The Oxford Biography Index calls her a “social observer and philanthropist”. Asenath Hatch Nicholson wrote the Annals of the Famine in Ireland which was published in 1851.
She had previously published Welcome to the Stranger in 1847, a valuable record of Ireland on the eve of the Famine. That is the account of her “first missionary journey” to Ireland in 1844 and 1845 which began when she left New York to “personally investigate the condition of the Irish poor” (her own words). This is an important “baseline study” because the purpose of that first visit was to distribute Bibles and read Scripture to the illiterate – not food aid. The background to this ministry is that she had been working with Irish immigrants in Brooklyn and felt a calling to go there as a missionary. In her days in New York she had been involved in both the Abolition and the Temperance movements. A broken marriage may have triggered her decision to “move on”?
In those days, being a Protestant “Bible reader” in a predominantly Catholic setting was regarded as proselytizing. She would distribute copies of the Bible to those who could read, and read the Bible to those who could not. Worse yet, Protestants were not generally supportive of her democratic ideals, including her being a 100% vegetarian. She was seen as something of a maverick – an American missionary to the Irish peasantry. She complained that people stared at her! After her first missionary journey to Ireland she left for Scotland in 1845. The emergence of the potato famine only started later that year.
She seemed to be the right person in the right place at the right time. She had now extensively traveled throughout Ireland and was busy generating a manuscript for her first book. Meanwhile her on-going correspondence had established a rapport with mission agencies and the Christian press. These contacts allowed her to appeal for relief aid as she started her second missionary journey to Ireland by setting up a soup kitchen in Dublin in late 1847. Soon some money and gifts-in-kind began to arrive in response to her personal appeals. As so often happens, church and non-state actors arrived at the scene of a disaster first and did what they could, followed in due course by government aid on a grander scale.
Church aid arrived on the same ships out of New York that brought hers, for the Central Relief Committee of the Society of Friends, but Nicholson preferred to operate individually. She herself walked through Dublin every morning distributing slices of bread - not Bibles this time. Unlike the Quakers, she did not charge even a symbolic price, as she was targeting the poorest of the poor. She figured that £10 divided among 100 beneficiaries helped no one, so she tried to make a regular difference a target group.
By 1847 the government’s Soup Kitchen Act (i.e. Temporary Relief Act) had kicked in, and she had finished her first manuscript. While it was being published, she followed the Quaker’s lead of closing its Soup Kitchen in deference to government’s aid scheme, and she began to visit the “interior” of Ireland again. It is from this period in Dublin and the famine-stricken West that her second book was drafted - Annals of the Famine in Ireland. It also came to be published – four years after her first book, in 1851. Her combined correspondence and publishing were a platform from which she pleaded the case (in today’s jargonese) for Development being a higher good than Relief, and for “Trade not Aid”. She argued this case with other philanthropists like English Quaker William Bennett. Her appeals were not only to friends and the public, but to government, which she also rebuked for corruption and its insensitivity. She regarded volunteer relief workers, coast guardsmen and missionaries as being much more sensitive and effective than bureaucratic government aid workers.
She herself lived frugally on bread and cocoa, and lamented loudly the diversion of grain to distilleries.
One important feature of her Annals is a record of how poor people helped one another. In fact, her Annals is really the third part of Lights and Shades of Ireland which she published at the end of her second missionary journey in London, in 1850. By then she thought the famine was over, but it recurred until 1852.
This week, St. Patrick’s Day was celebrated including the famous parade in New York. America has a huge Irish contingent which has made its mark. Many of these are descendants of people who left Ireland fleeing the famine.
But one maverick New Yorker left for Ireland on a personal mission of love which turned into a mission of mercy. Her work combines elements that are all dear to C4L – Bibles, literacy, disaster management, public engagement, fundraising, and writing books. These are all part of what we do or have done at C4L and we do it in the same spirit of “taking it personally” (i.e. small is beautiful) and yet working with other actors, while rebuking government at times, especially for corruption and insensitivity.
On a personal note, my own forefathers still lived in the West of Ireland at the time of Nicholson’s two missionary journeys. Maybe she visited them? Only later in the 19th century did my great-grandfather O’Dowda emigrate to Canada. Thus the “thank you” in the title - to this role-model maverick missionary, Asenath Hatch Nicholson. She is the latest to join the C4L blogsite on Role Models.
Americans have a special place in their heart for the Irish, and Ireland reciprocates. The feeling is mutual. She is one reason why.
Mission work has changed a lot over the centuries. But as the French say, as everything changes, everything remains the same.
Sunday, 20 March 2016
Wednesday, 16 December 2015
Putting Out the Fire of Craving
I can remember when former President George Bush announced a
$15-billion gift to fund the fight against HIV and AIDS. It was billed
as the biggest single donation ever made. As noted by commentators on
World Aids Day this week, there is no question that a disease that was
once regarded as a death sentence is now being managed by millions who
are “living positively”.
Then came The Giving Pledge with two of the world’s richest men (Bill Gates and Warren Buffet) pledging to give away half of their respective fortunes, and challenging other millionaires and billionaires to do the same.
So when Mark Zuckerberg this week announced that 99 percent of his Facebook fortune will be allocated to social investments, I was surprised at the reactions. The mechanism that he chose was critiqued by some from a tax angle – but who doesn’t look at tax deductibility when making a donation? Without suggesting that it should always be a factor in the Giving equation, there is little question that most givers like a tax deductible receipt when donating to charity.
Also Zuckerberg’s choice of a social investment mechanism that will allow profits to be generated is not so uncommon these days. For example, “poverty lending” schemes have to charge interest to keep themselves sustainable. We don’t all have to take an oath of poverty like St Francis did in order to serve the poor. Nor is there any shame in doing so, by the way.
Some people pointed out that even the remaining 1 percent comes to about $500 million, so it’s not like he is impoverishing himself. This sounded a lot like jealousy to me!
Also, no one mentioned the fact that he made this fortune by launching a SOCIAL tool, in the social media. Facebook is hugely inter-personal and relational and Zuckerberg deserves credit for that – he didn’t just sell widgets. He brought people together, strengthened our social fabric and softened borders. In short, he changed the way the world works.
How much is enough?
Last year, C4L launched a blogsite by this name – with a lot of musings on philanthropy and missions. It has had about 1200 site visits since then, so we are holding forth. This site has just been re-launched.
Zuckerberg’s initial forays into philanthropy are already mentioned on that site, and this C4L Bulletin will soon be uploaded. One bulletin that comes to mind is Affluence Extremism and another is Viva Contentment, Gratitude and Moderation. The Giving Pledge is mentioned along with a flotilla of 35 articles on Voluntarism, Volunteering, Altruism, and the Nonprofit Sector.
The question “How much is enough?” is a bit like “How long is a piece of string?” in the sense that there is no fixed answer. But a few other bulletin titles may point the direction that it goes in: Affluent people have a debt to pay, Gain the whole world and lose your soul, Charity begins at home, Unambiguously pro-poor, Putting it back, Living the paradox, The best way to give, Responsibility and complicity, Mendicancy, Disaster Watch, Kind-blameless-pure-astute.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Abraham Maslow’s studies arose from the work place, not from research on poverty or inequality. His pyramid is well-known, with a wide base of “survival needs” at entry level. The logic rises through other needs to a fifth level called “self-realization” – for example in continuing education to fulfil aspirations that were latent on your way up the ladder.
Long after Maslow, a sixth tier was added. That is, the need to give back to the system from which your success emerged, and to say Thank You to it. This resonates with The Giving Pledge.
Extinguishing the fire
At the root of Buddhism are the life experiences of Siddhartha Gautama. He was heir to a kingdom but too troubled by inequality and the problem of suffering to want to assume royal responsibilities. Discontent affected the rich too, not just the poor – in the form of greed.
Gautama concluded that no matter what anguish affects you, your mind experiences dissatisfaction or craving. In English we sometimes refer to “need” as “want”. For some, this is soul-numbing poverty and hunger. For others, it is the restlessness arising from the need for love or even meaning. Gautama probed ways to exit this perpetual angst, this constant chasing after fulfilment. He found that Enlightenment helped to melt away the craving – simply understanding the angst for what it is, addresses it. In Harari’s words:
I don’t know about you? But when I hear of a wealthy family placing 99 percent of their riches into an entity devoted to “advancing human potential and promoting equality for all children in the next generation”, I get the sense that the fire of craving has burned out. In the priceless lyrics of Dylan:
Once I was wading in fortune and fame
Everything that I dreamed of to get a start in life’s game
But suddenly it happened, I lost every dime
But I'm richer by far with a satisfied mind.
Then came The Giving Pledge with two of the world’s richest men (Bill Gates and Warren Buffet) pledging to give away half of their respective fortunes, and challenging other millionaires and billionaires to do the same.
So when Mark Zuckerberg this week announced that 99 percent of his Facebook fortune will be allocated to social investments, I was surprised at the reactions. The mechanism that he chose was critiqued by some from a tax angle – but who doesn’t look at tax deductibility when making a donation? Without suggesting that it should always be a factor in the Giving equation, there is little question that most givers like a tax deductible receipt when donating to charity.
Also Zuckerberg’s choice of a social investment mechanism that will allow profits to be generated is not so uncommon these days. For example, “poverty lending” schemes have to charge interest to keep themselves sustainable. We don’t all have to take an oath of poverty like St Francis did in order to serve the poor. Nor is there any shame in doing so, by the way.
Some people pointed out that even the remaining 1 percent comes to about $500 million, so it’s not like he is impoverishing himself. This sounded a lot like jealousy to me!
Also, no one mentioned the fact that he made this fortune by launching a SOCIAL tool, in the social media. Facebook is hugely inter-personal and relational and Zuckerberg deserves credit for that – he didn’t just sell widgets. He brought people together, strengthened our social fabric and softened borders. In short, he changed the way the world works.
How much is enough?
Last year, C4L launched a blogsite by this name – with a lot of musings on philanthropy and missions. It has had about 1200 site visits since then, so we are holding forth. This site has just been re-launched.
Zuckerberg’s initial forays into philanthropy are already mentioned on that site, and this C4L Bulletin will soon be uploaded. One bulletin that comes to mind is Affluence Extremism and another is Viva Contentment, Gratitude and Moderation. The Giving Pledge is mentioned along with a flotilla of 35 articles on Voluntarism, Volunteering, Altruism, and the Nonprofit Sector.
The question “How much is enough?” is a bit like “How long is a piece of string?” in the sense that there is no fixed answer. But a few other bulletin titles may point the direction that it goes in: Affluent people have a debt to pay, Gain the whole world and lose your soul, Charity begins at home, Unambiguously pro-poor, Putting it back, Living the paradox, The best way to give, Responsibility and complicity, Mendicancy, Disaster Watch, Kind-blameless-pure-astute.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Abraham Maslow’s studies arose from the work place, not from research on poverty or inequality. His pyramid is well-known, with a wide base of “survival needs” at entry level. The logic rises through other needs to a fifth level called “self-realization” – for example in continuing education to fulfil aspirations that were latent on your way up the ladder.
Long after Maslow, a sixth tier was added. That is, the need to give back to the system from which your success emerged, and to say Thank You to it. This resonates with The Giving Pledge.
Extinguishing the fire
At the root of Buddhism are the life experiences of Siddhartha Gautama. He was heir to a kingdom but too troubled by inequality and the problem of suffering to want to assume royal responsibilities. Discontent affected the rich too, not just the poor – in the form of greed.
Gautama concluded that no matter what anguish affects you, your mind experiences dissatisfaction or craving. In English we sometimes refer to “need” as “want”. For some, this is soul-numbing poverty and hunger. For others, it is the restlessness arising from the need for love or even meaning. Gautama probed ways to exit this perpetual angst, this constant chasing after fulfilment. He found that Enlightenment helped to melt away the craving – simply understanding the angst for what it is, addresses it. In Harari’s words:
“But how do you get the mind to accept things as they are, without craving? To accept sadness as sadness, joy as joy, pain as pain? Gautama developed a set of meditation techniques that train the mind to experience reality as it is, without craving…
“He instructed his followers to avoid killing, promiscuous sex and theft, since such acts necessarily stoke the fire of craving (for power, for sensual pleasure, or for wealth). When the flames are completely extinguished, craving is replaced by a state of perfect contentment and serenity, known as nirvana (the literal meaning of which is ‘extinguishing the fire’).”
I don’t know about you? But when I hear of a wealthy family placing 99 percent of their riches into an entity devoted to “advancing human potential and promoting equality for all children in the next generation”, I get the sense that the fire of craving has burned out. In the priceless lyrics of Dylan:
Once I was wading in fortune and fame
Everything that I dreamed of to get a start in life’s game
But suddenly it happened, I lost every dime
But I'm richer by far with a satisfied mind.
Sunday, 11 January 2015
Don’t Be Evil
Today a million people are marching in Paris. I can’t be there, so my act of solidarity is writing this C4L Bulletin…
South Africa hosted the United Nations Conference on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Intolerance in Durban in 2001. It generated a 61-page Declaration in 219 clauses. You can find it on Google, although you couldn’t Google at that time. An aside is that Google’s unofficial slogan when it went public in 2004 was “Don’t be evil”. In case you missed it - access to information shines light into darkness.
I have thought a lot about this theme since first reading Jean-Paul Sarte’s Anti-Semite and Jew when I was at university. I had grown up in colonial Africa, and seen the harsh Belgian system. I also saw that it was unsustainable. After completing my education in Canada, decades later, I returned to Africa to work as a missionary. First behind the iron curtain in Angola, then in socialist Zimbabwe, and for the past 21 years in the free and democratic South Africa.
The xenophobia outbreaks of 2008 in South Africa were a wake-up call. Intolerance is scary when it characterizes the large majority, in any setting. Affirmative action in South Africa is close to that edge – attitudinally it can and does go wrong at times. That is why all opposition parties critique it, even those on the New Left. Only the ruling alliance keeps it going, and one has to wonder why?
Charlie Hebdo Blues
In an SAPA article in the Mail and Guardian called “MJC: Freedom of speech should not lead to hate speech” the Muslim Judicial Council condemns the attacks in Paris, but says there must be limits to freedom of expression. The article concludes with the following three paragraphs:
“In May 2010, South African satirist Jonathan Shapiro, widely known as Zapiro, raised controversy when he depicted the Prophet Muhammad in a cartoon. The cartoon showed Muhammad lying on a couch complaining to a psychiatrist: “Other prophets have followers with a sense of humour!”
“A meeting was subsequently held between the Mail and Guardian newspaper that published the cartoon and Muslim community members. Then-editor Nic Dawes later said that the newspaper regretted the offence caused by the cartoon and that it had decided to review its editorial policy on religion, especially where it concerned the Prophet Muhammad.
“Later, Zapiro himself responded by publishing another cartoon, in which he drew himself on the same therapist’s couch and poured his heart out on the difficulties of censorship on religious grounds.”
In another article in today’s City Press called “Treading the tight line of tolerance”, Ferial Haffajee describes the fall-out at the M&G where she also worked at the time. She felt the heat again when she published cartoons made by the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten, to illustrate how protests were spreading across Europe. She writes:
“We do not offend each other on religious grounds. South Africa has decided, in weighting its rights, that religious rights trump the right to free expression. Unlike the French, many South Africans are deeply religious – prayer and worship are the most common practices across class and race.”
Then she describes the next surge of heat they took at City Press for publishing The Spear, a Leninesque portrait of President Zuma partially naked. As she put it “Damnation rained upon us…”
“Our society would not countenance a Charlie Hebdo here – if there was one, it would not survive commercially, and would be subject to court and other civic action.
“But in our other national spirit, that of debate, I must ask: have we overcorrected for our past and do we risk sacrificing free expression?”
Then she comes close to the present:
“At the end of last year, in the middle of the season of goodwill, President Jacob Zuma’s praise singer singled out Zapiro, me, City Press and Julius Malema as enemies of the state.
