by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author's program note. She was discovered whilst cleaning other people's houses. Even there she had "it". Her employers were so impressed that they taped her singing and sent the tape to a recording company. One thing lead to another and the woman soon to be known as "Lady Africa" was "discovered" by Alan Paton, who gave her a part as a chorus singer.That was in1964.
The poison called Apartheid was in full effect. But Lady Africa had that which would not be denied. Call it talent, call it fate, call it the right sound, call it destiny, call it luck. Soon she was singing to South Africa while showing the world that the spirit of the nation still lived, despite everything that could be done to suppress it.
Her name was Margaret Singana (1938-2000), and she sang her way into eternity with a number you need to hear to get full value from this article. It is "We Are Growing". Despite the fact that she suffered from the consequences of a 1980 stroke, she soared in this1986 comeback which became the theme song for the television series "Shaka Zulu". Go hear it now in any search engine. It is the heartbeat of a great people, a people that Nelson Mandela helped make greater still. Know them... learn from them... fly with them... "Ayoyo, oh, oyo/ Bayete, Inkosi".
"Be a man of greatness now... Be a man of wisdom now... Be a man of kindness now/ This is what you are/This is what to be." Let us begin...
This is an article that will be read by adults... but more importantly that must be read to children... because they need to know and understand that they are the most important people in all our lives, and we all have the responsibility to ease their often frustrating and difficult ways to the farthest extent possible.
Study leaders. Learn leadership from those who lead. Scrutinize! Understand! Emulate!
In his autobiography, Nelson Mandela (1918-2013) wrote of how he learned the crucial elements of leadership, large and small, by watching the ruler of the AbaThembu. He was the greatest figure in young Mandela's life... and thus a person worthy of the study.
This person of consequence obviously understood the critical importance of instructing the young. Mandela wrote, "I always remember the regent's axiom. A leader, he said, is like a shepherd, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind."
Now. Not later.
When was the last time you took child in hand, be that a gleeful five-year-old or surly, truculent teen-ager and opened a candid discussion on leadership? In your answer is how much you want that young person to succeed. My father, for instance, Donald Marshall Lant, now very near the conclusion of 9 decades, had at his instant disposal a person whose story he insisted his children know and follow.That person was General George S. Patton (1885-1945).
"Find the man in the furthest trench... Find the muddiest soldier there... Find the man leading from this trench... and you will have found General Patton." We learned he was a man of decisive action... a man who lead from the front... a man who followed Teddy Roosevelt's famous formula for success, "Do the best you can... with what you've got... where you are."
"You wanted to follow such a man... for he was doing what needed to be done. Helping such a one is a privilege, no matter how onerous, difficult, or exacting the task..." As for me, Father, I remember, I remember. Some lessons abide, appreciation for them never ending. This was such a lesson. Select Your Leader.
Luckily, Mandela had his leader close at hand, but not all of us are so fortunate to have an amiable monarch of pedagogical inclinations near. Thus, select a leader to befriend. Here's how to do it...
Start by drawing up a list of local leaders, people you know, know of, clergy, educators, writers, politicians, military officers, civic worthies, union and business leaders. These people, some of whom may live and work in your neighborhood, are more accessible than say, Pope Francis, although you should not neglect His Holiness. He clearly has a most congenial way with young people.
Write (note I did not say type) a letter that mingles unabashed admiration with a plea for their understanding and assistance. Such a letter is a minor art form and goes something like this. (I need hardly say that properly presented, such a missive is irresistible):
"Honored one, I present myself to you for an honorable purpose... to learn from you and become in the process a better person. Will you allow me to know and study you? I am just 15 years old and am at what my parents call an impressionable age. It would be a matter of the utmost significance if you would allow me to be impressed by you and so have your important deeds and actions chronicled by me."
Like I said, properly presented, such a missive is irresistible.
Include your biographical details. You may use a resume, though this is not an (immediate) job application. Your most winsome and arresting photo should be included; (be sure it isn't the classic of you on a white bear skin rug in the altogether.) That may be misconstrued. Add a recommendation or two from an adult, preferably a teacher, pastor, or other eminent personage who knows you and realizes that all future leaders begin here, needing a bit of help to commence their thousand mile journey.
Steps to building a leader. Now you are ready to begin.
