This lecture has a topic assigned by the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, “Leadership for Nation Building”. This is a difficult topic with layers of complexity. The subject would be difficult in ordinary circumstances. But it’s even more complex given the events in our country since workers at Marikana first started gathering at that koppie outside the mine. We all have a host of questions in the wake of Marikana.
These include: “What do recent events mean for our sense of nationhood, has trust broken down completely? What do these events mean for the leadership of the tripartite alliance, whose components are credited with leading from the depths of oppression and exploitation to the present?
What do they mean for our Constitution, whose Founding Provisions we proudly hold up, especially that of ‘Human dignity, the achievement of equality and the advancement of human rights and freedoms’; and the ‘Supremacy of the Constitution and the Rule of Law’. And if our nation is so tenuously held together by the values of our Constitution, what happens when these values no longer hold?” And do all South African truly embrace these values? Exactly what is on the other side of all of this?
These are similar questions that have arisen at various stages in our history, especially in the past century. As activists many of us are avid readers, and frequently pretend to be amateur historians. We are individually and collectively capable of looking back and developing a keen understanding of the circumstances that prevailed, giving rise to a particular set of decisions. With a bit of time, we can untangle the strands of events, personalities and consequences of each so that we can better understand what actually transpired at any given point.
But, now, just as then, there is no textbook on leadership. The opportunities to exercise leadership vary greatly with time and circumstances. And so we analyse our history for insights – sometimes to understand the texture and character of events, to try and understand the issues that leaders faced at a particular time – presumably this why biographies are so widely read. I would like to share two words of caution though; firstly, understanding history assists, but it cannot replace the responsibility of decision-making in particular circumstances.
And secondly, that history is always subjective. I am sure that if I looked back on the past century from the perspective of the oppressor, my views would be very different, as would be the events I choose to focus on. So, I select from what I have read and experienced, to illustrate my observations, without pretending that these are absolute views.
For the purpose of our discussion this afternoon, let’s choose a starting point, say a century ago, and examine the delegation that went to London in 1909 to register a strong and formal protest against the passage of the South Africa Act that set up the Union, thereby disenfranchising the majority and entrenching racism. Interestingly that delegation was led by Dr Walter Rubusane (later of the African National Congress (ANC)), Dr Abdullah Abdurahman (President of the African People’s Organisation), Mr William Schreiner (former Prime Minister of the Cape), representatives from Chiefs and various other organisations.
The delegation was indirectly supported in London by Mr Mohandas Gandhi, who happened to be there at the time. The leadership shown by these men remained an inspiration for the rest of the century, and continues today. They did not stop the passage of the Act, but their actions put a stake in the ground. And I would like to suggest, forged non-racialism as a modus operandi – an approach that would resonate in the following years and decades.
Let us fast forward to the formation of the ANC at Waaihoek in Bloemfontein on 08 January 1912. Then pause to examine the 1913 Land Act, and the dispossession that followed its passage. Evaluate the resistance to this gross act of dispossession – a measure so significant that it is still recalled – next year we will mourn the centenary of its passing. Or perhaps consider why there was virtually no resistance, notwithstanding the warning of the 1909 delegation.
To what extent did the imposition of World War I, a year after the 1913 Land Act demobilise citizens and leaders alike? Was politics set aside for the war effort, and four years later at its conclusion, black people discovered that the dispossession had been very extensive? What can we learn from a period such as that of 1910 to 1920 that would find resonance today?
In this chronological discourse, it is of course useful to also consider issues such as the Pegging Act Campaigns, the impact of Passive Resistance and the Doctors Pact. The approach should attempt to draw together the learning points from these historical events.
Now zoom into the formation of the ANC Youth League in 1949, and consider the impact of its Programme of Action on the decade that followed. Travel slowly through the 1950’s to imbibe the change in struggle to more mass-based forms. You are likely to develop a keen understanding of the Defiance Campaign, the Alexandra Bus Boycott and the Potato Boycott. You will need to understand the Campaign for the Congress of the People, and the Women’s March in 1956. In the course of this, you will develop an understanding of the impact of increased militancy of the leadership of the ANC and you will appreciate the impact of the Congress Alliance.
During this period you will also learn about the repression by the still-new apartheid regime, including the Treason Trial. Out of this entire period, it then becomes possible to understand why the PAC broke away from the ANC in 1959; you can then better appreciate what gave rise to the events at Sharpeville on that fateful day 21 March 1960. You may then have a slightly better basis for understanding the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), and the context for Nelson Mandela’s “Submit or Fight” speech from the dock, a few years later.