“Malema is a political opponent, not an enemy; City Press is a media title; and Zapiro and I are journalists, not enemies.
“This week’s attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the slaying of colleagues there have opushed me further away from our national consensus and the ways we have chosen to limit free expression.
“I understand and appreciate that consensus, but I no longer support it…”
The Economist has repeatedly rung warning bells about what can happen to a country when affirmative action favours the large majority. This is unpacked in a M&G article by William Gumede called “Honest politics needed to slay racism dragon”. It concludes with these five paragraphs:
“To slay the racism dragon demands more honest politics from black leaders, less opportunism in using the race card for self-enrichment and more ethical behaviour. African leaders and governments must govern in the interest of all, rather than a small elite, whether it is their “ethnic” group, region, political faction or party.
“Black communities and countries need to hold leaders more accountable for their actions.
“Cornel West, a noted American scholar on race, rightly argues that we must “replace racial reasoning with moral reasoning, to understand the black freedom struggle not as an affair of skin pigmentation and racial phenotype but rather as a matter of ethical principles and wise politics”.
“The challenge for South Africa and Africans is not to embrace leaders because they shout the loudest against racism, the continuing effect of colonialism or imperialism, but then go on to use racism to hide their own incompetence, personal self-enrichment and oppression of their own black people.
“Unless we do this, blacks in Africa will forever get the same useless, incompetent and self-interested leaders and governments that will perpetuate a continual cycle of black poverty and underdevelopment, helping to reinforce racism against black people and countries.”
Racism is a near and present danger in America as well as Europe and the Middle East - not just in Africa. How can society tolerate intolerance?
I end on a personal note, in our provincial setting. A decade ago, C4L echoed – in provincial forums - the courageous national voice of Zakkie Achmat in calling on government to roll out ARVs. We raised our voice again about morality and leadership when Zuma staged a comeback. In 2011, C4L did a poster campaign to raise awareness about the January Murders, which had started in 1998. Seventeen young leaders were lost – not in one massacre like at Charlie Hedblo, but year after year. Relentlessly, always in January, and always for whistle blowing. A death squad. In 2012 we reported corruption in the province’s roll-out of the Community Work Programme (CWP). This is still with the Hawks, the Public Protector and the High Court. In 2014 C4L’s first short-term objective was to promote more youth in Parliament. This succeeded and the results are graphic. Now we are lobbying that ending poverty and unemployment means ending inequality first. None of this sits well with the rich and powerful. The risks to C4L are there. For example, C4L has been burgled four times in the past month, diminishing its capability. The police didn’t even bother to come the last time we called them... I end with the last sentence of Ferial Haffajee’s article:
“But now I want to talk about the right to free speech and how to expand it, not limit it, and how to burnish it and keep it bright.”
Long live Charlie Hebdo! Vive la France libre!
South Africa hosted the United Nations Conference on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Intolerance in Durban in 2001. It generated a 61-page Declaration in 219 clauses. You can find it on Google, although you couldn’t Google at that time. An aside is that Google’s unofficial slogan when it went public in 2004 was “Don’t be evil”. In case you missed it - access to information shines light into darkness.
I have thought a lot about this theme since first reading Jean-Paul Sarte’s Anti-Semite and Jew when I was at university. I had grown up in colonial Africa, and seen the harsh Belgian system. I also saw that it was unsustainable. After completing my education in Canada, decades later, I returned to Africa to work as a missionary. First behind the iron curtain in Angola, then in socialist Zimbabwe, and for the past 21 years in the free and democratic South Africa.
The xenophobia outbreaks of 2008 in South Africa were a wake-up call. Intolerance is scary when it characterizes the large majority, in any setting. Affirmative action in South Africa is close to that edge – attitudinally it can and does go wrong at times. That is why all opposition parties critique it, even those on the New Left. Only the ruling alliance keeps it going, and one has to wonder why?
Charlie Hebdo Blues
In an SAPA article in the Mail and Guardian called “MJC: Freedom of speech should not lead to hate speech” the Muslim Judicial Council condemns the attacks in Paris, but says there must be limits to freedom of expression. The article concludes with the following three paragraphs:
“In May 2010, South African satirist Jonathan Shapiro, widely known as Zapiro, raised controversy when he depicted the Prophet Muhammad in a cartoon. The cartoon showed Muhammad lying on a couch complaining to a psychiatrist: “Other prophets have followers with a sense of humour!”
“A meeting was subsequently held between the Mail and Guardian newspaper that published the cartoon and Muslim community members. Then-editor Nic Dawes later said that the newspaper regretted the offence caused by the cartoon and that it had decided to review its editorial policy on religion, especially where it concerned the Prophet Muhammad.
“Later, Zapiro himself responded by publishing another cartoon, in which he drew himself on the same therapist’s couch and poured his heart out on the difficulties of censorship on religious grounds.”
In another article in today’s City Press called “Treading the tight line of tolerance”, Ferial Haffajee describes the fall-out at the M&G where she also worked at the time. She felt the heat again when she published cartoons made by the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten, to illustrate how protests were spreading across Europe. She writes:
“We do not offend each other on religious grounds. South Africa has decided, in weighting its rights, that religious rights trump the right to free expression. Unlike the French, many South Africans are deeply religious – prayer and worship are the most common practices across class and race.”
Then she describes the next surge of heat they took at City Press for publishing The Spear, a Leninesque portrait of President Zuma partially naked. As she put it “Damnation rained upon us…”
“Our society would not countenance a Charlie Hebdo here – if there was one, it would not survive commercially, and would be subject to court and other civic action.
“But in our other national spirit, that of debate, I must ask: have we overcorrected for our past and do we risk sacrificing free expression?”
Then she comes close to the present:
“At the end of last year, in the middle of the season of goodwill, President Jacob Zuma’s praise singer singled out Zapiro, me, City Press and Julius Malema as enemies of the state.
“Malema is a political opponent, not an enemy; City Press is a media title; and Zapiro and I are journalists, not enemies.
“This week’s attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the slaying of colleagues there have opushed me further away from our national consensus and the ways we have chosen to limit free expression.
“I understand and appreciate that consensus, but I no longer support it…”
The Economist has repeatedly rung warning bells about what can happen to a country when affirmative action favours the large majority. This is unpacked in a M&G article by William Gumede called “Honest politics needed to slay racism dragon”. It concludes with these five paragraphs:
“To slay the racism dragon demands more honest politics from black leaders, less opportunism in using the race card for self-enrichment and more ethical behaviour. African leaders and governments must govern in the interest of all, rather than a small elite, whether it is their “ethnic” group, region, political faction or party.
“Black communities and countries need to hold leaders more accountable for their actions.
“Cornel West, a noted American scholar on race, rightly argues that we must “replace racial reasoning with moral reasoning, to understand the black freedom struggle not as an affair of skin pigmentation and racial phenotype but rather as a matter of ethical principles and wise politics”.
“The challenge for South Africa and Africans is not to embrace leaders because they shout the loudest against racism, the continuing effect of colonialism or imperialism, but then go on to use racism to hide their own incompetence, personal self-enrichment and oppression of their own black people.
“Unless we do this, blacks in Africa will forever get the same useless, incompetent and self-interested leaders and governments that will perpetuate a continual cycle of black poverty and underdevelopment, helping to reinforce racism against black people and countries.”
Racism is a near and present danger in America as well as Europe and the Middle East - not just in Africa. How can society tolerate intolerance?
I end on a personal note, in our provincial setting. A decade ago, C4L echoed – in provincial forums - the courageous national voice of Zakkie Achmat in calling on government to roll out ARVs. We raised our voice again about morality and leadership when Zuma staged a comeback. In 2011, C4L did a poster campaign to raise awareness about the January Murders, which had started in 1998. Seventeen young leaders were lost – not in one massacre like at Charlie Hedblo, but year after year. Relentlessly, always in January, and always for whistle blowing. A death squad. In 2012 we reported corruption in the province’s roll-out of the Community Work Programme (CWP). This is still with the Hawks, the Public Protector and the High Court. In 2014 C4L’s first short-term objective was to promote more youth in Parliament. This succeeded and the results are graphic. Now we are lobbying that ending poverty and unemployment means ending inequality first. None of this sits well with the rich and powerful. The risks to C4L are there. For example, C4L has been burgled four times in the past month, diminishing its capability. The police didn’t even bother to come the last time we called them... I end with the last sentence of Ferial Haffajee’s article:
“But now I want to talk about the right to free speech and how to expand it, not limit it, and how to burnish it and keep it bright.”
Long live Charlie Hebdo! Vive la France libre!
Tuesday, 30 December 2014
This Makes me MADD
These excerpts are clipped from a Canadian book about Social Innovation:
“In 1980 Candy Lightner’s twelve-year-old daughter, Cari, was killed by a drunk driver – a repeat offender. Brought to trial, the driver was reprimanded and released.
“In her 1990 memoir, Giving Sorrow Words she wrote: “I promised myself on the day of Cari’s death that I would fight to make this needless homicide count for something positive in the years ahead.”
“Lightner was certainly not the first mother to be outraged about lenient drunk-driving laws that returned chronic drunks to the streets. Even in 1980, when her daughter was killed, the statistics were well known and widely publicized. Drunk driving was the major cause of traffic fatalities in North America. In fact, it remains the single largest criminal cause death in Canada, where approximately 1,500 people are killed each year as a result of impaired driving, a number about three times higher than the country’s murder rate. The situation is worse in the United States.
“Following her daughter’s death, Lightner founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD).
“It has been said that nothing is so powerful as an idea whose time has come. It is clear that the time was right for Lightner’s initiative. The fledgling organization that she founded took wing on currents that bore it upward.”
In today’s City Press, Mphonyane Mofokeng, chair of the Southern African Alcohol Policy Alliance wrote about a new government initiative to combat alcohol abuse:
“Binge drinking is the norm in South Africa. A recent WHO report rates this country fourth on the list of places with the riskiest drinking. The report says 16% of the alcohol consumers in the country are heavy drinkers, and 41.2% of them are women.
“Research indicates 12% of people start drinking at the age of 13… Young adults were also the most common victims of fatal violence.”
“The state ultimately shoulders the responsibility of this drinking behaviour.”
“It is not about the state playing nanny. If there is no direct intervention to curb easy access to and the excessive use of alcohol, South Africa’s young population will feel the impact for generations to come.”
These are not the words of a white, older, foreign male. They were written by a younger, black, South African woman. In fact, another even younger South African woman - named Zodwa Ntuli - has been appointed to lead government’s drive to tighten alcohol regulations in line with international standards. One measure is to increase the legal age for consumption - from 18 to 21.
“Substance abuse is a massive problem and liquor, unlike most drugs, is readily and easily available. When kids start experimenting, they start with alcohol because it’s available.
“We’re not becoming a nanny state. We are responding to real issues that affect everyone at work, in communities and in families.”
Over the past decade, I have written passionately about other social evils in South Africa, such as:
To sum up - as a social innovator myself (like Candy Lightner) - I know a social evil when I see one.
So both C4L programming and its Bulletins (like this one) are going to echo this theme more in the coming months. I am not in favour of affirmative action in its BEE form, but I would like to see another kind of affirmative action – in favour of the families and loved ones who get hurt because of alcohol abuse. Zero tolerance of drinking and driving is needed to reduce the number of road fatalities. Also, domestic abuse is so often linked to alcoholism. Let’s stop blaming the victims and make the perpetrators answer for their crimes.
For some of you, this may seem like déjà vu. But especially among youth in South Africa, there is need for awareness raising and behaviour change.
Back to Candy Lightner in closing:
“The goal of MADD was to reduce drunk-driving traffic fatalities and the proportion of traffic fatalities that are alcohol related has dropped 40 percent over the last quarter-century. Most observers give substantial credit for that decline to the efforts of MADD.
Since its start in 1980, more than 2,300 anti-drunk-driving laws have been passed.
In a 1994 study by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, MADD was the most popular non-profit cause in the United States, ranked second among the most strongly supported charities and third on the most credible list.
“Eight years after she had founded it, she left the organization in a widely publicized display of anger. She left because MADD changed its goal, becoming far more prohibitionist than she wanted or supported. “I didn’t start MADD to deal with alcohol,” she said. “I started MADD to deal with the issue of drunk driving.”
“In 1980 Candy Lightner’s twelve-year-old daughter, Cari, was killed by a drunk driver – a repeat offender. Brought to trial, the driver was reprimanded and released.
“In her 1990 memoir, Giving Sorrow Words she wrote: “I promised myself on the day of Cari’s death that I would fight to make this needless homicide count for something positive in the years ahead.”
“Lightner was certainly not the first mother to be outraged about lenient drunk-driving laws that returned chronic drunks to the streets. Even in 1980, when her daughter was killed, the statistics were well known and widely publicized. Drunk driving was the major cause of traffic fatalities in North America. In fact, it remains the single largest criminal cause death in Canada, where approximately 1,500 people are killed each year as a result of impaired driving, a number about three times higher than the country’s murder rate. The situation is worse in the United States.
“Following her daughter’s death, Lightner founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD).
“It has been said that nothing is so powerful as an idea whose time has come. It is clear that the time was right for Lightner’s initiative. The fledgling organization that she founded took wing on currents that bore it upward.”
In today’s City Press, Mphonyane Mofokeng, chair of the Southern African Alcohol Policy Alliance wrote about a new government initiative to combat alcohol abuse:
“Binge drinking is the norm in South Africa. A recent WHO report rates this country fourth on the list of places with the riskiest drinking. The report says 16% of the alcohol consumers in the country are heavy drinkers, and 41.2% of them are women.
“Research indicates 12% of people start drinking at the age of 13… Young adults were also the most common victims of fatal violence.”
“The state ultimately shoulders the responsibility of this drinking behaviour.”
“It is not about the state playing nanny. If there is no direct intervention to curb easy access to and the excessive use of alcohol, South Africa’s young population will feel the impact for generations to come.”
These are not the words of a white, older, foreign male. They were written by a younger, black, South African woman. In fact, another even younger South African woman - named Zodwa Ntuli - has been appointed to lead government’s drive to tighten alcohol regulations in line with international standards. One measure is to increase the legal age for consumption - from 18 to 21.
“Substance abuse is a massive problem and liquor, unlike most drugs, is readily and easily available. When kids start experimenting, they start with alcohol because it’s available.
“We’re not becoming a nanny state. We are responding to real issues that affect everyone at work, in communities and in families.”
Over the past decade, I have written passionately about other social evils in South Africa, such as:
- Government failure to roll out ARV distribution (C4L protested to the Global Fund in Geneva, and SANAC had to redress its distorted allocation of resources)
- Mpumalanga murders that started in 1998 (C4L did a poster campaign in mid-2011 and there has not been another whistle-blower shot in any January since 2011)
- Triumphalism, corruption and waste
- Inequality and unemployment especially among Mpumalanga youth
To sum up - as a social innovator myself (like Candy Lightner) - I know a social evil when I see one.
So both C4L programming and its Bulletins (like this one) are going to echo this theme more in the coming months. I am not in favour of affirmative action in its BEE form, but I would like to see another kind of affirmative action – in favour of the families and loved ones who get hurt because of alcohol abuse. Zero tolerance of drinking and driving is needed to reduce the number of road fatalities. Also, domestic abuse is so often linked to alcoholism. Let’s stop blaming the victims and make the perpetrators answer for their crimes.
For some of you, this may seem like déjà vu. But especially among youth in South Africa, there is need for awareness raising and behaviour change.
Back to Candy Lightner in closing:
“The goal of MADD was to reduce drunk-driving traffic fatalities and the proportion of traffic fatalities that are alcohol related has dropped 40 percent over the last quarter-century. Most observers give substantial credit for that decline to the efforts of MADD.
Since its start in 1980, more than 2,300 anti-drunk-driving laws have been passed.
In a 1994 study by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, MADD was the most popular non-profit cause in the United States, ranked second among the most strongly supported charities and third on the most credible list.
