Kumi Naidoo is a prominent global activist. He is the former Secretary General of Amnesty International and Executive Director of Greenpeace. Kumi shares his life story from growing up in Apartheid South Africa to becoming a global activist for social and environmental justice. He talks about how personal tragedies, especially his mother's death by suicide when he was 15, and his son's death by suicide a few years ago, have shaped his life's purpose.
Kumi reflects on his experiences as a student activist expelled from school, his time at Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar, and his return to South Africa after Nelson Mandela's release. He emphasizes the importance of "artivism" - using arts and culture to inspire change - and shares his thoughts on climate activism and giving hope to young people.
Kumi’s book is available for purchase: https://jacana.co.za/product/letters-to-my-mother/. You can follow him on social media @kuminaidoo. To learn more about his artivism work:
This podcast is produced by Larj Media.
Transcript:
Sarah: [00:00:00] Hi, I'm Sarah Cavanaugh , and this is Peaceful Exit. Every episode, we explore death, dying, and grief through stories by authors familiar with the topic. Writers are our translators. They take what is inexpressible, impossible to explain, and they translate it into words on a page. Today, I'm talking with Kumi Naidoo.
Kumi is a renowned human rights and environmental activist who's held leadership roles in organizations like Greenpeace and Amnesty International. Kumi's life from apartheid South Africa to global activism is nothing short of extraordinary. In this episode, Kumi shares his deeply personal experiences from his early days of activism against apartheid to his time in hiding in exile.
And the challenges he faced upon his return to South Africa. We talked about the profound impact of his mother's death on his activism and how it shaped his [00:01:00] commitment to making the world a better place. Kumi's story is not only one of struggle and resilience, but also one of hope and transformation.
His insights on the intersection of personal loss and global activism offer valuable lessons for all of us.
Welcome to Peaceful Exit.
Kumi: Thank you so much, Sarah, for having me.
Sarah: I very much enjoyed your book. Thank you. You've lived this incredibly fascinating life, and there's heartbreak and struggle, success, of course. I'm looking forward to learning more about your story, um, how all these experiences in your life shape the way you think about death.
And so let's start at the beginning. Can you tell me a little bit about your childhood? You grew up in apartheid South Africa, in Chatsworth, a racially segregated area for Indian families. And you wrote, we were by no means well off, but we had many things our neighbors did not. What was your childhood like?[00:02:00]
Kumi: So the amazing thing about it is what you don't know, you don't miss. So I never grew up with a sense of I'm poor. I think it was only when I got to Oxford at the age of 22 and all my peers came from relatively significantly more wealthy backgrounds, and they related to me as the person who came from poverty, but in reality, I lived in a township with about 350, 000 people.
It had, when I was growing up, one library. By the time apartheid ended, it had a few more. It had one swimming pool. But the township where my wife Louisa grew up in, which was an African township, there was no swimming pools and no libraries whatsoever because the apartheid system, like most colonial systems, survives on a divide and rule strategy.
So by giving different communities a little more and a little [00:03:00] less, you made it more difficult for people to organize. But We were blessed with so many things. We were blessed with amazing teachers. And in a way, it is from teachers that I first learned about public service. Because we knew that many of the teachers didn't have to stay after school and do an additional two hours, but they did it out of love.
They were clearly happy doing it and so on. Also, we had, you know, Huge stratification, even though you'd say, well, this was an Indian township, but within the township class divisions were very, very distinct and stark. So you had parts of the township where you had what were called owner builder houses where people bought land.
And usually like all townships in South Africa at that time, the veneer to townships would be the most best houses. So when, for example, international [00:04:00] fact finding missions would come to see how bad apartheid is for the oppressed people of South Africa, the government would take them to say Soweto or to Chatsworth and they would show them the first part of the township, which was these houses built by more middle class people.
And when you looked at it, you'd say, wow, If this is a township, I'm okay to live in the township. But my township had a unique thing in the sense that it had two exits, right? You could enter one way and you could exit another way. Most townships, you could exit one way and only get out that way. And it was a way of.
security control. So if ever there was resistance to apartheid, the government would just come with army vehicles and block the townships so the townships could be completely sealed. But I, I had a happy childhood, you know, I'm grateful for that. Both my parents were alive. We generally had three meals a day.
