November 12, 2018 • 44 mins
Following in the footsteps of his beloved and iconic grandfather, Ndaba Mandela has taken the torch of social justice and run with it. Today, Nelson Mandela’s legacy continues as Ndaba keeps its beacon of hope bright, fueling his message that one person can make a difference. In this candid interview, Ndaba discusses his passion for criminal justice reform and his commitment to a new generation of young Africans that he hopes will be at the forefront of Africa’s development.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
I've never been to trouble of my life. I didn't
even have a parking ticket, and you know what I mean.
I was brought up like cops are the good guys.
I didn't know what was going to happen, but I
do know that everything was stacked against me. Everything like everything,
this isn't supposed to happen this way. I'm innocent. I
(00:22):
know I'm innocent. I know I had nothing to do
with this. How is this possible? I grew up trusting
the systems. I grew up believing that every human thing
should do the right thing. And that's why, even though
I was dealing with corros people, I wasn't going to
brave anyone to get me out of prison because I
wouldn't live with the fact that I braved my way
out of my wife's death. I'm not innocent to proven guilty.
(00:46):
I'm guilty until I proved my innocence. And that's absolutely
what happened to me. Our system. Since I've been out
ten years, it's coming little ways, but it's still broken,
a totally little trust in humanity after what happened to me.
This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction. With
(01:21):
Jason Flam that's me And today we have an extraordinary
event happening here in the studio because my friend and
Dobba Mandela is here to talk about criminal justice reform
and Doaba welcome to the show. Thank you very much,
appreciate it. And Doba you are I've not gotten to
know you recently. You are a real throw back to
(01:44):
your grandfather. I mean everything I've I've gotten to interact
with you has been um well as the closest I'm
going to get to meeting the great Man, and you
were actually raised by him. So before we get into
talking about criminal justice reform with I know is it
is a passion of yours, senior blood. Um, can you
(02:04):
just give us a little bit of the backstory because
he's one of the most fascinating stories I know. Yes,
So basically, I like to describe myself as the second
son of the second son of Nelson Mandela. I come
from the first marriage of Nelson Mandela, which is he
was married to Evelyn Marse. A lot of people don't
know that because they think his original wife was Willie Mandela,
(02:25):
but that was actually the second wife. The first one
is Evelyn and then they had four children. The first
one UH died at six months. The second one was
my uncle timber Killer. He passed away while my grandfather
was still in jail. And then the third one was
my uh father. So the first was a daughter, son's son, daughter,
(02:50):
and my father gave birth to four boys, and I
am the second son. And so when my grandfather came
out of jail, he basically sent my parents to university
because they never had the opportunity to go to university
while he was aware and um, so when he sent
them to university, he didn't want them to also worry
(03:11):
about raising it at the same time. So he took
me in when he sent my parents university. I was
about eleven years old at that time. And so I
you know, from the time I was eleven years old,
I grew up in my grandfather. He raised me basically
a real witness to history. I mean, you had you
had the front seat for one of the most important,
(03:31):
um periods of time that ever took place anywhere in
the world in terms of the impact it had on
global change and and civil rights and human rights and
um just everything. It's uh, it's just a remarkable, remarkable
story in so many ways. And of course you visited
(03:53):
him in prison, is that right? Yes? I did, um,
you know the first time. Actually when I visited in jail. Um.
You know, my parents told me that we're going to
visit our grandfather in jail, and so I had a
typical image of what jail was like. Um, concrete bars, wardens,
you know, dogs, security everywhere. But when we got there,
it was a house, Um, a house that looked much
(04:16):
better than the house I lived in, because I didn't
understand that they had actually removed him from you know,
the Robin Island and put him in isolation. They were
trying to break him down mentally, to say, Madiba, you're
an old man. Now denounced the movement of the liberation movement,
denounce your comrades, denounce your party, and lived the rest
(04:36):
of your life in this luxury and enjoy your family
and your grandkids. But of course we know that that
didn't work out. Right. So when we got there and
it was a beautiful house. There was a swimming pool.
I never had a swimming pool, right. We watched a
never ending story. There was a chef who met the man,
of course, and he was very warm and was so
(04:57):
happy to meet every one of us, and so looking
at that, I was like, wow, this is a beautiful house.
You know, I would like to have a house like
this one day. And so, you know, unlike most kids
growing up thinking I want to be a lawyer, I
want to be a doctor, I said when I grew up,
I want to go to jail. Uh. That's what an
(05:19):
interesting to he old, were you, um? I was ten? Yes,
that's so that's logical at that age and should be
probably what the reaction would be for somebody coming from
this circumstance and seeing this as it was. So it's
interesting because I've been to his jail cell on Robin Island,
UM and I've seen obviously it's empty now, but I've
(05:39):
taken the tour and it's a very profound experience to
see what you know, he and his comrades went through.
UM and anyone who's you know, even a casual student
of the history UM, I recommend that they go when
they get the chance, well to to South Africa for starters,
but if you get a chance to visit Robin I
(06:00):
and it's not an experience that anyone will ever forget.
He was locked up for almost three decades, right seven years.
And I'm interested in how that shaped your view and
your priorities now because you know you well, probably of
(06:20):
all the grandchildren, you were the closest to him, right
because you were you were around him the most. He
from what I understand, he took a particular interest in
you and saw in you a future leader, um, which,
of course, especially at his age, he would have been
very driven to ensure that there's you know, a continuation
(06:46):
of the movement that he built and of the progress
that he made. Of course it's forwards and backwards and
one step and two steps in the whole thing, and
even in America now. But um so, how did his
experience from your perspective, shape him, and how did it
shape you? And what are your what are you used
now on criminal justice reform in in Africa, in the world. Um.
(07:11):
You know, I think to a large extent, because he
sacrificed his own family, you know, for the freedom of
his country. You know, he sacrificed what he had here
for the larger good of the of the society. Um.
It maybe it was a second chance for him to
be a father, to play that fatherly role, you know, um,
(07:35):
because he never had that opportunity. Um. And so you know,
because he was a man that was a comrade when
I was a soldier fighting against the system. You know,
he made sure that he instilled certain values in me
to become a leader. And you know, one thing he
(07:55):
said to me, which I will never forget, is that, Debba,
you are my grand some. Therefore people will look at
you as a leader. Therefore you must get the best
marks in class. And of course at that time, I
was just another lesson. I was like granddad, who WHOA,
that's too much pressure. I just want to get by.
(08:16):
You know, I was a kid much like my grandfather, rebel,
you know, sitting at the back of the class, very naughty,
hardly did my homework, peace shooting, you know the girls,
you know, that kind of thing. But of course, as
you grow up, you know a lot a lot of
the time, you you don't want to be treated as
a special kid or a special someone. You just want
(08:37):
to be a normal kid. And one of the things
also Um you know, instilled with me was humility. It
was very important to him. He said, you must never
drive a Jaguar because people will know you have money.
And as a as a leader, it's important that you
are seen as one of the community. As part of
(09:00):
the community, you understand, even if you have more money
than them or have more access to them. But when
you are socializing, there must not be any sort of
sense that you are more important or you should be
treated in any other different way. So for me, it's
the same thing when you talk about the criminal justice
system or any sort of justice system, is how do
(09:24):
we treat people with the same equality, right, whether you're black,
whether you write, whether you're male or female. Right, And
the laws that we have, of course standing from a
party segregation laws, similar to the gym crowd laws. Right,
when you talk about people who are trying to pretty
(09:46):
much just live on an equal footing, Right, that is
really the struggle that were that were that they were
fighting gainst. And that is the same struggle when you
talk about the justice system, because the laws that apply
to black people who are poor, who are marginalized are
not the same as the laws that apply to white
(10:09):
people who have access, who are wealthy or well off. Right. Um,
you know, I was very inspired to be at the
event last week in d C. The Criminal Um, the
Center Southern Center for Human Rights. Then that's right, and
(10:29):
it was the Frederick Douglas Awards ceremony, which, of course
world of Frederick Douglas is one of the most powerful
leaders evolutionists. Um. You know um, And for me, it's
really about making sure that people have first of all
education to understand what their rights are, right um, and
(10:54):
be able once you understand rights, to be able to
push right. You know, you have right for legal representation.
You know you have the right to to express what
it is. I'm not be afraid sort of speak right, um.
