything. I think that's the approach we need to take. I would, therefore, say even if those meetings had taken place violence would have still continued. If you take the meeting that took place in 1991 in Durban between the delegation of the IFP and the ANC wherein we thought we have talked issues out but as soon as we moved back it was difficult to implement what was agreed. That's precisely the point. I think it is only when you examine those factors you then realise that the violence in KZN was basically engineered by the third force and they were driving it. There was the scandal of the money wherein the security forces had paid for IFP rallies.

POM. Inkathagate?

JZ. Yes. Because that's how they were managing and manipulating it. It will pop out if some facts are found but in the majority of cases facts were not found and therefore it looked like it was IFP and ANC. They had infiltrated their own enemy agents provocateurs on both sides who would therefore in the name of both organisations talk and act in such a way that it would be undermining the process.

POM. But you and Frank Mdlalose embarked on a long process of trying to lower the violence in KZN for a number of years. I can see how the third force manipulated the thing, took advantage, but was there not a conflict there that existed between supporters of the UDF and then the ANC and the IFP, that when that conflict began the third force said this is a golden opportunity, we can step in.

JZ. No, not at all, not at all. The third force planned, it is now a known thing, planned how to influence Buthelezi as the Chief Minister. They disinformed him about us, influenced him long term to show him that his security was in danger, used their agents even to create a situation within our structures that were operational to give that impression that in fact something was going to happen. That's why he agreed for his people to be taken for training. This was long before violence started. The security forces, it was a sheer decision of the government that he needs to be influenced away from his positions that were closer to the ANC. It was planned, worked on for a number of years. So when it started they had manipulated and influenced it. So they didn't necessarily take advantage of it because it just happened, there was no animosity. The animosity that we would have talked about was merely political. For many years the ANC had a view about people who served in the homelands and then people talked about it. It never caused violence but the manipulation of the security forces, training of people, training of enemy agents, that is what brought violence and they then managed it and directed it. That's the critical matter.

POM. So it would have been both infiltrators in the IFP posing as IFP cadres or whatever and within the ANC who were creating the circumstances where massacres would occur and then once one massacre would occur that in itself would assume a life, that would have lit a spark that would burst into a bigger fire.

JZ. That's correct, and it gained a momentum of its own.

POM. So when you and Frank went to talk to people in villages and communities, what were you finding that were their major fears of each other?

JZ. There was no major political issue. By the time we came in the killings had taken place a long time. It was a question of a feeling of revenge. It was a question of a feeling of they have killed us, that kind of stuff. There was nothing that you could say, these were fundamental political differences. They were not there. In any fight once your people are killed you want revenge so that is what now was happening. In other words that's why I said it had gained a momentum of its own.

POM. Was there any, I ask this for a number of reasons because I asked Judge Goldstone – I'll tell you why, I asked Judge Goldstone once when he was in charge of the Tribunal for Rwanda on the genocide there why people can kill each other in such huge numbers, wife and husband kill wife and children. It just doesn't make sense, and he said, "Fear, that if I don't do it to you, you will do it to me." Was there any element of that in KZN, either between one village and the next or even within a village supporters of the IFP and the ANC if they heard of a massacre some place would say, "We're next on the list so if we don't kill them they're going to come over and kill us."

JZ. You see it doesn't move away from it being engineered because those who manipulated and managed, that's exactly what they wanted as a result because they would carry out a massacre here and carry out another swift one there to create that kind of feeling. They would participate themselves as it came out in the TRC, in Goldstone for example. The Boipatong that I am talking about, the police were there assisting the IFP people to kill people and they killed them brutally. That angered the ANC people so they would want revenge. I am saying leaving aside the details of different killings, whatever, the critical point is that there was a government that financed, engineered, manipulated, managed conflict in the country. That is a critical matter. Now you come in from the innocent point of view as we did with Frank Mdlalose. I was fully aware of it and what I was trying to do for example, how do you balance, how do you keep on hammering the political impact so that you begin to impact on the innocent political thinking. In my view that process will begin to undermine the manipulation so that in the process they are able to see that they are being manipulated. So it was a question of how do we make an impact and therefore get Mdlalose who was honest, innocent and therefore we were able to make that kind of an impact to try to roll back the misinformation, to roll back the influence, to highlight the necessity for peace, etc. It was a struggle. That's why I took a decision to request the organisation to allow me to go and stay in the province and work on it because you couldn't do it by remote control or on a part time basis. It needed you to be there, to interact with them, to talk to them, to engage them, to make it difficult for the third force to have an easy go and begin to roll back their influence and undermine their manipulation. I was as clear as anything as I was working there.