We [00:05:00] Felt very privileged to be able to have both of our parents with us during our early childhood years. Parents who were really committed to education and they spent a lot of time with us making sure that we studied and my dad and my mom were both like pretty strict. But to be honest, now when I reflect on it, it was such a great thing that our parents recognized that the root out of poverty and exclusion was education.
Sarah: Well, your focus on education comes through so strongly in your book, and when you write about when you are actually having to take your exams in secret, because the police are looking for you and you have to figure out how to take your exams, to study for them in a safe house, and then to take them on campus in a secret location, you have to really want to do that.
Take those exams to go to that , to go to that [00:06:00] length to pass those tests.
Kumi: So the important thing about why many of us really pushed with our studies was, on the one hand, we knew that that was the pathway out of poverty and exclusion, but on the other hand, we didn't want. what was being told about us to be true.
Because when my brother Kovan and I got involved in the boycotts of high school and organizing around that, it happened shortly after my mom had committed suicide. So many people were saying things like, Oh, shame. These boys used to be so clever and intelligent when their mom was alive. Now that she took her life, they've gone mad and they've lost control.
So when we were expelled from school, I went from rote learning and memorization of stuff to having to figure things out myself because the tutors that we had were all volunteers. Some of [00:07:00] them were teachers from our school. Some of them were older activists who had skills to share. Um, They went around all the time.
It would be like once in a while we'd get things that we're really struggling with, but mostly we had to look at the textbooks, figure it out ourselves. And what being expelled from school gave me was independent learning capability. And that's something that I'm quite proud of. Grateful that I had, because when I got to university, I found it much easier to cope with university than all my friends who didn't get expelled and didn't have the exposure of being able to develop a learning path that was quite independent from what you were being told on a daily basis.
Sarah: Yeah. And I think participating in activism in real life in action and learning at the same time, you're critical thinking, you're problem solving, you're doing all of those things.
Kumi: Absolutely. Over my life, I would have various people come up to me from time to time and say, [00:08:00] thank you for all the sacrifices you made and the risks you took and the courage you've shown and so on.
And thank you for contributing so much. And I always say, if I contributed five units of value, to society, I have got back 50 units of value because what our participating and contributing to creating a more just world, enrich my life, gave me meaning and so on. And, you know, when my mom committed suicide, Very many people all wanting to be kind and gentle and supportive.
Used to say the things that people normally say when people pass. But there was one person that stood out, and that was my father's friend who was an activist. And he said to me, my boy, I don't know how you recover from something like this. I guarantee you there are people in our country. You know, continent, Africa [00:09:00] and in the world who are in a much more dire and horrible space.
So my advice to you, if you want to honor your mom is for you to live with purpose and stand up for the dignity of others and use your God given talents of education and so on to serve others and in service. will be your recovery and your salvation. I got to say that that was the best advice that I could have been given.
And he stayed involved for his entire life until he passed. Uncle John, his name was. And it's not to say that there were not days where I just broke down and cried all the time, especially in the first three years since my mom died. But this whole idea of living with got ingrained in my life at the age of 15.
And If I don't live [00:10:00] with purpose, it's as if I'm not living at all. And there are many people in my network and my community have that same attitude and approach to life.
Sarah: Yes, as I do, as you know.
Kumi: Yes.
Sarah: What was your relationship like with each of your parents?
Kumi: You know, This is such a good question because if anybody asked me before my mom committed suicide, and you know how people can be so, including your own parents can do this to you, where they say, who's your favorite?
Is it mommy or is it daddy? You know, if that question was asked, I would say if I answered it, if I was pushed to answer it, even if I answered it in my head and quiet, I would have said I was close to my dad because, you know, we spent more time with him. He was a local amateur volunteer football and cricket administrator.
He was also the unofficial auditor of [00:11:00] the township. Then he did it completely free. So we learned two things from him, how to serve and the joy of serving. Because, you know, like people would say, thank you so much for helping our organization in a way that it was just nice to hear that my dad had offered something people had responded to.