And that's really for me the importance of how do
we make sure that we live in a society where
(11:17):
everybody is treated the same, regardless of your race or
your sex. Yeah. That's a that's a dream, um that
I think has been shared by all the great civil
rights leaders. And I'm glad you brought up Frederick Douglas
because I mean it was eighteen forty seven right when
he started his abolitionist um newspaper, and he you know,
(11:37):
the courage that he uh, and the two I forgot
the names of the two people who started with him.
One of them was a woman, um. But the I
mean their lives were at risk every minute of every
day as Mandela's was. And you know, there's a through
line with all of this. I mean, it's so odd
(11:57):
that we still have to have this conversation today, right,
but we do. And and it's probably more, um, you know,
more poignant at this moment than it would have been
at almost any other time in recent history. Speaking as
an American, of course, but there are these parallels. And
in America, everyone knows you have the right to an attorney. Um,
(12:19):
is it the same thing in Africa? And one thing
I tell um my listeners as often as I can
is if you are arrested for something you didn't do,
or someone that you love is arrested for something you
didn't do, all you're supposed to say, all you should
say is this is my name, this is my address,
and I want a lawyer, because at that point they
(12:40):
have to stop in tarrogeting. You know, I don't know
how it works in South Africa, but here people innocent
people wave those rights because they don't think they have
anything to hide, and they think, well, if I just cooperate,
then I can go home. And they want to be
helpful generally, right, people want to help the least. They
want to be good citizens. They want to be. Yes,
it's glad, it's a paradox. But how does it work
(13:02):
in South Africa? I mean, ironically, I think we have
a much higher incarceration rate than you do now, especially
for people of color. But um, in South Africa is
it a similar system? Are you entitled to an attorney?
And if so, when and how does it? Yes, you
are entitled to an attorney. Um, if you can afford on,
the state will provide one for you, right, right, same thing, um.
(13:24):
But of course, and a lot of the time, the
or the view, right, the general view is that it's
better to have money to pay an attorney because once
you're able to pay an attorney, he does a better job. Right,
generally speaking, that is the general view what people have.
(13:46):
But what I've seen actually is that because you know,
my own brother was involved in a criminal case. He
was accused wrongfully of raping a young girl who was
under the age, right, and you know it was very
you can imagine rape is a very sensitive case, right,
(14:06):
And my brother was acquitted because obviously he did not
commit the rape. So it was some sort of a
witch hunt that we didn't really understand where it came from. Um.
But that said, Um, yes, everybody's afforded lawyer. Otherwise you
go with the state lawyer. I have so many questions
(14:35):
about how the system works in South Africa. One of
them is the death penalty. Um, everyone knows that I'm
a strong advocate of abolishing the death penalty. I don't
think it serves any it doesn't serve any useful purpose.
It's been proven in every study, doesn't deter one crime
from happening ever, ever, ever, And it is barbaric, and
(14:57):
it is arbitrary and capricious, and you know, it's it's
I mean, everything about it is wrong. It's expensive, even
if that's where you're coming from. It's um, you know,
it's it's it's imperfect. Even in a perfect system, it
would be imperfect. Right, it's inhumane. But also you know
the conversation I have with people who are pro death penalty,
(15:18):
I say to them, And I had this conversation recently.
I was giving a talk at the New School and
one guy came up afterwards and he said, well, you know,
I'm in favor of the death penalty. And I said, okay,
how many innocent people is it okay to execute? What percentage?
And he says no, no, no, you can't execute inc
I say, okay, But then you're talking out of both
sides of your mouth, because we know the system is imperfect.
(15:38):
You know the system is imperfect, even if everyone isn't
is an honest actor in the system and doing the
best job that they can and and and everything is
moving through the way it's opposed to, which it doesn't
and it can't and it never will. We can make
it better, but we'll never make it perfect. You're still
going to execute a certain presentative innocent people. So that's
where it all breaks down. It should break down for everyone.
(15:59):
But do you still have the death penalty? And the
first thing one of the first things that our our
our government did, the ANC led government, was to abolish
the death penalty because we come from a system that
was using violence as a means to to govern, we understand,
So we had to make sure that we break the
cycle of violence. You know, killing someone because someone killed
(16:23):
somebody is not gonna like you just said, it's not
gonna take us anywhere. You're just gonna continue perpetuating the
cycle of violence. So where does it end? You understand
what I'm saying. So that was a very key thing
that we did in our country was to abolish the
death the death penalty completely. And what about sentencing was
(16:45):
in South Africa? How does because here, as you know,
we have some of the harshest sentencing policies in the world.
And it always boggles my mind, like why, why and
how we got to this place. I understand it intellectually,
but I don't understand it, um on any other level. Um,
on a humanitarian level. It's insane. I mean, we just
had a case actually this week where a gentleman in
(17:07):
Tennessee had been convicted of his first time offense. He
was selling I think a small quantity of drugs from
inside of his own home to adults. Right. There was
no no violence, no threat of nothing else. Right, But
it turned out he was in the school zone, right,
but he was inside of his own house. No, no, no,
nothing like that. And he was sentenced to seventeen years
(17:28):
in prison. So he Yeah, so he was just free
this week actually with the cooperation of the prosecutor, which
is so um, you know, such a a nice thing
to see. We don't see it often enough. But he
still served ten years in prison. I mean, we're so
out of step that's like murder, right, he was treated
as a murderer. And so how do you deal with
(17:48):
that in South Africa? Do you how what about the
drug laws is it? Do you treat it the same
way that we do so harshly? Um? I don't think
they treated so harshly. UM in s Africa, of course,
I think which was the same. Here would be the
mitigating factors as to how you put the sentencing. You know,
is the person remorseful, do they understand the detrimental effect
(18:11):
that they have on society? Um? And what what are
the mitigating factors? You know, you can't just say, oh,
you were selling cocaine, therefore your automatically get fifteen years.
What was your first time offender, second time offender, time offender? Um?
So you have to really look at all the different
mitigating factors to actually come up with the right sentencing.
(18:35):
And in South Africa, I would say it's pretty fair
because you know, looking at you know, when we achieved independence,
they were even before ninties, before we had the Truth
and Reconciation Commission right where we basically gave amnesty two
(18:55):
perpetrators of violence against the the victims if they were
coming to the table to discloss everything that had happened.
So if you come up and you say exactly what happened,
be very honest, who are you with, what made you
do it? Etcetera, etcetera, and you would be literally sitting
(19:19):
in front of the victims of those people that you
you perpetrated against. They would give you amnesty. So for us,
I think personally that the system in sol Afrika are
currently is not as harsh as that of America. For example,
you know, we met a gentleman last week at the
event UM. I forgot his name now, but that gentleman.
(19:43):
You know what struck me was that he received twenty
three years, which is the equivalent of two life sentences
for stealing goods of five and fifty dollars the first
time offender, a man with the college degree and the
navy veteran. As we would never happen in Africa. That
(20:04):
would not happen in stuff that is absurd, that is insane. Yes,
and so we're talking about Lenny Singleton who was convicted
of a series of what we call dash and grab robberies.
Right where he went in um and he pretended he
stuck he had his finger in his pocket. He pretended
to have a weapon, right, so technically that's considered our
robbery in America. But he never heard anybody, never touched anybody.
He just grabbed the money from the cash register and
(20:27):
he didn't have a weapon, pretended he didn't have a
Nobody argued at that point, and he can fessed, you know,
so he he was so in your you know, in
your system, which anyway, it's so crazy, and here with drugs,
it's it's absolute madness because you know, years ago, I
did a presentation for the Democratic Policy Committee in the
United States Senate, and I brought with me. One of
(20:48):
the people I brought with me was Federal Judge Castillo,
who was the chairman vice chairman of the US Sentence
and Commission, and he talked about how he he was
given this most um profound responsibility, which is to sentence
another human being to prison, and then the Congress took
all that power away from him because they established these
(21:08):
mandatory sentencing laws which we have here now, so that
if someone gets picked up with drugs, they just look
at the chart, here's how much drugs it was, here's
the thing, and then you get that much time and
the judge has no power to judge. The jury says
guilty and off you go, according to the chart. But
in almost all other types of crimes when there's no
mandatory sentence involved, they look at the other factors as
(21:30):
they do in South Africa, right, and they say, well,
your childhood was this, or you were there, or you're
disabled in such way, or you have an experience of this,
or you're positive contributed positively to society in certain ways,
and those things are mitigating factors and go into the
sentence that the judge and decides on. So judges, of
course hate these mandatory sentencing laws because they can't do
their jobs. So there's you know, I've been on the
(21:52):
board of Families Against Mandatory Minimums for twenty five years
now f a MM dot org. I hope people will
go and look because they're doing the most important work
in eliminating these crazy sentencing draconian sentencing policies that sent
that send people to prison for these horrendous amounts of
time for non violent first offenses. It's it's just nuts,
(22:13):
and I don't know why we do that to our
own citizens. Every one of these people is a is
a child of someone, a brother or sister, a mother.