POM. Relating to that, when I met Chief Buthelezi, it might have been 1990, for the first time, and I've interviewed him every year since, the first time I met him he gave me a book of 600 pages that had every insult that the ANC had made against him. I staggered out of there under the burden of this book, which I still have. Then he was nothing but, "The ANC is insulting me", the ANC is this, the ANC is that. It was an obsession with him. I later learned that, in fact it was from Roelf Meyer, in their negotiations, trying to get him to negotiate with the government that at one point they offered him in fact all of KZN, they threw in Durban and all the white areas and said, "If you become an independent state we will throw in Durban, we will throw in East London, Kingwilliamstown, we'll throw it all in", and he still said, "No, you've got to release Mandela, you've got to unban the ANC", and he held to that view all the time. Do you think that what he would call demonisation of himself that he thinks went on on the part of the ANC, or the UDF as it would have been then before because mostly this was data from the earlier eighties, do you think that Buthelezi's contribution to the struggle has been acknowledged by the ANC given that he only initially set up the IFP with the consent of the ANC and given that he became a homeland leader also with the approval of the ANC, and then to turn on him and say you're a puppet of the apartheid regime when he's still holding out for three basic principles and they can't buy him off, do you think your structures treated him fairly?

JZ. Yes definitely, treated him very fairly. You see we have got to balance a number of things. The ANC saying he must go and participate in the homelands was a tactic and it was not an open tactic, he was not told in a public meeting. It was a clandestine tactic for the ANC to undermine homeland policy. The ANC reached a point that you needed to have our people to operate within to make it not work. It was not an acceptance of it and because of that kind of complex tactical move the top leadership that has to discuss confidentialities and secrets could not tell every other member that in fact we have sent Buthelezi there because you would be sending the message to the other side. So it was a matter between the leadership of the ANC and Buthelezi. So the political movement, progressive, did not know, including other members of the ANC. So they hammered the wrong policy. The ANC itself hammered the homeland wrong policy publicly, much as it sent him. He got into a point where he felt the heat and then started talking in public that, "No I'm not here on my own, I was sent by the ANC." Now the ANC was not in a position to stand up in public and say he is actually right, for that would have defeated the very tactics. If at all you are put in, you are sacrificed for tactical reasons, you don't when you are under pressure, because you must expect to be under pressure from other people, then reveal the secrets. So the ANC never said, "We never sent Buthelezi", but it never commented itself, it just kept quiet. And people said, "You are lying", who didn't know, who were part of the ANC, UDF. He said, "I'm not lying, I am telling the truth." So it was a tug of war between him and the ANC kept quiet. He himself didn't make it better because at a certain stage he began to have a view about sanctions and had a view about the armed struggle which was no longer in keeping with the ANC. That's what led to the meeting that was organised in London, it was to discuss that.

. So in no way could you mix the clandestine work and overt work because to say to him he should go there, tactically, that was a clandestine move. Now once you talk about it in public it's no longer a clandestine move. He talked about it in defence of himself. So I am saying we are not wrong and he therefore became more vocal in defence of himself. Now he could have toned down, he could have understood even the discussion about the formation of the IFP. He himself did not say it then, that's one of the things he kept confidential. We couldn't at that point come public, now we have. In the recent period, in the meeting they actually appeared jointly with President Thabo where he then recounted that in fact he was taking Articles as a lawyer, to become a lawyer, he was asked by the ANC leadership to go and take the Chieftainship. It is true, we have now acknowledged it publicly. He was asked to go into the homeland. We have now acknowledged here in Johannesburg in a public rally. We formed the IFP together, we did everything together. He then said, "I was sent by the ANC", addressing both IFP and ANC, and he said, "I accomplished my mission." Then Thabo said, "He is correct, that's what he did." We have now publicly acknowledged that.

