Transformative Leadership Lessons from South Africa’s Journey
South Africa’s journey is very personal to me. I grew up in a bi-cultural household. My mother is a born and raised white, Dutch Reformed, Afrikaner—all my mother’s side of the family remain in South Africa (with one cousin now in Malawi). My father is a white American. My mother came of age when apartheid had gained its most virulent, destructive structural and systemic form through the policies of the National Party. Nelson Mandela and my Ouma (grandma) were generational peers but had radically different life experiences in the same country. Apartheid was part of my childhood vocabulary and the focus of one of the first research papers I wrote in a research writing course I took as a sophomore in high school. The year I wrote that paper, concluding apartheid was inherently unjust and unbiblical and must be ended, Mandela had already served 18 years in prison on Robben Island and had been fighting to end apartheid for nearly 40 years. How little I really understood then.
As I read Nelson Mandela’s profound autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom,[1] I found myself reflecting on my family’s story, on my story, and the implications of Mandela’s incisive leadership insights. Desmond Tutu’s memoir, No Future Without Forgiveness,[2] added a theological framework for the work of reconciliation to his leadership insights—central to my NPO. Both books, though intensely personal in nature, are also anthropological, sociological, political, and traumagenic treatises. Their collective experience and wisdom provide a revealing lens and potential roadmap for viewing current debates and challenges in the USA over how to address a painful racially abusive past with its continuing present-day impacts. Their work is also certainly relevant to the continuing destructive apartheid-like realities[3] perpetuated by the Israeli government towards both Arab citizens of Israel and Arabs living in the Palestinian territories.
Peter Northouse writes about transformational leadership in Leadership: Theory and Practice.[4] In essence, according to Northouse, this leadership style focuses on human relationships and tends to be more personality driven. The goal of the transformational leader is to increase positive outcomes for individuals, teams, and organizations. This type of leadership can result in change at the individual and societal level. These descriptions all sound so anemic after reading Mandela’s and Tutu’s lived experience.
Northouse does not discuss the reality of suffering and the impact suffering can have on a transformational leader’s character formation. Simon Walker, in Leading Out of Who You Are: Discovering the Secret of Undefended Leadership,[5] comes closer to exploring the contribution suffering can make to a leader’s character formation. He writes: “…leadership is merely an expression of who [a leader] is in inside…circumstances conspire to create an environment, an arena, in which character is put to the test…usually through trial and suffering.”[6] Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces also writes about the dangers and sufferings facing anyone who undertakes the Hero’s Journey. [7] He writes: “The adventure is always and everywhere a passage beyond the veil of the known into the unknown; the powers that watch at the boundary are dangerous; to deal with them is risky; yet for anyone with competence and courage the danger fades.”[8] These two authors offer a more apt description of Mandela and Tutu’s transformative leadership journey.
I deliberately use the word transformative. William Safire, writer of the “On Language” column in The New York Times Magazine, wrote a helpful note on the distinction between transformational and transformative: “Transformational means “relating to a major change,” while transformative is “having the power to transform.”[9] Indeed, the leadership of Mandela and Tutu had transformative influence and impact on other individuals and on an entire nation.
Several key practices grounded Mandela’s transformative leadership: his capacity to see the humanity in his oppressors/enemies,[10] his humility demonstrated through his willingness to listen and learn from those younger than him and those who held different opinions with real world consequences,[11] his choice to forgive rather than hold onto his pain and anger,[12] his commitment to persevere through setbacks and more in order to accomplish his vision for South Africa,[13] and his decision to act for the good of his whole country—often sacrificing his personal safety and familial comforts[14]—rather than the benefit of only those who looked like him.[15]
Desmond Tutu’s transformative leadership was grounded in and demonstrated through his commitment to restorative justice[16] and forgiveness.[17] These two practices are consistent with the black African cultural value of ubuntu, a word difficult to describe in English. Tutu renders it thus: “It is to say, ‘My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours.’ We belong in a bundle of life. We say, ‘A person is a person through other persons.’ It is not, ‘I think therefore I am.’ It says rather: ‘I am human because I belong. I participate, I share.’”[18] Steven Bouma-Prediger and Brian J. Walsh explore this longing of the human heart to belong in their book, Beyond Homelessness: Christian Faith in a Culture of Displacement.[19] Were it possible, I would have loved to hear a conversation between Tutu, Prediger, and Walsh on this topic.