You know. They it's like you're ripping these communities apart.
And of course it affects people of color disproportionately. That
goes without saying, and I'm assuming that's probably still true
in South Africa even to this day. You know, well,
of course, I mean the dynamics a little bit different
(22:35):
because in South Africa eighties seven percent of the population
as black are the natives as they used to call us,
and of the other way people. Um. One thing, um
that I always wonder about, um, is that you know,
in in South Africa, being a cop is not such
(22:55):
a beneficial job as I see in America, right. I
see in America that the cops are very well looked
after by the by the by the system. But in
South Africa, it's very easy to bribe a coup. Um,
it's very easy to brab a cop. You don't have
to have a lot of money. You can literally brab
(23:17):
a coup with equivalent of ten dollars, you know, to
get away with drinking under the influence, for example. You know,
that's how easy it is. And that's that's generally the
the the thing across the continent of Africa. But I don't.
I don't see that happening here in America. I see
the cops really, you know, being hardcore. I think my
(23:40):
perception in a way to bribe a coup for do
you are, you'd have to pay him like a thousand
or five thousand dollars something like that, right, And of
course it's another crime. If you try to bribe a
law enforcement official, they can add to the charges, you know,
if they you know, and so and here, I think
you're right. It doesn't happen often. And I'm one of
these people who I say, um, you know that I
believe been a system of laws. Um. I want to
(24:02):
make it better, I want to make it fairer um.
But I recognized that most of the people in the
system are people who mean to do well. Um. There.
They took these jobs because they wanted to protect society. Um.
And uh, you know that holds true for the judges
and many of the prosecutors as well. There are some
(24:22):
bad ones, though, and the bad ones, if you have
a misfortune to run across one of those, your life
can be turned upside down in an instant. And we
know too many of those stories. Um. And it's it's
really well Lenny Singleton was one, and of course you
met John Huffington when you were there as well, who's
been on this show. So it's sort of thirty two
years on death row for murders to murders that they
(24:43):
knew he didn't commit. And uh, you know, he's an amazing,
amazing guy. He had that great saying right when he
when somebody we were talking to him and somebody said,
aren't you better and he says, no, man, he goes,
that's why the rearview mirrors small and the windshield is big.
And I was like, oh, man, I love that. He
must have read some of your grandpa's books something, because
(25:03):
you know that's that's channeling that spirit, right. So if
you could wave a magic wand and you know, obviously
there's so much going on in South Africa beyond the
criminal justice system. You know, we're here with the guys
from bet Paw, who is an organization that's devoted to
trying to save the rhinos and the elephants, because you know,
you're facing an existential crisis there with the possible extinction
(25:25):
within a decade of the most iconic animals in the
world and what that will mean. Um in so many
it's there's so many terrible consequences of that, right, I
mean it hurts, it hurts my heart. But also with
tourism and everything else. So there's a lot of issues
that you're dealing with. And I know you're very active
in you know, in the affairs of the country, and
(25:47):
you love your country. I'm looking forward to visiting you
over there. Uh huh. And um. But if you could
wave a magic wand at the at the criminal justice
system and make it, you know, remake it in in
a way that was more consistent with your own values vision,
(26:08):
if it was you know, again drawing from the lessons
of you know, your grandfather, the great hero. Um, what
would it look like and what would you do? Because
maybe you'll have the opportunity, I hope so m hm,
you know they are for me. What I've learned is
that you know, people will commit crime. There are true
(26:32):
reasons why people commit crime. One as poverty, true is
purely criminal element, right, trying to cook the system. So
as much as you want to do with the criminal
justice system, you have to look at the fact that's
why people commit crimes, right, It's poverty. And then you
(26:57):
have gangsterism, which is just pure criminal element. So for me,
at large, part of that is the poverty. You know,
if you're able, My one would be to make sure
that people have education, would get rid of poverty, because
once you get rid of poverty and people have education,
half the people who are in jail will not be
(27:18):
in jail, if not more. If not more. So let
us deal with the fundamental issue at hand, that is
the fundamental issueth That's why I would weave my one. Yeah,
(27:42):
I mean, that's that's addressing it at the cause right, um,
as opposed to the effect UM. And I think we
have to deal with I call it prevention and cure.
I mean, we have to deal with these problems on
every level. Um. Ironically, it is a cycle, right because
we know that in America, the sociologists that have studied
this issue have come to the conclusion, which is probably
(28:05):
not a shock, that the number one determining factor of
whether a child will end up in prison eventually is
whether they've had a parent in prison. And so we
have to break that cycle, and we have to attack
it on both fronts. We have to reverse mass incarceration
and let these people out who are not any threat
to society. We have to hear reform the bail system.
(28:28):
I'm curious to know how that works in South Africa
as well. That's the next thing I want to talk
to you about. And we have to get rid of
these mandatory sensing laws. I locked these people up with
these insane periods of time. You know the great Brian Stevenson.
Have you met Brian. You'll you'll you You'll have the
privilege at some point and he'll have the privilege of
meeting you. I hope. So. Brian Stevenson is a great
(28:49):
hero of mine, and he has a wonderful expression where
he says, I believe everyone is better than the worst
thing they've ever done. And I think, yeah, we have
to start looking at these people as people and not
numbers and not statistics, and not inmates and not you know.
I mean, this is it's the it's the new Gym Crowe, right,
It's the modern version of slavery. And you know, I
(29:11):
don't know if you know this, but in America, when
slavery was abolished, it was only abolished for free people,
so they never changed that. So it's still legal if
you're in custody of the state. So it's an economic
engine right right, which feeds the rich people at the
expense of the poor. And and and then we end
(29:32):
up in this vicious cycle, like I said, which takes
us right back to you know, the impact that it
has on the families and in the communities of these
people who are again mostly people of color, who are
being taken away from that because of transgressions that there.
Um And I consider myself one of the lucky ones
because I grew up in a you know, in an
(29:52):
upper middle class environment where I was not subjected to
the same type of treatment. So, um so what about
That's one topic I do want to cover is bail.
How does it work in South Africa? Because here we
have a crazy system where if you're arrested and you're
charged with shoplifting or jumping a turnstyle or drinking a
beer in public, whatever it might be, they all might
(30:14):
be set at two d and fifty dollars or a
thousand dollars or whatever. It is small amount, but if
you don't have that money, you're just staying in jail
until your trial that could be weeks or months or
even years. And what we should be doing, of course,
they is sending people home to their family, to their job,
to their church, whatever they're doing, and then come back
and here's your date to come back, and we'll see
you in court and then we figure this out and
(30:35):
that's it. But that's not the way it works here.
We have almost a half a million people in jail
in America while we're sitting here, just because they're too
poor to post their own bail. So we have two
separate systems of justice here, one if you're rich and
one if you're poor. That's a violation of the sixth
Amendment in the fourteenth Amendment, but we're not going to
get into that now. Is not a constitutional law class. However,
how does it work in South Africa? Do you have
(30:55):
a similar arrangement. It's pretty much the same. It's pretty
much the same. But in my experience and my knowledge,
bail is never really set that high. Um. Generally people
can afford bail um, but of course you are. You
do have poor people who cannot afford, who cannot afford
it um. And it's it's terrible because now you're in jail,
(31:19):
you know, you get fired from your job, so you
don't even have a means to pay for that bail.
You know, if you're able to continue your job, you know,
because it should be innocent until proven guilty. But the
minute you are accused, for example, of rape, most people
automatically assume that you are guilty. You know. And I
(31:40):
have a personal experience to this, because my younger brother
was actually accused of rape. Now, the minute you're accused
of rape, and we know this, it's one of the
most sensitive crimes is the minute you're accused of rape,
most people ultimately assume that you're guilty or will side
with the female without knowing any you know, information about
(32:03):
how it took place, where it took place, any information whatsoever.
