In Conversation With Lynne Duke
Author of MANDELA, MOBUTU, AND ME

We spent some time with Washington Post Correspondent Lynne Duke discussing MANDELA, MOBUTU, AND ME, the stunning new memoir of her time in Africa during the late 1990s. This riveting book brilliantly illuminates a continent where hope and humanity thrive amid unimaginable depredation and brutal horrors.

Mandela, Mobutu, and Me was written with so much energy and passion, it's almost as if it burned its way out of you. Why was it so important for you to tell this story?

It was important for me to tell the story because I emerged from those four years somewhat traumatized. After all that I went through for four years, I actually emerged with a greater affection and respect for ordinary Africa. In the beginning, I was rather naive but when I emerged I had a realistic view of Africa I felt had been missing from the majority of nonfiction accounts. Journalists and foreign correspondents focus so easily and readily on mayhem and dysfunction in Africa. However, I felt I had something important to say, something that added an element of humanity to the overall portrayal of Africa.

We were awed by your act of courage to break the rules of journalism and cry. Why did you think that was important?

When you're a foreign correspondent in a tough area, such as Africa, you learn to calibrate your own personal feelings. You battle with them often and my way of trying to keep them in check was to let them go sometimes. It was very much a routine function of my work. I mean, when you're looking at a starving child, you can't just start crying on the spot but you've got to get it out at some point. One of the ways that I kept myself balanced was not to fight it. Later, in my own private room or when it was appropriate, I just let it out. I think that that's one of the things that kept me sane.

I thought it was important to include (in the book) because when you're a professional journalist, you're also human. You're not some automaton that's just going through the motions and not feeling anything. We should acknowledge that emotional side of ourselves. Male foreign correspondents typically do not acknowledge it. I'm sure some of them feel it, but you'd never hear them acknowledging it.

Almost all of the memoirs of Africa have been written by whites or by men and so Mandela, Mobutu, and Me will certainly stand out. So can you tell us a little more about that?

I think that because I am a woman and because I am an African American this book sets a special tone. And it brings a different voice to general African issues and specifically to issues such as South Africa and the Congo. I think that the voice that I present is, in some ways, startlingly different because I depart from the conventional wisdom. I think the fact that I am willing to discuss the emotional side of being a foreign correspondent is a departure. It humanizes what we do and humanizes the profession.

You were in Africa during a particularly fascinating time; quite possibly the most interesting time in recent modern African history. Can you tell us about that?

I first went to Africa in 1990 just after Mandela was freed from twenty-seven years of political imprisonment. I went back in '94 to cover his election as president and I returned again in '95 as the resident foreign correspondent for The Washington Post. Basically, I covered the Mandela years--that first administration under democratic and black rule in South Africa which was a momentous shift for the Southern African region and for the continent as a whole.

Mandela had the kind of moral authority that the world had refused to ever acknowledge in any other African leader. I'm not saying that no other African leader had it, but the world looked at Mandela as a very special breed of leader. He commanded this enormous respect everywhere and that put the Africa story on a different footing. Diplomats and the foreign affairs community were watching South Africa.

So, on the one extreme there was this fabulous good news story that was quite important to the continent. On the other extreme was Zaire and Mobutu Sese Seko which had been a very important part of the politics and life of the continent for many years.

Zaire represented the polar opposite of South Africa--the side of complete dysfunction and degeneration. South Africa was rebuilding itself and emerging, Zaire was falling and tearing itself apart. I had the privilege of looking at both extremes of Africa. That made for a very exciting time. It gave me vertigo because I was going between these two stories, literally, flying between these two stories over a period of a few years.