It was around December 2000 that I was holidaying in Cape Town and I took a trip to Robben Island with some friends. It’s an amazing place and holds a siginificant amount of pertinent history that every South African should never forget. It has been a leper colony, had an all women garrison protecting Table Bay during WW2 and the slaves would chop rock for the castles back in Dutch days. Naturally, it’s far more famous as a prison island. The only prison that had non-white prisoners and only white prison guards. It is also at the maximum security prison where the enemies to the state at the time were held captive, the murderers and rapists were in the prison block down the road apparently.
It was on a visit to the prison to see exactly where Nelson Mandela had been incarcerated for his beliefs, the same beliefs that has brought South Africa to where it is now. The prison tour is given by ex-inmates (maybe The Tourism Board feels this adds some authenticity) which gives it a sense of realism and truth.
We were all standing around the lime quarry where the politocal prisoners (Mandela included) would dig, day in and day out. Our inmate/tour guide told us of how Mandela implemented the ‘Each One, Teach One’ strategy. In short, whatever skills you had or knowlesdge you had, you would pass this onto the other members thereby everyone would benefit from the others knowledge, experiences and skills. At that time, it struck me that sharing knowledges is what gives you power, not ‘knowledge is power.’
I’ve always loved that phrase and what it means and how we could all make things work better if we just applied some basic collaboration and listened to others for a while. If a person is unable to change then their very existence of human being is brought into question, isn’t it? We are designed to think, to apply, to learn, to change our behaviours and one would think, become better at whatever it is we do?
So, I’d like to thank the man who told me that it was on those principles that South Africa managed to get through what it has. I just feel that the people who built this have forgotten how to use it. What ever happend to the ‘Freedom Charter?’
