Cascades

by Greg Satell

  CHAPTER 7

  Indoctrinating a Genome of Values

  The revolutionary sees his task as liberation not only of the oppressed but also of the oppressor.

  —STEPHEN BIKO

  Nelson Mandela was an unlikely revolutionary. Born into a royal Xhosa family in the South African region of Transkei, he was raised by the chief with the intention of him becoming a tribal councilor. However, when he learned that a marriage had been arranged for him without his knowledge, he ran off with his cousin to Johannesburg, where he became a clerk at a law firm, in 1941.1

  It was in Johannesburg that his involvement with the African National Congress (ANC) began. He met a variety of people associated with the movement, including Walter Sisulu, who would become a lifelong friend and colleague, as well as Oliver Tambo, with whom Mandela would become a partner in a law firm after he finished his studies. This too would become a lifelong association rooted in both the law and the revolutionary struggle.

  The 1940s would be a period of transformation for both Mandela and the ANC, which, much like the Indian National Congress of Gandhi’s time, was largely made up of educated elites who sought to bring about change within the system. Mandela, along with Sisulu and Tambo, as well as a number of other young activists, such as Anton Lembede and A. P. Mda, formed the African National Congress Youth League, which was far more African nationalist in nature than the older organization.2

  “I was sympathetic to the ultra-revolutionary stream of African nationalism,” Mandela would later write. “I was angry at the white man, not at racism. While I was not prepared to hurl the white man into the sea, I would have been perfectly happy if he climbed aboard his steamships and left the continent of his own volition.”3

  These views would be tempered in time. Much like Gandhi, Mandela would have to learn to conquer himself before he could overcome his enemy. Still, his views were in keeping with the zeitgeist of the moment. As the Afrikaner regime became more repressive, a stronger brand of resistance was increasingly seen to be necessary.

  Life for blacks would take a turn for the worse in 1948, when the National Party, led by Dr. Daniel Malan, prevailed over the more moderate United Party led by Jan Smuts. During World War II, the United Party, which had ties to Great Britain, supported the Allies, while the National Party openly sympathized with Nazi Germany, and in the 1948 campaign it ran on a white supremacist platform of Apartheid. Its victory was, much like Donald Trump’s in the 2016 American election, wholly unexpected. Nevertheless, the white Afrikaner Nationalists would dominate South African politics for almost half a century.4

  The National Party began to implement its policy of Apartheid, which included putting restrictions on trade unions, disenfranchising the already limited political power of Indians, Coloureds (mixed race), and native Africans, outlawing mixed marriages and sexual relationships between races and mandating that races live in different areas. As this was underway, Mandela and his comrades stepped up their efforts as well. The Youth League drafted a document that called for a “Program of Action,” which included boycotts, stay-at-homes, strikes, and other actions. This program was later adopted by the ANC as a whole, making direct action the official policy. Whatever hopes for working within the system had remained were now gone for good.5

  In the years that followed, Mandela maintained his African nationalist leanings and was skeptical of building links to other insurgent elements, such as the South African Indian Congress (SAIC, which Gandhi helped found), the Coloured People’s Congress (CPC), and the South African Communist Party (SACP), which he saw as a potential source of disunity and disempowerment among his people. It wasn’t that he bore animosity toward any of these groups, but he felt that they diluted the power of the ANC. His friend Walter Sisulu, however, vehemently disagreed and Mandela was outvoted.6

  Over time, as Mandela began to see the wisdom and value of collaboration he became a driving force behind the Congress of the People, a mass meeting of diverse groups that met in 1955. Over 2,000 organizations were invited, including liberal white activist groups like the Congress of Democrats (COD), which advocated for full equality among the races, including the right to vote. In June, the Congress adopted the Freedom Charter, which Mandela called a “revolutionary document precisely because the changes it envisioned could not be achieved without radically altering the economic and political structure of South Africa. . . . In South Africa, to merely achieve fairness, one had to destroy apartheid itself, for it was the very embodiment of injustice.7

  In other words, the Freedom Charter encapsulated the movement’s vision of tomorrow. It was far more than a statement of grievances. It called for fundamental change in how the affairs of state were handled. The Charter proudly stated, “only a democratic state, based on the will of the people, can secure to all their birthright without distinction of colour, race, sex or belief.” Yet it also did more than that. It set down a clear set of values:

  The People Shall Govern!

  All National Groups Shall Have Equal Rights!

  The People Shall Share in the Country’s Wealth!

  The Land Shall Be Shared Among Those Who Work It!

  All Shall Be Equal Before the Law!

  All Shall Enjoy Equal Human Rights!

  There Shall Be Work and Security!

  The Doors of Learning and of Culture Shall Be Opened!

  There Shall Be Houses, Security and Comfort!