As I develop my most viable prototype (MVP) for my NPO this year, I can’t help but hear the plea of the young adults who are my stakeholders—from both the Middle East and the USA. They have shared with me the deep sense of dislocation and isolation they experience. For those in the Middle East it is because their networks of family and relationships have been disrupted and scattered to the four ends of the earth. For those in the USA it is because they are part of a generation that has inherited the increasingly individualistic bent of American culture. Both groups recognize the streams of injustice in their respective cultures. Both feel a sense of paralysis, leaving them asking, ‘what can I really do to change things?’ Both long for the transformative. I want to listen for how the hero’s journey of both Mandela and Tutu speaks into the questions and yearnings raised by my stakeholders and attend to the implications their hero’s journey might have for how I develop my MVP.
[1] Mandela, Nelson. 2013. Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography. New York: Little, Brown and Company.
[2] Tutu, Desmond. 1999. No Future Without Forgiveness. New York, NY: Doubleday.
[3] “PC-Biz.” Presbyterian Church (USA). “On Recognition That Israel’s Laws, Policies, and Practices Constitute Apartheid Against the Palestinian People.” Accessed September 1, 2022. https://www.pc-biz.org/#/search/3000773.
[4] Northouse, Peter Guy. 2021. Leadership: Theory and Practice. Ninth Edition. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publishing, Chapter 8.
[5] Walker, Simon P. 2007. Leading Out of Who You Are: Discovering the Secret of Undefended Leadership. Piquant.
[6] Ibid., 21-22.
[7] Campbell, Joseph. 2008. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. 3rd ed. Bollingen Series XVII. Novato, Calif: New World Library.
[8] Ibid., 67-68.
[9] Safire, William. 2008. “Opinion | Is It Presumptive to Be Transformational?” The New York Times, March 2, 2008, sec. Opinion. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/opinion/02iht-edsafire.1.10615308.html. Accessed September 1, 2022.
[10] Mandela, 462.
[11] Ibid., 293-305, 485.
[12] Ibid., ix.
[13] Ibid., 561ff.
[14] Ibid., 600.
[15] Ibid., 565-567.
[16] Tutu, 30-31.
[17] Ibid., 119-120.
[18] Ibid., 31.
[19] Bouma-Prediger, Steven, and Brian J. Walsh. 2008. Beyond Homelessness: Christian Faith in a Culture of Displacement. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Pub.
About the Author
Elmarie Parker
18 responses to “Transformative Leadership Lessons from South Africa’s Journey”
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Elmarie,
What a fascinating review through the eyes of someone who inherited one of the most remarkable cultural and governmental systems in human history. Thank you for your transparency in sharing this.
I’d love to hear more, though not on this post, about the ways this worldview shaped you and your work today.
Hi Andy. Thank you for your reflection on my post. “Remarkable” is not an adjective I have thought to use in connection with this part of my cultural inheritance. I’ll be pondering that further. This inheritance, and my wrestling with it, has deeply shaped my worldview and life practices. On the one-hand, it has formed in me a deep and abiding love for other cultures–especially when those cultures interface with my own. There is so much potential to learn from each other and to see the beauty of God’s values in the rich diversity of the human race. There is, of course, also tremendous potential for conflict and often extremely painful and destructive conflict. This inheritance made me painfully aware of my place of privilege and power as a white person pretty early in my life and issues/judgements of what is just/unjust. I can remember as far back as early grade school being the one person in my class who would choose to befriend and stand with whoever the popular majority had decided to pick-on, isolate, or otherwise marginalize that year. Of course, I didn’t have any of this vocabulary for my gut impressions/instincts to the situations around me, but that is how I acted on those instincts at the time.
This also shaped in me a strong (and often reactive) response to anything I considered unjust–this was not a pleasant period of time for my parents. So grateful they persevered with me. I think now this may be part of a prophetic gifting of the Holy Spirit in me. If that is indeed the case, I am still wrestling with all those implications and how to posture myself in the world.
Part of how I’ve tried to work at maturing this part of me is learning to practice/cultivate active listening and question-asking (curiosity), humility, and generosity of spirit. I work to listen more than I speak and to ask the Holy Spirit what if anything the Spirit would have me contribute to a conversation. I work to find ways to test my gut reactions/assumptions in a conversation to see how on or off target they are before I make any declarations.
Of course, ranting is a favorite pass-time of mine :), and there are times when I am so compelled by the injustice I see in a situation that I have to rant in order to clear space to be a more productive/constructive part of the conversation and to honor the human dignity of the one or group I’m reacting/responding to, but I try to do that only with a few select people who have given me ‘permission’ to rant and won’t take my strident tone personally.
