Happy Birthday Matiba!
Happy Birthday Matiba!: Mandela, Grace and Leadership
by Dr. Matthew C. Whitaker
“Almost all of these great figures we revere are people who have had a very considerable experience of suffering of some sort or another, which has helped to deepen their compassion, their magnanimity and in the case of Madiba, it had the added benefit of endowing him with a credibility that nothing else would have been able to give.” – Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Madiba, the ancestral clan name of Nelson Mandela, was used by those close to him to address the legendary leader. It was a term of endearment imbued with an intentional, and almost spiritual reclamation of his African heritage and modest nobility. “The source of his humility,” argues Hasan Zillur Rahim, “sprang from a combination of high purpose, generosity of spirit, strength of character, self-assurance and daring, a combination tragically absent” in most contemporary leaders. Mandela’s commitment to high purpose is instructive today, his birthday, for those who are presently engaged in the fight to eradicate structural racism and injustice.
Mandela was a 46-year-old militant member of the African National Congress (ANC) in 1964, when he was jailed in South Africa as prisoner number 46664, for sabotage and conspiracy to overthrow the nation’s White supremacist apartheid government. He emerged from prison 27 years later in 1990, devoted as ever to Black African liberation. His physical rebelliousness, however, had surrendered ground to a more meticulous, meditative, and sagacious disposition. He was no longer a young man, yet he was almost immediately tapped to help retire the old South Africa and usher in the new, more just one. New circumstances required new leadership.
Still, as protestors continue to attack the symbolism and substance of inequity and systemic racism, particularly in the western world, we may do well to remember that nations such as the United States of America, must uphold the promise and practice of forgiveness and plurality at every turn. The future of our species, let alone freedom and democracy, requires selfless devotion to the proposition that all people, even those who have caused us unspeakable pain, are “endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Our social justice dreams and actions, therefore, must also include plans for someday leading to positions of structural authority. White supremacy and privilege will eventually pass. It is inevitable. The possibility of future harmony is tethered to the current character of our resistance. Will we develop a keen awareness of the frailties of the human spirit as we dismantle systems of oppression now, as Mandela did during his captivity, so we can lead with forgiveness and grace? Will we lift, even the most intractable, as we climb? We can if we follow Mandela’s lead. Happy birthday, Madiba, and thank you for showing us the way.
Dr. Matthew C. Whitaker is the Founder and CEO of the Diamond Strategies. He is also the AGC Collectors of Arizona 2020 Frederick Douglass Equity and Justice Award winner, and the 2016 Arizona Diversity Leadership Alliance (DLA) Diversity and Inclusion Leader Award winner. He is the founder of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy, winner of the 2014 DLA Inclusive Workplace Award, at Arizona State University, and the author of Race Work: The Rise of Civil Rights in the Urban West. He can be followed on Twitter at @Dr_Whitaker and DSC can be followed on Twitter at @dstategiesllc.
An Idol Appeared: Mandela
by Dr. Carl Schwartz
An amazing man's birthday will be occurring July 18th. He is a giant in compassion and a “dwarf” of pet peeves. He has immortally aged and travelled as gracefully as light. He appeared to me to represent a magical massless solidity- he became my calling to reach higher. Sometimes I could proclaim to others to "Not disdain hardship"; he was the constant example for “lessons learned” through the grit of the difficult. He sidled up to conflict; easily scaled ordinary doubt, and dissolved sadness with loves’ sure hands. This giant of a man lived in a magnitude that effectively drew a protective line around democracies’ hopefulness. He was steady enough to straddle the nuance between public exposure and private intimacy. He had the wisdom and strength to know the difference between what was a preference and what was necessary. He knew the art of solitude. He appreciated the short sighted views of the average person, and he was endlessly patient with the ambiguities of the “human condition”. He never gave in to the embarrassments of history and was able to merge the political with the poetic and no fabrications to popularize.
My own history has strangely been blessed by the safety of irony. Distance and metaphor wash nearby, but rarely flooded over. My birthday hero, by contrast, had a fierce loyalty to humanities’ full triumphs and failures; he bathed us with his forgiveness and forbearance. I am often “on the prowl” for relief; he is “on the make” for destiny. I can downsize the tragic; he can poeticize the gamble in the graveyard. Love and culpability can be merged into a creative stream of consciousness. “how to be in love”, “out of love”, and “forsaking love” in one breath: I gasp at the accomplishment- he always kept singing.
This man's birthday, is a poignant reminder of the possible dimensions of being human. He created a “life plot” to be able to withstand the storm, clean up the mess, and rebuild. He was endowed with a pristine ability to reason and an iron will that was unrelenting. No pestilence by the actions of others would defeat his belief in world possibility. NELSON- happy birthday to all of you.
Dr. Carl Schwartz has been helping people live happier and more fulfilling lives since 1977. During that time he has created a method that merges spiritual, psychological and neurolinguistic models. Dr. Schwartz holds both a PhD and J.D. degree. He has advanced training in NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), Hypnotherapy, and LENS (Biofeedback). He is also trained in Mindfulness Practices, Solution Focus Approaches, and the Eastern practices of Time, Space and Knowledge. Dr. Schwartz currently lives and practices in Tempe, Arizona.