For those who can’t or won’t listen to the video, here’s a salient part of the transcript.
Asked about Mandrell introducing three of his former jailers at his inauguration, Bill Clinton answers, “Well, he developed the discipline in his long period of incarceration to see the humanity even among his enemies. And he not only invited his jailers to his inauguration, he put in his cabinet the leaders of the parties who had sent him to prison. And keep in mind he got 62% of the vote, it was a parliamentary system, he could have claimed all the cabinet positions, run the country as a one-party state, he did not do that. He put literally people who had out him in prison, and because he trusted them, they came to trust him. And look, they didn’t solve all their problems, they didn’t end all their disagreements, but they worked together, they got things done. And it was an amazing thing to see.”
“And I talked to him on several occasions about how he came to the place inside, how he developed a mental and emotional capacity to forgive and to forge alliances with his former adversaries.”
Asked about visiting the prison cell with Mandela, Clinton continues, “Well, first of all I’ll never forget it, it was only like 14×14. And you could see from the pictures that even at a very old man Mandela maintained a certain level of fitness. He was erect till the very last couple of years of hos life. He was trim. You could see the man who had been a boxer, a man who had worked breaking rocks for eleven of more years of his time in prison.”
“He was amazing, but he talked to me in that prison cell, as we grabbed the bars and looked out together, about what it was like. And I said, Tell me how this changed you. How did you give up 27 years of your live and come out a better man than when you went in? And I said I just don’t understand. I said, didn’t you hate those people when you went in—I’ve seen the pictures of you as a young man when you went it, you were really mad.”
“He said, ‘Yeah, I was young, stong, and I was a boxer. And he said I lived on my hatred for 11 years breaking those rocks ever day. And one day I realized that they had already taken so much from me. They had abused me physically and emotionally they had kept me from seeing my children grow up. They has separated me from my wife. It eventually destroyed my marriage.’ ”
“He said, ‘I realized they could take everything from me, everything, except my mind and my heart. Those things I would have to give them.’ And he said, ‘I decided not to give them away.’ And he looked right at me and he said, ‘Neither should you.’ ”
From a Fox News Interview with Clinton in preparation for the funeral.
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