POM. When was that done?

JZ. That's a few months ago.

POM. Can you remember the event so I can trace it? Not that I don't take your word.

JZ. No, you can, it was in Thokoza.

POM. When they went to Thokoza to unveil the monument?

JZ. That's correct, that day. That was the thing that was said so we have acknowledged that. We couldn't acknowledge it at that time but our members did not know. They were not supposed to know anyway. That's the thing, because we were working at different levels so we didn't do anything wrong. So even his movement, his manner in which he should have positioned himself should have taken that into account but once he attacked the ANC positions then members who don't know attacked him. I think that's what ought to be balanced in this kind of situation. Therefore, we are now saying in fact we worked together but then the violence added a dimension which was no longer just political disagreement, it was now people dying. That's why the matter was too different.

POM. Let me just turn to then maybe two or three other things that I need some help on, would like some clarification on. One was something that I raised with you last year and the year before and that is that Kobie Coetsee insists that you and he had reached a deal on amnesty that would involve a general amnesty across the board and that somehow it got scuttled.

JZ. Unless I met him and I tried to check, we discussed a lot of things. I think generally we had a common approach but I think at the end it did not necessarily work out, I think more on his side than our side is where it got scuttled, I would imagine so. Up to now I see no reason why we could not have reached that position but I think people had, because of what I've just said, a number of things – some people were involved in wrong things, some were not, it did not work out at the end of the day. I think it caused us a bit of trouble because it meant that people who felt they would be in a sense tainted by facts then began to feel jittery, unsettled, because they did not know what their future was. And yet if we had put it on the agreement it would have gone a long way. Looking back that might not have brought in the kind of truth that came through the TRC because it would have gone. Of course we would have moved insofar as the agreements are concerned. Maybe when the truth came but people would have been covered by that thing, they might not have wanted to tell the amount of truth that was told. So weighing it is one thing but generally I think it was the government really that had more problems because they had more to hide. We didn't have at least anything to hide really. I think they had more to hide.

POM. So you were prepared to - ?

JZ. To discuss and find a way.

POM. How would general amnesty more than - ?

JZ. Not necessarily general amnesty, discussing an idea how do we handle that kind of situation as we come to the agreements. We would have dealt with matters in a particular way that would have lessened the burden. I think so.

POM. I've gotten contradictory accounts from about six different people. Mac Maharaj told me that at the Pretoria Minute he and President Mbeki and Niel Barnard and Fanie van der Merwe drew up a statement for blanket amnesty that had now been agreed upon and that the person who tore it up was Kobie who insisted on, no, everyone must apply and fill out documents and list all the offences and he blew his chance. And he said it was already written and they threw it away and didn't realise that they weren't covering their own boys.

. I want to talk to you about the 'cadre policy' and the Re-deployment Committee and what it all means. I've taken my information mostly from the publication called Umgabulu and various discussion documents dating back to 1996 that got incorporated in resolutions at the 50th Congress, talking about that the ANC "must wield and transform the instruments of power through a cadre policy, ensure that the ANC plays a leading role in all centres of power, that the ANC put in place a cadre policy to ensure that all power in the state, the economy and ideological arenas is in the hands of the ANC, that the ANC cadres remain loyal to the party." The document states, "It is not individuals as such who are in government but ANC members deployed to fulfil a function. The parameters within which they carry out their functions are defined by the ANC and they should account to it." It goes right through, through the congress, "The need to deploy cadres to various organs of state including the public service and to other centres of power in society, mandates the ANC's National Executive to put in place a deployment strategy, identify key centres of power and deploy cadres, to establish Deployment Committees which would deploy cadres to the public service, parastatals, structures of the movement and the private sector and ensure that these cadres remain accountable to the party." It also quotes an article from The Sunday Times in London written by Carol Patten and Michael Schmidt which says that, quoting from Secretary General Motlanthe, saying that, "The call to transfer the civil service initially discussed at the ANC's NEC last weekend is the result of growing frustration within the party that it has been unable to grasp the key levers of power." And so it goes on with the end result that there was a formation of a cadre policy and a Deployment Committee under your direction and that members of parliament, etc., who were not going to run for parliament again were told to report to the Cadre Committee where they would receive their redeployment tasks. What's all this?