Now, I don’t want to pretend that I know nearly enough to give a rapid-fire and complete political history lesson. I am merely using the period to illustrate a point about leadership. So looking back, we can applaud those who took these far-reaching decisions, and with the perfection of hindsight, we anoint our heroes. The truth is a little bit more complex. It is said that political decision-making and sausages have so much in common. You enjoy them once made, but you should actually be spared watching how they’re made.
Notwithstanding such views, the big changes that the campaigns of the 1950’s heralded were about organisation, discipline, the linkage to the people, the tangible shift in struggle from ‘the leaders’ to ‘the people’, to the manner in which very ordinary people were able to articulate their views and expectations, and the resonance of that entire period on what was to follow.
The decisions, even on the formation of MK, were tough and in respect of the launching of Operation Mayibuye, there were intense debates and disagreement. Some who were eventually charged as part of the MK High Command argued that this approach was just too reckless. But history is kind, it frequently spares us the enquiry into the conduct of each individual or groups of individuals.
Let us pause here to examine the trends up to this point. Was the formation of MK on 16 December 1961 the correct decision? What would have happened in the silence of the banning of the liberation movement if it had not happened? Was the act of its formation effective in instilling hope, providing a channel for those in the underground and did it link the struggles of South Africans inside and outside of the country differently? We need to try and appreciate the quality of leadership and the foresight demonstrated.
Fast forward to exile in 1969. Cadres were battling to survive. The military campaigns at Wankie and Sipolilo were not enough to lift the spirits. Establishing the organisational machinery was exceedingly difficult. These kinds of conditions tend to be a breeding ground for factionalism and defeatism. There was fear inside the country as increasing numbers of cadres were arrested, tried and imprisoned – after Rivonia wave after wave of leadership layers were removed. The conference at Morogoro was convened where the first Strategy and Tactics document was extensively debated and finally adopted.
This document gave substance to the revolutionary struggles, defining and linking the political and military struggles and grappled with the issue of non-racialism, creating space for all South Africans in the Revolutionary Council and opting for an early variant of “blacks in general and Africans in particular’. That we still debate these issues today is a tribute to its introduction into the political discourse. What the message from Morogoro succeeded in doing was to galvanise the troops. Suddenly there was a renewed sense of purpose and vigour. There was new direction and hope that represents a magnificent tribute to the quality of the leadership at that time.
Some five months before the Morogoro conference, SASO was formed at the University of Natal. Building on earlier experiences, the philosophy of Black Consciousness assumed ascendancy, especially among young people. Names such as Steve Biko, Mamphela Ramphele, Saths Cooper, Strini Moodley, Henry Isaacs, Johnny Issel and many others rose rapidly to the surface. There was now a new opportunity for the awakening of a people, albeit in circumstances of repression. At times such as this, the energy of leadership was a great inspiration to others.
Regional issues also lifted the spirits – the impossible now appeared possible. After the collapse of the Salazar regime in Portugal, Mozambique and Angola were decolonised. This new freedom had to be celebrated and SASO was ready to lead this process. So late in 1974, SASO activists convened a pro-Frelimo Rally to which the apartheid regime reacted viciously, charging 13 with treason.
This was followed shortly by the 1976 uprising. An intriguing question hangs over these events. Were they purely spontaneous, as some would suggest? Or were they the result of painstaking organisation? And if that was the case, could the organisers actually script the violent behaviour of the police? It might be instrumental to note that Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe and his late bosom buddy, Stan Nkosi were arrested for MK activities on 13 April 1976. They were involved in a Soweto unit that operated quite extensively.
I mention this only to illustrate that the innocent view of young people suddenly emerging at Morris Isaacson High School in a wave of spontaneity might actually be a very, very small part of the truth. The question is how did the leadership conduct itself in these circumstances that included a very heavy boot of repression?
One of the medium-term consequences of the uprising was for the state and capital to attempt to break the spirit of resistance that had flared up anew. One route that they tried was to co-opt various racial groupings in the townships. As this proceeded in a fairly lacklustre manner, the state’s total onslaught saw the combination of police repression and social co-option, including the introduction of 99-year leaseholds on township houses to appear to be providing security. But they also needed a political framework, so they embarked on a strategy to divide and conquer by introducing a tricameral parliament.