The other worldview piece that this heritage has developed in me is the primacy of human dignity. We are all created in the image of God; God’s divine fingerprints are present in all of us and has very practical implications for how we live toward each other. This truth was central to my early conversations with my mom (and also my dad) about the injustice of apartheid and the ways in which the distorted theology of the Dutch Reformed Church (at the time) supported apartheid. Of course the same type of distorted theology existed (and sadly in many cases continues to exist in both conscious and unconscious ways) in other white-dominant churches in other colonized countries and across Europe, the USA, and Australia. I suppose we have Pope Nicholas V (1452) to thank for issuing the papal bull that is commonly known as the Doctrine of Discovery for laying the foundation for this toxic theology. But it is a theology that forms the backbone and justifies the way in which the Afrikaners developed South Africa and how our forebears developed the USA–all codified into law. Disturbing is an understatement in my view.
Well…that is probably more than you wanted to read on a Sunday night, but there it is…at least a start on your thoughtful question to my very complex journey and its impact on my worldview…still a work in process.
Elmarie: So many powerful connections to the readings this week from both your personal story and the other readings we have encountered thus far. Thank you for sharing a bit more of your family history.
Thinking about your generational lineage within the Dutch Reformed tradition, did you find anything surprising regarding what was presented to be the denominations stance on Apartheid in either of the readings? I’m wondering if your research paper caused new dialogue at home or church.
Hi Kayli…thank you so very much for your reflection on my post, and for your questions. Both readings confirmed what I had already known about the most conservative part of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa (which is the part of the church my mom grew-up in–the old Dopper Church). The Reformed Church in South Africa has its own complex history and several different branches, which I hope to learn even more about while I am in South Africa. I’ve been invited to preach in one branch of the Reformed family in South Africa–what is called the NGK branch which uses Presbyterian Polity. So, that will be an interesting experience for sure.
Yes, my research paper led to much conversation with my mom especially, but also my dad. AND to a sit down with our pastor at the time to discuss the theological underpinnings to our social constructions of race. Wow, was that ever an interesting and challenging conversation…how does a sophomore challenge the theological training of a well-seasoned pastor. It was the conscious beginning of a life-long journey. Over the years I really had to come to terms with my own ‘judgement’ of my mom and her worldview growing up…which was only different by degrees from my father’s growing up experience in the racially divided south of the USA (though of course racial divisions were and are to varying degrees pervasive throughout the country). I’ve had to grapple with my own implicit biases and prejudices. And, it has also been a fascinating journey of experiencing my mom transform her worldview/lens/understanding over the years…the grief and pain she experienced as she grew in learning how blind she had been to apartheid’s reality. Truly what both Mandela and Tutu describe as the distinct realities that white and black South Africans experienced is real…painfully real. So, we have both come a long way…and both of us realize we still have much to learn from our siblings who are black…both in the USA and in South Africa.
So fascinating. Thank you for sharing — I can’t wait to see what you take away from your time in South Africa regarding these topics.
I also connect Nelson Mandela’s story to the hero’s journey. Kristin Hanggi, storyteller and mythologist, recently spoke about the heroin’s journey as the archetypal inner transformational journey: Similar to the hero’s journey, but delineates the inner transformation that occurs.
What inner transformation stands out to you from Mandela’s life?
Hi Michael. Thank you for adding another source to my bibliography! Does Kristin Hanggi have a particular book that speaks to the inner transformation of the heroine’s journey?
The inner transformation that I see in Mandela’s story include the shifts he made in several areas. I think the Intercultural Development Inventory we are using helps give language to some of these inner shifts. One is when he begins to recognize there are other tribes beyond his own and that they all share some common experiences in apartheid South Africa and that they are equals with one another. Another shift is when he comes to the important but difficult conclusion that apartheid is destructive for both the oppressed and the oppressor–in different ways, but real ways–and so working with the oppressor is critical to transformative change. The other critical shift is when he realizes that holding onto anger and bitterness will destroy him and what he felt called to do and be–he had to take up the journey of forgiveness if he truly wanted to see South Africa become free and a place of thriving for all the peoples of South Africa. This is certainly a part of his journey that continues post his death, carried on by others.
What did you notice about his inner transformations?
Elmarie wow thank you for sharing a portion of your family history. I am so looking for ward to journeying with you to Durban to hear more!!