JZ. The cadre policy is an old policy of the ANC, development of the cadres to be ready for any task. It doesn't necessarily get entangled into this, it's a decision of its own. We needed to develop our cadres, an old policy of the ANC to replenish the leadership as it goes. That's cadre policy. So it's not necessarily linked in the manner in which it appears on the documents. Umgabulu is a discussion document within the ANC that raises issues for discussion.

POM. It's not policy?

JZ. It's not a resolution; a discussion. In other words to bring about political decisions. We realised from 1994 that when we went into government there was no strategising in terms of deploying our cadres in every respect. We acknowledged that in the conference in 1994 in Bloemfontein in the political report that Mandela gave. In Mafikeng we still recognised it and took a decision that it is important for the ANC to look at its cadres because other people would leave government and go to the private sector at will and none of them were trained by the ANC. We needed to sit here and say where do we deploy our best cadres where they could make the best impact in terms of transformation, in terms of delivery? We needed to help the leaders, the government as a majority party, to say here's a reservoir of cadres and we need to have a view also. We shouldn't, for example, have a situation if you have got a cadre who is not performing, we can't make that between the cadre and the person who appointed the cadre. In other words the ANC must be a fall-back, we must be able to say, look, he's not performing as an organisation, can we change the person and we think we've got a cadre who is right, who can perform there to assist the transformation, to assist the movement forward. We also help those, for example, in other words there must be if a person says I want to go to private sector, you can't just have somebody just standing up one day, walking away and that's the end of the story. Somebody must be able to say - I am thinking of leaving. We might think the parastatal is important, for example, who do we take from people whom we know so that he could go and help lead the parastatal. There is a variety, there is a general policy of deployment which must be informed by skills of the cadres, capabilities, so that we don't have a situation if you are given a position even if you are useless. Nobody can tell you to go away, you just sit there and therefore undermine the process of transformation and delivery. The ANC must be able to say, no, no, and if it was, for example, a minister we are avoiding a situation where the President says you are not performing, I am taking you away, and the man says, no, no, this person hates me. The Deployment Committee must serve as the resource where the President could say, come, I have got these views, I don't know what is your view. Our job is to monitor, we must say we agree with you President, he's not performing. We might even initiate to say, Comrade President, we don't think that minister is performing and we think that you should deploy a person there with these kind of capabilities, so that it's not just even the President on his own. We are part of a reservoir of resources wherein he could come back and say, and when that decision is taken that individual has also a place where he could come and say - I'm being taken away, why? Instead of one person saying we don't think you perform, we can say no, we know that you are now performing from the organisation point of view. So I am saying in other words it's an attempt to plan how people are deployed for the maximum effectiveness and maximum success.

POM. To achieve transformation not just in the governmental sector but every organ of civil society.

JZ. Not only government sector, everywhere. Yes.

POM. If I were saying I'm tired of politics and I want to get out, then the committee could –

JZ. We would then sit down with you.

POM. - and say - listen, looking at your talents we think that you would be best if you got into some sector of the mining industry. We will see what possibilities exist there.

JZ. Yes, that's right.

POM. And somebody else might be good –

JZ. In financial matters.

POM. - in financial matters and you would say you ought to get into the financial sector, so you would direct him into that.

JZ. Direct him there, because they understand what it is all about that we are trying to do. Somebody else might be an academic. We say no, no, we think you should go to a university. And you say, how do you get a person – ? It helps us because once a person is in a university and has come from us we know then our policy of transforming education gets more help.

POM. Gets heard.

JZ. That's the point.

POM. In that sense and not in terms of objectives, but in the sense that in 1948 the Afrikaners when they assumed power placed their people in every key position that they could find to carry out their agenda, which was an evil agenda, but what's the difference between what you're doing, not in what you're trying to achieve.

JZ. No, I see that. The difference is that we are not discriminating. We are not removing other people to put our people. Not at all.

