by Justin Foxton | Nov 10, 2016 | Citizen Participation, Crime & Corruption, Democracy, Leadership
“Just as the power of water often lies in the ability to bend around obstacles, sometimes the most powerful step you can take is a step back”.
Advocate Thuli Madonsela posted this quote on her Twitter timeline just hours after last Wednesday’s release of her State of Capture report. The quote was not direct and not credited to anyone which made it more of a note-to-self than anything.
I have always had a sense of this woman’s unique ability to intuit the metaphysical and spiritual requirements of the moment beyond the physical aspects of her work as our Public Protector. Without naming it as such, I believe this is why most of us esteem her as we do. We in turn intuit the extent of her impact rather than just see, hear or feel it. Madiba elicited the same response. The fact that her response to the release of this final labour-of-love was to step back, should confirm what we may have sensed all along; that she is as much a spiritual leader as anything else. This is not a badge of honour and certainly not a mantle that I would expect her to wear comfortably, but that very fact would serve as further proof of the hypothesis.
When I say spiritual leader, I am not using this term in any kind of religious way, although that is how she – and indeed perhaps you the reader – chooses to give expression to spirituality. I am talking about a leader who “leads from the deep” as it were; from beneath the heart level; from that level of intuition that exists in those that understand that to fall is to rise; to step back at the right time is the ultimate power-move. As my favourite Franciscan Friar Richard Rohr puts it, the power of “falling upward”. Is this servant leadership? Yes, in its very purest form.
Thuli Madonsela is a person who understands what it means to lead in such a way. How can we tell this? Because in her finest hour, she knew instinctively that her most powerful response would be to step out of the limelight and into the shadows. She knew that for her work to have the maximum power and impact, she was going to need to humble herself and – without taking so much as a bow – exit stage left. This would allow the necessary processes to unfold untainted and uncluttered by her presence. The job was done.
Now, had I been her, I would have booked interviews on every radio and TV station possible. I would have made sure that the whole dang world knew how great I was. I would have got someone to sky-write “Justin For President” but pretended it was just an adoring fan. I would have planned the release of my book – entitled “Just in Time – How I saved South Africa” – to coincide with the release of this report. There would have been mugs, pens, t-shirts – the works. Now come on admit it; you would have been tempted to do the same and shore up your fame and fortune for good.
But she chose to post a quote about stepping back. Why? Firstly, she knows that we are ultimately only ever as powerful as we are humble. That is the conundrum of falling upward. The extent to which our ego is in control determines our impact for good in the world. Alas, this does not mean that ego-driven human beings will not become powerful leaders. It simply means that their legacy of positive impact is an illusion that will ultimately fade and die.
Secondly, by leading from this place of humility she will have sensed that in the days and weeks following the release of this damning report, crooks and cronies would come crawling out from under their rocks to try and discredit her. By stepping back she would give them nothing new to say. They would simply have to follow legal processes; not something that criminals like to do.
And finally, she drew a line in the sand and said, this job is now done; this fight is fought. I can now rest and prepare for the next challenge – whatever that may be.
Of course, there is also an implicit challenge in Madonsela’s above quote. It is her time to step back but where does that leave us? It is most certainly not our time to step back. As our Public Protector, she left us her legacy as well as lessons and of course tools to step forward and continue the fight for our democracy. But the battle is far from over. As Vytjie Mentor said, we are the same now as we were before the report. What can we do to ensure that South Africa emerges victorious from this battle for her soul?
I do not have 3 steps you can follow here, but I do know that our role in the process will come to each of us as we seek to lead humbly where we are and as we understand that each of us must play our part – however big or small – in the healing of our nation.
This – more than any report – is the greatest legacy that Thuli Madonsela leaves us.
#leadlikethuli
Justin Foxton is founder of The Peace Agency.
This column is dedicated to the memory of 17-year-old Anene Booysens: gang raped, mutilated and murdered, and our Mozambican brother Emmanuel Josias Sithole: beaten and stabbed to death.
by Justin Foxton | Oct 27, 2016 | Citizen Participation, Democracy
“I…am an image of what is happening everywhere, and I want it to stop today”. Richard Rohr.
In our defence, we had been in the queue for a good couple of hours. Lolly had been as patient as anyone could reasonably expect a 5-year-old to be and Cathy was working hard at maintaining that “isn’t-this-all-so-wonderful” face that parents do in adverse holiday situations. I was trying manfully to practise saying hello and smiling at people. But it was hot, the queue was endless and the experience was losing its shine.