“Eight years after she had founded it, she left the organization in a widely publicized display of anger. She left because MADD changed its goal, becoming far more prohibitionist than she wanted or supported. “I didn’t start MADD to deal with alcohol,” she said. “I started MADD to deal with the issue of drunk driving.”
Wednesday, 17 December 2014
Hey, Who's That Girl?
That was more or less what Boaz said when he walked into his barley
field to check on the harvest. Over the years, I have interpreted this
favourite chapter 2 of the Book of Ruth variously. This reflects to
some extent contextual changes as well as changes in my life and work.
1. Refugee work
I first noticed this chapter, which is almost a one-act play, when I was living in Zimbabwe during the 1980s. There were so many Mozambican widows crossing the border for refuge at the time, as their men engaged in that proxy war. Like Ruth leaving her land of Moab and coming to Israel, leaving a series of disasters behind her.
I even preached from this chapter at times, as a way of unpacking what was happening, and the need for those with resources to provide mechanisms to show mercy. Gleaning was the Hebrew mechanism, a form of charity. Relief agencies are a modern equivalent, and I was working for World Vision at the time. The problem was that in refugee camps, the widows could not do much to receive the benefits of charity, which I found degrading. So we explored other options like food-for-work projects that still helped the needy without robbing them of their dignity.
2. Volunteering and Voluntarism
In the next decade, after the Cold War ended and apartheid with it, the focus was on building Democracy, participation, inclusion… My practice as an NGO consultant (“helping development organizations with organization development”) in the 1990s was one of the roots of C4L as a resource centre for nonprofits, beginning in 1999.
In morning meditations at C4L training events, I would often read this beloved chapter and apply it differently. All those in the work place are contributors, whether paid managers or unpaid volunteers. Gleaning may be a mechanism of charity, but it also serves an agricultural purpose in the scheme of crop rotation. If Boaz was going to plant another crop in that field during the next season, this would avoid having barley popping up where ever the grain has fallen to the ground during the harvest. So what every person contributes is important, no matter how insignificant they may feel. In fact, for a Human Resources meditation - in any sector not just for nonprofits - the drama of the Book of Ruth chapter 2 is useful and instructive.
3. The Rainbow Nation
During my two decades living in South Africa, into the new millennium, themes like non-racialism and xenophobia have been recurrent. One could always turn to this chapter for inspiration. Unlike the much stricter Nehemiah, who tore people’s hair out for inter-marrying with other races and culture, the message of the Book of Ruth is unambiguous. Ruth was not Jewish, but that didn’t matter to Boaz. By the same token, Ruth bought into the local culture, being a cultural relativist, not an enclave of Moabites in Bethlehem. In this she was incarnational.
4. Age-disparate Romance
Now some of you will laugh! I don’t know whether Boaz was a bachelor, a widower or a divorcee, it doesn’t say? But it is clear that he was older and wealthier than Ruth. One thing is for sure, though… it certainly didn’t take Boaz long once he arrived (fashionably late) to notice her. Did he have that much of an eye for detail? Or was she just drop-dead gorgeous? I’ll ask him when I meet him one day, this intrigues me.
In 2004, Save the Children published a study of research in Malawi called Cross-generational relationships: using a ‘Continuum of Volition’ in HIV prevention work among young people. It concluded: “rather than defining cross-generational relationships as inherently problematic, it is important to understand the choices (or lack of choices) that young women have in their own communities.” Ruth could have told them that, three thousand years earlier.
By lunch break, Boaz invites Ruth to eat with him and his workers. She stuffs herself full of bread and wine (she's poor and hungry, remember?). Then when Ruth leaves to go glean some more (she been at this all day; the young lady is a hard worker), Boaz tells his workers that she is allowed to take some non-charity grain as well. Was he just being altruistic? Or did he already have a crush on her?
Graca Machel married a man almost 30 years older than herself when he was almost 80. She and Nelson Mandela still got on like a house on fire, as did Boaz and Ruth… who eventually became the grandparents to King David. What better endorsement could you get than that?!
5. Inequality
Unemployment is a kind of inequality, because the others have jobs. Poverty is a manifestation of inequality because the others are wealthy. So I am not sure there is a “triple conundrum” – the lowest common denominator is inequality.
In its Medium-Term Strategic Framework 2014-2019 (MTSF), the government has lambasted as “offensive” those who show off their wealth. Josephilda Nhlapo-Hlophe, outcomes facilitator for the presidency’s department of planning, wrote the social cohesion section of the MTSF document. Get this!
“Many times we see people who we know do not work or have any access to income and suddenly, the person is driving a flashy car. The question people will ask is: ‘Where does that person get this money from?’
“This person might not be a good role model for young kids who think getting flashy things is more important than hard work and the contributions they are making to society. We are trying to build a citizen who knows you get rewarded for working hard.”
Makes you wonder if Boaz arrived at the barley field that day driving his Mazerati, or what?
It is that kind of insensitivity that led Karl Marx to famously comment: “The last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the rope.” Well, then what? In my view, scientific Socialism failed miserably to improve the quality of life. I lived and worked in Angola and Mozambique before the end of the Cold War. I walked into so many stores with empty shelves, they didn’t have food to sell, let alone rope! The answers lie rather in the example of Boaz, and three comments from our time:
“Warren Buffett wrote: “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
Pope Francis wrote: “These days there is a lot of poverty in the world, and that’s a scandal when we have so many riches and resources to give to everyone. We all have to think about how we can become a little poorer.”
Mamphela Ramphele wrote: “South Africa does not have a poverty problem. Poverty is a result of denialism of the way corruption taxes poor people, the inefficiencies that undermine poor people’s opportunities and our refusal to admit that we are part of the problem.”
1. Refugee work
I first noticed this chapter, which is almost a one-act play, when I was living in Zimbabwe during the 1980s. There were so many Mozambican widows crossing the border for refuge at the time, as their men engaged in that proxy war. Like Ruth leaving her land of Moab and coming to Israel, leaving a series of disasters behind her.
I even preached from this chapter at times, as a way of unpacking what was happening, and the need for those with resources to provide mechanisms to show mercy. Gleaning was the Hebrew mechanism, a form of charity. Relief agencies are a modern equivalent, and I was working for World Vision at the time. The problem was that in refugee camps, the widows could not do much to receive the benefits of charity, which I found degrading. So we explored other options like food-for-work projects that still helped the needy without robbing them of their dignity.
2. Volunteering and Voluntarism
In the next decade, after the Cold War ended and apartheid with it, the focus was on building Democracy, participation, inclusion… My practice as an NGO consultant (“helping development organizations with organization development”) in the 1990s was one of the roots of C4L as a resource centre for nonprofits, beginning in 1999.
In morning meditations at C4L training events, I would often read this beloved chapter and apply it differently. All those in the work place are contributors, whether paid managers or unpaid volunteers. Gleaning may be a mechanism of charity, but it also serves an agricultural purpose in the scheme of crop rotation. If Boaz was going to plant another crop in that field during the next season, this would avoid having barley popping up where ever the grain has fallen to the ground during the harvest. So what every person contributes is important, no matter how insignificant they may feel. In fact, for a Human Resources meditation - in any sector not just for nonprofits - the drama of the Book of Ruth chapter 2 is useful and instructive.
3. The Rainbow Nation
During my two decades living in South Africa, into the new millennium, themes like non-racialism and xenophobia have been recurrent. One could always turn to this chapter for inspiration. Unlike the much stricter Nehemiah, who tore people’s hair out for inter-marrying with other races and culture, the message of the Book of Ruth is unambiguous. Ruth was not Jewish, but that didn’t matter to Boaz. By the same token, Ruth bought into the local culture, being a cultural relativist, not an enclave of Moabites in Bethlehem. In this she was incarnational.
4. Age-disparate Romance
Now some of you will laugh! I don’t know whether Boaz was a bachelor, a widower or a divorcee, it doesn’t say? But it is clear that he was older and wealthier than Ruth. One thing is for sure, though… it certainly didn’t take Boaz long once he arrived (fashionably late) to notice her. Did he have that much of an eye for detail? Or was she just drop-dead gorgeous? I’ll ask him when I meet him one day, this intrigues me.
In 2004, Save the Children published a study of research in Malawi called Cross-generational relationships: using a ‘Continuum of Volition’ in HIV prevention work among young people. It concluded: “rather than defining cross-generational relationships as inherently problematic, it is important to understand the choices (or lack of choices) that young women have in their own communities.” Ruth could have told them that, three thousand years earlier.
By lunch break, Boaz invites Ruth to eat with him and his workers. She stuffs herself full of bread and wine (she's poor and hungry, remember?). Then when Ruth leaves to go glean some more (she been at this all day; the young lady is a hard worker), Boaz tells his workers that she is allowed to take some non-charity grain as well. Was he just being altruistic? Or did he already have a crush on her?
Graca Machel married a man almost 30 years older than herself when he was almost 80. She and Nelson Mandela still got on like a house on fire, as did Boaz and Ruth… who eventually became the grandparents to King David. What better endorsement could you get than that?!
5. Inequality
Unemployment is a kind of inequality, because the others have jobs. Poverty is a manifestation of inequality because the others are wealthy. So I am not sure there is a “triple conundrum” – the lowest common denominator is inequality.
In its Medium-Term Strategic Framework 2014-2019 (MTSF), the government has lambasted as “offensive” those who show off their wealth. Josephilda Nhlapo-Hlophe, outcomes facilitator for the presidency’s department of planning, wrote the social cohesion section of the MTSF document. Get this!
“Many times we see people who we know do not work or have any access to income and suddenly, the person is driving a flashy car. The question people will ask is: ‘Where does that person get this money from?’
“This person might not be a good role model for young kids who think getting flashy things is more important than hard work and the contributions they are making to society. We are trying to build a citizen who knows you get rewarded for working hard.”
Makes you wonder if Boaz arrived at the barley field that day driving his Mazerati, or what?
It is that kind of insensitivity that led Karl Marx to famously comment: “The last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the rope.” Well, then what? In my view, scientific Socialism failed miserably to improve the quality of life. I lived and worked in Angola and Mozambique before the end of the Cold War. I walked into so many stores with empty shelves, they didn’t have food to sell, let alone rope! The answers lie rather in the example of Boaz, and three comments from our time:
“Warren Buffett wrote: “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
Pope Francis wrote: “These days there is a lot of poverty in the world, and that’s a scandal when we have so many riches and resources to give to everyone. We all have to think about how we can become a little poorer.”
Mamphela Ramphele wrote: “South Africa does not have a poverty problem. Poverty is a result of denialism of the way corruption taxes poor people, the inefficiencies that undermine poor people’s opportunities and our refusal to admit that we are part of the problem.”
Monday, 15 December 2014
The Bible and the Almanac
We lament the departure of this great artist and human being yesterday.
When Seeger wrote If I had a hammer in 1949, Bono was but a twinkle in his father's eye.
But that song has become like our International anthem.
I wrote the tribute below in 2007 - to my own father on the occasion of his winning of the
Order of Canada for humanitarian service. It was never before posted as a C4L Bulletin, so
this is not a re-run. All I can say is this gives you some idea of the stature of Pete Seeger -
the yardstick against which I measure greatness.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the 1940s, two musical groups were formed which would have a great influence on my
life. One was called the Med's Gospel Team, in Canada, because the members were all
studying medicine. One of the team members would later get married and become my father.
The other was called the Almanac Singers, in the USA, which included Pete Seeger and
Woodie Guthrie. Obviously the emphasis of these groups differed – one was evangelistic and
the other was social/cultural. The better known group (by far) had chosen its name out of its
belief that most farm homes had two books – a Bible and an almanac.
Maybe this explains why my two favorite forms of music are hymns and protest songs? I
love to hear my father playing hymns on the piano, and I still agree with Pete Seeger's
comment at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival – when he said he wished that he had an axe to
cut the cord of Bob Dylan's microphone! This because Dylan had just been accompanied by
the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, and no one could hear the message in his music.
As a young man, Pete Seeger embraced the conviction that songs are a way of binding people
to a cause. John and Charles Wesley were the minister and the musician that launched
Methodism. Seeger's father - a music academic - wrote that the necessary question to ask
was not “Is it good music?” but “What is the music good for?”
Pete Seeger's influence is amazing. Dylan was not just Seeger's heir apparent, perhaps more
of his legitimization. Johnny Cash was but a teen idol until he re-recorded his song Folsom
Prison Blues in a new setting – not in a concert hall or recording studio, but live at Folsom
Prison. Songs like Man in Black, that influenced me personally, put deeper meaning in the
music and that placed Cash (the other JC in my life) in a whole new league. He in turn
influenced others - like Bono, who in the Cash tradition usually dresses in black. And Bruce
Springsteen, who was asked to record a tribute album to Seeger in 1997. In the end, he
recorded but did not include the song that has surely influenced my life more than any other...
it just asserted itself too forcefully among the others in his collection:
It's the hammer of justice
It's the bell of freedom
It's the song about the love between my brothers and my sisters
All over this land
No wonder Bono would be named Man of the Year by TIME magazine, for following
Seeger's lyrical advice - and example. I have certainly tried to live my life in alignment to
these lyrics. Recently, Seeger was introduced at a “pro bono” school concert with these
words: “He's probably the person who's done more for this country than anyone I can think
of.”
You need both spirituality and activism – Bible and almanac. Upon graduation from medical
school, the members of the Med's Gospel Team all became medical missionaries. They
headed for three continents - into Ecuador, Zambia and China. However, en route to China
my father stopped in Europe to study tropical medicine. During that year (1949) the Bamboo
Curtain came down and missionaries were no longer able to enter. So he diverted to the
Belgian Congo, where I was born.
The principle that both groups shared is that all human beings are created equal. In the mid-
20th century, this meant either you could either become a missionary or a socialist – Bible or
almanac, I suppose. The medical missionaries exerted huge influence in remote parts of the
Third World. Meanwhile, Seeger got called up before Congress's Un-American Activities
Committee. For pleading the First Amendment (not the Fifth) he was indicted for contempt
of Congress, but this was later overturned by an appeals court. Advocacy is seen by many as
a higher calling than service provision, but it often comes at a cost in terms of your
reputation. But having a bad reputation does not always mean that you lose your influence.
Medical missionaries in countries that joined the Second World (communist bloc) often lost
their reputation when they were called reactionaries, but this seldom diminished their
influence.
Here is a story recorded by Alec Wilkinson in the New Yorker (April 17, 2006). It is told by
a man named John Cronin, who is the director of the Pace Academy for the Environment, at
Pace University. Cronin has known Seeger for thirty years. “About two winters ago, on
Route 9 outside Beacon, one winter day, it was freezing – rainy and slushy, a miserable
winter day – the war in Iraq is just heating up and the country's in a poor mood,” Cronin said.
“I'm driving north, and on the other side of the road, I see from the back a tall, slim figure in
a hood and coat. I'm looking, and I can tell it's Pete. He's standing there all by himself, and
he's holding up a big piece of cardboard that clearly has something written on it. Cars and
trucks are going by him. He's getting wet. He's holding the homemade sign above his head –
he's very tall, and his chin is raised the way he does when he sings – and he's turning the sign
in a semi-circle, so that the drivers can see it as they pass, and some people are honking and
waving at him, and some people are giving him the finger. He's eighty-four years old. I
know he's got some purpose, of course, but I don't know what it is. What struck me is that,
whatever his intentions are, and obviously he wants people to notice what he's doing, he
wants to make an impression – anyway, whatever they are, he doesn't call the newspapers and
say, “I'm Pete Seeger, here's what I'm going to do.” He doesn't cultivate publicity. That isn't
what he does. He's far more modest than that. He would never make a fuss. He's just
standing out there in the cold and the sleet like a scarecrow. I go a little bit down the road, so
that I can turn and come back, and when I get him in view again, this solitary and elderly
figure, I see that what he's written on the sign is Peace.”
