All Roads Lead to Qunu
Leadership is not what you do to the other side. That’s always easy. It’s what you do for and say to your own people.
If ever there was even a modicum of doubt that technology has shrunk our wide, wide world down to a virtual global village, it will forever be laid to rest this coming Sunday with the burial of Nelson Mandela – in Qunu, a previously obscure actual village in the eastern Cape province of South Africa. The whole world will be watching.
The gods work in strange ways…
Every so often, just when a country or the world needs it, they produce a leader (often from places far removed from the usual centres and customary sources of power) who grabs the world’s attention and takes centre stage – a man or a woman whose beliefs and actions reminds us that there is a better side to human kind if only we would dare to walk in others shoes and make room for one another.
Many of them have their share of human flaws and foibles. They don’t always get it right, nor are they all saints.
What they are, though, are authentic. They derive their direction and focus from an inner, spiritual compass. They know who they are and speak with their own voice.
They have courage and are willing to take risks. Totally engaged in what they believe, their head and heart are twinned as one.
Compassionate, yet shrewd, willing to be vulnerable but tough, they are open to different cultures, customs and belief systems.
In so being, by action and deed, they inspire and rally their followers to a common purpose by providing meaning and values to their lives.
Unfortunately, when they are gone, most of time, the world goes back to business as usual, but these are not usual times. When leadership is so needed and sorely lacking on many fronts, perhaps, this time, the words and deeds of this leader, Mandela will have some lasting effect.
Read his full story here, compliments of PBS Frontline, The Long Walk of Nelson Mandela.