The Table Mountain cable way is a world-class tourist attraction that is exceptionally well run. However, on this particular day there had been early morning wind on the mountain and the cable car had remained shut until around 10:00 am – the time that we arrived. As a consequence, there were several hundred people in front of us waiting to be ferried up the mountain. We were getting close to the front when we became aware of an adolescent child – a new face in our immediate circle of queue friends – standing behind us. We thought little of it, until we became aware that the rest of his family were following suit; leapfrogging their way up the winding line of people one family member at a time. Father would nudge a child forward to hop the queue and once the child had blended in with the crowds, the rest of the Von Trapps would follow.
Eventually the whole lot of them were in front of us. Cathy transformed from oh-so-happy Mum into Darth Vader. I thought about greeting these newcomers in a friendly “being peace” kind of way but opted to spend the rest of our wait plotting ever more gruesome ways to exact my revenge. However, in that unspoken way that spouses sometimes make decisions we opted for a truly brave and adult response to this irksome family: we stood close behind them and muttered our disgust at their appalling queue etiquette – just loudly enough for them to hear: “What gives people the right? “and “I hope they enjoy the extra few seconds of view they will have”. It was this last comment that caused the mother to turn round, take Cathy’s hand and say patronisingly: “Oh, darling we will!”
Well, Cathy transformed out of Darth Vader into Lucifer himself and made to mouth off. I chose to play the peace-maker role in this somewhat volatile situation by declaring loudly: “Oh leave it Cath, they aren’t worth it!”
I turned away in a huff and looked down towards the city. Just a short distance below our scene of mountain rage, the university students were continuing to enact #feesmustfall by looting, burning, threatening and expressing hatred and vengeance. My anger-spilt-over at our small queueing injustice was suddenly inseparable from the rage of our nation. I went cold. How easily I point fingers; how quickly I exonerate myself; paint a me-and-them picture. I am non-violent and peaceful because I speak and write about such lofty ideals damn it; because I mouth off against the violence associated with such campaigns as #feesmustfall. I am better than someone who hurts people or damages property. I may spew vitriol about this family, that group of students or some random politicians. But as long as it is behind people’s backs or in the safety of my social or work circle, then I can still pass as a reasonable, peaceful citizen.
Much of my passion is about promoting peace and non-violence in our country and there I was reacting in a decidedly non-peaceful way to something as petty as queue hoppers. In effect, I acknowledged in that situation a violent response to injustice is easier – better perhaps – than non-violence. This was abhorrent to me; shameful in fact; a denial of the infinitely powerful processes of peaceful conflict resolution.
“He who is without blame cast the first stone”. I know I must drop my stone – in truth we all must – but preaching about peace, tolerance and non-violence is so much easier than actually doing anything about it. We want to stone the so-called “wrong-doers” as this eases our pain and assuages our guilt. But we must find a way – even in the seemingly small instances of violence and confrontation in our everyday lives. We must take responsibility for setting a tone of non-violence in our nation. Interaction by interaction, we must transform the present moment into a cauldron of peace. This is the long but necessary road – indeed the only road – to the peaceful society we wish to inhabit.
Of course, Murphy insisted that we bump into this family at least half a dozen times on our mountain adventure. Not only that, but whilst having lunch at a wine estate 2 days later, they were sitting at the next door table!
We will be presented with the challenge time and again until we listen and drop the stone.
Justin Foxton is founder of The Peace Agency.
This column is dedicated to the memory of 17-year-old Anene Booysens: gang raped, mutilated and murdered, and our Mozambican brother Emmanuel Josias Sithole: beaten and stabbed to death.
by Justin Foxton | Oct 14, 2016 | Citizen Participation, Democracy, Leadership
“The peace movement can write very good protest letters, but they are not yet able to write a love letter.” Thich Nhat Hanh – Vietnamese Buddhist monk, poet, scholar and human rights activist
The recent story of Dr Lisa Augustine took me back to 2007. I remember it clearly; wandering round an old Natal Midlands farmstead with Cathy, chatting to the farmer’s wife about their business; a weaving operation. The subject turned to safety in the area and we were regaled with one of the most astonishing tales of humanity that I have ever heard.
Dr Augustine of Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital is also a weaver of sorts. That day she left the orthopaedic ward late. She was on her way home when she was set upon by attackers.
The weavers were weaving peacefully when a gang of hopped-up young men entered their workshop yelling, brandishing all manner of weaponry and demanding “all the money”. The weavers were simple folk but the young men would not listen to this and attacked the husband with an axe. He was wounded but not fatally. Again, the wife explained that there was no money but that they had some food and she would be glad to prepare them something if they were hungry. This disarmed the young men somewhat. Suddenly – with this offer of kindness in the form of food – there appeared to be more than one possible ending to this encounter.