This was, at least in the public domain, the spur for the formation of the United Democratic Front (UDF). The apartheid machinery had to demonstrate some tolerance of opposition. Taking them at their word, a cadre of activists convened and conjured up the idea of the United Democratic Front.
The informal networks suddenly sprung to life, organisation could operate more openly, though still with a great degree of circumspection and caution. The speed of mobilisation surpassed all expectations. It was clear to all involved, and to detractors and the state, that the UDF was an initiative of the banned Congress movement, or just simply the charterists.
This boundless mobilisation, coupled with calls to make the country ungovernable, combined with heightened MK activity and the international isolation of the apartheid regime created an environment where the regime retained the power of force, but had lost the ability to govern. It was this fact that laid the basis for the first exploratory talks between the ANC and the apartheid regime. The precise dates vary but the ‘feeling out’ appears to have started around 1987. Until this point, any activist from this generation, when asked how the struggle would end, articulated the very same view: that we would ride on tanks down Church Street Pretoria. Nobody dared ask what would happen when we got there.
Suddenly, talks about talks landed in our world. The rules of the game had been changed completely with the discussions around the Harare Declaration. There would be no tanks rolling down Church Street, rather negotiations would be the path to take to resolve the conflict. No one imagined the really hard work that lay beyond those negotiations. We would have a new constitution and free and fair elections, but there was no clarity nor a deep enough understanding about what precisely would be done with the immense power and huge responsibility that comes with the right to govern.
As talks started, Madiba engaged with the apartheid regime, without the full and unequivocal support, even of his fellow Rivonia trialists. He indicated then, and this fact had been subsequently confirmed, that “Lusaka”, or more precisely OR Tambo, was kept abreast of developments. I would hazard that there were serious misgivings about his strategy. At a very public level, he spurned the attempts by the apartheid regime to get him to renounce violence in order to secure his release.
The apartheid government was mortified by his stance. Yet he engaged in these talks about talks, which were completely outside of the ANC’s modus operandi. Moreover, he was physically separated even from the Rivonia Trialists, and not talking directly to his comrades to secure the mandates.
There were huge risks, as a cleavage could easily have developed that rent the ANC apart. Assume that some of the Rivonia Trialists had opted to be released at all costs, what would it have done for the morale in the struggle? How did the ANC overcome the risks, and what may have happened if they had not chosen this to remain united?
There was the interesting discourse that was opened when Operation Vula became known – together it presented as “Walk softly but carry a big stick.” But, the situation was fraught and the guidance of a then already-ill OR Tambo was important to hold the cadre ship in trust. The attribute of trust among and between leaders and the masses can never be sufficiently emphasised. In the circumstances of the start of informal talks, trust was tested time and again.
So let us leapfrog to 1990. Soon after the events of 2 and 11 February 1990 the playing field had radically changed. By the end of April, a delegation from Lusaka arrived to advance on the ‘talks about talks’ at Groote Schuur. Many in the ANC delegation returned to Lusaka afterwards and were repatriated a few months later, to build the organisation and pursue negotiations. The Groote Schuur process was followed by the talks that concluded in the signing of the Pretoria Minute.
This phase posed particularly risky and difficult challenges. One of the key issues from this Minute was the immediate cessation of hostilities. The leadership offered this in order to proceed to the next phase, chipping away at the edifice of the apartheid machinery. This now became a hard sell. The leadership was asking MK cadres to lay down their weapons, and unearth their arms caches but nothing concomitant was required of the apartheid forces. All of this was taking place while there were still a number of ANC cadres either in prison or awaiting repatriation. It was actually a most awful experience.
The wounds were still very raw, and some cadres were of the view that they had been sold out by the leadership. This was an exceedingly important debate to observe and learn from. The first step necessary was for the central leadership corps each to be persuaded about the correctness of the decision, and to evaluate the grievances of cadres against the central objective. Much of the persuasion that ensued followed the lines of the military formations of MK – so the MK Commander and the Chief of Staff sought out the unit commanders and commissars who then took on the political responsibility to persuade others and to hold the line.
