Santos warns against the comfort of silence

Detailed summary

Delivering the 24th Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture in Cape Town, Nobel laureate Juan Manuel Santos warned that government silence in the face of injustice…

Thirty years ago, Juan Manuel Santos sat with Nelson Mandela and described a country in which violence had become so familiar that people could scarcely imagine life without it.

Colombia was descending into some of the darkest years of its armed conflict. South Africa was confronting its painful past through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. What Santos expected to be a brief diplomatic meeting became almost three hours of conversation about violence, justice and reconciliation.

Mandela listened. Then he told his visitor that without peace, Colombia would never take off.

Returning to South Africa on Friday to deliver the 24th Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture, Santos recalled how that encounter helped give him a purpose he would pursue through war, negotiations and fierce political opposition.

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