The doctor’s attackers threatened to shoot her if she did not hand over her cell phone. In her exhausted state she did something that she later felt may have been unwise; she looked one of them in the eye and explained that she had been working hard all day at the hospital helping his community. It was probably her tone more than anything she said, but the man immediately changed his tune: “And suddenly the hostility vanished. He seemed to soften and his body language changed from being very aggressive. He apologised,” explained Dr Augustine who then gave him R40. The attackers left without hurting her.
The weavers and the Doctor said similar things about their attacks; that their attackers were probably just desperate. The question is, desperate for what? If we could answer this, then we would be a huge step closer to establishing a peaceful society. And we need to move beyond money, food, greed etc. These are only partial answers that trap us at the level of the material. We must be willing to venture into the darker spaces of human suffering. Until we go there, non-violence can only ever be a pipe-dream.
In 1967, Dr Martin Luther King Jr nominated the above quoted monk for the Nobel Peace Prize. The reason for this – as I see his work – is that he seems to provide us with the beginnings of an answer to this question – what are people so desperate for? He tells us that peace begins with each of us “being peace” as he calls it. We cannot fight for peace; we cannot create peace; we can only learn to “be peace.” How does this answer the question of what people are desperate for? Quite simply because hurt people hurt people. The only way to end the cycle of desperation that leads inevitably to violence is to be peace to people and we only do that by living lives that are – in themselves – a love letter to humanity and to the world at large; a constant cycle of healing and being healed. You see, people – all people whether poor or rich – are desperate for connection; for love and belonging.
After several hours of food and conversation, the weavers helped the young men to load their possessions into the family car. They were to lose a great deal but their lives would not be taken. However, just as things seemed to be working out for the best, it became evident that none of the youngsters could drive a car. This caused tempers to once again flare. The weavers then did the only logical thing they could think of under the circumstances; they taught one of the boys to drive. Like parents, they patiently explained the workings of the clutch and gears and it was not long before they stood atop their driveway and watched as their assailants drove their car and possessions off into the distance.
The boys were caught before they left the midlands. The weavers continue to weave and Doctor Augustine continues to help people get well The world continues, but with a little less blood spilt. This is simply because the weavers and Dr Augustine decided to be peace.
“The way you speak, the kind of understanding, the kind of language you use…. without being peace, we cannot do anything for peace. If we cannot smile, we cannot help other people to smile. If we are not peaceful, then we cannot contribute to the peace movement,” Thich Nhat Hanh.
Although this is radically counter-cultural – especially in western civilization – it will resonate deeply with us if we allow it. And the world will be a better place.
Justin Foxton is founder of The Peace Agency.
This column is dedicated to the memory of 17-year-old Anene Booysens: gang raped, mutilated and murdered, and our Mozambican brother Emmanuel Josias Sithole: beaten and stabbed to death.
by Justin Foxton | Sep 13, 2016 | Citizen Participation, Democracy
I recently got a glimpse of myself in a mirror of entitlement.
The reflection was clear and stark and it took me totally by surprise. I did a double-take; looked and re-looked – but still the images played themselves out in front of me like scenes from a ghastly movie.
The incident took place at our local Home Affairs office. We were there to do Cathy’s photo-card ID and had prepared ourselves for a long morning. We were welcomed by a kind man who perhaps could have known a little more about what was going on. But what he lacked in terms of hard knowledge he made up for with his soft and friendly demeanour. He sent us to wait in the right seating area which is really all one can expect from the man at the info desk at a Home Affairs office.
We took our seats in the queue and were greeted by nods, yebos and smiles. Everyone was relaxed and happy; checking their phones or chatting to their mates. The queue moved quite quickly.
But then it happened. Two rows ahead of us, between a couple of students there to get their ID’s sorted out – sat me. I was having a total meltdown.
We white people – when firing at our stereotypical best can be entitled in a way that I have frankly never experienced black people to be. We built an entire system of entitlement that has been officially outlawed for 22 years but most of us still behave as though we inherently deserve more, better, quicker than other races. We get around this despicable and outdated behaviour by labelling other races entitled.