The next period worth giving attention to is the period of actual negotiations that started with CODESA 1 in December of 1991. Two asides, the first was that the ANC had a new elected leadership that brought together “exiles” and “inziles” which was in place only for about six months, so there was much learning necessary to build an esprit de corps; secondly, much to the irritation of the young bucks (and Comrade Kathrada), from the time of his release from prison, Madiba kept referring to President F W de Klerk as a “man of integrity”. At the actual talks, and in response to FW de Klerk’s attack on uMkhonto we Sizwe and blaming it for the violence in the country, Madiba put down his carefully prepared speech and unleashed a scathing counter-attack on F W de Klerk, including a withdrawal of the “man of integrity” epithet.
Perhaps this was the past master at work. President de Klerk had been lulled into a false sense of security, that allowed him to launch repeated broadside attacks on the ANC and he failed to appreciate just how organised the ANC’s thinking was, and the honeymoon ended right there. Moreover, the ANC was completely united on the issue – leadership was provided when it mattered. In many ways the events of the period, not just the actions of one individual, were exceedingly important to observe and learn from.
Part of the ability of the leadership to act was the fact that a strong organisation was being built that took on the energy of a mandating force. People knew that they were being afforded an opportunity to shape this history by being part of a movement that listened. They had a sense of agency and belonging.
Over the next 18 months, the situation remained, as the press describes it “tense but calm”. The ANC opened a “channel” with the National Party coordinated by Cyril Ramaphosa and Roelf Meyer, and mandated discussions happened to create a platform for negotiations. Wars still raged in Natal, (as it was then) on the East Rand (Katlehong, Vosloorus and Thokoza), and in parts of Soweto, especially around hostels such as Nancefield and Dube. Then in June of 1992, the Boipatong massacre happened.
The ANC withdrew from talks with the apartheid regime. There was intensive mass action, including a two-day general strike that was exceedingly successful. This was compounded less than three months later when activists were mowed down by the forces of Oupa Gqozo in Bhisho. The ANC leadership mobilised the support of world leaders to back its demands for the apartheid regime to disarm its own and its surrogate forces. In September of 1992 there was an ANC/SA Government summit that agreed on a Record of Understanding. The Record included a ban on the carrying of dangerous weapons, the fencing of hostels, the release of remaining political prisoners and agreement on a Constituent Assembly.
Let me apologise for going into so much detail about the events of 20 years ago – I do so only to illustrate a tip in the balance of power and how this demonstrated that leadership was needed when it mattered. The apartheid regime had overplayed its hand; the ANC leadership seized on this opportunity and tipped the scales in its favour.
If we want to understand the challenge of leadership, this was the master-class. The ANC was de facto in charge of the situation beyond this point. The apartheid regime had run out both the ability to govern, and the will to rule. They found themselves in a cul de sac, the myth of their invincibility in tatters, and with their intellectual capital close to zero. They were despised across the world, and outmanoeuvred and marginalised inside the country. But, de jure, they remained the government.
The next circumstance to focus on is the assassination of Comrade Chris Hani on 10 April 1993. The entire nation was, at first, stunned into silence. This was followed immediately by an outpouring of anger. The apartheid regime itself was paralysed. Three days after the assassination, Nelson Mandela addressed the nation on primetime television. These events heralded his status as the de facto Head of State on 13 April 1993, 54 weeks before the first national elections were held.
The process to the elections was consequently, and in relative terms, very peaceful because leadership had created the conditions for an effective shift of power and control. Another way of looking at the period to this point is not unlike the tanks in Church Street analogy. These were the tough battles of revolutionary conflict. Not quite like the landing of the Granma in the Cuban Revolution, or the gunfights on the streets of Aleppo in Syria, but they were challenging of leadership in a not dissimilar way.
There was a different party in power. There was conflict to attain power. The enemy was equipped and experienced, and frequently even appeared invincible. But it had to be dislodged with a combination of force, cunning and determination; all undergirded by a mass base as a trump card.
In the examples I’ve fleetingly recalled, it is important to register that no two situations are alike. The quality of the leadership - and yes, there were organisations other than the ANC - was exemplarily gifted. They were also a “tried and tested” leadership. The attributes that would stand out from the 100, or so years we refer to, include vision, determination, listening, referencing, decisiveness, persuasive charm and a deep commitment to lead from the front as well as the back.
In relative terms, the challenges of leadership in government are much more difficult. The first and obvious difficulty is having to, seamlessly, lead both government and an organisation outside of government. In all previous times, pressure was being placed on a government with no credibility nor support. Now the mass base had to march in step.