How might you combine transformational and transformative characteristics in your NPO?
Hi Nicole…thank you so very much for your question. I’m going to lean on the definition I shared from Safire and I reflect on your question: “Transformational means “relating to a major change,” while transformative is “having the power to transform.”[9].
For my NPO, the transformative element I think will be the capacities and sense of agency that I hope to see developed in those who participate in the initiative I am developing. I hope this initiative will be the beginning of a life-long journey for these young adults that will grow in them the belief and capacities to know they have God-given gifts (and a call) that equip and empower them to be transformative agents in their contexts.
The transformational piece I think will be the actual projects they develop and implement that will result in major change in their context…the stone thrown into the pond has its resultant ripple effects.
Those are my beginning thoughts on your question.
Elmarie thank you for giving my question some thought. I think you are on to something. Question…do those transformational projects then become agents of transformative power?
Wow, you killed it! Well done in wrapping all of these books we have read as applied principles to this blog. Beautifully (and powerfully) done. I, like Andy, thank you for your transparency in sharing. I too would love to hear more about your worldview and some of the events that helped shape it. I trust that you will have a very powerful and impactful MVP. Very exciting.
Hi Eric. Thank you for your reflection on my post and your encouragement regarding my NPO! I hope it will be impactful in ways I can’t even imagine right now.
Thank you too for your interest in how my story has impacted my worldview….here is what I shared with Andy on the same inquiry:
This inheritance, and my wrestling with it, has deeply shaped my worldview and life practices. On the one-hand, it has formed in me a deep and abiding love for other cultures–especially when those cultures interface with my own. There is so much potential to learn from each other and to see the beauty of God’s values in the rich diversity of the human race. There is, of course, also tremendous potential for conflict and often extremely painful and destructive conflict. This inheritance made me painfully aware of my place of privilege and power as a white person pretty early in my life and issues/judgements of what is just/unjust. I can remember as far back as early grade school being the one person in my class who would choose to befriend and stand with whoever the popular majority had decided to pick-on, isolate, or otherwise marginalize that year. Of course, I didn’t have any of this vocabulary for my gut impressions/instincts to the situations around me, but that is how I acted on those instincts at the time.
This also shaped in me a strong (and often reactive) response to anything I considered unjust–this was not a pleasant period of time for my parents. So grateful they persevered with me. I think now this may be part of a prophetic gifting of the Holy Spirit in me. If that is indeed the case, I am still wrestling with all those implications and how to posture myself in the world.
Part of how I’ve tried to work at maturing this part of me is learning to practice/cultivate active listening and question-asking (curiosity), humility, and generosity of spirit. I work to listen more than I speak and to ask the Holy Spirit what if anything the Spirit would have me contribute to a conversation. I work to find ways to test my gut reactions/assumptions in a conversation to see how on or off target they are before I make any declarations.
Of course, ranting is a favorite pass-time of mine :), and there are times when I am so compelled by the injustice I see in a situation that I have to rant in order to clear space to be a more productive/constructive part of the conversation and to honor the human dignity of the one or group I’m reacting/responding to, but I try to do that only with a few select people who have given me ‘permission’ to rant and won’t take my strident tone personally.
The other worldview piece that this heritage has developed in me is the primacy of human dignity. We are all created in the image of God; God’s divine fingerprints are present in all of us and has very practical implications for how we live toward each other. This truth was central to my early conversations with my mom (and also my dad) about the injustice of apartheid and the ways in which the distorted theology of the Dutch Reformed Church (at the time) supported apartheid. Of course the same type of distorted theology existed (and sadly in many cases continues to exist in both conscious and unconscious ways) in other white-dominant churches in other colonized countries and across Europe, the USA, and Australia. I suppose we have Pope Nicholas V (1452) to thank for issuing the papal bull that is commonly known as the Doctrine of Discovery for laying the foundation for this toxic theology. But it is a theology that forms the backbone and justifies the way in which the Afrikaners developed South Africa and how our forebears developed the USA–all codified into law. Disturbing is an understatement in my view.
Well…that is probably more than you wanted to read on a Sunday night, but there it is…at least a start on your thoughtful question to my very complex journey and its impact on my worldview…still a work in process.
Elmarie, I appreciate the many connections you made to other books in our past semesters. You reference Mandela’s humility and that stood out to me in the reading. A question for you: we know that humility stands as a biblical quality for all, including leaders. Yet, in American culture, the general type of strong leader portrayed does not emphasize that. How do you think the tension between leading and initiating vision and change can also include the type of humility found in a great leader like Mandela?