Advocacy is legitimized by social activism. It is important to be out there, doing your part,
not just speaking on talk shows and stuff. Which brings me to the purpose of writing these
reflections. My father is almost as old as Pete Seeger, and he is still an activist too. Already
in 2007 he has spent two months overseas, helping out his favorite cause. It was good to
observe him back in a position of influence – helping to bring about intellectual and
attitudinal change...
But best of all, for a career that has included both overseas and domestic health service, and
for his example of serving others through faith-based organizations, he was awarded the
Order of Canada this month. This is the highest civilian honor that can be bestowed on a
citizen, and he deserves it.
This month also, TIME magazine released its annual issue containing the 100 most influential
people in the world. I was wondering how many of those listed will have the staying power
of these two personal heroes of mine - one who taught me to revere the Bible, and the other
who wrote protest songs for the Almanac Singers? To love my neighbor, and to hammer out
injustice. If only two of the 100 can do so, the world will be a better place for our
grandchildren.
When Seeger wrote If I had a hammer in 1949, Bono was but a twinkle in his father's eye.
But that song has become like our International anthem.
I wrote the tribute below in 2007 - to my own father on the occasion of his winning of the
Order of Canada for humanitarian service. It was never before posted as a C4L Bulletin, so
this is not a re-run. All I can say is this gives you some idea of the stature of Pete Seeger -
the yardstick against which I measure greatness.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the 1940s, two musical groups were formed which would have a great influence on my
life. One was called the Med's Gospel Team, in Canada, because the members were all
studying medicine. One of the team members would later get married and become my father.
The other was called the Almanac Singers, in the USA, which included Pete Seeger and
Woodie Guthrie. Obviously the emphasis of these groups differed – one was evangelistic and
the other was social/cultural. The better known group (by far) had chosen its name out of its
belief that most farm homes had two books – a Bible and an almanac.
Maybe this explains why my two favorite forms of music are hymns and protest songs? I
love to hear my father playing hymns on the piano, and I still agree with Pete Seeger's
comment at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival – when he said he wished that he had an axe to
cut the cord of Bob Dylan's microphone! This because Dylan had just been accompanied by
the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, and no one could hear the message in his music.
As a young man, Pete Seeger embraced the conviction that songs are a way of binding people
to a cause. John and Charles Wesley were the minister and the musician that launched
Methodism. Seeger's father - a music academic - wrote that the necessary question to ask
was not “Is it good music?” but “What is the music good for?”
Pete Seeger's influence is amazing. Dylan was not just Seeger's heir apparent, perhaps more
of his legitimization. Johnny Cash was but a teen idol until he re-recorded his song Folsom
Prison Blues in a new setting – not in a concert hall or recording studio, but live at Folsom
Prison. Songs like Man in Black, that influenced me personally, put deeper meaning in the
music and that placed Cash (the other JC in my life) in a whole new league. He in turn
influenced others - like Bono, who in the Cash tradition usually dresses in black. And Bruce
Springsteen, who was asked to record a tribute album to Seeger in 1997. In the end, he
recorded but did not include the song that has surely influenced my life more than any other...
it just asserted itself too forcefully among the others in his collection:
It's the hammer of justice
It's the bell of freedom
It's the song about the love between my brothers and my sisters
All over this land
No wonder Bono would be named Man of the Year by TIME magazine, for following
Seeger's lyrical advice - and example. I have certainly tried to live my life in alignment to
these lyrics. Recently, Seeger was introduced at a “pro bono” school concert with these
words: “He's probably the person who's done more for this country than anyone I can think
of.”
You need both spirituality and activism – Bible and almanac. Upon graduation from medical
school, the members of the Med's Gospel Team all became medical missionaries. They
headed for three continents - into Ecuador, Zambia and China. However, en route to China
my father stopped in Europe to study tropical medicine. During that year (1949) the Bamboo
Curtain came down and missionaries were no longer able to enter. So he diverted to the
Belgian Congo, where I was born.
The principle that both groups shared is that all human beings are created equal. In the mid-
20th century, this meant either you could either become a missionary or a socialist – Bible or
almanac, I suppose. The medical missionaries exerted huge influence in remote parts of the
Third World. Meanwhile, Seeger got called up before Congress's Un-American Activities
Committee. For pleading the First Amendment (not the Fifth) he was indicted for contempt
of Congress, but this was later overturned by an appeals court. Advocacy is seen by many as
a higher calling than service provision, but it often comes at a cost in terms of your
reputation. But having a bad reputation does not always mean that you lose your influence.
Medical missionaries in countries that joined the Second World (communist bloc) often lost
their reputation when they were called reactionaries, but this seldom diminished their
influence.
Here is a story recorded by Alec Wilkinson in the New Yorker (April 17, 2006). It is told by
a man named John Cronin, who is the director of the Pace Academy for the Environment, at
Pace University. Cronin has known Seeger for thirty years. “About two winters ago, on
Route 9 outside Beacon, one winter day, it was freezing – rainy and slushy, a miserable
winter day – the war in Iraq is just heating up and the country's in a poor mood,” Cronin said.
“I'm driving north, and on the other side of the road, I see from the back a tall, slim figure in
a hood and coat. I'm looking, and I can tell it's Pete. He's standing there all by himself, and
he's holding up a big piece of cardboard that clearly has something written on it. Cars and
trucks are going by him. He's getting wet. He's holding the homemade sign above his head –
he's very tall, and his chin is raised the way he does when he sings – and he's turning the sign
in a semi-circle, so that the drivers can see it as they pass, and some people are honking and
waving at him, and some people are giving him the finger. He's eighty-four years old. I
know he's got some purpose, of course, but I don't know what it is. What struck me is that,
whatever his intentions are, and obviously he wants people to notice what he's doing, he
wants to make an impression – anyway, whatever they are, he doesn't call the newspapers and
say, “I'm Pete Seeger, here's what I'm going to do.” He doesn't cultivate publicity. That isn't
what he does. He's far more modest than that. He would never make a fuss. He's just
standing out there in the cold and the sleet like a scarecrow. I go a little bit down the road, so
that I can turn and come back, and when I get him in view again, this solitary and elderly
figure, I see that what he's written on the sign is Peace.”
Advocacy is legitimized by social activism. It is important to be out there, doing your part,
not just speaking on talk shows and stuff. Which brings me to the purpose of writing these
reflections. My father is almost as old as Pete Seeger, and he is still an activist too. Already
in 2007 he has spent two months overseas, helping out his favorite cause. It was good to
observe him back in a position of influence – helping to bring about intellectual and
attitudinal change...
But best of all, for a career that has included both overseas and domestic health service, and
for his example of serving others through faith-based organizations, he was awarded the
Order of Canada this month. This is the highest civilian honor that can be bestowed on a
citizen, and he deserves it.
This month also, TIME magazine released its annual issue containing the 100 most influential
people in the world. I was wondering how many of those listed will have the staying power
of these two personal heroes of mine - one who taught me to revere the Bible, and the other
who wrote protest songs for the Almanac Singers? To love my neighbor, and to hammer out
injustice. If only two of the 100 can do so, the world will be a better place for our
grandchildren.
Sunday, 30 November 2014
Selflessness
What is it like for a person to be "selfless"?
Marya Sklodowska was born in Poland in 1867. Like Nelson Mandela, she was born in one century, and died in the next - in a new and different era. That change in their respective settings and centuries could be attributed largely to the influence each of them exerted in their sphere Like Mandela, Marya came from a disadvantaged background. She too was a single orphan, she lost her mother as a child, whereas Mandela lost his father. But compared to Mandela - who enjoyed the limelight - Marya cherished privacy. Later in life, when she won her second Nobel prize, her husband stated that the media attention that this attracted was the worst thing that had ever happened to them!
Mandela’s life took a turn when he moved to the big city of Johannesburg. In Marya’s case, the sea change came when she got to Paris. Both of them spent their first few years completing their studies and struggling to get established in their respective professions – he as a lawyer and she as a scientist. In their cities, they each got married – Nelson to Evelyn and Marya to Pierre Curie. So she became better known by her francophone name Marie and her married name Curie. She has come to be known, in fact, as Madame Curie. Yet I have never known of a person who was more selfless:
She was the first women ever to be awarded a PhD in France. And the first woman ever to win a Nobel prize. And the first person ever to win Nobel prizes in two different sciences – Physics (1903) and Chemistry (1911).
In this respect, the parallel to Nelson Mandela refers. At Marie Curie’s time in France, it was unthinkable for a woman to even be nominated for a Nobel laureate. In fact, she wasn’t – her husband and another scientist (Henri Becquerel) were. But in more liberal Sweden, the Nobel committee awarded her the prize nevertheless, realizing that she was being discriminated against. Who could have dreamed that after 3 decades of incarceration, Mandela would become President? Both scenarios were breathtaking – and rooted in selflessness. Justice and “the beauty of science” were paramount to them.
One irony is that Alfred Nobel himself had made his personal fortune from discovering and patenting dynamite. Upon his death, he bequeathed that fortune to fund the Nobel prizes. Either one of Marie Curie’s discoveries could have been patented far beyond the value of dynamite – Xray and radioactivity. (It was she, in fact, who coined that word “radioactivity” to describe what she had discovered.) Yet she declined to register patents for the sake of “pure science” for its own sake. Excellence is its own reward.
“True grit” is part of selflessness as well. Mandela toughed it out in prison for 27 years for the cause he championed. He did hard labour in the lime quarry on Robben Island. Like Marie Curie, his own health was affected by his exposure – in his case, to the fine dust, that damaged his tear ducts.
As for Marie, it is almost inconceivable just how much physical work she did! Processing uranium ore (pitchblende) to refine polonium and later radium is painstaking, time-consuming hard labour. In this, she was her own prisoner. The final product turned out to be one-millionth the volume that you start with (compared to one litre of maple syrup which is boiled down from 30 litres of tree sap!) Imagine – one million to one… processed by one person working by herself for about 4 years. It was back breaking work. Marie’s resolve is epitomized in this quote… she said: “One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.”
She was also very loyal – for example, naming Polonium after her beloved homeland.
Albert Einstein said: “Marie Curie is, of all celebrated beings, the only one whom fame has not corrupted.” In this, her selflessness is also similar to Mandela’s – whose movement became horribly corrupt after his voluntary retirement.
Which makes me wonder…
Have we lost an appreciation for virtues like selflessness, zealous resolve, prudence, and tenacious loyalty?
Have these been corrupted into attitudes like self-preservation, cynicism, a preoccupation with credentials and track records, and fashion crazes?
At the root of Corruption are bad attitudes. Let us adopt role-models that serve as mirrors.
Marya Sklodowska was born in Poland in 1867. Like Nelson Mandela, she was born in one century, and died in the next - in a new and different era. That change in their respective settings and centuries could be attributed largely to the influence each of them exerted in their sphere Like Mandela, Marya came from a disadvantaged background. She too was a single orphan, she lost her mother as a child, whereas Mandela lost his father. But compared to Mandela - who enjoyed the limelight - Marya cherished privacy. Later in life, when she won her second Nobel prize, her husband stated that the media attention that this attracted was the worst thing that had ever happened to them!
Mandela’s life took a turn when he moved to the big city of Johannesburg. In Marya’s case, the sea change came when she got to Paris. Both of them spent their first few years completing their studies and struggling to get established in their respective professions – he as a lawyer and she as a scientist. In their cities, they each got married – Nelson to Evelyn and Marya to Pierre Curie. So she became better known by her francophone name Marie and her married name Curie. She has come to be known, in fact, as Madame Curie. Yet I have never known of a person who was more selfless:
- After finishing high school she put her own education on hold and worked to put her older sister through college. After graduating from medical school, her sister reciprocated
- She practiced an austerity that verged on self-denial. She rented small rooms that were so sparsely furnished that she didn’t even hang pictures on the wall!
- With a wedding gift she received, she bought two bicycles that she and her groom used for the honeymoon – pedaling through the countryside of France
- She worked in abysmal conditions, far beyond the limits of normal working hours - all for the sake of her passion for scientific research
- She declined to patent any of her discoveries or inventions, leaving them instead to posterity for the advancement of science
- She shared much of her prize money with others in need, in part to establish two radium research institutes – in Paris and Warsaw
- She worked behind the front lines of battle in World War I training 150 X-ray technicians to use this new diagnostic tool that she had developed to locate bullets and shrapnel for removal from wounded soldiers
- She exposed herself to radioactivity levels that shortened her life. She died of leukemia induced by overexposure, before her time
She was the first women ever to be awarded a PhD in France. And the first woman ever to win a Nobel prize. And the first person ever to win Nobel prizes in two different sciences – Physics (1903) and Chemistry (1911).
In this respect, the parallel to Nelson Mandela refers. At Marie Curie’s time in France, it was unthinkable for a woman to even be nominated for a Nobel laureate. In fact, she wasn’t – her husband and another scientist (Henri Becquerel) were. But in more liberal Sweden, the Nobel committee awarded her the prize nevertheless, realizing that she was being discriminated against. Who could have dreamed that after 3 decades of incarceration, Mandela would become President? Both scenarios were breathtaking – and rooted in selflessness. Justice and “the beauty of science” were paramount to them.
One irony is that Alfred Nobel himself had made his personal fortune from discovering and patenting dynamite. Upon his death, he bequeathed that fortune to fund the Nobel prizes. Either one of Marie Curie’s discoveries could have been patented far beyond the value of dynamite – Xray and radioactivity. (It was she, in fact, who coined that word “radioactivity” to describe what she had discovered.) Yet she declined to register patents for the sake of “pure science” for its own sake. Excellence is its own reward.
“True grit” is part of selflessness as well. Mandela toughed it out in prison for 27 years for the cause he championed. He did hard labour in the lime quarry on Robben Island. Like Marie Curie, his own health was affected by his exposure – in his case, to the fine dust, that damaged his tear ducts.
As for Marie, it is almost inconceivable just how much physical work she did! Processing uranium ore (pitchblende) to refine polonium and later radium is painstaking, time-consuming hard labour. In this, she was her own prisoner. The final product turned out to be one-millionth the volume that you start with (compared to one litre of maple syrup which is boiled down from 30 litres of tree sap!) Imagine – one million to one… processed by one person working by herself for about 4 years. It was back breaking work. Marie’s resolve is epitomized in this quote… she said: “One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.”
She was also very loyal – for example, naming Polonium after her beloved homeland.
Albert Einstein said: “Marie Curie is, of all celebrated beings, the only one whom fame has not corrupted.” In this, her selflessness is also similar to Mandela’s – whose movement became horribly corrupt after his voluntary retirement.
Which makes me wonder…
Have we lost an appreciation for virtues like selflessness, zealous resolve, prudence, and tenacious loyalty?
Have these been corrupted into attitudes like self-preservation, cynicism, a preoccupation with credentials and track records, and fashion crazes?
At the root of Corruption are bad attitudes. Let us adopt role-models that serve as mirrors.
Saturday, 15 November 2014
Mandela Meditations
It's been quite a week. Intriguing. At times moving. Quite remarkable.
Yesterday more than 100 world leaders attended the Mandela memorial along with 70 000 South Africans in a stadium that many associate with the 2010 soccer World Cup. Madiba worked so hard and so long to bring that tournament to Africa.
I will just share a few highlights of my reflections during this grieving process...
I saw Bill Clinton being interviewed. He and Mandela were concurrent presidents in their respective countries. They remained good friends. Both have strong Methodist roots. Clinton said that he once got up the courage to ask Mandela if, as he famously walked out of those prison gates, he really didn't hate those people who kept him incarcerated for 27 years. He answered Clinton: "Briefly. But I knew that if I kept hating them, I would still be their prisoner. And I wanted to be free. So I let it go."
This says a lot to me about the nature of forgiveness. It is not only good for those we forgive. It is good for us. "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those that trespass against us." At some stage, we need to let go of hate, and put the past behind us.