Sarah: So I felt like I got to know your mom a little bit at the beginning of the book, but what was your relationship like with her?
Kumi: It was a beautiful
relationship, but Also one where my mom was ultra concerned about the violent neighborhood in which we lived. And so she was, and now that I think about it, at that time it was annoying, but now that I think about it, You know, I would have made the same choices as a [00:12:00] parent if my kids were being brought up in that context.
The other thing that she was very anxious about was us joining gangs, because there were lots of quite violent gangs operating right outside our house. But my mom was an amazingly strong person and, and, and very, very smart and intelligent, even though sadly, She didn't have more than a equivalent of seven years of education because of poverty.
And for her, the main thing would be my children are my priority. And, and, and that was it. So that's why when she left us, the difficulty was like my little sister, Kamini was six years old when she made the decision. And to be honest, after I got through the grief and the, pain of the loss. I then also, I must confess, I had anger, especially about my little sister.
Like I'm saying, okay, [00:13:00] I was 15. My brother was 14. We were boys. And then my little sister was. six. My eldest sister was 19, and I was like, how could you leave a six year old behind? And then as I grew older, I came to understand that the pain of living had got to a point where an exit from this world was what she thought would give her less pain.
And while I don't support it and I don't support the choice of suicide, I don't think any one of us can judge people who might make that choice when we don't know exactly the level of despair that they must sometimes reach. But I should say one fun thing about my mom is that she was. full of life and like loved making everybody laugh.
Like all my father's sisters totally loved it. Any family function, my [00:14:00] mom will be in the kitchen kind of telling jokes and making people laugh and all of that.
Sarah: Yeah. It sounds like she worked hard to take care of you and protect you and make sure that.
Kumi: Yeah, I grew
Sarah: up.
Kumi: Yeah. And then for work, she works from home.
She was an amazing seamstress, usually for weddings. And she would embroider this sari. And the sewing machine was in the room where my brother and I slept. And she would sometimes have to wake up at three in the morning to start sewing to meet a deadline. First, it was like being disturbed with the noise.
And after a while, both my brother and I just adapted to the noise because it was like Ma is near us and the rooms were small so a chair would be against the bed where my brother is so it was like almost as if she was there and she was with [00:15:00] us sleeping but even though she was working and so yeah my parents I am grateful for what they gave us and even my service.
that I try to do in my life. It's partly to honor the life that they bequeathed on us.
Sarah: I love how you described her as a whole person. She's not just the way she died. She's not just her suffering. She's this whole person that makes people laugh and, and clearly adored you and your siblings.
Kumi: Yeah, no, she certainly did.
Sarah: How
did your grief launch your activism? You wrote, In the three short months after Ma's death, Kovan and I went from being overprotected, studious teenagers, to student activists on the front line against apartheid. It was a scary time, but that short period laid the foundation for the rest of my life.
Kumi: So The important thing I [00:16:00] like to stress always is that context matters, you know, uh, where you're born, what you see, what you experience, what you live through shapes you.
And to a large extent, before Mama passed, I was already, you know, kind of becoming politically aware of the reality of apartheid. So the context for us was the national student uprising against the inequality in education. Basically, how much the government was spending on the education of a white child versus spending, what it was spending on, much less on black kids generally.
And then if you looked at how that expenditure was, there was slightly more for Indians and coloreds and much less for the vast majority of our, uh, our African brothers and sisters in the country. [00:17:00] So the student boycott, you know, it started off with a slogan in Cape Town. One of the slogans was, you pay our teachers peanuts, no wonder they give us monkey education.
Right? And that thing just spread like wildfire, got to Durban, and we knew that this was a time to stand up. But my awareness had already been activated as a result of the murder of Stephen Bantu Biko, one of the leaders of our liberation struggle. Three years earlier, and he was brutally killed in prison and his inquest and everything around it was in the newspapers.
And I used to avidly read anything I could get hold of. So when the national student uprising started, it seemed like we were ready for it. And the best thing that could happen To us was actually getting expelled from school as a [00:18:00] result of that resistance, because one of the things I've seen around the world over the decades, those in power who think that repression serves them are usually mistaken.