Just because you're accused of rape, he must be built
in why would the woman accuse him, you know, out
of nowhere for rape? You know. But they don't even
know what the situation. They don't even know the relationship
of these people, right, And that's one of the worst
sort of crimes out there, right, to be honest, it's
(32:27):
one of the worst. So, yeah, bail is pretty much
worth the same, right And and here it's supposed to
be said according to your ability to pay, but it's
not done in that manner typically Here it's just sort
of done almost by it's almost like it's done by
a machine. It's just sort of here's the thing. They
just draw a line and accused of shoplifting. It's going
to be because there's too many people going through the system.
(32:50):
It's overloaded, and so they just some of them. You
don't you don't ever see a lawyer, you don't get
any You may even be doing it on a video screen.
They may do it in a group. Um. People aren't
aware of this until they get caught in it. But man,
once you get caught in it just gets worse and
worse than It's exactly as you describe, because then your
your life gets significantly worse because most of these people,
if they can't afford bail, it's because they're living paycheck
to paycheck. And now your job is going going away,
(33:12):
your apartment, you're gonna lose that if you have one,
you could lose custody of your kids. It's just a terrible,
terrible downward spirals that you get into and only because
you're poor, and that doesn't make any logical sense whatsoever.
And it's another one of these things. If I had
a magic one, that would be one of the first
things that I would fix that in our system of
pearl and probation and all this other stuff. Um, how
(33:34):
about the jail conditions, because in it's such an odd thing.
You know. Now we have groups of people going from
the United States to visit prisons in Western Europe. In
some of the countries in Western Europe, like Germany, the
prisons are designed for the purpose of rehabilitation and their
(33:57):
prisoners are treated humanly, it's with respect. The same is
true in Scandinavia, where they're treated um, you know, in
a way where it's basically a philosophy of hey, you
guys are gonna come out one day, You're going to
be my next door neighbors. That's how the guards approach it.
The guards have to study for two years, they have
to get degrees in psychology. It's amazing, right, um. And
(34:17):
as a result, those countries have much lower recidivism rates
than we do. They're allowed out for um, furloughs and
things like that to go work, and even before their
release they go out to look for jobs and things
like that. I mean. So the good news is we
now have delegations from our corrections uh system institutions. Uh.
Some political leaders going and visiting and seeing how it
(34:40):
can be done. There's there's some movement. We have a
long way to go, but basically our system here is
designed for punishment, not rehabilitation. And some of the conditions
and the jails and prisons are absolutely brutal. Um. Same
in South Africa. I mean, you used to be able
to get a degree in jail. You can't. You can't anymore.
(35:00):
Um that that that has been taken away completely. Um.
There's so much overcrowding and sales. You know, you get
a room like we're in right now with easily twenty
people living in a cell like this. UM. I mean
I don't know about here, but the the amount of
rape that occurs inside the inside the prisoners heavy. Um.
(35:23):
You know, there's gangs obviously in prison and there's one
of the gangs in South Africa that actually specialize in
violence and systematically you know, raping and still in fear
in other prisoners. Um. There's also the amount of corruption
because of poverty. You know, prisoners are able to bribe
(35:44):
the wardens to the point where if a adolescent, right juvenile,
you can pay the warden to say, hey, I want
that young boy to come to myself tonight and they
can have his way have his way. Um, I'll tell
you about one of them. I studied criminology and there
(36:06):
was a gentleman I forgot his name now, but he
had such a crazy story. He was actually a general
right in the in the in the prison, so he
was one of the most ruthless shared persons. He even
had a way of how to attack and kill somebody
that he had to kill, you know, he used he
used the penny chopping the pen. He'd go for the neck,
(36:28):
go for the eye, you know. But one day, he said,
when everything switched for him, is that when he witnessed
a young boy hardly sixteen years old, got getting raped
by about ten guys. And I was on the floor, bleeding, crying,
just completely en shambles. And he sawed his kid and
(36:50):
he said to the kid, do something for yourself. And
the kids said, I can't see, I can't feel. What
can I do? And that touched them so deeply that
he actually decided that he's gonna change from becoming a
general and actually exposed the corruption that was happening in jail.
(37:13):
And so he spoke to people outside the jail. He
smuggled in cameras into the jail right and exposed the rape,
exposed the criminal activities that the wardens were actually getting
involved in, to the point where he even got a
pardon from the from the president of our country. And
(37:33):
he ended up marrying his lawyer, which was a white
woman and he was a black guy, because of what
he had witnessed of this sort of gang rape of
this young boy that had come into into the into
the cells, you know. Um, So the conditions are horrific.
The conditions are disturbing, to be honest with you. Um,
(37:56):
when I visited my you know, in jail cigarette our currency,
cigarettes are currency, um, people smuggling anything and everything, as
you can imagine, right, Um. But more so it's the
corruption of the actual system because the wardens themselves part
of that corruption system that has been entrenched over decades,
(38:21):
do you understand over decades. So basically, with money, you
can do anything you want to do. If you have money,
you can live like you're living in the normal apartment
in mid Tom Manhanan pretty much. And if you don't,
you're living in hell, literal hell. I mean, the way
(38:42):
you described it can't be much worse than that. That's it.
And in fact, we had an amazing guy hero of mine,
people who go from Kenya, was on the show and
he had been wrongfully convicted intends to death, and he
was describing a similar situation to what you said, where
he was in a small cell with thirteen other guy
eyes and he said that in order for them to sleep,
(39:03):
they would all have to lay on one side facing
the same way, and like Sardine's in a cann they
would have to roll over at the same time. And
you know that. It's just yeah, I mean, it's so
crazy and his story is amazing. You'll I'll show you
the podcast that Peluko is on and now he's about
Vergion becoming a lawyer and he's just i think just
joined some one of the boards of Amnesty. I mean
(39:25):
he's doing amazing, amazing things and helping the youth over there.
What a great guy. So anyway, we have a tradition
here onun wrongful conviction which I'm going to share with
you now, and it's actually my favorite part of the show.
Probably a lot of people in the audience would agree.
But anyway, this is the part of the show where
our featured are honored. Guest gets the free reign of
(39:49):
the microphone. I UM, what I do is I give
you my thanks, and thank the audience and our producers
as well for being here and sharing your thoughts and
your wisdom, and thank everyone for listening. And now for
the last part of the show, I just like to
(40:10):
turn it over to you for any closing thoughts you
have on anything at all. You know what I can say,
In the words of Nelson Mandela, education is the most
powerful weapon you can use to change your world. And
that's why it's important for us to make sure that
young people have access to information, of access to education,
(40:34):
so that they can understand that they are the masters
of their destiny. We need to make sure that we're
empower as many young people as we can. We need
to become mentors in our society. Go on other days
where your judges, your lawyers of doctors are the most
influential people on society. These days, it's your musicians, it
(40:58):
is your actors, you entertain us who are the most
influential people on the young people right, And those people
are not always cognizant of the influence and the sort
of role model position that they hold in society, and
so they don't actually take it to consideration right, and
(41:19):
they may be careless with it. So I would like
to say that each and every single one of us
has the opportunity to mentor a young person, to make
sure that young person can deal with whatever challenges that
they face, even if it is just helping that young
person with doing their homework, finding out how they dare
(41:40):
was finding out how they weak was what you can
help them with. You know, there are so many young
people out there who his parents are in jail, who
would grow up without a father, without a mother, you know,
who don't value themselves in society and they become easy
prey to gangsterism and being recruited by the thugs and society.
(42:03):
So I want to say to the people out there
that you know, if you take just one hour a
week to sit with the young person to mentor young person,
and you do that one hour a week that is
nothing on a Saturday or a Sunday, to sit with
the young person to mentor that person, think about the
positive effect and the value that that young person will
(42:26):
have to know that there's somebody out there who cares
for them, who will spend the time. Because time, it's
just as important as money to be with that person,
to listen to them, to give them guidance. For me,
we all need to go out there and try to
be good mentors in society. One young person, that is all.
(42:50):
It takes one hour week, you can make a much
better society. Thank you again for being here and wrong
for Conviction. I look forward to working together to make
a difference and that's exactly what we're going to do.
So um, this has been an extraordinary experience for me.
(43:11):
And thank you again to our audience for listening. Thank
you very much, Jackson. That was beautiful. Don't forget to
give us a fantastic review wherever you get your podcasts.
