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:

• 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.”

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.”

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.

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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.

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:

• 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.

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. 

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.

• 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

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:

• 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.