It might very well have been that they didn't do anything with us because our protests were peaceful. You know, they allowed us to protest, we come out of prison, we eventually go back to school, and maybe I would not have been as dedicated as I was, but the fact that you get expelled is them saying to you, Okay, we're setting you on a path of lifetime resistance to injustice, right?
And so therefore I say, in many ways, I'm grateful for that expulsion. And, and it also, to be honest, was scary because once I got expelled from school, I remember thinking that I only had two employment options. One [00:19:00] was to be a karate instructor because I was doing karate and I was quite advanced. The other thing that I could do was what in South Africa at that time they would call a pumpy.
A pumpie is a person who pumps gas in the car when you come to the gas station. And so, you know, I was sad about that because I felt that I had let my parents down. And that's why we just persevered and somehow managed to write the alternative school leaving certificate and then make it to university.
Sarah: What was it like to be so deep in activism? So much so that you didn't even think you'd probably live out your 20s?
Kumi: So. One of the things we did a lot of growing up, sadly, was attending funerals of fellow activists that we murdered. And the funerals themselves would often be the place where somebody else would get murdered, and then it would just be a endless sort of, uh, [00:20:00] cycle.
So we used to sing songs, for example, which were about giving your life for the struggle. I remember there was a song in Zulu, a heavy load, a heavy load, and it's going to take some real men and Our first gender sort of awareness was, that was how we learned the song. And already by the age of 16, we had strong young women activists our age with us.
And they said, huh, what about us? And so, We changed that song to, and it will take some unity. And there was a line that went, We do not
care if we go to prison. It is for freedom that we gladly go. A heavy load, a heavy, heavy load. And it will take some unity.
So, All the
kind of messaging [00:21:00] that came from arts and culture, because basically what moved us most and what moves people most today is really not complicated policy statements and complicated speeches and big words and complicated concepts and so on.
One of the reasons we're losing so many people from the agenda of human rights. Sustainability, gender equity, and so on, is because we think we can change things by mainly aiming our narratives at the brain, meaning policy, science, facts and figures, and so on, as we do in climate activism. And actually, one of the things that we forgot from the anti apartheid struggle period is that most people get moved by what touches their hearts and their bodies and So if you stood up and gave a speech versus if you're saying a song and if you're saying it well, not like how I sounded a short while ago, if you're saying it [00:22:00] well, then there's a better chance that you're going to reach people than just giving a long speech, for example.
So Because people were dying around us all the time, we assumed that it could happen to us at any point. I remember losing a close friend called Jomon Kees. He lived in a rural area and he was brutally murdered by agents of the states. And going for his funeral. Um, I basically had to be smuggled out of the funeral because there were people waiting to kill us and so on.
And also, of course, it was not just murder being the most extreme form, but then detention without trial. And detention without trial was happening all the time. My brother Koven ended up in prison for about a year, held without trial and released. Uh, I was about to be arrested when I fled the country at the age of 22.
And by the way, that time, None of us wanted to flee the country. We [00:23:00] didn't want to leave the struggle. And the only time that you really did it was when older activists actually sat you down and said, Hey, what are your choices? You're either going to sit in prison and be of no use for the next 20 years or 15 years, however long you get in prison, or rather get out.
get some skills and try and come back legally or illegally, so that you can actually continue to serve with more capability than you otherwise would have. And because the racism and the apartheid system was so horribly inhumane, it was easy to be committed to wanting to end it. You know, even if the, Particular part of society that you came from was not facing the worst brunt of the oppression.
It was still horrific that you wanted to end it for yourself and for all communities, including those that were worse off and those that were [00:24:00] maybe not worse off. And one of the things we learned from Mandela was Mandela sort of told us that the struggle is not against white people. The struggle is against the system of white oppression.
And that is why In all the liberation activities I've done, there was always the presence, small presence, but symbolically very important presence of fellow white South Africans who opposed the system as much as any one of us did.
Sarah: There are parts of your book that read like a Cause you're changing your look, you're shaving your hair.