President Obama's eulogy yesterday was the best. He included a Mandela quote that has fascinated me: "I am not a saint, unless by that you mean a sinner who keeps trying." I resonate with this comment. For far too long I somehow associated the word "missionary" with the saints. But I myself am living proof that this is not so. But I do keep trying to contribute. At the end of my CV is my epitaph: "I came. I saw. I contributed." I am not a conqueror. Or a saint. But I am a missionary.
The third Mandela quote that has intrigued me is from the Treason Trials. Obama reminded us that this speech was at the time of Kennedy and Kruschev! "I have fought white domination and I have fought black domination." Years later, no, decades later, he was still fighting both. The main plot was of course ending white minority rule. But there were those who wanted to replace white domination with black domination. That was the sub-plot to the story, and we have to recognize Mandela's role on that front as well. His parting with Winnie could be construed in this light. He was President of all South Africans, and she had become embittered and radicalized. Mamphela Ramphele calls it "woundedness" - generically, I don't mean that she said that of Winnie specifically. Some people, no, many people, still can't get past "the past". Mandela’s great spirituality stems from that one word in his reply to Clinton: "Briefly." He felt it... then he let it go.
By the way, the movie Long Walk to Freedom does Winnie a big favour - by putting her militant attitudes in context. She really suffered for the cause... in solitary confinement for over a year. A mother parted from her children. It's funny, many are quick to forgive her, who are slow to forgive and forget "the past". Mandela somehow managed to get above it all.
My mind keeps asking: What is the difference between “black domination” and affirmative action that favours the large majority?
That brings me back to another favorite theme and person... I see that TIME magazine has voted Pope Francis I to be Person of the Year for 2013. I second the emotion. Here's why, from an article by Mike Kohen this week called Our country is still in white hands:
"The stability that Mandela engineered in those early days after apartheid never made South Africa an economic dynamo. Economic growth has averaged 3.5% since 2004, compared with 10.5% in China.
"Moreover, the Gini coefficient, a measure of economic equality, has risen to 0.63 in 2009 from 0.59 in 1993, making South Africa one of the world's most unequal countries."
The risk to Mandela's legacy is that "inequality and exclusion" (to quote Pope Francis, again generically speaking) could drain the gains. In any country, regardless of the colour bar, poor people can come to resent the rich. Not always and not everywhere, depending to some extent on the local culture's comfort or discomfort with what Gerte Hofstede calls "power distance". But where the disparities are acute and glaring, it will breed discontent. Aristotle said that inequality is the mother of revolution.
Yes, there has to be redress, no question. But when is the cut-off point for affirmative action? Or will there ever be one, when the rich are getting richer and ranks of the poor are growing? Also, as the ranks of the rich include more and more "successful" blacks, is not a class system being created? Put another way, many poor people will not be in a forgiving mood, ready to forget "the past". So it is double-jeopardy for South Africa to let the "wealth gap" increase.
If you are rich by your own standards, the question is: How much is enough?
If you are “historically disadvantaged” and thus deserve positive discrimination, the question is: How long should you have that advantage, before YOU end up with more than enough?
Thinking Locally, Acting Globally
For non-South Africans, the example of Nelson Mandela is also relevant. For in his own rural poor context, he was also privileged – from the royal family, getting early exposure to leadership role models and an education. After urbanizing, he became a professional, a lawyer, and co-owned a law firm with Oliver Tambo. So he was (relatively) well off, although among the oppressed. Even in prison, he was a political prisoner, not a criminal.
The point is, look what he did with the few advantages he enjoyed. I was reduced to tears this week when Mac Maharaj, a co-prisoner at Robben island, described how Mandela would sometimes be served better food than the other prisoners because of the esteem that even his jailers had for him. Like bread, when everyone else got only pap. He would call over other prisoners, especially the younger ones, and share it with them, recognizing the deprivation that they faced because of a shared cause.
We need to apply the biblical principles that are there in the Old Testament Poor Laws – sabbath, sabbatical, Jubilee… to keep leveling the playing field. This has to be continuous. Pope Francis is right that money can end up being a form of idolatry, like the Golden Calf.
Yesterday more than 100 world leaders attended the Mandela memorial along with 70 000 South Africans in a stadium that many associate with the 2010 soccer World Cup. Madiba worked so hard and so long to bring that tournament to Africa.
I will just share a few highlights of my reflections during this grieving process...
I saw Bill Clinton being interviewed. He and Mandela were concurrent presidents in their respective countries. They remained good friends. Both have strong Methodist roots. Clinton said that he once got up the courage to ask Mandela if, as he famously walked out of those prison gates, he really didn't hate those people who kept him incarcerated for 27 years. He answered Clinton: "Briefly. But I knew that if I kept hating them, I would still be their prisoner. And I wanted to be free. So I let it go."
This says a lot to me about the nature of forgiveness. It is not only good for those we forgive. It is good for us. "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those that trespass against us." At some stage, we need to let go of hate, and put the past behind us.
President Obama's eulogy yesterday was the best. He included a Mandela quote that has fascinated me: "I am not a saint, unless by that you mean a sinner who keeps trying." I resonate with this comment. For far too long I somehow associated the word "missionary" with the saints. But I myself am living proof that this is not so. But I do keep trying to contribute. At the end of my CV is my epitaph: "I came. I saw. I contributed." I am not a conqueror. Or a saint. But I am a missionary.
The third Mandela quote that has intrigued me is from the Treason Trials. Obama reminded us that this speech was at the time of Kennedy and Kruschev! "I have fought white domination and I have fought black domination." Years later, no, decades later, he was still fighting both. The main plot was of course ending white minority rule. But there were those who wanted to replace white domination with black domination. That was the sub-plot to the story, and we have to recognize Mandela's role on that front as well. His parting with Winnie could be construed in this light. He was President of all South Africans, and she had become embittered and radicalized. Mamphela Ramphele calls it "woundedness" - generically, I don't mean that she said that of Winnie specifically. Some people, no, many people, still can't get past "the past". Mandela’s great spirituality stems from that one word in his reply to Clinton: "Briefly." He felt it... then he let it go.
By the way, the movie Long Walk to Freedom does Winnie a big favour - by putting her militant attitudes in context. She really suffered for the cause... in solitary confinement for over a year. A mother parted from her children. It's funny, many are quick to forgive her, who are slow to forgive and forget "the past". Mandela somehow managed to get above it all.
My mind keeps asking: What is the difference between “black domination” and affirmative action that favours the large majority?
That brings me back to another favorite theme and person... I see that TIME magazine has voted Pope Francis I to be Person of the Year for 2013. I second the emotion. Here's why, from an article by Mike Kohen this week called Our country is still in white hands:
"The stability that Mandela engineered in those early days after apartheid never made South Africa an economic dynamo. Economic growth has averaged 3.5% since 2004, compared with 10.5% in China.
"Moreover, the Gini coefficient, a measure of economic equality, has risen to 0.63 in 2009 from 0.59 in 1993, making South Africa one of the world's most unequal countries."
The risk to Mandela's legacy is that "inequality and exclusion" (to quote Pope Francis, again generically speaking) could drain the gains. In any country, regardless of the colour bar, poor people can come to resent the rich. Not always and not everywhere, depending to some extent on the local culture's comfort or discomfort with what Gerte Hofstede calls "power distance". But where the disparities are acute and glaring, it will breed discontent. Aristotle said that inequality is the mother of revolution.
Yes, there has to be redress, no question. But when is the cut-off point for affirmative action? Or will there ever be one, when the rich are getting richer and ranks of the poor are growing? Also, as the ranks of the rich include more and more "successful" blacks, is not a class system being created? Put another way, many poor people will not be in a forgiving mood, ready to forget "the past". So it is double-jeopardy for South Africa to let the "wealth gap" increase.
If you are rich by your own standards, the question is: How much is enough?
If you are “historically disadvantaged” and thus deserve positive discrimination, the question is: How long should you have that advantage, before YOU end up with more than enough?
Thinking Locally, Acting Globally
For non-South Africans, the example of Nelson Mandela is also relevant. For in his own rural poor context, he was also privileged – from the royal family, getting early exposure to leadership role models and an education. After urbanizing, he became a professional, a lawyer, and co-owned a law firm with Oliver Tambo. So he was (relatively) well off, although among the oppressed. Even in prison, he was a political prisoner, not a criminal.
The point is, look what he did with the few advantages he enjoyed. I was reduced to tears this week when Mac Maharaj, a co-prisoner at Robben island, described how Mandela would sometimes be served better food than the other prisoners because of the esteem that even his jailers had for him. Like bread, when everyone else got only pap. He would call over other prisoners, especially the younger ones, and share it with them, recognizing the deprivation that they faced because of a shared cause.
We need to apply the biblical principles that are there in the Old Testament Poor Laws – sabbath, sabbatical, Jubilee… to keep leveling the playing field. This has to be continuous. Pope Francis is right that money can end up being a form of idolatry, like the Golden Calf.
Saturday, 1 November 2014
Feast of All Saints
For Christians in the West, November 1st is All Saints Day. This is the origin of Halloween, for sometimes the feast is called All Hallows, venerating those who have reached Paradise. It is a national holiday in many historically Catholic countries. In the Catholic Church and Church of England, the next day (All Souls) specifically commemorates the departed faithful. This of course relates to Purgatory. At the base of this is a sense that there is a link between the living (militant) and the dead and for some, between those still in Purgatory (suffering) and those who already reached Paradise (triumphant). The all-in-one term is “cloud of witnesses” from Hebrews. This is a day to celebrate just that.
Oh when the saints
Go marchin in
Oh when the saints go marchin in
Lord, I wanna be in that number!
When the saints go marchin in
The festival was retained after the Reformation in the calendar of the Church of England and in many Lutheran churches. In the Swedish calendar, the observance takes place on the Saturday between 31 October and 6 November. That would be this Saturday! In many Lutheran Churches, it is moved to the first Sunday of November. In the Anglican church it may be celebrated either on 1 November or on the Sunday between 30 October and 5 November. That would be this Sunday! It is also celebrated by other Protestants of the English tradition, such as the United Church of Canada, the Methodist churches, and the Wesleyan church.
The African “church triumphant”
Time for a commercial break! Don’t forget to order your 2014 desktop calendar from C4L. Its theme is speaking truth to power. So it is a self-financing attempt to influence leaders.
Original portraits were commissioned for this project by a local White River artist - of no less than a dozen departed African saints. I have it on good authority that not one of these is stuck in Purgatory. Plus you get three living legends – all African bishops.
The calendar is $12 plus freight which is unfortunately $11 into Canada. We can drop the price per calendar to $8 if you order quantities, but the postage remains the same. It makes a nice Christmas gift, or a year-end corporate gift. It is designed to use for many years as the full colour portrait side of the display has no shelf life.
Order from publications@C4L.org
Only three of the 12 months are dedicated to women, which has more to say about Africa and church history than anything. So to do my penance as editor of the calendar, for this lack of gender balance, allow me to salute a few more in the run-up to All Saints.
From Africa’s “church militant” - Africa’s Leading Women
First I have to register an apology. In the last C4L Bulletin I mentioned that there had only been one woman President in Africa – ever. Not so! I stand corrected. In fact there have been five, as follows:
Malawi President Joyce Banda deserves a medal for selling the presidential jet for $15 million and using the money to avert a food crisis. It was estimated that the proceeds of the sale could feed up to a million people. She also dissolved her entire cabinet because of corruption.
Graca Machel deserves honourable mention for staying at Nelson Mandela’s side throughout his recent hospital stay. She is an amazing role model who belies all the xenophobia and machismo that manifests itself in local cultures. She certainly deserves to be among the Elders with the likes of Kofi Annan and Desmond Tutu.
Leah Tutu is the proverbial great woman behind the great man. She says that he proposed to her by saying, "My parents want me to get married." She calls it the most unromantic proposal ever made. She responded, "I will help you to be obedient to your parents."
Most people do not know that she was, at first, the family activist, the co-founder of the South African Domestic Workers Association, which brought relief to many women working in that once unregulated space in which black maids were often left to the mercy of the white madams. The legacy of SADWA is celebrated to this day.
She felt the heat herself, during the Struggle. Not to mention standing beside Father Desmond. All through this, she raised a family. All her children have been highly educated.
In a country where leaders are so often charged with corruption, where family love relationships dissolve in such spectacular public fashion, and where one-time activists fight shamelessly to acquire for themselves the spoils of war, we love Desmond and Leah because they represent so powerfully the kind of country we wish we had.
From Desmond Tutu’s collection of poems called AN AFRICAN PRAYER BOOK, comes this one from Bread for Tomorrow in Kenya - called DELIVER ME:
From the cowardice that dare not face new truths
From the laziness that is contented with half truths
From the arrogance that thinks it knows all truth
Good Lord deliver me
Oh when the saints
Go marchin in
Oh when the saints go marchin in
Lord, I wanna be in that number!
When the saints go marchin in
The festival was retained after the Reformation in the calendar of the Church of England and in many Lutheran churches. In the Swedish calendar, the observance takes place on the Saturday between 31 October and 6 November. That would be this Saturday! In many Lutheran Churches, it is moved to the first Sunday of November. In the Anglican church it may be celebrated either on 1 November or on the Sunday between 30 October and 5 November. That would be this Sunday! It is also celebrated by other Protestants of the English tradition, such as the United Church of Canada, the Methodist churches, and the Wesleyan church.
The African “church triumphant”
Time for a commercial break! Don’t forget to order your 2014 desktop calendar from C4L. Its theme is speaking truth to power. So it is a self-financing attempt to influence leaders.
Original portraits were commissioned for this project by a local White River artist - of no less than a dozen departed African saints. I have it on good authority that not one of these is stuck in Purgatory. Plus you get three living legends – all African bishops.
The calendar is $12 plus freight which is unfortunately $11 into Canada. We can drop the price per calendar to $8 if you order quantities, but the postage remains the same. It makes a nice Christmas gift, or a year-end corporate gift. It is designed to use for many years as the full colour portrait side of the display has no shelf life.
Order from publications@C4L.org
Only three of the 12 months are dedicated to women, which has more to say about Africa and church history than anything. So to do my penance as editor of the calendar, for this lack of gender balance, allow me to salute a few more in the run-up to All Saints.
- Eve – first African woman
- Charlotte Maxeke – first African woman to get a university degree
- “Ma” Albertina Sisulu – Walter’s wife
From Africa’s “church militant” - Africa’s Leading Women
First I have to register an apology. In the last C4L Bulletin I mentioned that there had only been one woman President in Africa – ever. Not so! I stand corrected. In fact there have been five, as follows:
Carmen Perreira
|
Guinea Bissau
|
2 days
|
Sylvie Kinigi
|
Burundi
|
101 days
|
Ruth Perry
|
Liberia
|
332 days
|
Ellen Sirleaf
|
Liberia
|
8 years
|
Joyce Banda
|
Malawi
|
1 year
|
Malawi President Joyce Banda deserves a medal for selling the presidential jet for $15 million and using the money to avert a food crisis. It was estimated that the proceeds of the sale could feed up to a million people. She also dissolved her entire cabinet because of corruption.
Graca Machel deserves honourable mention for staying at Nelson Mandela’s side throughout his recent hospital stay. She is an amazing role model who belies all the xenophobia and machismo that manifests itself in local cultures. She certainly deserves to be among the Elders with the likes of Kofi Annan and Desmond Tutu.
Leah Tutu is the proverbial great woman behind the great man. She says that he proposed to her by saying, "My parents want me to get married." She calls it the most unromantic proposal ever made. She responded, "I will help you to be obedient to your parents."
Most people do not know that she was, at first, the family activist, the co-founder of the South African Domestic Workers Association, which brought relief to many women working in that once unregulated space in which black maids were often left to the mercy of the white madams. The legacy of SADWA is celebrated to this day.
She felt the heat herself, during the Struggle. Not to mention standing beside Father Desmond. All through this, she raised a family. All her children have been highly educated.