But, pause for a moment and consider the complexity of government – it has to be the drafter and implementer of policies; it has to ensure that a raft of legislation is passed; it is the country’s largest employer; it has to develop and maintain an international footprint; it must attract investment to ensure that the economy creates sufficient employment; and it has to raise and allocate resources in conditions that are not of its own making. It is fairly easy to brush this aside with a “but the same challenges surely face all governments” - the situation is a bit more complex in South Africa.
In the almost 20 years since democracy, the major challenges have arisen because we haven’t found a way to maintain two discrete centres of power - and my submission is that this term is far more complex than looking at the individuals concerned. Yet running two different kinds of organisations with the same cadre of people is extraordinarily difficult. For good measure, add the layer of complexity provided by the need to maintain the tripartite alliance.
How might these tasks be accomplished more easily? Is the problem in the nature of the mandate from the one to the other? Is the entire structure just not too democratic, requiring the matching of information between one system and the other, without matching the requisite skills? There are challenging issues that relate to the nature of the mandate - what exactly is expected of those who are deployed into government? and how is trust maintained between people inside and outside of government? ought there to be a hierarchy of interests and how is this decided upon? These issues are actually at the very heart of attempting to understand the challenges of leadership in South Africa.
The biggest difficulty is that with all of these matters there also needs to be the implementation of policies, agreed to and overseen. Amongst all of these tasks, implementation is frequently what gets least attention. There is a particular weakness in the discourse across South Africa – we are immensely happy to discuss policy or allocations of resources, and appear to lose interest in the vigilance required over implementation.
As a consequence of all of these factors, the debates on leadership are frequently misplaced and too often focuses on leadership of party and state at the highest level, ignoring the reality that for leadership to succeed it has to be multi-faceted and deeply layered. But there is a bigger missing link. What is democracy actually? Is it participatory or representative? Can government always claim to act on behalf of people? And, what do we expect of leadership?
As South Africans we have badly abused the term “delivery”. Delivery is fine if you’re building a postal service, but not so in a democracy. In fact, this emphasis on “delivery” creates a chasm between the leadership and led, between an active state and a passive populace. This situation is complicated by our electoral system that creates wide open spaces between the electorate and their representatives, and even, as in municipal government, where direct elections take place and statutory space is created for direct accountability, it is not really followed.
It is against this realisation that the National Planning Commission (NPC) was convened. It was first assembled in May 2010 and mandated to “take a broad cross-cutting, independent and critical view of South Africa, to help to define the South Africa we seek to achieve in 20 years time and to map out a path to achieve these objectives.”
The NPC firstly restated the national objectives – to eliminate poverty and significantly reduce inequality. Then, in June 2011 released a diagnostic of the impediments to attain such conditions. Nine challenges were listed then, to this list, a further four were added and in each case a set of implementable targets set. The Planning Commission has not sat down to craft new policies. Essentially, it has accepted the policies that have been developed and focused on stitching these together and on their implementation.
The Plan is premised on a change of focus, returning to an approach best articulated by Nelson Mandela when he wrote, “I challenged them; I did not patronise them: ‘If you want to continue living in poverty without clothes and food,’ I told them, ‘then go and drink in the shebeens. But if you want better things, you must work hard. We cannot do it all for you; you must do it yourselves.”
The National Development Plan draws attention to this same theme when it says, Citizen participation has an important role to play in bringing about transformation. South Africans need to use the avenues provided for in the legislation and others to help shape the development process and hold the government to account for the quality of services it delivers.
Active citizenship requires inspirational leadership at all levels of society. Leadership does not refer to one person, or even a tight collective of people. It applies to every aspect of life. In particular, community leaders and public figures should demonstrate leadership qualities that include:
- the ability to lead by example and to follow rules that apply to everyone;
- honesty, integrity and trustworthiness. Leaders are able to combine the ability to hold fast to a core set of values as enshrined in the Constitution with embracing change and agitating for transformation;
- the capacity to innovate, manage change, build enough support to drive an ‘essential’ and not a popular agenda, communicating with people, keeping them interested and informed;
- the ability to listen, especially to those with a different opinion, perspective and/or priorities;
- ability to promote meaningful inclusion, helping to overcome barriers associated with ethnicity, gender, disability and other factors of exclusion; and
- this is an all-encompassing leadership that empowers people and places them at the centre of development.
So essentially, the Plan focuses on a broad leadership whose intent is measured by the style of its approach. The style of leadership we describe is neither authoritarian nor avaricious; the Plan proposes a leadership cadre from amongst and in the service of people. A very important dimension of this style of leadership is that it is measured by an attitude of responsibility – for good and bad – and not merely by the authority of office.