Kumi: So, so in those days I had a very big beard and a very long hair. So generally when the cops would be looking for me, what I would do is just lose the beard and cut my hair, take out the mustache and everything. And I had to do something a bit more sophisticated when I was told by the Rhodes Scholarship Committee in, The Rhodes Trust in [00:25:00] Oxford, that even though I'd been accepted, it would be better for me to write my exams and have the second degree.
And so I had to pitch up at a university that was occupied by the army and the police, right? And drive through a roadblock every day to enter the university. So I had to have a disguise. And, and in fact, I was one of the people they were looking for quite aggressively at that time. So I had support from my progressive academics on the university and what they did was they created a secret venue on the campus where I could write the exams.
So the army and the police would pitch up at the venue that was pre announced and there would be like, uh, exams put on the desk and I would be marked absent. But these progressive academics lecturers would do it, they had to do it by law on the campus, and they negotiated with the very conservative university [00:26:00] administration to actually do this.
And so I would dress up, and I always dressed up in t shirts, uh, jeans and, and, and running shoes. I would dress up in a suit of which I had one and I would carry a suitcase and I was hiding in the home of a white academic and she would drive me in. And because she was driving, it also gave me cover and I looked like a boring sort of professional guy who had just picked up a lift with her.
So I drove. for my four papers through Roblox to get into the campus and then I would just be in one venue where only I would write and the lecturer whose course it was would come and thankfully I passed summa cum laude and I was able to start at Oxford in [00:27:00] September of 1987.
Sarah: So you got the Rhodes Scholarship, you got to Oxford.
Talk just for a minute about the jarring juxtaposition of these circumstances.
Kumi: You cannot imagine, Sarah, how overwhelmingly different it was. It was a mega change. Culture shock. For one, I'd never really left Southern Africa before. I'd only gone on one trip with my parents to Swaziland, which is a neighboring country.
So suddenly at the age of 22, I land in London with 100 in my pocket, six months before my scholarship could start. So I didn't know whether I'll be able to sustain myself. Can I describe you my first morning in Oxford, right? So I arrive, they call the Rhodes Trust to verify that I was a Rhodes Scholar and [00:28:00] that they were ready to receive me.
They said yes, even though I was there six months earlier. I didn't say anything about I'm seeking exile status or anything because I had one thing my father did, which was so smart. When he saw us getting more and more actively in the struggle, he went quietly and applied for a passport way before we became very high profile.
And once we were on the run, he gave my brother and I passports. He said, listen, I'm not saying you should. But if you'll need it, here it is, you know, and so I had not slept for a week, you know, with the adrenaline and preparing to flee saying goodbye to family and friends and loved ones. And then I. Go to bed in a building called Rhodes House.
So when the queen visits Oxford, she goes to Rhodes House, just to give you a sense, right? So now they put me on the third floor where there's [00:29:00] eight rooms and I'm the only person in any of the rooms, right? So I'm so exhausted when I close the door behind me. I just collapsed without taking off my clothes.
The curtains were drawn apart and I slept for 12 hours. And there's a woman who at that stage in Oxford, they called a scout. She sort of would clean up normally and take care of the place. She saw me sleeping. So she came and knocked on the door and bear in mind, I was on the run for six months before I fled the country.
So a knock on the door is the most terrifying thing. All right. So I wake up. I'm in a state of shock. I opened my eyes and it had snowed the night before. I'd never seen snow before. And then the door slowly opens and this woman walks in, very nice and smiley and friendly person. [00:30:00] And she says, good morning, sir.
Can I offer you some tea and toast? Right now, not only had not seen. snow before. I'd never been offered breakfast in bed before. I'd never been called Sarah before by a black or white person. And certainly there was not a white woman in my room before. So all of these things were just so new to me. I'm being honest to you for like a One or two minutes, I thought I died
Sarah: Yeah
Kumi: that I was in some different universe.
Everything was just so unfamiliar. So the culture shock of going from a apartheid township to one of the most privileged universities in the world was quite a big culture shock and not easy all the time. Lastly, I should say Oxford offered me Something that I hold dear today, because before I fled South Africa to Oxford, all the people I engaged with were [00:31:00] people who held the same values, same beliefs, passionately involved.