In a country where leaders are so often charged with corruption, where family love relationships dissolve in such spectacular public fashion, and where one-time activists fight shamelessly to acquire for themselves the spoils of war, we love Desmond and Leah because they represent so powerfully the kind of country we wish we had.
From Desmond Tutu’s collection of poems called AN AFRICAN PRAYER BOOK, comes this one from Bread for Tomorrow in Kenya - called DELIVER ME:
From the cowardice that dare not face new truths
From the laziness that is contented with half truths
From the arrogance that thinks it knows all truth
Good Lord deliver me
Wednesday, 15 October 2014
The Pope is Retired, but I’m Getting Re-treaded!
This is an amazing day! Benedict has stepped aside… if he was an African leader, he would be eligible for Mo Ibraim’s prize for heads of state who retire voluntarily. Africa needs fewer Presidents-for-life and I hope that Benedict has started a trend. God bless him for leading by example!
A Lament
I am sad to announce that my right-hand man for 5 years now has decided to emigrate. He just got his green card and is on his way to New York. The gap that he is going to leave in C4L’s senior management team will be a hard act to follow.
But what are the prospects for a “pale male” age 40 in South Africa today? It’s pretty gloomy. The Finance Minister gave his budget speech today. One thing he noted is that tax revenue is R16 billion less that projected in last year speech. Why? Because the economy slowed down in the last half of 2012, he said.
Another factor that he didn’t mention has to be the “brain drain”. Ben Christo is a case in point. In saying so, I do not disagree with his decision to emigrate. He is half way through his career, and sees better prospects outside South Africa than in it.
When I came to South Africa 19 years ago, about 1 person in 6 were white. It is now about 1 person in 10. This reflects both The Exodus of skills and experience and population growth of 10 million – from 40 million in 1994 to 50 million today. So many young people, almost entirely black and poor, will be entering the job market in the next 20 years, while Ben Christo is still in career mode. He has read the signs of the times.
I will also miss him as a friend and trusted advisor, but I take solace from the words of St. Francis de Sales: “Friendships begun in this world will be taken up again, never to be broken off.” Today we celebrated our enduring friendship by hiking up the escarpment. We had a mountain top experience, visiting ADAM’S CALENDAR. This was partly for debriefing in these final weeks of “hand-over” and partly to prepare ourselves for the rising nostalgia.
Please, I highly recommend that you Google ADAM’S CALENDAR. It is on Ben Christo’s favorite mountain, near where he lives. I had heard about it, read about it and pondered over the claims being made about it. But I had never seen it myself. Seeing is believing. It is touted as possibly the oldest architecture in the whole world – maybe 75 000 years old? A calendar whose shadow moves across the major stone, cast by a sculpted stone a meter closer to sunset, from Equinox to Solstice – tracking the annual cycle. So it is a calendar not a clock. I can see that this could be a major new world heritage site - in its early stages of discovery.
It reminds me of the amazing story of the Canadian archaeologist who followed her hunch to Mexico to learn Spanish (the same time that I went to work in Angola), then to Spain to research medieval records in town churches, then to the Labrador coast to verify what she discovered in those old archives in Spain. She re-discovered centuries later that summer whaling expeditions occurred, then ended after several centuries, because the whale population was depleted so (or the whales adapted and swam elsewhere). By the way, on those old Spanish maps, the land mass where they set up their summer camp for processing the whale oil (used to fuel the streetlights in Paris and London) was thought to be uninhabited – so they wrote “Ca nada” meaning “Here, nothing”. The name stuck!
ADAM’S CALENDAR may be another such amazing discovery? In our time. I visited it today at it is enchanting. Enough said! Please visit it on Google.
The Signs of the Times
Ben Christo’s departure makes me reflect on being a generation older, also a pale male, and worse yet a foreigner… in a context of 45% unemployment.
As a missionary, I face three challenges that are symptomatic of this country.
First, South Africa has a run-away case of affirmative action. Many black intellectuals are saying openly that they want to start competing on merit – not because they are “historically disadvantaged”. My major concern is that the advantage in this country is being given to the majority – not to a minority. And to a majority that is in power.
Second, there are strong sentiments of xenophobia in South Africans. This has various manifestations, but the conflict in Sasolburg is this year’s major episode. I have run into it head on this year, personally, in attitudes that defy incarnational missiology.
Third, unemployment rates are soaring. In line with a world-wide phenomenon, this is mainly among youth. We prefer to give a hand up than a hand-out, but the new grant corroborates the rationale for C4L’s main focus. African Youth do not need charity, they need INSPIRATION!
The 3 reasons cited lead me to conclude that I need to be “re-treaded”. I am certainly not in a position to retire, but like Benedict I may have to do the unthinkable…
Since I first came to Africa to work in 1982, I have resisted the traditional paradigm of “missionary support”. In my heart I still do, as I prefer to function on a level playing field. But that playing field now has reached a tipping point – against “tentmakers”. So I am thinking that I need to raise “support” outside South Africa to cover 50% of my income. It may seem like regress, but I think that the logic is sound.
Another factor that I have written about previously is the trend towards a “command economy” in South Africa. This is having a huge effect on what I do for a living – training. Stacked together with the three points above, sustaining my ministry is likely to need external “balance of payments support”.
Here are some options that come to mind:
Do I want to emigrate? (Or is it to return?) Not in my heart. I am not there yet. Just as Benedict is not leaving the Vatican, but becoming a “pope emeritus”, I still see C4L as home.
A Lament
I am sad to announce that my right-hand man for 5 years now has decided to emigrate. He just got his green card and is on his way to New York. The gap that he is going to leave in C4L’s senior management team will be a hard act to follow.
But what are the prospects for a “pale male” age 40 in South Africa today? It’s pretty gloomy. The Finance Minister gave his budget speech today. One thing he noted is that tax revenue is R16 billion less that projected in last year speech. Why? Because the economy slowed down in the last half of 2012, he said.
Another factor that he didn’t mention has to be the “brain drain”. Ben Christo is a case in point. In saying so, I do not disagree with his decision to emigrate. He is half way through his career, and sees better prospects outside South Africa than in it.
When I came to South Africa 19 years ago, about 1 person in 6 were white. It is now about 1 person in 10. This reflects both The Exodus of skills and experience and population growth of 10 million – from 40 million in 1994 to 50 million today. So many young people, almost entirely black and poor, will be entering the job market in the next 20 years, while Ben Christo is still in career mode. He has read the signs of the times.
I will also miss him as a friend and trusted advisor, but I take solace from the words of St. Francis de Sales: “Friendships begun in this world will be taken up again, never to be broken off.” Today we celebrated our enduring friendship by hiking up the escarpment. We had a mountain top experience, visiting ADAM’S CALENDAR. This was partly for debriefing in these final weeks of “hand-over” and partly to prepare ourselves for the rising nostalgia.
Please, I highly recommend that you Google ADAM’S CALENDAR. It is on Ben Christo’s favorite mountain, near where he lives. I had heard about it, read about it and pondered over the claims being made about it. But I had never seen it myself. Seeing is believing. It is touted as possibly the oldest architecture in the whole world – maybe 75 000 years old? A calendar whose shadow moves across the major stone, cast by a sculpted stone a meter closer to sunset, from Equinox to Solstice – tracking the annual cycle. So it is a calendar not a clock. I can see that this could be a major new world heritage site - in its early stages of discovery.
It reminds me of the amazing story of the Canadian archaeologist who followed her hunch to Mexico to learn Spanish (the same time that I went to work in Angola), then to Spain to research medieval records in town churches, then to the Labrador coast to verify what she discovered in those old archives in Spain. She re-discovered centuries later that summer whaling expeditions occurred, then ended after several centuries, because the whale population was depleted so (or the whales adapted and swam elsewhere). By the way, on those old Spanish maps, the land mass where they set up their summer camp for processing the whale oil (used to fuel the streetlights in Paris and London) was thought to be uninhabited – so they wrote “Ca nada” meaning “Here, nothing”. The name stuck!
ADAM’S CALENDAR may be another such amazing discovery? In our time. I visited it today at it is enchanting. Enough said! Please visit it on Google.
The Signs of the Times
Ben Christo’s departure makes me reflect on being a generation older, also a pale male, and worse yet a foreigner… in a context of 45% unemployment.
As a missionary, I face three challenges that are symptomatic of this country.
First, South Africa has a run-away case of affirmative action. Many black intellectuals are saying openly that they want to start competing on merit – not because they are “historically disadvantaged”. My major concern is that the advantage in this country is being given to the majority – not to a minority. And to a majority that is in power.
Second, there are strong sentiments of xenophobia in South Africans. This has various manifestations, but the conflict in Sasolburg is this year’s major episode. I have run into it head on this year, personally, in attitudes that defy incarnational missiology.
Third, unemployment rates are soaring. In line with a world-wide phenomenon, this is mainly among youth. We prefer to give a hand up than a hand-out, but the new grant corroborates the rationale for C4L’s main focus. African Youth do not need charity, they need INSPIRATION!
The 3 reasons cited lead me to conclude that I need to be “re-treaded”. I am certainly not in a position to retire, but like Benedict I may have to do the unthinkable…
Since I first came to Africa to work in 1982, I have resisted the traditional paradigm of “missionary support”. In my heart I still do, as I prefer to function on a level playing field. But that playing field now has reached a tipping point – against “tentmakers”. So I am thinking that I need to raise “support” outside South Africa to cover 50% of my income. It may seem like regress, but I think that the logic is sound.
Another factor that I have written about previously is the trend towards a “command economy” in South Africa. This is having a huge effect on what I do for a living – training. Stacked together with the three points above, sustaining my ministry is likely to need external “balance of payments support”.
Here are some options that come to mind:
- Spend periods away (possibly in Canada) earning and saving
- Visit Canada for a sabbatical period (maybe in summer) to raise missionary support
- Get C4L to reinvent itself, as the symbiosis between it and myself are evident to all
Do I want to emigrate? (Or is it to return?) Not in my heart. I am not there yet. Just as Benedict is not leaving the Vatican, but becoming a “pope emeritus”, I still see C4L as home.
Wednesday, 1 October 2014
Happy Birthday Tu-tu!
The archbishop emeritus turns 81 today. It is Thanksgiving Sunday in Canada – so give thanks for his life.
To celebrate, he helped a cancer-related NGO with some fundraising. This is fitting, as he himself has fought prostate cancer – and won. Cancer can be beaten!
During his birthday party, he heard that he had received the Mo Ibrahim Foundation award in recognition of his contribution to justice, freedom and democracy.
Tutu said: “I have been very fortunate throughout my life to be surrounded by people of the highest caliber, beginning with my extraordinary wife. It is these generous people who have guided, prodded, assisted, cajoled – and ultimately allowed – me to take the credit.”
I see that Graca Machel delivered the annual Desmond Tutu International Peace Lecture at the University of the Western Cape. She is quoted as saying:
“It may sound presumptuous, but I have observed, as a South African and a Mozambican, that we have huge difficulty in communicating in a serene, peaceful, accommodating manner. We have a lot of anger in our communication. We are harming one another because we can’t control our pain.”
Food for thought!
In its first few decades in the USA, Democracy took a bit of a different turn from the political parties in England – the Conservatives and Liberals. The two parties that emerged are still with us – the Democrats and the Republicans. Each country is a different context and Democracy has to adapt. So there is not just the Democratization of Africa, but there is the Africanization of Democracy!
In South Africa, although the names have not stuck yet, the distinction could be described as the Constitutionalists and the Triumphalists.
Constitutionalists
These are the citizens from all parties including the ANC that believe the Constitution is paramount. To quote a recent article by Opposition leader Helen Zille:
Triumphalists
And in the other corner, wearing the red shorts, are the Triumphalists! A political biography of Deputy President Kgalema Montlanthe was recently released. The author Ebrahim Harvey mentions some of his concerns:
“Moves within Luthuli House after Polokwane to unseat premiers said to be close to Mbeki worried him most because they were driven by the same factionalist manoeuvring vices the Zuma-ites had accused Mbeki of not long before. If the period before Polokwane left him very worried about the state of the affairs in the organization he had dedicated his life to, then the period after Polokwane was not much better.
“Many in what was called the Zuma camp did not clearly understand what was really wrong with the previous leadership, because if they really did understand, they would not in fact be repeating many problems committed by the previous leaders.
“Within the earlier leadership, when they manoeuvred and were wrong in this or that, you could invoke the constitution, pull them into line and they would back off, but leadership after Polokwane were extremely triumphalist and did not really listen when you invoked the constitution. Instead they thought you don’t understand power.
“For them the form and manifestation of the problem was simple: Zuma was victimized and we lined up behind him and removed Mbeki. But they failed to understand that other than and independent of this problem there were many other accompanying problems. It reminded me of what Mandela once said: ‘A crisis or chaos can give rise to a leadership which is ill-suited to solve the problems and in fact can worsen them.’
“I was unhappy that after Mbeki resigned he was not kept in the loop and serviced as Mandela was when he retired. Right up to Polokwane, I briefed Mandela on all important matters, but in the case of Thabo, we were not treating him the same.”
C4L’s Case Study
We are caught in a similar conundrum at C4L. We entered a Joint Venture earlier this year only to find that our partners are basically “tenderprenuers”. We do not condone some of their conduct and we have even dared to become “whistle blowers”. This means, like it or not, that we have taken the Constitutionalist road out.
Meanwhile the Triumphalists are proving ill-suited to solve the partnership problems and as Mandela indicated, actually worsen them!
These are the fault lines in South Africa – no longer black and white but Constitutionalists and Triumphalists. The erstewhile youth leader Julius Malema comes to mind. He finally got pushed out by ANC Disciplinary action and he is now getting the heat for corruption. But he continues to be influential because he is a populist who relates well to young people. In fact, he has represented his constituency well, but sadly used his contacts in public service to feather his own nest. Thank God for “The Arch” who remains the role-model par excellence.
To celebrate, he helped a cancer-related NGO with some fundraising. This is fitting, as he himself has fought prostate cancer – and won. Cancer can be beaten!
During his birthday party, he heard that he had received the Mo Ibrahim Foundation award in recognition of his contribution to justice, freedom and democracy.
Tutu said: “I have been very fortunate throughout my life to be surrounded by people of the highest caliber, beginning with my extraordinary wife. It is these generous people who have guided, prodded, assisted, cajoled – and ultimately allowed – me to take the credit.”
I see that Graca Machel delivered the annual Desmond Tutu International Peace Lecture at the University of the Western Cape. She is quoted as saying:
“It may sound presumptuous, but I have observed, as a South African and a Mozambican, that we have huge difficulty in communicating in a serene, peaceful, accommodating manner. We have a lot of anger in our communication. We are harming one another because we can’t control our pain.”
Food for thought!
In its first few decades in the USA, Democracy took a bit of a different turn from the political parties in England – the Conservatives and Liberals. The two parties that emerged are still with us – the Democrats and the Republicans. Each country is a different context and Democracy has to adapt. So there is not just the Democratization of Africa, but there is the Africanization of Democracy!
In South Africa, although the names have not stuck yet, the distinction could be described as the Constitutionalists and the Triumphalists.
Constitutionalists
These are the citizens from all parties including the ANC that believe the Constitution is paramount. To quote a recent article by Opposition leader Helen Zille:
- Defending our constitution and securing its promise of equal rights and fair opportunities for all
- Nurturing genuine non-racialism on the basis of reconciliation and redress
- Growing an appropriately regulated, market-driven economy that can achieve the levels of sustainable growth needed to reduce unemployment significantly and lessen inequality
- Building a state that puts competence above party loyalty, values service and punishes self-interest and corruption
Triumphalists
And in the other corner, wearing the red shorts, are the Triumphalists! A political biography of Deputy President Kgalema Montlanthe was recently released. The author Ebrahim Harvey mentions some of his concerns:
“Moves within Luthuli House after Polokwane to unseat premiers said to be close to Mbeki worried him most because they were driven by the same factionalist manoeuvring vices the Zuma-ites had accused Mbeki of not long before. If the period before Polokwane left him very worried about the state of the affairs in the organization he had dedicated his life to, then the period after Polokwane was not much better.
