Читать книгу Tafelberg Short: A chief is a chief by the grace of his people - Max du Preez - Страница 6

The teacher and his student

But there was an early southern African leader who did have enough space – or made enough space – for his vision, ideas and approach to flourish.

This leader was an extraordinary statesman following a clear vision of what leadership should be, and we have enough reliable material on his philosophies and the remarkable mentor that taught him. The fact that these two men were untouched by Western or any other external influences when they developed their doctrines on governance and leadership makes them an ideal case study.

The statesman was King Moshoeshoe of the Basotho and his mentor was Chief Mohlomi, Africa’s most underrated philosopher of all time, who ran his own leadership academy in central South Africa more than two centuries ago.

Mohlomi (1720-1815) lived during the same time as the famous Western philosophers Montesquieu (1689-1755), Voltaire (1694-1778), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) and Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).

If Mohlomi had had the ability to write down his thoughts and philosophies, I have little doubt that the whole world would have known about him and that he would probably have been as famous as Montesquieu, Rousseau, Voltaire and Kant.

Mohlomi’s thoughts and teachings were aimed at the community he was living in and the problems of his time. Voltaire, Rousseau and the others of course did the same; only their communities and circumstances were radically different.

Mohlomi’s student Moshoeshoe stabilised central South Africa at a critical time in history; without his interventions the black societies of his time would have been much more weakened when they first encountered white settlers.

Most of the British colonialists and Afrikaner farmers regarded Moshoeshoe as a sly, unreliable and primitive African chief. When he declared simply ‘I am Moshoeshoe’ to Paul Kruger’s rude questions, Kruger didn’t understand that he probably meant: ‘I am a proud and accomplished African king. I am the product of a successful, spiritual civilisation that had been on this land many generations before you arrived. Your sense of superiority is purely a reflection of your own ignorance and arrogance.’