It really helps. And I'm a proud donor to the
Innocence Project and I really hope you'll join me in
supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future
(43:32):
wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot org to learn
how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank
our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wardis. The music
in the show is by three time OSCAR nominated composer
Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at
Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast. Wrongful
(43:52):
Conviction with Jason Flam is a production of Lava for
Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one All
I've never been to trouble of my life. I didn't
even have a parking ticket, and you know what I mean.
I was brought up like cops are the good guys.
I didn't know what was going to happen, but I
do know that everything was stacked against me. Everything like everything,
this isn't supposed to happen this way. I'm innocent. I
(00:22):
know I'm innocent. I know I had nothing to do
with this. How is this possible? I grew up trusting
the systems. I grew up believing that every human thing
should do the right thing. And that's why, even though
I was dealing with corros people, I wasn't going to
brave anyone to get me out of prison because I
wouldn't live with the fact that I braved my way
out of my wife's death. I'm not innocent to proven guilty.
(00:46):
I'm guilty until I proved my innocence. And that's absolutely
what happened to me. Our system. Since I've been out
ten years, it's coming little ways, but it's still broken,
a totally little trust in humanity after what happened to me.
This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction. With
(01:21):
Jason Flam that's me And today we have an extraordinary
event happening here in the studio because my friend and
Dobba Mandela is here to talk about criminal justice reform
and Doaba welcome to the show. Thank you very much,
appreciate it. And Doba you are I've not gotten to
know you recently. You are a real throw back to
(01:44):
your grandfather. I mean everything I've I've gotten to interact
with you has been um well as the closest I'm
going to get to meeting the great Man, and you
were actually raised by him. So before we get into
talking about criminal justice reform with I know is it
is a passion of yours, senior blood. Um, can you
(02:04):
just give us a little bit of the backstory because
he's one of the most fascinating stories I know. Yes,
So basically, I like to describe myself as the second
son of the second son of Nelson Mandela. I come
from the first marriage of Nelson Mandela, which is he
was married to Evelyn Marse. A lot of people don't
know that because they think his original wife was Willie Mandela,
(02:25):
but that was actually the second wife. The first one
is Evelyn and then they had four children. The first
one UH died at six months. The second one was
my uncle timber Killer. He passed away while my grandfather
was still in jail. And then the third one was
my uh father. So the first was a daughter, son's son, daughter,
(02:50):
and my father gave birth to four boys, and I
am the second son. And so when my grandfather came
out of jail, he basically sent my parents to university
because they never had the opportunity to go to university
while he was aware and um, so when he sent
them to university, he didn't want them to also worry
(03:11):
about raising it at the same time. So he took
me in when he sent my parents university. I was
about eleven years old at that time. And so I
you know, from the time I was eleven years old,
I grew up in my grandfather. He raised me basically
a real witness to history. I mean, you had you
had the front seat for one of the most important,
(03:31):
um periods of time that ever took place anywhere in
the world in terms of the impact it had on
global change and and civil rights and human rights and
um just everything. It's uh, it's just a remarkable, remarkable
story in so many ways. And of course you visited
(03:53):
him in prison, is that right? Yes? I did, um,
you know the first time. Actually when I visited in jail. Um.
You know, my parents told me that we're going to
visit our grandfather in jail, and so I had a
typical image of what jail was like. Um, concrete bars, wardens,
you know, dogs, security everywhere. But when we got there,
it was a house, Um, a house that looked much
(04:16):
better than the house I lived in, because I didn't
understand that they had actually removed him from you know,
the Robin Island and put him in isolation. They were
trying to break him down mentally, to say, Madiba, you're
an old man. Now denounced the movement of the liberation movement,
denounce your comrades, denounce your party, and lived the rest
(04:36):
of your life in this luxury and enjoy your family
and your grandkids. But of course we know that that
didn't work out. Right. So when we got there and
it was a beautiful house. There was a swimming pool.
I never had a swimming pool, right. We watched a
never ending story. There was a chef who met the man,
of course, and he was very warm and was so
(04:57):
happy to meet every one of us, and so looking
at that, I was like, wow, this is a beautiful house.
You know, I would like to have a house like
this one day. And so, you know, unlike most kids
growing up thinking I want to be a lawyer, I
want to be a doctor, I said when I grew up,
I want to go to jail. Uh. That's what an
(05:19):
interesting to he old, were you, um? I was ten? Yes,
that's so that's logical at that age and should be
probably what the reaction would be for somebody coming from
this circumstance and seeing this as it was. So it's
interesting because I've been to his jail cell on Robin Island,
UM and I've seen obviously it's empty now, but I've
(05:39):
taken the tour and it's a very profound experience to
see what you know, he and his comrades went through.
UM and anyone who's you know, even a casual student
of the history UM, I recommend that they go when
they get the chance, well to to South Africa for starters,
but if you get a chance to visit Robin I
(06:00):
and it's not an experience that anyone will ever forget.
He was locked up for almost three decades, right seven years.
And I'm interested in how that shaped your view and
your priorities now because you know you well, probably of
(06:20):
all the grandchildren, you were the closest to him, right
because you were you were around him the most. He
from what I understand, he took a particular interest in
you and saw in you a future leader, um, which,
of course, especially at his age, he would have been
very driven to ensure that there's you know, a continuation
(06:46):
of the movement that he built and of the progress
that he made. Of course it's forwards and backwards and
one step and two steps in the whole thing, and
even in America now. But um so, how did his
experience from your perspective, shape him, and how did it
shape you? And what are your what are you used
now on criminal justice reform in in Africa, in the world. Um.
(07:11):
You know, I think to a large extent, because he
sacrificed his own family, you know, for the freedom of
his country. You know, he sacrificed what he had here
for the larger good of the of the society. Um.
It maybe it was a second chance for him to
be a father, to play that fatherly role, you know, um,
(07:35):
because he never had that opportunity. Um. And so you know,
because he was a man that was a comrade when
I was a soldier fighting against the system. You know,
he made sure that he instilled certain values in me
to become a leader. And you know, one thing he
(07:55):
said to me, which I will never forget, is that, Debba,
you are my grand some. Therefore people will look at
you as a leader. Therefore you must get the best
marks in class. And of course at that time, I
was just another lesson. I was like granddad, who WHOA,
that's too much pressure. I just want to get by.
(08:16):
You know, I was a kid much like my grandfather, rebel,
you know, sitting at the back of the class, very naughty,
hardly did my homework, peace shooting, you know the girls,
you know, that kind of thing. But of course, as
you grow up, you know a lot a lot of
the time, you you don't want to be treated as
a special kid or a special someone. You just want
(08:37):
to be a normal kid. And one of the things
also Um you know, instilled with me was humility. It
was very important to him. He said, you must never
drive a Jaguar because people will know you have money.
And as a as a leader, it's important that you
are seen as one of the community. As part of
(09:00):
the community, you understand, even if you have more money
than them or have more access to them. But when
you are socializing, there must not be any sort of
sense that you are more important or you should be
treated in any other different way. So for me, it's
the same thing when you talk about the criminal justice
system or any sort of justice system, is how do
(09:24):
we treat people with the same equality, right, whether you're black,
whether you write, whether you're male or female. Right, And
the laws that we have, of course standing from a
party segregation laws, similar to the gym crowd laws. Right,
when you talk about people who are trying to pretty
(09:46):
much just live on an equal footing, Right, that is
really the struggle that were that were that they were
fighting gainst. And that is the same struggle when you
talk about the justice system, because the laws that apply
to black people who are poor, who are marginalized are
not the same as the laws that apply to white
(10:09):
people who have access, who are wealthy or well off. Right. Um,
you know, I was very inspired to be at the
event last week in d C. The Criminal Um, the
Center Southern Center for Human Rights. Then that's right, and
(10:29):
it was the Frederick Douglas Awards ceremony, which, of course
world of Frederick Douglas is one of the most powerful
leaders evolutionists. Um. You know um, And for me, it's
really about making sure that people have first of all
education to understand what their rights are, right um, and
(10:54):
be able once you understand rights, to be able to
push right. You know, you have right for legal representation.
You know you have the right to to express what
it is. I'm not be afraid sort of speak right, um.
And that's really for me the importance of how do
we make sure that we live in a society where
(11:17):
everybody is treated the same, regardless of your race or
your sex. Yeah. That's a that's a dream, um that
I think has been shared by all the great civil
rights leaders. And I'm glad you brought up Frederick Douglas
because I mean it was eighteen forty seven right when
he started his abolitionist um newspaper, and he you know,
(11:37):
the courage that he uh, and the two I forgot
the names of the two people who started with him.
