Great Leadership!

Yesterday, I was talking about Ratu Mara, the role of true leadership and how Alan Paton's lovely novel "Cry, the Beloved Country" proposed the idea that a Great Leader has three qualities: The Heart, The Voice and The Presence.

Then late last night I recalled something  rather astonishing: 

Back in our high school, St Joseph's, back in maybe 1972, while we were reading Alan Paton's book, in class one day Sister Francis showed us an old 20 minute long black-and-white film taken by a Catholic priest in a kitchen of an unnamed member of South Africa's then newly outlawed ANC.

This short film was simply four men sitting around a kitchen table talking about the future leadership of South Africa, and Sister Francis told us three of these men were the ones Alan Paton's characters talked about in the book; the three possible future leaders once South Africans had won the war on Apartheid.

I forget who these three were, but in this film there was a fourth man, quite small in stature, who just sat there listening but who still owned that room.  He had the most remarkable charisma and such intelligent loving eyes that none of us could look away from him.  And then, right at the end, he spoke and it was beautiful. In the most intelligent way, he summed up and countered each of the other three arguments, and then came up with his own viewpoint.

"That's him! That's him!" we  all called out.  "He's South Africa's rightful future leader." 

Naturally, yes, we'd all identified Nelson Mandela, because we could all see he was the one who had it all: The Heart, The Voice, and The Presence.

Gosh, who knew back then what was about to slowly unfold in that far away country!  Actually, it would seem that an entire class of St Joseph Form 4 girls already knew.  No, I'm not claiming we were all psychic, just that, yup, it was that obvious!