Now what I saw in the mirror that day at Home Affairs was your archetypal white man doing the famous white person’s dance of entitlement. The queuing version of this dance goes something like this: When being made to wait in a queue we perform a series of repeated moves usually accompanied by sounds specifically designed to make the surrounding people feel slow, inefficient and inferior. The routine known as: “Things Worked Better in the Good old Days” involves one or more of the following moves:
We sit bolt upright and crane our necks around the people in front of us trying to catch the eye of the man at the info desk. If we can just catch his eye he will realise the error of his way making us wait and move us to the front of the queue where we belong. Whilst we are craning, we develop a strained look on our face, as if we are sitting on the toilet. We then check our watches in an exaggerated manner, lifting our wrists unnecessarily high for this purpose. We alternate between craning, straining and checking our watch. Craning, straining and checking our watch. This is the basic beat of the dance of entitlement (queuing).
Having failed at getting the man’s attention with our initial routine, we up the ante by muttering loudly enough to be heard about how few people are serving the long queues of people. We then roll our eyes. We cluck. We drum our fingers. We pout. Mutter, roll, cluck, drum, pout. Mutter, roll, cluck, drum, pout.
When this also fails, we abandon the subtleties of our various interpretative dance moves, pull out our cell phones and loudly tell whoever is on the other end how incompetent ‘they’ are.
I stared in horror at my reflection and realised how often I had performed the dance of white entitlement (queuing) or some variation thereof. My black friend and colleague caught me doing it just two days later whilst we were waiting together in a bank queue in Limpopo (us mlungus are well-known to black people for our impatience and rudeness). So not even this experience at Home Affairs had shamed me into some form of change.
My wife made it to the front of the queue. As she sat down, she smiled and said a warm hello to the fingerprint lady. The woman was totally taken aback. And as my wife thanked her and turned her back to walk away, the woman literally beamed after her.
It’s quite simple to contribute to nation-building in our country – particularly as a white person. We can begin by patiently waiting our turn. And when we get to the front, say hello and smile.
It’s radical.
Justin Foxton is founder of The Peace Agency.
This column is dedicated to the memory of 17-year-old Anene Booysens: gang raped, mutilated and murdered, and our Mozambican brother Emmanuel Josias Sithole: beaten and stabbed to death.
by Justin Foxton | Sep 2, 2016 | Citizen Participation, Democracy
I have a friend who recently came out of the racism closet.
Well, when I say she came out of the racism closet what I mean is that she came out publicly – on Facebook. She did not mince her words or try to soften the blow. She just came right out and said it.
Now under any circumstances this would be an extremely brave thing to have done. Coming to terms with our own internal tensions, ideological complexities and paradoxes is a life-long journey and revealing those in public is a truly vulnerable act. However, for me it was doubly brave given the profile of my friend. A little about her for context:
She is an educated, savvy, young, middle-class, white woman. You wouldn’t say that she comes from a conservative background as such, but she does come from a church-going family and the church can sometimes be a conservative environment.
Given this short profile you can understand why her closet-hop on Facebook caused a bit of a stir. Here it is verbatim: “Listening to Julius Malema on SAfm – this guy makes so much sense! Love it. Glad I voted EFF. (Update – not a hack folks!)”
Now, let’s recap for clarity: my friend is an educated, young, white woman. She is a deep thinker and her decision to vote for the Economic Freedom Fighters would have been well-considered, researched and spoken-through.
Now, the post did not go unnoticed. Some – presumably in denial – stated that her account must have been hacked. Others pointed out that Julius Malema is anti-white, to which she responded that he is not anti-white but anti-white supremacy.
Why is all this important to us? Well, with this post my friend sent a couple of very clear messages. Firstly, she defied the general rule of your vote being your secret. This tells us that she is proud of her choice and fearless about making it known publicly. This is good for democracy.
Secondly – and this is the more important point – she sent a hugely powerful message about who she is as a white South African; the journey she is on – a journey out of her own dark closet: her closet called racism; her closet called white privilege; her closet called white-is-right. Through this short and simple post, she told the world that she will not be a slave to her own white fear for one day longer, but will stand tall and proud and say something like (my words of course – not hers):
“I am working hard to become a person who my children can be proud of; a person who daily internalises the fact that even though I rejected apartheid – in fact more accurately, I came of age after the demise of the thing – I benefited and continue to benefit from apartheid and from being white. I realise that in order for me to be where I am – privileged – people, yes, black people, have had to lose their lives and their dignity and they continue to make these sacrifices for me on a daily basis. I simply cannot rest on my piece of land whilst knowing that yours was taken from you because of racism. I cannot send my child to a beautiful school whilst your child has no access to even the most basic education. I cannot stand by and watch while business founded and forged on the backs of the oppressed continues to enrich itself whilst over 30% of our population remains unemployed.