1) Deliver your request in person whenever possible. If not send by a carrier that requires a signature.
2) Always include your phone number and e-mail address. Include your social network page.
3) If you have not received a response within two weeks, send an e-mail or telephone your designated leader. These folks are busy; help them out by following up.
4) Be prepared to speak to your chosen leader. Brainstorm what you will say and WRITE IT DOWN.
5) Schedule a convenient time to meet with your leader for that all-important first encounter. Remember, you never get a second chance to make the best first impression.
6) Before the meeting get a scrap-book and collect everything you can about this person. A scrap-book is essential for this project and must be kept up-to-date, especially for this crucial first time.
7) Make sure at least one parent or adult accompanies you to this meeting and testifies to your seriousness of intent and good habits. Be sure to look the part of the young leader for this and all future meetings. Slovenly look and demeanor are completely unacceptable. Too, make sure your cell-phone does NOT ring during the meeting; this is a must.
"Hear the children, hear the children/ They are talking to you."
Whether you've ever considered the matter or not, you must know that every child, of whatever age wants not just to be liked but far more important to be respected and admired, in the classroom, on the playing field, within any given organization or the broader community, or even worldwide. Your help is crucial in achieving this critical role. Are you doing the necessary?
1) Set the objective, ensuring that each child has a leadership goal.
2) Help the child, which means assisting and advising, not doing the work needed. If you do that you've defeated the entire purpose.
3) Ask for regular reports and follow-up. Do not assume there is progress. Know.
4) Praise whenever possible, critique softly but always honestly. This is essential.
5) If the necessary communication between young person and designated leader breaks down, intervene and with deft handling put the matter back on track.
Finally, when the project is well advanced, arrange with your leader a meeting to share the scrapbook with all its valuable insights into the important matter of leadership. Be sure a photographer is present to record this auspicious moment for an awaiting posterity. Send it to your local newspaper; post it online in social networks with appropriate caption.
If you've followed the steps in this article, you may be sure the leader's incandescent smile is real, not assumed. Then ask her for a recommendation... for, remember, leaders leverage each and every action to achieve still greater renown.
Then sit-down and congratulate yourself for you have given your child the necessary leg up. You've done, in short, what good parents do... and you have every reason to feel pleased with yourself, not least because you exemplify the crucial concept of "umbuntu", that is "you are open and available to others, affirming of others... with a proper self-assurance."
"Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu"... we rise not alone, but through other people." And this is the most important leadership lesson of all.
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol http://WorkingAtHome101.com
Author's program note. One evening several years ago I was dining in London with two of the nicest (and most charming) people I know, Lord and Lady Mackay of Clashfern. Born the son of a railway signalman, after a lifetime of zealous study and application of the law, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher appointed him Lord Chancellor of the realm, the equivalent of Chief Justice; a position he honored from 1987-1997.
During the course of the kind of delightful evening only the British know how to arrange, everything perfect, nothing ostentatious and the best table talk on Earth, I asked Lady Mackay who was the most impressive person she had met in all their travels. Her answer was swift and sure: "Nelson Mandela".
She talked, as all discerning people talk, of Mandela's megawatt smile, of how he looked her in the eyes, of how she felt his full attention whilst he was speaking with her, and how she felt his serenity and peace. Then the question that the world has always wanted answered: how after 27 years in the bleakest of prisons had he managed not only to preserve his sanity and the best of what makes us human, but to emerge with love, real love, in his heart, not corrosive anger, hatred, and rancor. Mirabile dictu, these were absent, no sign at all of his Via Dolorosa. And this, to her, to me, to all, was as a miracle.
And because he personified the very essence of optimism and hope, I have selected such a song for the music to accompany this article. Go now to any search engine and find "Free Nelson Mandela". It is a song written by Jerry Dammers and released in 1984 as a protest against Mandela's imprisonment. Unlike most protest songs, this track with lead vocals by Stan Campbell is upbeat and celebratory... the perfect sound for a man who knew the power of hope and therewith changed the world, one smile at a time, love his constant guide, staff, policy, and credo.
Born an aristocrat.
Rolihlahla Dalibhunga Mandela was born July 18, 1918 in Mvezo, a village in South Africa's Transkei region, on the southeast coast. His father, Henry Mgadla Mandela, was village chief and a member of the royal house of the Thembu tribe. He died when Mandela was just 9, when he became a ward of the Paramount Chief Dalinyebo. Nosekeni Fanny Mandela, his mother, was one of his father's four wives.