Suddenly I was in a context where nobody really cared. about what your struggle was because they had struggles in their countries and so on. And what I learned from the Oxford experience was being able to engage and to deal with people who had very, very different beliefs. So your ability to argue and persuade and so on needed to be much better.
And so I'm grateful for that experience, even though while I was going through it, at times I felt desperately lonely, sad, guilty as well. Uh, very guilty because I made it out. I'm in this privileged place. Uh, I've left my people behind and that kind of stuff. So when Manila was released, the moment it was released, one month later I was on a flight back home.
I didn't waste any time to get legal clearance that the charges had been dropped and so on. I just went back home.
Sarah: [00:32:00] Yeah, I understand you did return to South Africa. You worked on the legislation of the African National Conference, and you went on to serve as the head of Amnesty International and Greenpeace International, other key leadership posts you had.
Given all this experience, what kind of activism do we need now?
Kumi: Thank you for asking this, because Albert Einstein once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting to get different results. If I'm brutally honest, that definition could be applied to my life.
We had a tragedy two years ago plus when our son who was a musician and a rapper committed suicide. In the last conversation that his mom and I had with him six weeks before he passed, he said, you know, guys, I must tell you something. I think you guys are crap at your jobs. You're really not good at what you'll do.[00:33:00]
So I say, why? And I know he was great, so I didn't take it badly. He said, well, you've been fighting for human rights, gender equality, sustainability, all since we were teenagers. And I look at all of these from the United States to the Russia, from the UK to Afghanistan, all of these agendas are moving in the wrong direction.
So why don't you just chill, spend more time with us and your grandkids? Because even if you work so hard or don't work so hard, it doesn't seem that things change that much. He then asked him, why do you think we are not effective? And I'll just summarize in my words what he was trying to say. So basically he said, well, you all think that people get moved.
by facts, figures, science, logic, policies, and so on. But that's not what moves people. You must reach people in their hearts and soul if you want to move them to understanding and to action. So today all my activism [00:34:00] is about harnessing the power of arts and culture to Plug the communications deficit gap that activism faces today.
We are not communicating to the people that matter in the language and the cultural sort of, uh, messaging that speaks to people. So the foundation that we set up in Ricardo's name is known as the Ricky Rick Foundation for the Promotion of Artivism. And as I speak to you in a couple of months, the first inaugural Global Artivism Conference from the 58th of September takes place in South Africa.
And it's about inspiring a movement of how can we reach people who have not had the benefit of education? How can we bring them into the struggle? Now, let me just be very clear. I'm not saying that harnessing the power of arts and culture alone will deliver salvation from the climate crisis and the intersecting [00:35:00] crisis.
However, I'm very clear in my mind that the failure to harness the power of arts and culture will almost guarantee that we will fail.
Sarah: I was recently in a conversation about sort of the ultimate imagination and how if we don't imagine a better world.
Kumi: Absolutely.
Sarah: And we don't create around that better world.
We're stuck with this dystopian view of what's going to happen to us.
Kumi: The way Ricardo would have put it was, I would not want to have been a young person growing up in apartheid South Africa and be like you all attending funerals every other weekend of your friends and comrades who've been killed. But you all had something then that we don't have now.
And you know what the answer to that? You all had hope that things will get better. And right now we need to be giving young people hope, not unrealistic hope, not naive hope, but giving them hope that through their [00:36:00] agency, through using the skills and talents that they have, they can move people in a way that can give us a fighting chance, right?
And the reality is people ask, is it too late to address climate change? For all the people in the United States and elsewhere that are dying from extreme weather events brought about by climate change, it is too late for them. Let's just be clear. But we still have a window of opportunity that is small and closing for us to prevent the worst of catastrophic climate change.
I naughtily end some of my speeches these days by saying, folks, I know that Topics that we covered were heavy, so I want to end on a light note. So many of you all would have heard people like me and maybe even you say it, save the planet, save the climate, save the environment. The good news is I believe the planet does not need saving.
