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.

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:

• 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.

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.

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”?