“Many in what was called the Zuma camp did not clearly understand what was really wrong with the previous leadership, because if they really did understand, they would not in fact be repeating many problems committed by the previous leaders.
“Within the earlier leadership, when they manoeuvred and were wrong in this or that, you could invoke the constitution, pull them into line and they would back off, but leadership after Polokwane were extremely triumphalist and did not really listen when you invoked the constitution. Instead they thought you don’t understand power.
“For them the form and manifestation of the problem was simple: Zuma was victimized and we lined up behind him and removed Mbeki. But they failed to understand that other than and independent of this problem there were many other accompanying problems. It reminded me of what Mandela once said: ‘A crisis or chaos can give rise to a leadership which is ill-suited to solve the problems and in fact can worsen them.’
“I was unhappy that after Mbeki resigned he was not kept in the loop and serviced as Mandela was when he retired. Right up to Polokwane, I briefed Mandela on all important matters, but in the case of Thabo, we were not treating him the same.”
C4L’s Case Study
We are caught in a similar conundrum at C4L. We entered a Joint Venture earlier this year only to find that our partners are basically “tenderprenuers”. We do not condone some of their conduct and we have even dared to become “whistle blowers”. This means, like it or not, that we have taken the Constitutionalist road out.
Meanwhile the Triumphalists are proving ill-suited to solve the partnership problems and as Mandela indicated, actually worsen them!
These are the fault lines in South Africa – no longer black and white but Constitutionalists and Triumphalists. The erstewhile youth leader Julius Malema comes to mind. He finally got pushed out by ANC Disciplinary action and he is now getting the heat for corruption. But he continues to be influential because he is a populist who relates well to young people. In fact, he has represented his constituency well, but sadly used his contacts in public service to feather his own nest. Thank God for “The Arch” who remains the role-model par excellence.
Monday, 15 September 2014
Father Desmond Reaches 80
Desmond Tutu has been called many names – archbishop, voice of the voiceless, rabble rouser, and others that are not repeatable!
He is probably liked more among whites than among blacks at this stage. Put another way, he has been consistently disliked by those in power – previously whites and now blacks.
His face is etched in global awareness, as distinctive as Colonel Saunders founder of KFC.
He tried to withdraw from public life, but keeps making comebacks!
He gave his permission in 2006 to let us re-name C4L in his honour. The proviso was that he could not get actively involved.
C4L chose him for 6 reasons. He is African. He is a person of faith. He has remained in civil society, not entered the public sector. He started in service delivery (as a teacher) and moved into advocacy (for justice). He was and is courageous. He engages the powers. For these reasons he became C4L’s icon… our champion, our hero.
He wrote a book called God is not a Christian. Food for thought.
He has a way of being totally unorthodox while still wearing that traditional old dog collar!
He wrote this poem, Victory is Ours:
Goodness is stronger than evil;
Love is stronger than hate;
Light is stronger than darkness;
Life is stronger than death;
Victory is ours through Him who loves us.
In his collection called An African Prayer Book, his poem above is followed by another from Bread for Tomorrow, in Kenya. It is called Deliver Me:
From the cowardice that dare not face new truths
From the laziness that is contented with half truths
From the arrogance that thinks it knows all truth
Good Lord deliver me.
Commemorate!
Here’s the challenge… to give 80 bucks to commemorate this special occasion. This will help with some C4L development costs that cannot be funded by grants. In other words, the “general fund”. Grant funding is a mixed blessing – they increase an NGO’s volumes but they also come with stringent spending limitations. So “unallocated funding” is very useful.
In Canada, mark your gifts clearly for C4L and send them to:
Reachout To Africa
Parkgate RPO
PO Box 30052
North Vancouver, BC
V7H 2Y8
In South Africa, make a deposit to C4L’s account at Standard Bank:
Desmond Tutu Centre for Leadership
Branch code: 05 28 52 43
Account number: 0302 82713
The big birthday is October 7th. Visit C4L on that day for an Open House! Hoyo hoyo!
Long live Desmond Tutu!
Getting it right
C4L seems to be ending a 2-year period of consolidation and starting to grow again. The big news is that before Oct 7th, it will complete the graduation of 80 youth with accredited training on campus in 2011! This is from the Livelihood Security Unit.
Before the end of the year, two other accredited training courses are coming on line for 2012:
End User Computing – a segment of our Organization Development programme
Social Auxiliary Worker – a new umbrella for youth deployed in community service
The strategic focus on youth seems to be a propos in the light of the “jobless recovery” to global economic recession. C4L’s approach mixes economic empowerment with social service. Especially in terms of the water emergency and the energy crisis, youth need to take ownership because their generation will be affected by these more than their forbears.
The rotational “acting up” has been working well. Instead of a CEO, the “CEO-ship” is being shared on a rotating basis. This is giving the Senior Management Team more opportunities to stretch and grow.
This month C4L is joined by two young Europeans volunteers. Julia just arrived from Germany for one year, to carry the torch of the On-line Mentoring project. Wendy is arriving soon from the UK for 3 months to help get the next two accredited training courses ready.
The work of C4L is never far from Desmond Tutu’s prayer about “the cowardice that dare not face new truths”. The new generation has to conserve resources like water and energy more than their short-sighted forbears. Youth need to gain entry to the work place much sooner that they are presently able to. The “digital divide” between North and South is widening not narrowing. Social work as a profession needs to find more room for young auxiliaries. C4L is at there forefront of these efforts – where it should be.
He is probably liked more among whites than among blacks at this stage. Put another way, he has been consistently disliked by those in power – previously whites and now blacks.
His face is etched in global awareness, as distinctive as Colonel Saunders founder of KFC.
He tried to withdraw from public life, but keeps making comebacks!
He gave his permission in 2006 to let us re-name C4L in his honour. The proviso was that he could not get actively involved.
C4L chose him for 6 reasons. He is African. He is a person of faith. He has remained in civil society, not entered the public sector. He started in service delivery (as a teacher) and moved into advocacy (for justice). He was and is courageous. He engages the powers. For these reasons he became C4L’s icon… our champion, our hero.
He wrote a book called God is not a Christian. Food for thought.
He has a way of being totally unorthodox while still wearing that traditional old dog collar!
He wrote this poem, Victory is Ours:
Goodness is stronger than evil;
Love is stronger than hate;
Light is stronger than darkness;
Life is stronger than death;
Victory is ours through Him who loves us.
In his collection called An African Prayer Book, his poem above is followed by another from Bread for Tomorrow, in Kenya. It is called Deliver Me:
From the cowardice that dare not face new truths
From the laziness that is contented with half truths
From the arrogance that thinks it knows all truth
Good Lord deliver me.
Commemorate!
Here’s the challenge… to give 80 bucks to commemorate this special occasion. This will help with some C4L development costs that cannot be funded by grants. In other words, the “general fund”. Grant funding is a mixed blessing – they increase an NGO’s volumes but they also come with stringent spending limitations. So “unallocated funding” is very useful.
In Canada, mark your gifts clearly for C4L and send them to:
Reachout To Africa
Parkgate RPO
PO Box 30052
North Vancouver, BC
V7H 2Y8
In South Africa, make a deposit to C4L’s account at Standard Bank:
Desmond Tutu Centre for Leadership
Branch code: 05 28 52 43
Account number: 0302 82713
The big birthday is October 7th. Visit C4L on that day for an Open House! Hoyo hoyo!
Long live Desmond Tutu!
Getting it right
C4L seems to be ending a 2-year period of consolidation and starting to grow again. The big news is that before Oct 7th, it will complete the graduation of 80 youth with accredited training on campus in 2011! This is from the Livelihood Security Unit.
Before the end of the year, two other accredited training courses are coming on line for 2012:
End User Computing – a segment of our Organization Development programme
Social Auxiliary Worker – a new umbrella for youth deployed in community service
The strategic focus on youth seems to be a propos in the light of the “jobless recovery” to global economic recession. C4L’s approach mixes economic empowerment with social service. Especially in terms of the water emergency and the energy crisis, youth need to take ownership because their generation will be affected by these more than their forbears.
The rotational “acting up” has been working well. Instead of a CEO, the “CEO-ship” is being shared on a rotating basis. This is giving the Senior Management Team more opportunities to stretch and grow.
This month C4L is joined by two young Europeans volunteers. Julia just arrived from Germany for one year, to carry the torch of the On-line Mentoring project. Wendy is arriving soon from the UK for 3 months to help get the next two accredited training courses ready.
The work of C4L is never far from Desmond Tutu’s prayer about “the cowardice that dare not face new truths”. The new generation has to conserve resources like water and energy more than their short-sighted forbears. Youth need to gain entry to the work place much sooner that they are presently able to. The “digital divide” between North and South is widening not narrowing. Social work as a profession needs to find more room for young auxiliaries. C4L is at there forefront of these efforts – where it should be.
Monday, 1 September 2014
Mohamed Bouazizi and Andries Tekane Day
Tomorrow is Freedom Day. This bulletin is about two African youth, one Muslim, one Christian… freedom fighters.
Has anybody here
Seen my old friend Bouazizi?
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
He inspired a lot of people
It seems the good, they die young
I just turned around
And he’s gone!
In the latest issue of The Thinker, Dr. Essop Pahad waxes eloquent about Tunisia:
“Tunisia is an African country. Its glorious history of Carthage and Hannibal is part of our African heritage… Tunisia was one of the first countries in Africa, in 1956, to wrest its political independence from France. It is one of the founding members of the OAU and later the AU. Now, 55 years after that glorious event in our continent, Africa should take pride in the heroic actions of the people of Tunisia.
“An unemployed university graduate Mohamed Bouazizi is harassed, assaulted, humiliated and forcibly prevented from earning a meager income by selling fruits and vegetables. In desperation and in an action of defiance he sets himself on fire. This act of self-immolation triggered demonstrations by his family in Sidi Bouzid. They were joined by hundreds of people, mainly young, in their protests. Very rapidly this demonstration spread like wild-fire throughout the country and eventually brought down the President.
“This young hero, Mohamed Bouazizi, will forever be credited with inspiring the overthrow of the 23-year old regime of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. Under this regime Tunisia had been lauded and fêted as a very successful, wealthy, fast-growing economy; and according to an IMF report it was the “most competitive economy in Africa”and ranked 40th in the world.
“Progressive organizations and individuals, including journalists, were subject to arbitrary arrest, detention and torture. This iron-fisted rule was the bedrock of an economy that spawned massive inequality between rich and poor, high unemployment rates, including many jobless university graduates, ever-increasing prices of basic commodities and a serious lack of any form of redistribution…
“The developments in Tunisia are earth-shattering. They have had a massive impact, for the good, in Egypt, Algeria, Jordan, Yemen and other countries in Africa and the Middle East. Mohamed Bouazizi and the other martyrs did not die in vain. Whatever happens, Tunisia will never be the same. The democratic process cannot be halted, neo-colonialism has suffered a huge blow and autocratic regimes in Africa and the Middle East are feeling the heat. However, the forces of neo-colonialism and monopoly capital may still take advantage of current instability to push for the establishment of new governments sympathetic to their interests, thus threatening the independence of these countries and the democratic rights of their people.”
The problem with Colonialism was foreign interference. The Ben Ali regime was independent, so no one intervened - while people were denied their freedom. Is booming economic growth reason enough for the hands-off approach to human rights abuses? What does that say about what matters most?
The last C4L Bulletin contained the sad news of another death, another sacrifice, another young African who wanted a better deal for the poor.
Has anybody here
Seen my old friend Tatane?
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
He mobilized a lot of people
It seems the good, they die young
I just turned around
And he’s gone!
Disparity in South Africa is phenomenal. Driving along the R21 highway this week from Pretoria to Joburg, I observed so many huge mansions sprouting up on the hill by Irene Mall, then within minutes the sprawling township of Tembisa. It is graphic to the point of being shocking. Someone described South Africa as a First World Country and a Third World Country occupying the same space.
But the same is true in global terms! This week I also retuned to Africa from Europe – it’s just as graphic. Is anyone “free” in a society or a world like that?
Andries Tatane was on the right track.. There is a Myth of Spontaneous Development. It doesn’t just happen, it gets kick-started – by facilitation, activism and resources. In fact “intervention” actually means that someone has to “come between”. So Tatane was out there, protesting the lack of service delivery. There are risks in being a freedom fighter.
It has often been said that if you are not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem. If our convictions and values allow us to stand by and watch while people’s rights are denied, then we are guilty of passivism, maybe even fatalism. Ouch! Not everyone is a volunteer, but Voluntarism offers so many diverse ways to get involved.
In the days when there were still Second World Countries (the Communist Bloc as these were also called) there used to be dissidents and occasionally, defectors. Then Alexander Solzhenitsyn started writing books about the Gulag… then glasnost… then perestroika… and a New World Order. Migration is now booming – causing a brain drain for Africa.
Earlier cries of Uhuru! (freedom) turned to Amandla! (power) under Apartheid. The Struggle was not just for liberation but for empowerment. Now the question is being raised whether BEE (black economic empowerment) is going over the top? Pallo Jordan once wrote that the purpose of affirmative action was to create circumstances in which affirmative action would no longer be needed. It is a means, not an end. But there are concerns that it is becoming a destination, not just a journey - a permanent feature of the landscape. Will the time come when the adjective “positive” will dropped from in front of “discrimination”. Does it dignify people to be selected by that criteria, and not competency?! Is entitlement “freedom”?
Has anybody here
Seen my old friend Bouazizi?
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
He inspired a lot of people
It seems the good, they die young
I just turned around
And he’s gone!
In the latest issue of The Thinker, Dr. Essop Pahad waxes eloquent about Tunisia:
“Tunisia is an African country. Its glorious history of Carthage and Hannibal is part of our African heritage… Tunisia was one of the first countries in Africa, in 1956, to wrest its political independence from France. It is one of the founding members of the OAU and later the AU. Now, 55 years after that glorious event in our continent, Africa should take pride in the heroic actions of the people of Tunisia.
“An unemployed university graduate Mohamed Bouazizi is harassed, assaulted, humiliated and forcibly prevented from earning a meager income by selling fruits and vegetables. In desperation and in an action of defiance he sets himself on fire. This act of self-immolation triggered demonstrations by his family in Sidi Bouzid. They were joined by hundreds of people, mainly young, in their protests. Very rapidly this demonstration spread like wild-fire throughout the country and eventually brought down the President.
“This young hero, Mohamed Bouazizi, will forever be credited with inspiring the overthrow of the 23-year old regime of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. Under this regime Tunisia had been lauded and fêted as a very successful, wealthy, fast-growing economy; and according to an IMF report it was the “most competitive economy in Africa”and ranked 40th in the world.
“Progressive organizations and individuals, including journalists, were subject to arbitrary arrest, detention and torture. This iron-fisted rule was the bedrock of an economy that spawned massive inequality between rich and poor, high unemployment rates, including many jobless university graduates, ever-increasing prices of basic commodities and a serious lack of any form of redistribution…
“The developments in Tunisia are earth-shattering. They have had a massive impact, for the good, in Egypt, Algeria, Jordan, Yemen and other countries in Africa and the Middle East. Mohamed Bouazizi and the other martyrs did not die in vain. Whatever happens, Tunisia will never be the same. The democratic process cannot be halted, neo-colonialism has suffered a huge blow and autocratic regimes in Africa and the Middle East are feeling the heat. However, the forces of neo-colonialism and monopoly capital may still take advantage of current instability to push for the establishment of new governments sympathetic to their interests, thus threatening the independence of these countries and the democratic rights of their people.”
The problem with Colonialism was foreign interference. The Ben Ali regime was independent, so no one intervened - while people were denied their freedom. Is booming economic growth reason enough for the hands-off approach to human rights abuses? What does that say about what matters most?