At age 7 he was given a new first name by his schoolteacher, in honor of Horatio (Lord) Nelson, the most famous British seaman, whose victory over the combined French and Spanish fleets in 1805 at Cape Trafalgar accelerated British colonization of Africa, a matter pertinent to Mandela's future.
Privilege.
Like so many revolutionaries, Mandela's early years were privileged years. He was educated at Methodist schools and attended the University College of Fort Hare. He was an avid sportsman, ran cross-country and boxed. His hero was heavy weight champion Joe Louis.
He was a good student, liked school and was popular. People knew even then that he was special, great things sure to come. Such a paragon needs must be married and so his legal guardian arranged a suitable match; Mandela disagreed and so became the run-away groom, supporting himself as a law clerk, earning a bachelor's degree from the University of South Africa in 1942.
"One thousand slights, a thousand indignities."
Ever since St. Paul entered the revelation business on his celebrated journey to Damascus, people have scrutinized important people for the moment they experienced an epiphany, destiny, fate, kismet. Albert Schweitzer, for instance, had this moment on the Ogooue' river in French Equatorial Africa; (now Gabon.) "Reverence for life."
But Mandela recalled no such epochal, defining experience, the moment he crossed the Rubicon. Instead his politicization was a thing of years, decades, pinpricks subtle, humiliating, and never ending.
It all added up to this, "Kaffir man, you are black. Kaffir man you are God's garbage. Kaffir man look down, look down, for that is where you must stay." And upon this fundamental basis a system for total control was evolved, white against black, forever apart, adamantly divided one from the other, the white minority to rule forever, the black majority to be ruled and submit, without cavil or complaint if possible, with brute force if not.
The name of this system was Apartheid, "separateness" in the Afrikaans language of the ruling elite, and the system, conceived and legally implemented from 1948 in hate, fear, bitterness and woe was as close to hell as mortal man could conceive and develop.
Apartheid touched everyone and everything. It crushed the oppressed... it corrupted the oppressor. No one under Apartheid was free, not oppressed, not oppressor, for the system ruined all. It was a deal with the Devil, and the Devil took his toll, every long minute of every bitter day.
At last the Devil grasped at Nelson Mandela... but the Devil soon knew this man would not submit. And so even the Devil was confounded by the invidious system. No one was immune and untouched but one person refused to accept the intolerable, though that would have been the easy way, the way of least resistance.
That person was Nelson Mandela, and we cherish him not because he recognized a moral evil. Many did, including brave members of the elite who made their aversion clear. It is not merely because he acted against this pernicious system, many did that, too. It is rather that he learned the essential task of embracing the oppressor who condemned them both to a system of despair and destruction yet rose above, to love in response to every calculated insult, every vulgar and demeaning humiliation, every affliction, every action intended to devalue, diminish, and degrade.
To each, to all, in every situation, he returned love... thereby redeeming a great people from the sin they could not free themselves from alone. Members of the elite though they were, responsible for every outrage, they more than ever needed a man of destiny to save them.... and Nelson Mandela was that man, though there was nothing inevitable about his rise to eminence and political importance. Instead, as he was insulted as a black man over and over again he advanced in his determination to right this wrong.
As he was humiliated as a black man over and over, so he vowed to do his part to overturn the egregious apparatus of state-sponsored racism. Instead, as he was demeaned in every aspect of his humanity, so he was adamant that this must be stopped here, now, forever... and he said he would do his part, though death be his portion.
Is it any wonder these great lines from "Julius Caesar" were his favorite? "Cowards die many times before their deaths/The valiant never taste of death but once." And he was the most valiant of men. However as we all know, discretion is the better part of valor... and discretion is a matter of experience and education. The more he knew, the more he observed, the more he considered, the more he moved towards his ultimate goal -- freedom-- something far more important than mere retaliation and revenge.
This all took time, pains, focus, commitment and resilience. It was never overnight, never easy, never the work of a single day, and it took the faith that moves mountains. Thus Mandela, so often in prison from 1956 to1990, created himself, examined himself, crafted himself and moved towards becoming the man he needed to be and all the people of South Africa needed him to be for the great work at hand.