POM. OK.

JZ. Every South African on merit is there. We have got everybody. We have got people even from, as you know there are even ambassadors who come from the National Party, from the Freedom Front, we are not discriminating absolutely. Even that one we need to look at because we don't want an NP person to occupy a key position to use it to sabotage the maximum success. We monitor that as well. If somebody politicises and is sabotaging, we are going to say, no, aside, and put the right person. We have, for example, put other people who are not ANC who are better qualified for the things. This helps to focus on what we are doing. It's not to say, in the Afrikaner, for example, they were not putting the NP members per se, they were putting Afrikaners. We are putting ANC's, not a race. In the ANC there are Afrikaners, some of them are occupying key positions, there are Indians, there are English speaking and we look at the quality, we look at their merits. That's why we find them everywhere. Then it was racialism. That's the difference, they were putting race for an evil agenda, only Afrikaners. Not even the whites per se, not a political approach, it was the Afrikaners who have been put in places and moving everybody else. So it's totally different to this.

POM. Just two more things because I know you're pushing me out of the door.

JZ. I'm under serious pressure now.

POM. I can feel your body language, I know it after ten years. One is the 1994 election which elements in the ANC believe in KZN they had won and wanted to go to court and challenge the results and in the end either the NEC said, "Listen, in the interests of harmony let's …"  Do you think that the ANC did win KZN in 1994 or that in fact the IFP did win it?

JZ. There was a lot of rigging of elections. It's a well known fact, including IEC officials who wrote affidavits to say there was a lot of rigging. That one I've got no doubt in my mind. For example, a whole big bundle of ballot papers got lost. They had to reprint something like a million to send there and I am sure they all voted. I mean it's a well known fact that things did not go well. Where they were on their own they were doing everything they wanted to do.

POM. Then what would account for their doing so well, though certainly not in the urban areas, but overall getting an overall plurality of the vote in 1999 and in the local elections in between?

JZ. In the local elections, as you know, we raised our percentage in the local elections. I think in the 1999 elections it was a question of registration. I think other people had not registered, they didn't take the matter seriously of registration in our areas. A lot of them, when the voting came, when they were now wanting to vote but they hadn't registered. So there were other factors that had come in. I am sure if people had gone and registered and gone in a big way the majority would have been clear and there was still some measure of intimidation. Not to the same degree but at least to some degree. It doesn't remove the fact of 1994, it doesn't.

POM. Do you still, or does the ANC still believe that elements of the third force are -  ?

JZ. Are still very operational?

POM. Operating from within the -

JZ. Some from within, some linking up with them. Not everybody, individuals, certain individuals I am sure.

POM. Finally, as I understand it, and I've been told by three or four people, ministers, there's a law on the books that would transfer the ownership of houses from people living in townships who have been paying rent over the years to the local authorities, would transfer the ownership to the tenants. That law has been on the books since 1996 and yet it hasn't been implemented to any large scale degree. Now the President, who is determined to have fast delivery, could say, "Forget about all the bureaucratic red tape, I'm setting up something like the IEC but for housing. We establish you've lived in a house for ten years or whatever, it's yours. Hand over, yours. Home ownership established, you've a whole new class of people established, homeowners." They can go and they can borrow, something is theirs. You've achieved a revolution in home ownership. Why has it not happened when it seems such an obvious and simple and costless thing to do?

JZ. I don't know. I don't know why it has not happened. As you know I was in the province, I was not involved in the nitty-gritty discussions of this. I still have to talk to other ministers, the Minister of Housing is one that I'm going to be talking to about many other things in relation to housing. So I don't know, I can't say. I am sure it's bureaucracy.

POM. Can't the President suddenly say, "I'm making a presidential proclamation here."

JZ. I'm sure it could be done.

POM. Could you put that on his millennium list?

JZ. Absolutely. I think it's a good point to look at.

POM. All these people in power, they …

JZ. Overnight.

POM. It would really make a difference, it doesn't cost anything.

JZ. Doesn't cost anything.

POM. So you kind of whisper in the back of his ear that this Irishman who's been bugging you for ten years -

JZ. Don't worry. It has been worth it.

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