Word: mandela
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...miracle brought forth by Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk was abundantly welcome, and long overdue, it also looked dangerous. A thousand | possibilities (brilliant or ominous, best of times or worst of times) attended the birth of the new South Africa. Jubilation and anxiety flashed around the imagination like manifestations of weather in a Shakespeare tragedy...
Just a short stroll from Nelson Mandela's modest country house in the Transkei is the even more humble village where he was born. The round thatched huts of Qunu have no running water or electricity, and shy herdboys wielding sticks tend the skinny cattle the same way young Rolihlahla Nelson Mandela did almost 70 years ago. Walking across the green hills above the village one morning not long ago, Mandela recalled a lesson he learned as a boy. "When you want to get a herd to move in a certain direction," he said, "you stand at the back with...
...would suggest that so charismatic a figure as Nelson Mandela, a doughty and energetic 75, leads from behind. But Mandela has always made his authority felt on two levels: by standing at the head of the African National Congress as symbol and standard bearer and by forming strategy from behind by suggestion, pressure, indirection. During his career as a politician -- a word he proudly uses to describe himself -- he has at times moved out ahead of his colleagues and audaciously created policy, while at other times he has been content to plant the seed of an idea that bears fruit...
Next week Mandela will become the President of the country whose government he fought against for so long. Leading a liberation struggle is a task fundamentally different from heading a government; Mandela will no longer seek to bring a system down but to build one up. Yet his style of leadership is suited to his new task, for he is a practiced seeker of unity and consensus...
...Mandela witnessed the dynamic of leadership early on. Several times a year, his guardian, Chief Jongintaba, the regent of the Thembu tribe, presided over what were essentially tribal town meetings. People came from far and wide to Chief Jongintaba's royal seat, the Great Place at Mqekezweni. These meetings lasted days, and did not end until everyone had had a chance to speak his , mind. Rolihlahla sat on the fringes and watched as his guardian listened in thoughtful silence. Only at the end would Chief Jongintaba speak, and then it was to nurture a consensus. A leader, Mandela learned, does...