Tag: apartheid

A leader with courage and integrity

Posted on by kathiemm

Film review of Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, by guest contributor Dot Walsh

With the recent passing of Nelson Mandela, the former president of South Africa, this film takes on a historical quality.

The movie and story line quite accurately follow Mandela’s autobiography of the same name, highlighting the background of the rise and brutality of apartheid resulting in conflict and suffering. Actual film footage is woven into the script making the movie interesting and real.

Idris Elba, in his role as Mandela, does an excellent job of portraying the emotional turmoil within this man and the poignancy of the journey.

After 27 years of incarceration, Nelson Mandela emerged as a political leader with courage and moral integrity, able to unite both black and white in the country he loved.

One sad note is that Mandela had to separate from his wife, Winnie, who was unable to leave revenge behind.

This is not a film to miss!

Dot Walsh is a lifelong peace activist and member of the Engaging Peace Board of Directors.

Father Michael Lapsley addresses the healing of trauma, Part 1

Posted on by kathiemm

By guest author Dot Walsh

“UBUNTU” in the Xhosa culture means: “I am because we are.”

On Veterans Day, November 11, it is good to recognize that many of the women and men who have served at war in Afghanistan and other foreign countries return to their homes without adequate support for the trauma they have experienced.

Trauma is an invisible wound. We have learned a lot about post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and have identified it in individuals engaged in current wars. But soldiers who returned from Vietnam and Korea often remain victims of their pain and sometimes victimize others.

A recent visit, interview, and workshop with Father Michael Lapsley of South Africa gave me some insight into the effects of trauma and the possibility of healing. Father Lapsley is an Anglican priest from New Zealand who experienced his own trauma as a result of his active participation in speaking out against the apartheid regime in South Africa.

In 1973 during the height of apartheid, he was sent by his order to Durban, South Africa, to serve as chaplain for both black and white university students. As a witness to the atrocities and injustices of apartheid, he began to speak out on behalf of schoolchildren who were being shot, detained, and tortured.

Because of his public stand against the government, his life was threatened. It became necessary for him to leave the country and go into exile in Zimbabwe. In 1990, he received a letter bomb that was hidden inside two religious magazines. The bomb exploded with a force that blew off both of his hands and blinded him in one eye, along with covering his body with serious burns.

After a long recovery in Australia, he returned to South Africa to become chaplain of the Trauma Centre for Survivors of Violence and Torture, which became part of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). This work led to the creation of the Institute for Healing of Memories (IHOM), an organization that focuses on individuals who tell their stories in workshops where they can begin to work through their trauma.

[to be continued]

Dot Walsh is a lifelong peace activist and member of the Engaging Peace board of directors.

No causes to kill for

Posted on by kathiemm
Gandhi in 1944
Gandhi in 1944 (Image in public domain)

“There are many causes that I am prepared to die for but no causes that I am prepared to kill for.”     (Mahatma Gandhi, The story of my experiments with truth, 1927)

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, often known as Mahatma (“Great Soul” in Sanskrit) was born October 2, 1869. In 2007, the General Assembly of the United Nations approved a resolution to create an International Day of Non-Violence on October 2 to commemorate his birthday.

In anticipation of his birthday, we provide a list of some of the relatively recent non-violent movements and their goals:

  • Martin Luther King’s campaign in the 1960s to achieve his dream: “that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal'”
  • Anti-nuclear protests in the 1970s and 1980s—for example, at the Montague Nuclear Plant site where the actions of one man, Sam Lovejoy, led to cancellation of plans for a nuclear power plant
  • The Chinese pro-democracy movement of 1987-1989, most memorable for the protests in Tiananmen Square
  • The end of apartheid in South Africa in the early 1990s
  • The Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions of 2010 and 2011
  • The current demonstrations against economic and political control of the United States by Wall Street

To start a non-violent campaign of your own, you may find the steps offered in this document helpful.

Non-violence can achieve results.

Some wonderful examples can be found in the book A force more powerful: A century of non-violent conflict by Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Happy birthday, Nelson Mandela

Posted on by kathiemm

The world is honored and made a better place by your presence among us and by the lessons and leadership you have provided throughout a life of courage and character.

Nelson Mandela
Image in public domain

I am grateful that despite all the horrors of apartheid, all the violence that was done, your life was preserved because that life has been a gift to all life on earth.

You are the role model most needed in a world where too many people rush to destroy anyone they have decided to call an enemy. You are a mensch.

Here, in the 100thpost of this blog, I want to share with all of our readers, some of your enduring words of truth, justice, wisdom, and empathy:

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”

“For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. ”

“If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner. ”

“We must use time wisely and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right. ”

Dear Readers, if you want to see a wonderful movie that says a lot about the kind of man Nelson Mandela is, see the film Invictus and enjoy this fine poem by William Ernest Henley:

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

(Poem in public domain)

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