Because if we continue on the path that we're [00:37:00] on, we continue to our dependency on fossil fuels, oil, coal, and gas, which is driving climate change. The end result is we destroy our soil, we destroy our water supply, it gets too hot, we're not going to be able to grow food. So the end result is we will be gone.
The planet will still be here. And the good news is, once we become extinct as a species, the oceans will recover, the forests will grow back and so on. So we need to understand that the struggle to avert catastrophic climate change is nothing more and nothing less than protecting our children and their children's future.
And when you put it in that terms, I have seen That I was able to even move CEOs of some of the biggest companies, not to agree with everything that I was saying, but to actually get them to gulp. You know, I used to have, you know, meetings with CEOs of big companies and I would say to them, what are you going to say to your children when your [00:38:00] children ask you 10 years from now?
When the science was clear that we needed to act, why did you put the interest of your company and profit before my interest? And I feel passionately that what we must do, especially for young people, is to have multiple pathways in which people can participate and make a contribution, and to Make sure that we send the message that actually activism doesn't have to be boring and drudgery and always being killed and detained and so on.
Activism can also be fun and sexy.
Sarah: What does a peaceful exit mean to you? For
Kumi: me, a peaceful exit has some elements in it. One is, I want to be able to feel. I would not have a peaceful exit if I felt that there was, not that I succeeded in every agenda that I was trying to advance, but I simply want to know for myself that I gave it my best shot.
[00:39:00] The second thing is, A peaceful exit for me, and I know this is gonna sound a bit uncharacteristic from how people frame me. I hope it will be peaceful, meaning that I hope it won't be what people often think will happen to a person like me, which is I'll get shot and killed or get killed in a prison somewhere or something like that.
I, and this might sound like I'm being a rather cowardly person, but I hope a peaceful exit will be peacefully in my sleep, you know, without too much of drama around it. Uh, and then the third thing for me, I guess, is to have a certain And this is a painful thing for me to say. The choices I've made in my life, I've prioritized public service above everything else.
This has come at a cost at how much of time over the years I was able to spend with family and friends. Um, I need to [00:40:00] convince those that still need to be convinced in my life. that I was genuinely sorry for not being around more, that I would much prefer spending time with them than meeting with heads of state and ministers and running from one meeting to the other, that I would have got more joy from that.
And everything that I did, in the public benefit. I also did it for my friends and family and my colleagues because I always hoped that they would benefit as well from all the struggles and sacrifices that one might have opted to take on. So Peaceful Exit is all those different elements. And I think I just want to say thank you for having Peaceful Exit as a frame for this podcast, because just preparing for this conversation with you today was in itself really helpful for me.
Because some of the things, [00:41:00] to be honest, that I said to you just now in this last contribution, before I committed to doing the podcast with you and having to think about it and process it, I don't think I was exactly there. But just the fact that you invited me to have this conversation. Has already helped me to feel stronger and I don't want to say excited about because some people might think that's a bit over the top, but not to feel fear and will I wake up tomorrow and suddenly feel some fear about it?
Probably, you know, it's a bit of an up and down thing, but I feel what your podcast is doing is giving many people tools and guidance to come to terms with the fact that this is natural, that it's going to happen. And let's make sure that we do it in a way that you're most prepared for it. But most importantly, [00:42:00] all the people around you who need to be prepared for it are also prepared.
Sarah: Well, thank you. Thank you for your words.
Kumi: Thank you. And for what you do.
Sarah: Thank you for listening to Peaceful Exit. I'm your host, Sarah Cavanaugh . You can learn more about this podcast at peacefulexit. net. And you can find me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram at uppeacefulexit. If you enjoyed this episode, please let us know. You can rate and review this show on Spotify and Apple podcasts.
This episode was produced by the amazing team at Larj Media. You can find them at L A R J media dot com. The Peaceful Exit team includes my producer, Katy Klein, and editor, Corinne Kuehlthau. Our sound engineer is Shawn Simmons. Tina Nole is our senior producer and Syd Gladu provides additional production and social media support.
Special thanks to [00:43:00] Ricardo Russell for podcast. As always, thanks for listening. I'm Sarah Cavanaugh , and this is Peaceful Exit.
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