(Re)imagining Mandela's Leadership esiXhoseni

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/intecritdivestud.2.2.0072
• Pages: 72-88
• Published date: 01 December 2019
• Date: 01 December 2019
• Author: Pedro Mzileni
• Subject Matter: isiXhosa,Qunu,Mandela,African leadership,liberation movements

International Journal of CRITICAL DIVERSITY STUDIES 2.2 December 2019

(Re)imagining Mandela’s Leadership

esiXhoseni

Pedro Mzileni

Sociology and Anthropology, Nelson Mandela University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa

Pedro Mzileni is a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at

Nelson Mandela University, South Africa.

ABSTRACT

Much public discourse positions Nelson Mandela as a global gure who embraced

Western English ideals characterised by liberal human rights and heroic individual

leadership. This paper challenges that decontextualised presentation of Mandela

by locating him esiXhoseni, which is his ancestral, linguistic, geographic and epis-

temic locality. Pulling Mandela’s leadership traits into his indigenous traditions and

origins provides an opportunity to (re)imagine the philosophical and moral tools

he utilised to form his personal and social sensibilities in the execution of his po-

litical responsibilities as an African freedom ghter and statesman. This study also

contextualises how Mandela utilised isiXhosa as an African leadership philosophy

in the struggle for social justice across his personal and political life. If we are to

properly comprehend the primary inuences that shaped the ontological canons

of Southern African liberation struggle gures, then we must labour to understand

how their local and indigenous African languages constructed their political con-

sciousness, principles, ethics, ideals, moral codes and leadership qualities.

KEYWORDS

isiXhosa, Qunu, Mandela, African leadership, liberation movements

Introduction

Much quantitative attention has been granted to the studying of Mandela. However, little has

been accorded to qualitative studies about his indigenous traditions and other sources of his

leadership philosophies from an African perspective. Mangcu (2019) shares the same observa-

tion when he reveals that, first, none of Mandela’s existing biographies have been written by an

African and, secondly, the overarching theme of these Western-generated biographies of his

life, as far as his village background is concerned, is tribalised presentations of his upbringing,

(Re)imagining mandela’s leadeRship esiXhoseni 73

International Journal of CRITICAL DIVERSITY STUDIES 2.2 December 2019

wherein his family community in the rural Eastern Cape, South Africa, is viewed as a back-

ward society that he eventually outgrew when he became urbanised and civilised by the

European education he obtained from Fort Hare University, and later the employment he

acquired in urban Johannesburg.

Mangcu’s work (2019) mainly focuses on the Untold Heritage of Mandela’s life which

traces the figure’s life in two aspects: (1) the historicisation of his ancestral heritage, clan

histories and family tree; and (2) the convergence of his indigenous intellectual traditions

with Western education and ANC urban political education that he imbibed in industrialis-

ing Johannesburg at the height of apartheid in the 1940s. These trajectories undoubtedly

influenced his ‘broad church’ outlook on socio-political questions of that time, as expected

from an African freedom fighter waging the liberation struggle in a complex militarised-

settler colony that had to be fought mainly through epistemic strategy and tactics with

various degrees of force. This paper adds further emphasis by specifically underscoring

isiXhosa, Mandela’s home language, as an African leadership philosophy that guided his

political consciousness, moral code and ethical convictions throughout his personal and

political life – two traces that are relatively difficult to compartmentalise in Mandela’s life, as

he once famously proclaimed: “the struggle is my life” (Mandela, 2011, p. 279).

By locating isiXhosa as a leadership philosophy, I am attempting to deepen the public’s

understanding of its intellectual heritage and demonstrate the extent of its cultural and epis-

temic depth. IsiXhosa was instrumental as an epistemological and pedagogical asset right

through his evolving life of struggle. Put differently, Mandela might have had his traditions

overwhelmed by Western urbanisation as a political and social phenomenon (Mangcu,

2019), but consciously, philosophically, and ethically, I will show that he remained rooted

esiXhoseni.

EsiXhoseni and/or isiXhosa

IsiXhosa refers to the spoken language and its underlying philosophies of life as practiced;

whereas esiXhoseni can refer to both a geographic area where people who speak isiXhosa

come from, as well as a set of ancestral and epistemic convictions that they hold dear. In

other words, isiXhosa and esiXhoseni are interconnected analytical knowledges and theo-

rising assets that Xhosa people intellectually possess to theoretically interpret their practices,

reality and structures of everyday life.

Therefore, isiXhosa and esiXhoseni entail having an individual’s and a community’s

identity being imbibed in ancestral land histories and being intimately connected to ulwimi

(language), iinkumbulo neembali (memories and histories), isinxibo (dress code), inkcubeko

esidibanisayo (the culture and values that make us who we are), uhlobo lokucinga (concep-

tual thinking competencies and interpreting the world), ukubunjwa kwesimo somntu (the

making of a person’s personality), indlela yokuziphatha (the manner in which a person car-

ries and presents themselves), indlela yokuthetha nokwenza izinto (a distinct way of doing

things), inkolo (a belief system), uphuhliso (civilisation and socio-economic progress),

amasiko (customs and traditions) and iziduko (clan histories). These attributes mutually

consist of ideas, belief systems, values, philosophies and norms which form a person’s socio-

political conduct. The researcher is personally aware of these attributes as a young man