But to argue this is not to suggest that the authority of office is without place in society. On the contrary, the country must be governed and led by men and women who will be the first among equals in respect of the living out the values of our Constitution, including the supremacy thereof and the rule of law. As we are of the view that the struggle is continuous, so the responsibilities of leadership have to be continuous.
Sure, points of emphasis may change, but the responsibilities are continuous. The only way to deal with this is to appreciate the need for constant and continuous renewal, frequently of the values and ethics, rather than the individuals. Part of the judgment has to be on whether leaders pause to reflect in the midst of what they’re doing to ask of themselves whether they are doing the correct things.
One of the big and on going challenges is to develop the ability, with others to appraise the situation. Are the actions appropriate to the circumstances? How can the life circumstances of people be improved upon? What risks are we prepared to take in pursuit of these objectives? The responsibilities of all of us are described in the preamble to our Constitution, whose objectives are to:
- Heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights;
- Lay the foundations for a democratic and open society in which government is based on the will of the people and every citizen is protected by law;
- Improve on the quality of life of all citizens and free the potential of each person; and
- Build a united and democratic South Africa able to take its rightful place as a sovereign state in the family of nations.
These responsibilities are so well crafted that leaders do not even have to be particularly smart, but they must be deeply committed and faithful servants of the values of our Constitution. A reality that is almost completely overlooked is that the leaders who have gone before were not hereditary leaders. They were shaped and honed in the furnace of struggle. We recall those who come through the circumstance with flying colours, but these were only a small cohort of the many who participated in the organisations.
The furnace is different, and the best leaders are going to remain those who learn by leading. This is not enough, however. Between the previous generations and the current is a huge cadre of people who were trained and work shopped. Many of the generation of the 1980s tended to be multi-skilled. What was a consistent feature of this training were the tools of analysis. To this was added hard organisational skills, the ability to listen, the ability to run meetings.
But, the issue of values and service, so quintessential to the make-up of a deep cadre of leaders was taught and retaught, until the values were internalised. Much of this training was done by a range of non-governmental organisation's for groups drawn from community organisations - or at least that was the legend! The training was not undertaken by the banned organisations. So, the kinds of skills that were honed were available to activists from the Mass Democratic Movement, and beyond!
In sharp contradiction, the opportunities to replicate the necessary skills to build an adaptive and resilient leadership cadre are now too few and far-between. This happens in spite of significant progress in technology, available information and resources in organisations. Well, if as it is alleged that branches of political organisations discuss the awarding of tenders and other issues that advance the material position of its leadership, we've identified part of the problem. And if this situation continues, we must pause to consider how this desired cadre of leadership will emerge?
So, where are we, as nation? What do we see into the future? What are we prepared to invest in a leadership that is values-based and strong? Part of the answer to these questions is embedded in how we answer the questions that arose at the start of this talk. We have to repeat questions informed by our observations of the present such as, “What does this mean for our sense of nationhood, has trust broken down completely?” and “Exactly what is on the other side of this?”
I know that Nelson Mandela’s name is associated with a quotation that goes something like, “After climbing a great hill, one finds that there are many more hills to climb.”
I recently heard a variation on the same theme by the Nigerian author, Ben Okri who described the opportunity in nations with the following words, how long does it last, this sense of having climbed a mountain-top against all the odds and gazing back down over the journey accomplished and feeling for a long historical moment the sense that with the will power and the vision clear, anything is possible?
Historical exaltation is too short. Life comes rushing in. No one can dwell on a mountain-top long; the air there is too pure and unreal. The value of mountain-tops is not to live on them but to see from them. To see into the magic and difficult distances, to see something of the great journey still ahead; to see, in short, the seven mountains that are hidden when we climb. It may be only once that a people have such a vision.
Maybe very, very great nations have such a vision a few times, and each time they do they affect a profound renewal in their history and take a quantum leap in their development. Most nations never glimpse the mountain-top at all; never sense the vastness and the greatness of the gritty glory that lies ahead of them in the seven mountains each concealed behind the other.
So, are we gathered on that mountain-top? Can we look back and see the traverse of our struggle to this point? How far can we see ahead? How do we appreciate risks? And do we understand what history demands of us? Are we ready for the next phase? And are we ready to be the kinds of leaders that the moment demands?