Do I feel guilty that my children go to good schools or that I live in a nice home? No. I feel broken. Broken by the inequality I see around me each day. I simply cannot continue as I am knowing that I live a life of quite extraordinary benefit and privilege at the expense of my black brothers and sisters.” That is something of what my friend said to me in this Facebook post and it killed me because all my work tells me that she is spot on.
Now please don’t misinterpret her post. It was a statement of defiance against her own unearned white privilege; a statement of recognition that she – like all of us – has such a long way to go before we can joyfully inhabit this land together as one. It was not an endorsement of Julius Malema personally and it went way beyond any kind of political statement.
With this simple post my friend challenged me on so many levels. I voted for the DA but when I read her post I somehow wished I had voted for the EFF.
Justin Foxton is founder of The Peace Agency.
This column is dedicated to the memory of 17-year-old Anene Booysens: gang raped, mutilated and murdered, and our Mozambican brother Emmanuel Josias Sithole: beaten and stabbed to death.
by Justin Foxton | Aug 16, 2016 | Democracy, Women & Gender Issues
“Outside, the music pumped. But no one looked like they were in the mood for a party. The late winter crescent moon hung in the sky like a scythe. Five pieces of paper had worked like a car bomb, blowing the night apart.” The Daily Maverick’s Richard Poplak on the silent anti-rape protest #rememberkhwezi during Jacob Zuma’s speech at the announcement of the election results.
It was like a scene from a Hollywood thriller, though were it fiction you would have battled to believe it. 4 brave young women took on the State President, the Independent Electoral Commission and the nation’s top security – and triumphed. You could see it etched on their faces; bewilderment. Mere seconds after they began their protest, hand written signs held aloft (“I am 1 in 3”, “# 10 years later”, “khanga” and “Remember Khwezi”), they stole a brief glance at one another and almost sheepishly let their signs drop a little. They simply could not believe that they had managed to steal the show for that long. It was never part of the plan surely that the nation – the world – would get the full length of the President’s speech to read their signs and process the magnitude of what was happening. They had expected to be thrown out in a matter of seconds. But incredibly, no one moved to get rid of them. The President babbled away like some wind-up children’s toy and everyone else assumed that he must know what was going on – otherwise he surely would not have continued. Timing is everything and their’s was immaculate. They left the President’s – and by extension the party’s – integrity and even dignity in tatters on the floor or that building.
The impact of Poplak’s quote above is that he likens the impact of this silent protest to a car bomb. What he is saying is that silence – peace if you will – is as powerful a weapon as the worst forms of public violence. Done properly and timed correctly, it impacts in similar ways to car, human or aircraft bombs by wresting attention away from the main event and making itself the main event. The difference is that with high impact peaceful protest – and it does not get higher impact than this – the only death is to people’s egos and heaven knows that is no bad thing. There is no down side. The irony of peaceful, silent protest is that its reverberations can be louder, longer and more powerful than any act of carnage. The vibrations of this protest will be felt for years – decades I would think. How this must have incensed the powers that be. But peace does that – it incenses those with any form of tyranny in their heart.
It is quite possible that the seeds of this protest were sown on Friday 22nd July when SABC staff coordinated a “blackout” protest by all wearing black from the first to the last broadcast of the day. They were protesting against the unfair firing of their 8 colleagues and against the national broadcaster’s decision to censor scenes of violent protest in the build up to the 2016 local government elections. SABC management including COO Hlaudi Motsoeneng knew absolutely nothing about this; it was coordinated without a paper trail and as brilliantly timed and executed as the #rememberkhwezi protest. And like that protest, it hurt no one; it contained no violence and it resonated with the nation. Again, the only casualties were inflated egos. Shame. The real victor? Democracy.
It is surely no coincidence that these incidents of silent and very powerful peaceful protest coincide with a change in direction of the political winds of our nation. Silent protest at this level of audacity, impunity and bravery is a hallmark of deepening democracy and the results of the 2016 Local Government Elections demonstrate a similar trend towards maturity.
These clever and well-coordinated silent protests – along with more balanced election results – reaffirm that our democracy is in better shape than even the most positive amongst us could have imagined. And the large-scale impact of the protests will surely begin to recalibrate how many perceive and enact protest in the future. Also, bear in mind that #rememberkhwezi was coordinated from within the EFF, the same party that walked out of the IEC Elections Centre when Jacob Zuma rose to speak. This is their ongoing form of silent protest as they refuse to legitimise the President by listening to him.
As activists and politicians begin to understand and experiment with its power, we can all look forward to a lot more silence in the future.
This column is dedicated to the memory of 17-year-old Anene Booysens: gang raped, mutilated and murdered, and our Mozambican brother Emmanuel Josias Sithole: beaten and stabbed to death.