One of them was a woman, um. But the I
mean their lives were at risk every minute of every
day as Mandela's was. And you know, there's a through
line with all of this. I mean, it's so odd
(11:57):
that we still have to have this conversation today, right,
but we do. And and it's probably more, um, you know,
more poignant at this moment than it would have been
at almost any other time in recent history. Speaking as
an American, of course, but there are these parallels. And
in America, everyone knows you have the right to an attorney. Um,
(12:19):
is it the same thing in Africa? And one thing
I tell um my listeners as often as I can
is if you are arrested for something you didn't do,
or someone that you love is arrested for something you
didn't do, all you're supposed to say, all you should
say is this is my name, this is my address,
and I want a lawyer, because at that point they
(12:40):
have to stop in tarrogeting. You know, I don't know
how it works in South Africa, but here people innocent
people wave those rights because they don't think they have
anything to hide, and they think, well, if I just cooperate,
then I can go home. And they want to be
helpful generally, right, people want to help the least. They
want to be good citizens. They want to be. Yes,
it's glad, it's a paradox. But how does it work
(13:02):
in South Africa? I mean, ironically, I think we have
a much higher incarceration rate than you do now, especially
for people of color. But um, in South Africa is
it a similar system? Are you entitled to an attorney?
And if so, when and how does it? Yes, you
are entitled to an attorney. Um, if you can afford on,
the state will provide one for you, right, right, same thing, um.
(13:24):
But of course, and a lot of the time, the
or the view, right, the general view is that it's
better to have money to pay an attorney because once
you're able to pay an attorney, he does a better job. Right,
generally speaking, that is the general view what people have.
(13:46):
But what I've seen actually is that because you know,
my own brother was involved in a criminal case. He
was accused wrongfully of raping a young girl who was
under the age, right, and you know it was very
you can imagine rape is a very sensitive case, right,
(14:06):
And my brother was acquitted because obviously he did not
commit the rape. So it was some sort of a
witch hunt that we didn't really understand where it came from. Um.
But that said, Um, yes, everybody's afforded lawyer. Otherwise you
go with the state lawyer. I have so many questions
(14:35):
about how the system works in South Africa. One of
them is the death penalty. Um, everyone knows that I'm
a strong advocate of abolishing the death penalty. I don't
think it serves any it doesn't serve any useful purpose.
It's been proven in every study, doesn't deter one crime
from happening ever, ever, ever, And it is barbaric, and
(14:57):
it is arbitrary and capricious, and you know, it's it's
I mean, everything about it is wrong. It's expensive, even
if that's where you're coming from. It's um, you know,
it's it's it's imperfect. Even in a perfect system, it
would be imperfect. Right, it's inhumane. But also you know
the conversation I have with people who are pro death penalty,
(15:18):
I say to them, And I had this conversation recently.
I was giving a talk at the New School and
one guy came up afterwards and he said, well, you know,
I'm in favor of the death penalty. And I said, okay,
how many innocent people is it okay to execute? What percentage?
And he says no, no, no, you can't execute inc
I say, okay, But then you're talking out of both
sides of your mouth, because we know the system is imperfect.
(15:38):
You know the system is imperfect, even if everyone isn't
is an honest actor in the system and doing the
best job that they can and and and everything is
moving through the way it's opposed to, which it doesn't
and it can't and it never will. We can make
it better, but we'll never make it perfect. You're still
going to execute a certain presentative innocent people. So that's
where it all breaks down. It should break down for everyone.
(15:59):
But do you still have the death penalty? And the
first thing one of the first things that our our
our government did, the ANC led government, was to abolish
the death penalty because we come from a system that
was using violence as a means to to govern, we understand,
So we had to make sure that we break the
cycle of violence. You know, killing someone because someone killed
(16:23):
somebody is not gonna like you just said, it's not
gonna take us anywhere. You're just gonna continue perpetuating the
cycle of violence. So where does it end? You understand
what I'm saying. So that was a very key thing
that we did in our country was to abolish the
death the death penalty completely. And what about sentencing was
(16:45):
in South Africa? How does because here, as you know,
we have some of the harshest sentencing policies in the world.
And it always boggles my mind, like why, why and
how we got to this place. I understand it intellectually,
but I don't understand it, um on any other level. Um,
on a humanitarian level. It's insane. I mean, we just
had a case actually this week where a gentleman in
(17:07):
Tennessee had been convicted of his first time offense. He
was selling I think a small quantity of drugs from
inside of his own home to adults. Right. There was
no no violence, no threat of nothing else. Right, But
it turned out he was in the school zone, right,
but he was inside of his own house. No, no, no,
nothing like that. And he was sentenced to seventeen years
(17:28):
in prison. So he Yeah, so he was just free
this week actually with the cooperation of the prosecutor, which
is so um, you know, such a a nice thing
to see. We don't see it often enough. But he
still served ten years in prison. I mean, we're so
out of step that's like murder, right, he was treated
as a murderer. And so how do you deal with
(17:48):
that in South Africa? Do you how what about the
drug laws is it? Do you treat it the same
way that we do so harshly? Um? I don't think
they treated so harshly. UM in s Africa, of course,
I think which was the same. Here would be the
mitigating factors as to how you put the sentencing. You know,
is the person remorseful, do they understand the detrimental effect
(18:11):
that they have on society? Um? And what what are
the mitigating factors? You know, you can't just say, oh,
you were selling cocaine, therefore your automatically get fifteen years.
What was your first time offender, second time offender, time offender? Um?
So you have to really look at all the different
mitigating factors to actually come up with the right sentencing.
(18:35):
And in South Africa, I would say it's pretty fair
because you know, looking at you know, when we achieved independence,
they were even before ninties, before we had the Truth
and Reconciation Commission right where we basically gave amnesty two
(18:55):
perpetrators of violence against the the victims if they were
coming to the table to discloss everything that had happened.
So if you come up and you say exactly what happened,
be very honest, who are you with, what made you
do it? Etcetera, etcetera, and you would be literally sitting
(19:19):
in front of the victims of those people that you
you perpetrated against. They would give you amnesty. So for us,
I think personally that the system in sol Afrika are
currently is not as harsh as that of America. For example,
you know, we met a gentleman last week at the
event UM. I forgot his name now, but that gentleman.
(19:43):
You know what struck me was that he received twenty
three years, which is the equivalent of two life sentences
for stealing goods of five and fifty dollars the first
time offender, a man with the college degree and the
navy veteran. As we would never happen in Africa. That
(20:04):
would not happen in stuff that is absurd, that is insane. Yes,
and so we're talking about Lenny Singleton who was convicted
of a series of what we call dash and grab robberies.
Right where he went in um and he pretended he
stuck he had his finger in his pocket. He pretended
to have a weapon, right, so technically that's considered our
robbery in America. But he never heard anybody, never touched anybody.
He just grabbed the money from the cash register and
(20:27):
he didn't have a weapon, pretended he didn't have a
Nobody argued at that point, and he can fessed, you know,
so he he was so in your you know, in
your system, which anyway, it's so crazy, and here with drugs,
it's it's absolute madness because you know, years ago, I
did a presentation for the Democratic Policy Committee in the
United States Senate, and I brought with me. One of
(20:48):
the people I brought with me was Federal Judge Castillo,
who was the chairman vice chairman of the US Sentence
and Commission, and he talked about how he he was
given this most um profound responsibility, which is to sentence
another human being to prison, and then the Congress took
all that power away from him because they established these
(21:08):
mandatory sentencing laws which we have here now, so that
if someone gets picked up with drugs, they just look
at the chart, here's how much drugs it was, here's
the thing, and then you get that much time and
the judge has no power to judge. The jury says
guilty and off you go, according to the chart. But
in almost all other types of crimes when there's no
mandatory sentence involved, they look at the other factors as
(21:30):
they do in South Africa, right, and they say, well,
your childhood was this, or you were there, or you're
disabled in such way, or you have an experience of this,
or you're positive contributed positively to society in certain ways,
and those things are mitigating factors and go into the
sentence that the judge and decides on. So judges, of
course hate these mandatory sentencing laws because they can't do
their jobs. So there's you know, I've been on the
(21:52):
board of Families Against Mandatory Minimums for twenty five years
now f a MM dot org. I hope people will
go and look because they're doing the most important work
in eliminating these crazy sentencing draconian sentencing policies that sent
that send people to prison for these horrendous amounts of
time for non violent first offenses. It's it's just nuts,
(22:13):
and I don't know why we do that to our
own citizens. Every one of these people is a is
a child of someone, a brother or sister, a mother.
