Audio file 26-1

Ernest and Wonga discuss the far right French political party, the National Front, and other fascist movements

Ernest is reminded of his South African friend, [Monte] Shapiro, a white student at Rhodes University and head of its debating society. Ernest recounts Shapiro's family, though poor but being white, led a privileged life in Rhodesia, and his family was able to send him to the University in South Africa.

Rhodesia was the colonial name of present-day Zimbabwe

Shapiro is of Polish and Jewish ancestry and tells Ernest about pogroms for the exterminations of Jews in Poland, instigated by some of the Catholic population. That Shapiro's grandfather was a victim of one such incidence of violence.

Wonga opines that it is like an "instinctive holocaust" to which the Nazis would later give efficiencies. To which Ernest responds that the intellectuals avoided confronting the situation. That very few are courageous enough to do that even if that is what is needed.

[tape stopped and restarts] Ernest reads in the newspaper that Nelson Mandela has been freed and that Mandela was an individual who took the stand against oppression.

Nelson Mandela was released by the apartheid South African government on 11th February 1990

Ernest tells Wonga that Mbeki, Mandela's lieutenant, was a fellow student at the University of Fort Hare. He speaks of Mbeki as someone who listened.

Ernest has confused the two Mbeki's. Thabo Mbeki (born 1942) is the son of Govan Mbeki (1910-2001). Whilst both were political activists, it was the former who was Mandela's lieutenant (and would later become President of South Africa) whereas the latter was Ernest's friend at the University.

[recording stopped]