  There Shall Be Peace and Friendship!8

  While to modern eyes, these may seem like fairly anodyne statements, they were, in fact, values that constrained the anti-Apartheid movement in important ways. The Freedom Charter called for universal rights, including not only for the other downtrodden races, but also for the white oppressors. It was also somewhat controversial at the time. As Mandela would remember, “Some in the ANC, particularly the Africanist contingent, who were anti-Communist and anti-white, objected to the charter as being a design for a radically different South Africa from the one that the ANC had called for throughout its history.9

  Yet it was those constraints that made the Freedom Charter such a powerful document. Rather than a mere statement of grievances coupled with a call to overthrow the oppressors, it envisioned a society that most people throughout the world would recognize as just (and international institutions would prove to be a key Pillar of Support that the anti-Apartheid movement would learn to leverage over time). Also, because it had broad-based support, it represented shared values and shared consciousness among the entire network of organizations opposed to Apartheid. Sure, it would have been written differently if the ANC had created it alone, but values, if they are to be more than platitudes, always cost you something.

  In the years and decades that followed, much of the power and respect that Mandela would gain, both in his own country and throughout the world, stemmed from the fact that he adhered to the values laid out in the Freedom Charter even when they were not to his immediate advantage and convenience. In fact, in future years when Mandela was often accused of being a communist, an anarchist, and worse, he always proudly pointed to the Freedom Charter and would note that nobody needed to guess what he believed in or was fighting for because it had been written down in 1955.

  In 1962 Mandela was arrested and charged with “inciting workers through strikes and leaving the country without permission.”10 He was, of course, guilty of that and much more. A year before he had set up, along with Walter Sisulu and Joe Slovo, the leader of the South African Communist Party, a military wing of the ANC called Umkhonto we Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation” or, more commonly, “MK”).

  The shift from nonviolence to violence was not taken lightly, but was seen as unavoidable after a number of recent events, including the notorious Sharpeville massacre, in which police opened fire—without any warning—on thousands of unarmed civilians, killing 69 and wounding more than 400, including women and children. Although there were only 75 officers, over 700 shots were fired. Many of the demonstrators were sh
ot in the back as they were running away.11 The plan for violence was also constrained to sabotage and sought to avoid casualties, but increase the economic costs of Apartheid.

  At trial Mandela didn’t even try to defend himself. As he would later write, “It was indisputable—and in fact I did not dispute—that I was technically guilty of both charges.”12 Yet he still did all he could to make the trial work to his advantage by giving voice to the values of his cause. In court, he insisted on wearing a traditional kaross rather than European dress, and upon entering and leaving the court he would raise his fist and say “Amandla!” (Power!), to which his many supporters in the crowd would reply “Ngawethu!” (To the people!).

  In his statement to the court, he explained, “there comes a time, as it came in my life, when a man is denied the right to a normal life. . . . I was driven to this situation, and I do not regret the decisions that I did take. Other people will be driven in the same way in this country, by this very same force of police persecution and of administrative action by the government, to follow my course, of that I am certain.”13 He went on to declare, “I have done my duty to my people and to South Africa. I have no doubt that posterity will pronounce that I was innocent and that the criminals that should have been brought before this court are the members of the government.”14

  He was, of course, proven right. Today, few can remember Mandela’s oppressors, but his name is revered throughout the world because, like Gandhi, he committed himself not only to the struggles of his people, but to the values of his cause, which helped him to be considered a man of vision, rather than one solely of grievance.

  In the years and decades that would follow, he put those values above his own personal despair during imprisonment, when he had little reason for hope, as well as during his years of triumph, when those same values would limit the power he had won and lead him to act against the wishes of many of his most ardent supporters. It was his commitment to those values, in both despair and triumph, that allowed his movement to not only prevail, but to survive victory and achieve transformational change for the long term.

  Mandela would be found guilty and sentenced to five years in prison, but that would be just the beginning of his travails. Nine months into his five-year sentence, South African police raided Liliesleaf, the farmhouse that served as the headquarters for MK, the militant wing of the ANC that Mandela had helped to found, and captured its high command as well as hundreds of documents filled with plans and operational details.

  The result was the famous Rivonia trial, in which Mandela and nine others were charged under the Sabotage Act. Once again, there was little doubt that Mandela, and most of the others due to their leadership in MK, were guilty (although two that had been caught up in the net were eventually acquitted), and Mandela, resigned to his fate, once again wanted to make a statement that put the blame squarely at the foot of the regime. He spoke from the dock for three hours, concluding with the lines that would become famous, “I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal, which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if it needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”15

  Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life in prison. He would serve 27 years, and during his incarceration, his statements were banned from public consumption. The Apartheid regime thought that by imprisoning both his body and his ideas both would eventually die out.

  They were wrong on all counts.

  Stephen Biko was still a college student during the Rivonia trial and its aftermath. With Mandela in prison and the ANC a banned organization, there was no national movement for him to join, no prevailing ideology for him to grasp onto, and no mentors to take him under their wing. So Biko would start anew, establishing the South African Students’ Organisation (SASO) and the Black Consciousness Movement.

