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Introduction: William Ury explains how Nelson Mandela was a consummate third sider.


This rough transcript provides a text alternative to audio. We apologize for occasional errors and unintelligible sections (which are marked with ???).

Nelson Mandela as a Third Sider
William Ury
Director of the Global Negotiation Project, Program on Negotiation, Harvard Law School
Interviewed by
Julian Portilla
2003

Q: So, ok, but now, the idea of violence as an alternative in terms of bolstering the power of - or at least the position of -- the less powerful seems like it's still looming. I mean the idea of terrible injustice, and that it's not going to change unless we have a revolution, or unless there's some sort of violent protest. And I think Nelson Mandela is also a consummate third sider and always had command over the street riots to say, "Ok, when this isn't working, we're going to the streets…"

A: Right. Well see, Mandela to me is a great example of a third sider - he wasn't neutral, he was on one side and he stood for the whole. If you just look at his language, all throughout, from the very beginning - even back from the revonian trial??? Back in the '50s and early '60s was, "I stand for the whites and the blacks. I want the freedom of the blacks and the freedom of the whites and all of the other people in South Africa." And it's really interesting, I remember when he was released from prison after 27 years, and he goes and gives his first speech there, I believe it was in Parliament Square there in Capetown, and there's this huge… everyone's paying attention - all these TV cameras, and his first words are in Afrikans, the language of his adversary. Because he's trying to say, "I am standing for a South Africa that includes you." So he [Nelson Mandela] very definitely is a model third sider and again he is an insider and he was helped by the outsiders.

 
Aye, fight! But not your neighbor. Fight rather all the things that cause you and your neighbor to fight. -- Mikhail Naim

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