>From Communist to non-violence, essential elements in his "Long Walk to Freedom".
Like so many black men around the world, Mandela was at first determined to use any means to topple a system that systematically devalued him and his kind. If the transition could be peaceful well and good. If not... then let the chips fall where they may. Freedom might well need weapons, and these weapons might have to be used.
This was the Great Fear of the white minority and many blacks. And it was very real, a thing of apprehension and profound anxieties, a Reign of Terror far greater and more bloody than Robespierre's. The possibility of such a bloodbath was always present and who can doubt that if Mandela had continued to advocate violence as he did in his early career the "beloved country" would have cried indeed? "If this man wasn't there, the whole country would have gone up in flames." This is the considered opinion of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the man who won the Nobel Peace Prize with Mandela in 1993.
Balance.
Here was the problem Mandela faced. Particularly young black men pressed him for action now, armed action if necessary, war a l'outrance .They demanded "results", damn the consequences. Following this bloody course would have activated the full power of a powerful regime with catastrophic consequences for all. This was the policy of Apocalypse, and if it had been implemented South Africa would have drowned in its own blood.
He knew the undeniable attraction of this adamant position. After all, he had once advocated this line himself. But as he matured he knew he had to take a very different course than turning the land he loved into a battlefield. He needed to stay focused on the big picture, the policy that would save the nation, not destroy it; ensure freedom to all, not deny it to anyone.
To ensure this end meant keeping the hotheads in line while using their undeniable power to press for constructive resolution; to use their outrage to bring constructive interaction, to bring forth harmony from rancor. This was difficult, often frustrating, perplexing, baffling. And it demanded statecraft of the highest level; statecraft perfected in a 7 feet square prison cell he occupied at a maximum-security facility, Robben Island, near Cape Town. He spent 18 years there before being transferred to a less isolated prison on the mainland.
"You have no idea of the cruelty of man against man until you have been in a South African prison with white warders and black prisoners." Under these circumstances Mandela could have perfected hatred and bile, becoming the merciless Angel of Retribution. The world would have understood this, but Mandela chose a different course, the harder course, the course of freedom, liberty... and a united South Africa, a destination almost unimaginable in the acrid years after 1948... the years when the regime denied Mandela sun glasses. He suffered permanent eye damage; but it was the ruling authorities who were blind.
Thus, simultaneously he had to let the members of the elite know that they had to make compromises to appease his followers, who could not be expected to be patient forever. A declared Communist at first, this orientation estranged the United States, which continued to support the rigidly anti-Communist regime, that being far more important in Washington, D.C. than civil rights. It was an understandable position, but only exacerbated an already confounding situation.
Through this maze of bewildering possibilities, many contradictory, often repugnant to a nose-holding degree, Mandela had not only to maneuver... but he had to grow. The fate of millions depended on it. And bit by bit the world came to know it, nowhere more than in Boston, Massachusetts, a city which revived its revolutionary heritage by supporting Mandela's.
There on June 23, 1990, I took advantage of the opportunity to see and hear the last of the great racial liberators, Mahatma Gandhi, The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mandela himself. All three were men of privilege and learning who put their comfortable lives on the line for something of worldwide impact and importance; men who had to master themselves before they dared to ask others to follow.
Of course, I had to see the last of these titans and so along with over a quarter million other souls, many radiant, all of good cheer, I trekked to the Hatch Shell on the Esplanade alongside the Charles River. Here Mandela, just released from prison, made his first remarks to America and its iconic City on a Hill. He said little, told us nothing new. He didn't have to.
He was the man who had cleansed a great nation of its debilitating burden, thereby saving that nation and the lives of thousands; thus even the tiniest tot knew something special was happening here and remembered. Then he smiled at the delirious crowd, danced on stage to the delight of all, thence speeding on his way to immortality.
At that moment every person in that undulating sea of humanity felt better, happy, glad to be reassured that a single person could make the world a better place and do it without revenge, retribution, retaliation, or the slaughter of a single person, black or white. That is the legacy of Nelson Mandela, and its relevance will never dim or tarnish. We must all see to that...
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is the author of over a dozen books on marketing, several ebooks, and over one thousand online articles on a variety of topics. Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol http://WorkingAtHome101.com.