Hi Roy…thank you for your reflection on my post and for your thought-provoking question. It is something I have pondered over the years as well. I wonder if the general type of strong leader you reference in American culture might be more of a white cultural understanding of a strong leader? Although I hear this same description from some of those I know who are lantinx in their cultural heritage. I get the sense from some I know within the indigenous community that they more highly value humility in their tribal leadership practices. Humility is also a high value for leaders in the various cultures making up the part of the Middle East in which we currently live and work.
My observation and learning from colleagues in the Middle East and from my indigenous colleagues in the USA is that they often use story and parable to cast vision and to raise the issue of why change is needed…generating the dissonance between what is and the pull toward what could be through the stories and parables they tell. I also notice that this gives room for people to sit with those stories/parables and share with the community what it prompts in them. It is a form of communal discernment and decision-making. They also use the experiences of their ancestors to call forth a remembrance of identity and core values and possible paths of living into that identity and those core values in the midst of current challenges and opportunities. And they ask questions and let people sit with the questions and respond to the questions. They listen.
I see points of connection there with Mandela’s approach in his later years. It took time and experience for him to grow to a more mature and genuine practice of humility. Especially at pivotal points of change, he asked questions of others and listened. It seems he used his time in solitude to cultivate his capacity to be still and listen to God’s voice, to his own voice, and to the voice of others. He remained teachable…willing to learn from those younger than himself and from his peers and from those with whom he disagreed.
He also spoke to the crowds with stirring, powerful oratory that called people to the change in had in mind. I think these speeches were convicting and persuasive because of what he had endured. He carried in his own body and spirit the scars of oppression and so his vision for healing carried weight with people. He had credibility.
So, I wonder if there are some lessons in there for those of us who lead in cultures that hold up this ‘strong man’ ideal of leadership and where humility is seen as a weakness? There may be some who are never responsive to a leader who embodies humility. But I think humility, when practiced authentically and when it is grounded in a credible journey that has endured through challenges of one kind or another, is winsome and appealing to anyone who has faced their own challenges and have allowed those challenges to have a shaping impact on their lives. I think it is appealing to anyone who is asking questions of life. They may or may not be able to name their experience of a leader as that leader practicing humility, but when a leader pauses and asks questions and gives them space to actually respond and have their response influence what a leaders does…that leaves a mark. And stories…telling stories I think is as effective in a culture that values ‘strong’ leaders as it is in a communal culture. It may be that we need to tell different stories than our colleagues tell in their contexts, but still, telling stories opens up space for others to enter in and contribute. I think for me that is one hallmark of humility–humility opens up space for others; it doesn’t have to be the center (though when needed it can step into that place, but how it steps into that place is different from a ‘strong’ leader); it learns from others; it shares power by sharing space; it doesn’t hoard power for itself. I think, in this way, the vision and change journey becomes shared rather than personality driven by a ‘strong’ leader.
You’ve asked a thought-provoking question. These are some of my initial thoughts. How would you engage your own question? What have you experienced regarding humility and the work of initiating vision and change?
I appreciate how you make our assigned two books relevant to your own Project Portfolio. You have a really interesting and important project and I would think these two books bring an optimism to the possibility of success with what your are trying to do. And also I like your connection with The Heroes Journey with both Mandela and Tutu. I didn’t think of that phrase with them, but it is so fitting. Joseph Campbell would see the hero in both these great men.
Hi Troy. Thank you for your reflections on my post. Yes, I agree, I think Mandela’s and Tutu’s journeys can bring an optimism to the journey of young adults…to see what can be possible. It is a sobering kind of optimism, however, because their story makes clear the costs that come with committing oneself to transformative work.
Did you see any connection between Mandela’s and Tutu’s journeys and your own NPO?
Elmarie,
Thank you for tying in your vast cultural life into this post. I am often challenged by it because your eyes see through glasses that are very different than mine. I would love to be in the conversation with Tutu, Prediger, and Walsh. I had to include them in my post as well. My question for you is how do you anticipate your world view has changed since your last visit to South Africa?
Elmarie,
I am glad that I have had the opportunity to read your reflection on the biographies of Mandela and Tutu. It is so eye-opening. Thank you for your generosity in sharing your story and your heritage; it has given me a different perspective on both sides of the Apartheid system in South Africa. You did a great job applying and connecting to the books we read in previous semesters.