Mr Mandela

 Mr. Nelson Mandela – Lessons from the man who dared to change the color

Time to vote!! Who gives me more money, or liquor and may be some thing else as well. Our leaders are here to give us all it takes to rob us again!

 

Are we not confused, who should you vote, and how much money should I ask for? How do I know who is the right leader to lead us? And one of my friends was talking about the money he made In the last Election, it was whopping 10k in one day!!! Some of you must be thinking good time to en-cash your tax money! How much are you making?

 

 

Sir, there are people who claim that they can change the country in some months, there are parties who claim that they have empowered all (If you are a party member, we are empowering you to take bribe).

ICICI world T20, Champions league and Election in India, it’s an action pack year for us. There is one guy who claims that he is clean (he doesn’t shave though), but how can he be, when he belongs to the same party which was the most corrupt to rule Karnataka!.

 

There is a party which says everyone is wrong apart from the leader who leads the party and party member. If you do not belong to that party then you are a corrupt leader!. Can it be ever true?

There is another party which talks about the changes, growth, progress, empowering every single person, come on give us a break. All of you have done is to  simply never understood the qualities of a great leader.  It’s a complete blame game one party shitting on other!, what can you be expect from these “ so called leaders”. If any of you are really serious about making this country a better place for people, then please learn the qualities of leadership.

Some great guy once observed “Time and tide waits for none”, how true? Very less people can make every moment count! And those who make every moment count are the once whom we remember forever (I am sure these dam so called leaders will never be remembered).

There has been never a great time, never a great platform ever created than today to be a leader. It doesn’t matter where you work and what you do.  We noticed and some have experienced it, but let see where this “AAM ADMI” can take us to.  History is filled with some sort of “AAM, crazy people who thought that they can change the course of life. These are those Stars, illuminate brighter than the sun. Spend their life time, burn their personal life for others.

Kudos to Mr Mandela the man who lived every moment suffered a great deal for Humanity.

I am very proud that recently I read his autobiography (A long walk to freedom), A rare master piece for any learner of leadership.  “We live in such a world where your value drastically increases after you are dead”!! (It’s not advisable to try it)

We never spend time to know our family and people when they are alive, but we spend more time once they are gone!! What an Irony, we live like a spider, which creates and dies in its own”.. Let’s move on “Life is long process of getting tired” – Samuel Butler ( really).

I may not be able to list down all the qualities of Mr. Mandela, but I will try my best to cover as much as possible. If you think I have missed certain qualities then its only “I” who is to be blamed. Never been a great book written on a great guy, any book you write may not make any justice to the stature & pain of a leader. “Words can never express the pain and pleasure of a man”…. It’s the feeling!!

“A philosopher once noted that something is odd if a person is not liberal when he is young and conservative when he is old”.

It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones — and South Africa treated its imprisoned African citizens like animals.

 I did delete the above mentioned statement, but I felt it’s so relevant because lot of us work for one other organization, and simply replacing the word from” nation” to “company” makes all the difference in doing so, you would realize where you working. There are times when I personally felt that “Organizations” treat their employee’s unfairly. The more I talk the more I can think of the situations and places where people are treated as animals.

Apparently this blog is not the place where we can discuss about this…. All I want to do is to pay my humble tribute the most sought out leader of all time.

I have listed down couple of experiences of Nelson Mandela and explain us in details some of the leadership qualities which we rather earnestly search in our leaders.

1.       Honesty and Ethics:

During my second year at Healdtown, I was appointed a prefect by Reverend Mokitimi and Dr. Wellington. Prefects have different responsibilities, and the newest prefects have the least desirable chores. In the beginning, I supervised a group of students who worked as window cleaners during our manual work time in the afternoon, and led them to different buildings each day.

I soon graduated to the next level of responsibility, which was night duty. I have never had a problem in staying up through the night, but during one such night I was put in a moral quandary that has remained in my memory. We did not have toilets in the dormitory, but there was an outhouse about one hundred feet behind the residence. On rainy evenings, when a student woke up in the middle of the night, no one wanted to trudge through the grass and mud to the outhouse. Instead, students would stand on the veranda and urinate into the bushes. This practice, however, was strictly against regulations and one job of the prefect was to take down the names of students who indulged in it.

One night, I was on duty when it was pouring rain, and I caught quite a few students — perhaps fifteen or so — relieving themselves from the veranda. Toward dawn, I saw a chap come out, look both ways, and stand at one end of the veranda to urinate. I made my way over to him and announced that he had been caught, whereupon he turned around and I realized that he was a prefect. I was in a predicament. In law and philosophy, one asks, “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” (Who will guard the guardians themselves?) If the prefect does not obey the rules, how can the students be expected to obey? In effect, the prefect was above the law because he was the law, and one prefect was not supposed to report another. But I did not think it fair to avoid reporting the prefect and mark down the fifteen others, so I simply tore up my list and charged no one.

2.       Empowering:

Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine that a child of farmworkers can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.

“IF YOU COULD MAKE THE LAWS . . . WHAT WOULD YOU DO?” they said. “HOW

WOULD YOU SET ABOUT MAKING SOUTH AFRICA A HAPPY PLACE FOR ALL THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN IT?” Some of the flyers and leaflets were filled with the poetic idealism that characterized the planning:

“FREEDOM IN OUR LIFETIME, LONG LIVE THE STRUGGLE.”

When from class society we move to classless society there is a revolution awaiting to happen in future and that will bring on a leader, a man who changes the complete perception of religion, caste, private property, who will change the way people think and work…… And that should and will happen anytime by the end of this century….. Capitalist of this century will be withered as ashes in a summer wind… We will go back to the old and ancient way of living our life, ever free of all our misinterpretation of nature, religion, life….

3.       Slogan and Vision:

A slogan is a vital link between the organization and the masses it seeks to lead. It should synthesize a particular grievance into a succinct and pithy phrase, while mobilizing the people to combat it. Our slogan caught the imagination of the people, but it led them to believe that we would fight to the death to resist the removal.

 

4.       Promise only those which you can deliver:

The PAC put forward a dramatic and overambitious program that promised quick solutions. Their most dramatic — and naïve — promise was that liberation would be achieved by the end of 1963, and they urged Africans to ready themselves for that historic hour. “In 1960 we take our first step,” they promised, “in 1963, our last towards freedom and independence.” Although this prediction inspired hope and enthusiasm among people who were tired of waiting, it is always dangerous for an organization to make promises it cannot keep.

This blog of mine is not complete because I am sure there are many more qualities of “Nelson Mandela” are not covered.

It’s an irony that we do not have such kind of leader alive, the person who talks about no corruption belongs to the same party which ruled Karnataka in recent time with lots of corruption issues and leaders amassed a great wealth.

If ever we want to do something to our country then it’s time for us to guide the right leaders in the right place. Think about some of the qualities a leader must and should possess! And choice is yours, whether you want to give chance to a right leader or not..

 Happy reading….