This Time for Africa

In 1990,Nelson Mandela emerged after 27 years in prison and,in one startling move,forgave the government that had put him there,its history of apartheid. In the years that Mandela set a new standard for humanity and made South Africa a Rainbow Nation,Lapierre was busy churning out best-sellers and coping with the demands of his humanitarian work (he has donated $65 million over the past 25 years in projects that range from education to tuberculosis treatment). So,this time,it was the story that found Lapierre.

“Five years ago,I was in Kolkata when a Frenchman asked me if I wanted to meet a ‘South African Mother Teresa,’” he recounts. She turned out to be Helen Lieberman,a white woman who had saved thousands of black children at a risk to her own life — she could have been killed by the white police or,just as easily,by the blacks. Lapierre’s initial plan was to tell the story of her heroism but,as the few weeks he had scheduled for Cape Town came to an end,the writer realised that the people of the new country had made an epic journey,from tranquillity to brutal oppression,to a final freedom underscored by extraordinary courage and forgiveness.

With his sharp narrative style that combines investigative journalism with history and pop storytelling,Lapierre introduces the “whole lot of people who played a role in South Africa”. Apart from Lieberman,there is Dr Christiaan Neethling Barnard,who performed the world’s first heart transplant in South Africa. “Interestingly,he put a black person’s heart into a white man’s chest,” says Lapierre,“This was a time when a dying white man had the choice to refuse being infused the blood of a black person.”

It isn’t only about heroes. Lapierre devotes space to “Dr Death” Wouter Basson,“who was commissioned by the government to create toxic substances to kill black people. These were mixed into beer,chocolates and cigarettes and sold in black neighbourhoods. There is no estimate of the numbers that died,” says Lapierre.

He spent two years in the country,conducting interviews,poring through documents at the National Archives and visiting Mandela’s cell in Robben Island. As a result,the book does what Lapierre aims with all his writings — “make the reader enter into the story,body and soul. If it is hot,he must feel hot,” he says.

The writer is donating a part of the proceeds from his book to Lieberman’s NGO called Ikamva Labantu. “Now,I have one foot in South Africa and one in India,” says Lapierre,who is currently in West Bengal where most of his projects are based. “At my welfare centre in Bengal,we have just cured the 75,000th TB patient and educated the 10,000th girl student,” he says proudly.