The last C4L Bulletin contained the sad news of another death, another sacrifice, another young African who wanted a better deal for the poor.
Has anybody here
Seen my old friend Tatane?
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
He mobilized a lot of people
It seems the good, they die young
I just turned around
And he’s gone!
Disparity in South Africa is phenomenal. Driving along the R21 highway this week from Pretoria to Joburg, I observed so many huge mansions sprouting up on the hill by Irene Mall, then within minutes the sprawling township of Tembisa. It is graphic to the point of being shocking. Someone described South Africa as a First World Country and a Third World Country occupying the same space.
But the same is true in global terms! This week I also retuned to Africa from Europe – it’s just as graphic. Is anyone “free” in a society or a world like that?
Andries Tatane was on the right track.. There is a Myth of Spontaneous Development. It doesn’t just happen, it gets kick-started – by facilitation, activism and resources. In fact “intervention” actually means that someone has to “come between”. So Tatane was out there, protesting the lack of service delivery. There are risks in being a freedom fighter.
It has often been said that if you are not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem. If our convictions and values allow us to stand by and watch while people’s rights are denied, then we are guilty of passivism, maybe even fatalism. Ouch! Not everyone is a volunteer, but Voluntarism offers so many diverse ways to get involved.
In the days when there were still Second World Countries (the Communist Bloc as these were also called) there used to be dissidents and occasionally, defectors. Then Alexander Solzhenitsyn started writing books about the Gulag… then glasnost… then perestroika… and a New World Order. Migration is now booming – causing a brain drain for Africa.
Earlier cries of Uhuru! (freedom) turned to Amandla! (power) under Apartheid. The Struggle was not just for liberation but for empowerment. Now the question is being raised whether BEE (black economic empowerment) is going over the top? Pallo Jordan once wrote that the purpose of affirmative action was to create circumstances in which affirmative action would no longer be needed. It is a means, not an end. But there are concerns that it is becoming a destination, not just a journey - a permanent feature of the landscape. Will the time come when the adjective “positive” will dropped from in front of “discrimination”. Does it dignify people to be selected by that criteria, and not competency?! Is entitlement “freedom”?
Saturday, 30 August 2014
Portia and Amber
Public Engagement
The last C4L bulletin, called Three Kings Festival, contained a list of 15 men whose murders are taking their toll in Mpumalanga province.
On Christmas Eve last year, this grim litany crossed the gender barrier. A woman called Portia Mlangeni was shot at her home. She is in intensive care. Your prayers are solicited for her recovery. The Sunday Times today reports that police are investigating a possible link between that attack and the murder of Johan Ndlovu featured in the last C4L bulletin. Portia works at Ehlanzeni Disaster Management – thus she is a colleague in the broadest sense as C4L’s focus has always combined disaster and development management.
Private Agony
Amber Joubert died on December 27th after a car crash. There was nothing political about that incident, but in her name I found a message for her mother, a dear friend of mine…
Amber rhymes with sombre
But she was not like that at all
She was sunny and bright
Her eclipse was total
But you can still see the sun flares
Effervescent outside the core eclipse
Memories and photos
That refuse to let darkness overcome her light
Amber is the colour of frankincense
A resin from trees
Clear and fragrant
An incense used for worship
To celebrate the sacrifice
The Magi brought frankincense and myrrh
To the Adoration
Amber at birth
A lovely name
A baby
Given to service and sacrifice
Myrrh is for burial
Everyone needs it
Even the one who took captivity captive
In Amber’s case it was sooner, not later
But frankincense at birth was sombre
Not just death, but sacrifice
Not just a life, but a gift
Not just a man, but deity
The Lamb of God
Frankincense and myrrh combined again
In Amber’s departure
For her short life was not in vain
Her death had a purpose
That is embedded in her name
Some deaths are expected
Others are predictable but still tragic
Some are a release
Only a few can become
Sacrificial
God asked Abraham to release his only son
After all the drama of his emergence
From a barren womb
On that same mountain
Centuries later
God forsook his only begotten Son
A watershed sacrifice
Unblemished
He was embalmed with myrrh
Worshipped with frankincense
Amber’s death was tragic
But not her life
Her name is a clue
To a mystery
Lovely and fragrant
Calm amidst upheaval
Amber was a gift
More precious than gold
More meaningful than myrrh
Understood only by star-gazers
Ponder that in your heart
God took her
His protection did not fail
That is evident
From his timing
For Amber was taken
At the festival of three kings
Please pray for Amber’s mom, Jay, and for her little sister. About 500 people attended her memorial service yesterday in White River – evidence that a 20-year old can command plenty of esteem in the community. While we may not understand, we can be sure that God has a purpose. Epiphany is ending, time to take that sign +C+M+B down from the door lintel!
The last C4L bulletin, called Three Kings Festival, contained a list of 15 men whose murders are taking their toll in Mpumalanga province.
On Christmas Eve last year, this grim litany crossed the gender barrier. A woman called Portia Mlangeni was shot at her home. She is in intensive care. Your prayers are solicited for her recovery. The Sunday Times today reports that police are investigating a possible link between that attack and the murder of Johan Ndlovu featured in the last C4L bulletin. Portia works at Ehlanzeni Disaster Management – thus she is a colleague in the broadest sense as C4L’s focus has always combined disaster and development management.
Private Agony
Amber Joubert died on December 27th after a car crash. There was nothing political about that incident, but in her name I found a message for her mother, a dear friend of mine…
Amber rhymes with sombre
But she was not like that at all
She was sunny and bright
Her eclipse was total
But you can still see the sun flares
Effervescent outside the core eclipse
Memories and photos
That refuse to let darkness overcome her light
Amber is the colour of frankincense
A resin from trees
Clear and fragrant
An incense used for worship
To celebrate the sacrifice
The Magi brought frankincense and myrrh
To the Adoration
Amber at birth
A lovely name
A baby
Given to service and sacrifice
Myrrh is for burial
Everyone needs it
Even the one who took captivity captive
In Amber’s case it was sooner, not later
But frankincense at birth was sombre
Not just death, but sacrifice
Not just a life, but a gift
Not just a man, but deity
The Lamb of God
Frankincense and myrrh combined again
In Amber’s departure
For her short life was not in vain
Her death had a purpose
That is embedded in her name
Some deaths are expected
Others are predictable but still tragic
Some are a release
Only a few can become
Sacrificial
God asked Abraham to release his only son
After all the drama of his emergence
From a barren womb
On that same mountain
Centuries later
God forsook his only begotten Son
A watershed sacrifice
Unblemished
He was embalmed with myrrh
Worshipped with frankincense
Amber’s death was tragic
But not her life
Her name is a clue
To a mystery
Lovely and fragrant
Calm amidst upheaval
Amber was a gift
More precious than gold
More meaningful than myrrh
Understood only by star-gazers
Ponder that in your heart
God took her
His protection did not fail
That is evident
From his timing
For Amber was taken
At the festival of three kings
Please pray for Amber’s mom, Jay, and for her little sister. About 500 people attended her memorial service yesterday in White River – evidence that a 20-year old can command plenty of esteem in the community. While we may not understand, we can be sure that God has a purpose. Epiphany is ending, time to take that sign +C+M+B down from the door lintel!
Tuesday, 15 July 2014
Can you see your blind side?
It's been awhile since I recommended a movie. The last one was INVICTUS, and I still say that it's a picture whose time has come. South Africa needs to shake of its overdose of affirmative action and get serious about inter-racial collaboration.
It’s always nice when Hollywood awards a movie for portrayal of virtue, instead of vice (which probably sell more pictures). My favorite movie of all time, come to think of it, is just one of those – Tender Mercies. It won Best Picture in 1982. It is a better conversion story than any Billy Graham film! Here comes another one…
Oscar-winner
The Blind Side won a Best Leading Actress award for Sandra Bullock. She plays Leigh Anne Touhy, in a true story about Michael Oher, a homeless and traumatized boy who became an All American football player and first round NFL draft pick.
“Big Mike” was taken in by this caring woman and her family. It takes place in Memphis, Tennessee, the only city in America which is fully half black. The Touhy family is white and the movie shows just how radical this kind of action still is.
For example, the movie shows Collins Tuohy and Michael Oher studying together at home and school. In real life, Collins was an A student, who rearranged her schedules, and dropped out of several advanced placement classes, to share more classes with Michael - to help him graduate.
Here is one of the most poignant scenes in the film, when the family invites “Big Mike” to stay with them permanently, after he has been sleeping on the couch for awhile:
Leigh Anne Touhy: Find some time to figure out another bedroom for you.
Michael Oher: This is mine?
Leigh Anne Touhy: Yes, sir.
Michael Oher: I never had one before.
Leigh Anne Touhy: What, a room to yourself?
Michael Oher: A bed.
I have to admit to choking up at this point. Two Bible verses came to mind: “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head” and “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”
I have visited Memphis. I brought back a poster of Martin Luther King which hangs in the buffet area at C4L. Two of his speeches are framed and hang in the C4L Board room (I Had a Dream and I Have Been to the Mountaintop). So it is refreshing to see racial harmony right there, on the doorstep of the Human Rights Museum, which is housed in the former motel where MLK was assassinated.
I have also tasted Southern hospitality in Memphis, and remember it fondly.
The role of Leigh Anne Touhy, portrayed by Sandra Bullock, reminded me of someone who both in our home and at our workplace has advocated unrelentlessly for the best interests of children and youth. Alas, she is no longer at home or at work with me, but this film is a tribute to specially gifted people like her, who love their neighbour as themselves - no matter what colour, age, creed, gender or background.
Not everyone has this spiritual gifting, as God gives different gifts to different children in his family. But one thing we do all have, without exception – a blind side.
The film begins with a narrative of the game in which Lawrence Taylor broke Joe Theismann's leg. According to Michael Lewis, who wrote the book that this movie is based on, that hit - more than any other moment in football history - heightened the need for a strong, left tackle to protect the quarterback's blind side. “Big Mike” had incredible protective instincts and turned these into a shining role on the sports field.
Heather’s protective instincts have caused her to perform with distinction, not in sports but in social work. Part of the role that we have in compassionate ministry is to make others see their blind side. In one scene in the movie, while having lunch with her peers, the socialite banter crosses the line of racism, xenophobia and intolerance. Leigh Anne Touhy responds with all the politeness of a Southern dame: “Shame on you”. That’s what Dorothy Day meant when she said that our remit is “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable”!
The South African Story
By the way, speaking of cinema... Desmond Tutu has just finished filming a documentary series – the brainchild of former journalist Roger Friedman, who said: “He is really one of the proudest, most patriotic people we have. He went to places he had never been before, like walking down Government Avenue. We could have given the script to someone like David Attenborough, but who better than the Arch?”
Tutu said he hoped people would be inspired by the documentary. “I hope it will be something that says, ‘We have come this long, long journey. We have been given a fantastic country and we have the capacity to make it one of the most remarkable places in the world. Now when am I getting my Oscar?”
Endgame
Also, look out for a new release next month, a movie made in Britain about the top-secret talks that were held between the apartheid regime and the ANC when Botha was still president, and which then continued when De Klerk took over. These have only come to light in recent years, they were kept under wraps lest they should detract from the follow-on efforts of the Mandela and Mbeki governments.
“The most notable feature of Endgame is that, unlike so many other films on this subject, it is not a self-righteous denunciation of the evils of apartheid, with saintly revolutionaries triumphing over fascist bigots. Milne’s incisive script shows that the negotiations were much subtler, and that both parties wanted the same thing – a peaceful transition to a new dispensation.” War was averted in South Africa, but so far, the peace dividend has been diminished by too much acrimony and not enough lenience. This is because all people - of all colours - have a blind side.
It’s always nice when Hollywood awards a movie for portrayal of virtue, instead of vice (which probably sell more pictures). My favorite movie of all time, come to think of it, is just one of those – Tender Mercies. It won Best Picture in 1982. It is a better conversion story than any Billy Graham film! Here comes another one…
Oscar-winner
The Blind Side won a Best Leading Actress award for Sandra Bullock. She plays Leigh Anne Touhy, in a true story about Michael Oher, a homeless and traumatized boy who became an All American football player and first round NFL draft pick.
“Big Mike” was taken in by this caring woman and her family. It takes place in Memphis, Tennessee, the only city in America which is fully half black. The Touhy family is white and the movie shows just how radical this kind of action still is.
For example, the movie shows Collins Tuohy and Michael Oher studying together at home and school. In real life, Collins was an A student, who rearranged her schedules, and dropped out of several advanced placement classes, to share more classes with Michael - to help him graduate.
Here is one of the most poignant scenes in the film, when the family invites “Big Mike” to stay with them permanently, after he has been sleeping on the couch for awhile:
Leigh Anne Touhy: Find some time to figure out another bedroom for you.
Michael Oher: This is mine?
Leigh Anne Touhy: Yes, sir.
Michael Oher: I never had one before.
Leigh Anne Touhy: What, a room to yourself?
Michael Oher: A bed.
I have to admit to choking up at this point. Two Bible verses came to mind: “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head” and “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”
I have visited Memphis. I brought back a poster of Martin Luther King which hangs in the buffet area at C4L. Two of his speeches are framed and hang in the C4L Board room (I Had a Dream and I Have Been to the Mountaintop). So it is refreshing to see racial harmony right there, on the doorstep of the Human Rights Museum, which is housed in the former motel where MLK was assassinated.
I have also tasted Southern hospitality in Memphis, and remember it fondly.
The role of Leigh Anne Touhy, portrayed by Sandra Bullock, reminded me of someone who both in our home and at our workplace has advocated unrelentlessly for the best interests of children and youth. Alas, she is no longer at home or at work with me, but this film is a tribute to specially gifted people like her, who love their neighbour as themselves - no matter what colour, age, creed, gender or background.
Not everyone has this spiritual gifting, as God gives different gifts to different children in his family. But one thing we do all have, without exception – a blind side.
The film begins with a narrative of the game in which Lawrence Taylor broke Joe Theismann's leg. According to Michael Lewis, who wrote the book that this movie is based on, that hit - more than any other moment in football history - heightened the need for a strong, left tackle to protect the quarterback's blind side. “Big Mike” had incredible protective instincts and turned these into a shining role on the sports field.
Heather’s protective instincts have caused her to perform with distinction, not in sports but in social work. Part of the role that we have in compassionate ministry is to make others see their blind side. In one scene in the movie, while having lunch with her peers, the socialite banter crosses the line of racism, xenophobia and intolerance. Leigh Anne Touhy responds with all the politeness of a Southern dame: “Shame on you”. That’s what Dorothy Day meant when she said that our remit is “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable”!
The South African Story
By the way, speaking of cinema... Desmond Tutu has just finished filming a documentary series – the brainchild of former journalist Roger Friedman, who said: “He is really one of the proudest, most patriotic people we have. He went to places he had never been before, like walking down Government Avenue. We could have given the script to someone like David Attenborough, but who better than the Arch?”
Tutu said he hoped people would be inspired by the documentary. “I hope it will be something that says, ‘We have come this long, long journey. We have been given a fantastic country and we have the capacity to make it one of the most remarkable places in the world. Now when am I getting my Oscar?”
Endgame
Also, look out for a new release next month, a movie made in Britain about the top-secret talks that were held between the apartheid regime and the ANC when Botha was still president, and which then continued when De Klerk took over. These have only come to light in recent years, they were kept under wraps lest they should detract from the follow-on efforts of the Mandela and Mbeki governments.
“The most notable feature of Endgame is that, unlike so many other films on this subject, it is not a self-righteous denunciation of the evils of apartheid, with saintly revolutionaries triumphing over fascist bigots. Milne’s incisive script shows that the negotiations were much subtler, and that both parties wanted the same thing – a peaceful transition to a new dispensation.” War was averted in South Africa, but so far, the peace dividend has been diminished by too much acrimony and not enough lenience. This is because all people - of all colours - have a blind side.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)