  Whereas Mandela and the ANC had worked to free black South Africans from physical and legal oppression, Biko sought to free them from the psychological oppression brought on by decades of being treated as inferior beings in which they had learned to “feel that there is something incomplete in your humanity, and that completeness goes with whiteness.”16 This was, incidentally, an affliction that even Nelson Mandela himself suffered. On a trip abroad to gather support among African nations for MK, he boarded a flight on Ethiopian Airlines and found himself alarmed to find that the pilot was black, before chiding himself for falling into an “Apartheid mind-set.”17

  Much like Gandhi a half century before, Biko saw that in order to change the world, he and his compatriots would first have to change themselves. Unlike the ANC, the Black Consciousness Movement did not call for strikes, stay-at-homes, or other forms of conventional protest. Instead, much in the mold of Saul Alinsky, it focused on development through its Black Community Programs (BCPs), which ran self-help and literacy classes, managed health clinics, and undertook other projects that would directly benefit its constituents.18 Another difference is that while much of the ANC’s work was done underground, Biko insisted that his organization, the Black People’s Convention (BPC), would only operate openly.19

  These were Biko’s values, and even after his death in police custody in 1977, they held great sway in South Africa and internationally as well. They were also, of course, somewhat different than the values put forward by Mandela and the ANC, but they were not at all mutually exclusive or even inconsistent, a point that Biko readily acknowledged. “While the BPC is nonviolent, it should not be forgotten that we are part of a movement which will be confronted with new situations that may require different strategies. We begin with the assumption that rapprochement is necessary. The BPC is not a third wing among the blacks, next to the ANC and the PAC [Pan Africanist Congress, a splinter group that broke away from the ANC].”20

  In other words, while Biko was by no means a member of the ANC, he readily acknowledged that he shared values with others in the anti-apartheid movement, and those shared values constituted a bond that transcended the differences in their approaches. This is a recurrent theme among movements that succeed. Many of the organizations involved in the civil rights movement resented the center stage afforded to Martin Luther King Jr. and his SCLC, but all worked together to achieve common goals. When the American Federation for Equal Rights (AFER) announced that it would seek to bring a court case to overturn Proposition 8, the amendment to the California Constitution that banned same-sex marriage, it initially encountered hostility from traditional gay rights groups.21 When the case became a reality, though, everybody pitched in and helped.

  Movements for change always feature strong personalities with varied opinions and approaches. The successful ones learn how to transcend those differences. The key is to recognize values for what they are, not dictates and not plans, but rules for adaptation that can be combined and recombined as the environment shifts, without losing their power or provenance.

  VALUES AS RULES FOR ADAPTATION

  * * *

  Our DNA is not a blueprint or a technical specification. In fact, our genome contains only about 1.5 gigabytes of data, barely enough for a full-length movie. Its genius is that rather than specifying detailed features of our biology, it provides us with rules for adaptation—first, for chemical gradients in the womb and later for the outside environment. Genetic codes are also not monolithic, but contain various influences from different ancestors and can express themselves differently when exposed to different environmental factors.

  Successful movements for change operate on a similar principle, providing genomes of values that act as rules for adaptation. For example, both the ANC and the Black Consciousness Movement had similar ancestors—namely Gandhi’s Indian independence movement and the civil rights movement in the United States—but expressed those influences very differently. Nevertheless, they were—and considered themselves to be—part of the same family, much like the various organizations in the civil rights movement, such as Martin
Luther King Jr.’s SCLC, John Lewis’s SNCC, the NAACP, CORE, and others, despite being distinct efforts, were part of the same movement and were able to collaborate effectively.

  The need to express values is obviously critical in a political or social movement, although as we have seen, many movements lack the discipline to adhere to the values they profess to hold. What is less obvious is the important role that values play in a corporate context where, just like in a political or social movement, various constituencies and institutions need to be woven together into a coherent network. Make no mistake, however—values are absolutely critical to success. For example, Irving Wladawsky-Berger, whom we met in Chapter 4, stressed to me how central values were both to IBM’s decline and to Lou Gerstner’s historic turnaround in the 1990s.

  “At IBM we had lost sight of our values,” he remembers. “For example, there was a long tradition of IBM executives dressing formally in a suit and tie. Yet that wasn’t a value, it was an early manifestation of a value. In the early days, many of IBM’s customers were banks, so IBM’s salespeople dressed to reflect their customers. So the value was to be close to customers. Lou reminded us of that, and we realized that if our customers now wore khakis, it was okay for IBMers to also wear khakis.”

  “IBM had always valued competitiveness, but we had started to compete with each other internally rather than working together to beat the competition. Lou put a stop to that and even let go some senior executives who were known for infighting. He thought we should be open to ideas from the outside instead of thinking, ‘if it was a good idea, we would already have done it.’ He pushed these values constantly, through personal conversations, company e-mails, you name it. Eventually it all stuck.”