You know. They it's like you're ripping these communities apart.
And of course it affects people of color disproportionately. That
goes without saying, and I'm assuming that's probably still true
in South Africa even to this day. You know, well,
of course, I mean the dynamics a little bit different
(22:35):
because in South Africa eighties seven percent of the population
as black are the natives as they used to call us,
and of the other way people. Um. One thing, um
that I always wonder about, um, is that you know,
in in South Africa, being a cop is not such
(22:55):
a beneficial job as I see in America, right. I
see in America that the cops are very well looked
after by the by the by the system. But in
South Africa, it's very easy to bribe a coup. Um,
it's very easy to brab a cop. You don't have
to have a lot of money. You can literally brab
(23:17):
a coup with equivalent of ten dollars, you know, to
get away with drinking under the influence, for example. You know,
that's how easy it is. And that's that's generally the
the the thing across the continent of Africa. But I don't.
I don't see that happening here in America. I see
the cops really, you know, being hardcore. I think my
(23:40):
perception in a way to bribe a coup for do
you are, you'd have to pay him like a thousand
or five thousand dollars something like that, right, And of
course it's another crime. If you try to bribe a
law enforcement official, they can add to the charges, you know,
if they you know, and so and here, I think
you're right. It doesn't happen often. And I'm one of
these people who I say, um, you know that I
believe been a system of laws. Um. I want to
(24:02):
make it better, I want to make it fairer um.
But I recognized that most of the people in the
system are people who mean to do well. Um. There.
They took these jobs because they wanted to protect society. Um.
And uh, you know that holds true for the judges
and many of the prosecutors as well. There are some
(24:22):
bad ones, though, and the bad ones, if you have
a misfortune to run across one of those, your life
can be turned upside down in an instant. And we
know too many of those stories. Um. And it's it's
really well Lenny Singleton was one, and of course you
met John Huffington when you were there as well, who's
been on this show. So it's sort of thirty two
years on death row for murders to murders that they
(24:43):
knew he didn't commit. And uh, you know, he's an amazing,
amazing guy. He had that great saying right when he
when somebody we were talking to him and somebody said,
aren't you better and he says, no, man, he goes,
that's why the rearview mirrors small and the windshield is big.
And I was like, oh, man, I love that. He
must have read some of your grandpa's books something, because
(25:03):
you know that's that's channeling that spirit, right. So if
you could wave a magic wand and you know, obviously
there's so much going on in South Africa beyond the
criminal justice system. You know, we're here with the guys
from bet Paw, who is an organization that's devoted to
trying to save the rhinos and the elephants, because you know,
you're facing an existential crisis there with the possible extinction
(25:25):
within a decade of the most iconic animals in the
world and what that will mean. Um in so many
it's there's so many terrible consequences of that, right, I
mean it hurts, it hurts my heart. But also with
tourism and everything else. So there's a lot of issues
that you're dealing with. And I know you're very active
in you know, in the affairs of the country, and
(25:47):
you love your country. I'm looking forward to visiting you
over there. Uh huh. And um. But if you could
wave a magic wand at the at the criminal justice
system and make it, you know, remake it in in
a way that was more consistent with your own values vision,
(26:08):
if it was you know, again drawing from the lessons
of you know, your grandfather, the great hero. Um, what
would it look like and what would you do? Because
maybe you'll have the opportunity, I hope so m hm,
you know they are for me. What I've learned is
that you know, people will commit crime. There are true
(26:32):
reasons why people commit crime. One as poverty, true is
purely criminal element, right, trying to cook the system. So
as much as you want to do with the criminal
justice system, you have to look at the fact that's
why people commit crimes, right, It's poverty. And then you
(26:57):
have gangsterism, which is just pure criminal element. So for me,
at large, part of that is the poverty. You know,
if you're able, My one would be to make sure
that people have education, would get rid of poverty, because
once you get rid of poverty and people have education,
half the people who are in jail will not be
(27:18):
in jail, if not more. If not more. So let
us deal with the fundamental issue at hand, that is
the fundamental issueth That's why I would weave my one. Yeah,
(27:42):
I mean, that's that's addressing it at the cause right, um,
as opposed to the effect UM. And I think we
have to deal with I call it prevention and cure.
I mean, we have to deal with these problems on
every level. Um. Ironically, it is a cycle, right because
we know that in America, the sociologists that have studied
this issue have come to the conclusion, which is probably
(28:05):
not a shock, that the number one determining factor of
whether a child will end up in prison eventually is
whether they've had a parent in prison. And so we
have to break that cycle, and we have to attack
it on both fronts. We have to reverse mass incarceration
and let these people out who are not any threat
to society. We have to hear reform the bail system.
(28:28):
I'm curious to know how that works in South Africa
as well. That's the next thing I want to talk
to you about. And we have to get rid of
these mandatory sensing laws. I locked these people up with
these insane periods of time. You know the great Brian Stevenson.
Have you met Brian. You'll you'll you You'll have the
privilege at some point and he'll have the privilege of
meeting you. I hope. So. Brian Stevenson is a great
(28:49):
hero of mine, and he has a wonderful expression where
he says, I believe everyone is better than the worst
thing they've ever done. And I think, yeah, we have
to start looking at these people as people and not
numbers and not statistics, and not inmates and not you know.
I mean, this is it's the it's the new Gym Crowe, right,
It's the modern version of slavery. And you know, I
(29:11):
don't know if you know this, but in America, when
slavery was abolished, it was only abolished for free people,
so they never changed that. So it's still legal if
you're in custody of the state. So it's an economic
engine right right, which feeds the rich people at the
expense of the poor. And and and then we end
(29:32):
up in this vicious cycle, like I said, which takes
us right back to you know, the impact that it
has on the families and in the communities of these
people who are again mostly people of color, who are
being taken away from that because of transgressions that there.
Um And I consider myself one of the lucky ones
because I grew up in a you know, in an
(29:52):
upper middle class environment where I was not subjected to
the same type of treatment. So, um so what about
That's one topic I do want to cover is bail.
How does it work in South Africa? Because here we
have a crazy system where if you're arrested and you're
charged with shoplifting or jumping a turnstyle or drinking a
beer in public, whatever it might be, they all might
(30:14):
be set at two d and fifty dollars or a
thousand dollars or whatever. It is small amount, but if
you don't have that money, you're just staying in jail
until your trial that could be weeks or months or
even years. And what we should be doing, of course,
they is sending people home to their family, to their job,
to their church, whatever they're doing, and then come back
and here's your date to come back, and we'll see
you in court and then we figure this out and
(30:35):
that's it. But that's not the way it works here.
We have almost a half a million people in jail
in America while we're sitting here, just because they're too
poor to post their own bail. So we have two
separate systems of justice here, one if you're rich and
one if you're poor. That's a violation of the sixth
Amendment in the fourteenth Amendment, but we're not going to
get into that now. Is not a constitutional law class. However,
how does it work in South Africa? Do you have
(30:55):
a similar arrangement. It's pretty much the same. It's pretty
much the same. But in my experience and my knowledge,
bail is never really set that high. Um. Generally people
can afford bail um, but of course you are. You
do have poor people who cannot afford, who cannot afford
it um. And it's it's terrible because now you're in jail,
(31:19):
you know, you get fired from your job, so you
don't even have a means to pay for that bail.
You know, if you're able to continue your job, you know,
because it should be innocent until proven guilty. But the
minute you are accused, for example, of rape, most people
automatically assume that you are guilty. You know. And I
(31:40):
have a personal experience to this, because my younger brother
was actually accused of rape. Now, the minute you're accused
of rape, and we know this, it's one of the
most sensitive crimes is the minute you're accused of rape,
most people ultimately assume that you're guilty or will side
with the female without knowing any you know, information about
(32:03):
how it took place, where it took place, any information whatsoever.
Just because you're accused of rape, he must be built
in why would the woman accuse him, you know, out
of nowhere for rape? You know. But they don't even
know what the situation. They don't even know the relationship
of these people, right, And that's one of the worst
sort of crimes out there, right, to be honest, it's
(32:27):
one of the worst. So, yeah, bail is pretty much
worth the same, right And and here it's supposed to
be said according to your ability to pay, but it's
not done in that manner typically Here it's just sort
of done almost by it's almost like it's done by
a machine. It's just sort of here's the thing. They
just draw a line and accused of shoplifting. It's going
to be because there's too many people going through the system.
(32:50):
It's overloaded, and so they just some of them. You
don't you don't ever see a lawyer, you don't get
any You may even be doing it on a video screen.
They may do it in a group. Um. People aren't
aware of this until they get caught in it. But man,
once you get caught in it just gets worse and
worse than It's exactly as you describe, because then your
your life gets significantly worse because most of these people,
if they can't afford bail, it's because they're living paycheck
to paycheck. And now your job is going going away,
(33:12):
your apartment, you're gonna lose that if you have one,
you could lose custody of your kids. It's just a terrible,
terrible downward spirals that you get into and only because
you're poor, and that doesn't make any logical sense whatsoever.
And it's another one of these things. If I had
a magic one, that would be one of the first
things that I would fix that in our system of
pearl and probation and all this other stuff. Um, how
(33:34):
about the jail conditions, because in it's such an odd thing.
You know. Now we have groups of people going from
the United States to visit prisons in Western Europe. In
some of the countries in Western Europe, like Germany, the
prisons are designed for the purpose of rehabilitation and their
(33:57):
prisoners are treated humanly, it's with respect. The same is
true in Scandinavia, where they're treated um, you know, in
a way where it's basically a philosophy of hey, you
guys are gonna come out one day, You're going to
be my next door neighbors. That's how the guards approach it.
The guards have to study for two years, they have
to get degrees in psychology. It's amazing, right, um. And
(34:17):
as a result, those countries have much lower recidivism rates
than we do. They're allowed out for um, furloughs and
things like that to go work, and even before their
release they go out to look for jobs and things
like that. I mean. So the good news is we
now have delegations from our corrections uh system institutions. Uh.
Some political leaders going and visiting and seeing how it
(34:40):
can be done. There's there's some movement. We have a
long way to go, but basically our system here is
designed for punishment, not rehabilitation. And some of the conditions
and the jails and prisons are absolutely brutal. Um. Same
in South Africa. I mean, you used to be able
to get a degree in jail. You can't. You can't anymore.
(35:00):
Um that that that has been taken away completely. Um.
There's so much overcrowding and sales. You know, you get
a room like we're in right now with easily twenty
people living in a cell like this. UM. I mean
I don't know about here, but the the amount of
rape that occurs inside the inside the prisoners heavy. Um.
(35:23):
You know, there's gangs obviously in prison and there's one
of the gangs in South Africa that actually specialize in
violence and systematically you know, raping and still in fear
in other prisoners. Um. There's also the amount of corruption
because of poverty. You know, prisoners are able to bribe
(35:44):
the wardens to the point where if a adolescent, right juvenile,
you can pay the warden to say, hey, I want
that young boy to come to myself tonight and they
can have his way have his way. Um, I'll tell
you about one of them. I studied criminology and there
(36:06):
was a gentleman I forgot his name now, but he
had such a crazy story. He was actually a general
right in the in the in the prison, so he
was one of the most ruthless shared persons. He even
had a way of how to attack and kill somebody
that he had to kill, you know, he used he
used the penny chopping the pen. He'd go for the neck,
(36:28):
go for the eye, you know. But one day, he said,
when everything switched for him, is that when he witnessed
a young boy hardly sixteen years old, got getting raped
by about ten guys. And I was on the floor, bleeding, crying,
just completely en shambles. And he sawed his kid and
(36:50):
he said to the kid, do something for yourself. And
the kids said, I can't see, I can't feel. What
can I do? And that touched them so deeply that
he actually decided that he's gonna change from becoming a
general and actually exposed the corruption that was happening in jail.
(37:13):
And so he spoke to people outside the jail. He
smuggled in cameras into the jail right and exposed the rape,
exposed the criminal activities that the wardens were actually getting
involved in, to the point where he even got a
pardon from the from the president of our country. And
(37:33):
he ended up marrying his lawyer, which was a white
woman and he was a black guy, because of what
he had witnessed of this sort of gang rape of
this young boy that had come into into the into
the cells, you know. Um, So the conditions are horrific.
The conditions are disturbing, to be honest with you. Um,
(37:56):
when I visited my you know, in jail cigarette our currency,
cigarettes are currency, um, people smuggling anything and everything, as
you can imagine, right, Um. But more so it's the
corruption of the actual system because the wardens themselves part
of that corruption system that has been entrenched over decades,
(38:21):
do you understand over decades. So basically, with money, you
can do anything you want to do. If you have money,
you can live like you're living in the normal apartment
in mid Tom Manhanan pretty much. And if you don't,
you're living in hell, literal hell. I mean, the way
(38:42):
you described it can't be much worse than that. That's it.
And in fact, we had an amazing guy hero of mine,
people who go from Kenya, was on the show and
he had been wrongfully convicted intends to death, and he
was describing a similar situation to what you said, where
he was in a small cell with thirteen other guy
eyes and he said that in order for them to sleep,
(39:03):
they would all have to lay on one side facing
the same way, and like Sardine's in a cann they
would have to roll over at the same time. And
you know that. It's just yeah, I mean, it's so
crazy and his story is amazing. You'll I'll show you
the podcast that Peluko is on and now he's about
Vergion becoming a lawyer and he's just i think just
joined some one of the boards of Amnesty. I mean
(39:25):
he's doing amazing, amazing things and helping the youth over there.
What a great guy. So anyway, we have a tradition
here onun wrongful conviction which I'm going to share with
you now, and it's actually my favorite part of the show.
Probably a lot of people in the audience would agree.
But anyway, this is the part of the show where
our featured are honored. Guest gets the free reign of
(39:49):
the microphone. I UM, what I do is I give
you my thanks, and thank the audience and our producers
as well for being here and sharing your thoughts and
your wisdom, and thank everyone for listening. And now for
the last part of the show, I just like to
(40:10):
turn it over to you for any closing thoughts you
have on anything at all. You know what I can say,
In the words of Nelson Mandela, education is the most
powerful weapon you can use to change your world. And
that's why it's important for us to make sure that
young people have access to information, of access to education,
(40:34):
so that they can understand that they are the masters
of their destiny. We need to make sure that we're
empower as many young people as we can. We need
to become mentors in our society. Go on other days
where your judges, your lawyers of doctors are the most
influential people on society. These days, it's your musicians, it
(40:58):
is your actors, you entertain us who are the most
influential people on the young people right, And those people
are not always cognizant of the influence and the sort
of role model position that they hold in society, and
so they don't actually take it to consideration right, and
(41:19):
they may be careless with it. So I would like
to say that each and every single one of us
has the opportunity to mentor a young person, to make
sure that young person can deal with whatever challenges that
they face, even if it is just helping that young
person with doing their homework, finding out how they dare
(41:40):
was finding out how they weak was what you can
help them with. You know, there are so many young
people out there who his parents are in jail, who
would grow up without a father, without a mother, you know,
who don't value themselves in society and they become easy
prey to gangsterism and being recruited by the thugs and society.
(42:03):
So I want to say to the people out there
that you know, if you take just one hour a
week to sit with the young person to mentor young person,
and you do that one hour a week that is
nothing on a Saturday or a Sunday, to sit with
the young person to mentor that person, think about the
positive effect and the value that that young person will
(42:26):
have to know that there's somebody out there who cares
for them, who will spend the time. Because time, it's
just as important as money to be with that person,
to listen to them, to give them guidance. For me,
we all need to go out there and try to
be good mentors in society. One young person, that is all.
(42:50):
It takes one hour week, you can make a much
better society. Thank you again for being here and wrong
for Conviction. I look forward to working together to make
a difference and that's exactly what we're going to do.
So um, this has been an extraordinary experience for me.
(43:11):
And thank you again to our audience for listening. Thank
you very much, Jackson. That was beautiful. Don't forget to
give us a fantastic review wherever you get your podcasts.
It really helps. And I'm a proud donor to the
Innocence Project and I really hope you'll join me in
supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future
(43:32):
wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot org to learn
how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank
our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wardis. The music
in the show is by three time OSCAR nominated composer
Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at
Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast. Wrongful
(43:52):
Conviction with Jason Flam is a production of Lava for
Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one All
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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