From James Michener’s The Covenant, the epic 1100-page saga of South African history, comes this nugget of wisdom. All quotes below are from this historical novel. With everything happening in Ferguson, MO, my heart aches…why can’t we learn from our hundreds of mistakes?
Interesting, during the Great Boer War launched in 1899, the battle of Spion Kop (Spying Hill) included four men who would change history. Each took something vastly different away from the conflict.
Winston Churchill learned a lesson in bulldog tenacity, which played out in his bid for immortality.
Louis Botha was a Boer and first Prime Minister (1910-1919) of the Union of South Africa—the forerunner of the modern South African state. at Spion Kop, he “became convinced that Boer and Englishman would do better if they worked together.” He, however, believed this was necessary only for “the two white races.” This, of course, was part of the mindset that paved the way for apartheid government.
Micah Nxumalo, from the great Zulu Nation, served General Paulus de Groot, and the understanding he took away from this deadly conflict was that the conflict between the English and Boers was only temporary, and that the biggest struggle would be “white man against black and in the end [the black man] shall triumph.”
The most interesting lesson came from a man whose role in the conflict was surprising: that of stretcher bearer for the English forces. This young man was Mohandas Gandhi. He “learned that warfare was utterly stupid, that it solved no problems, and that when teh dead were colleced and the medals distributed, the warring parties still faced their insoluble problems. How much better had they avoided violent discourse and taken resort to peaceful non-resistance.”
Note: This term “non-resistance” has nearly gone out of vogue; it means “the practice or principle of not resisting authority, even when it is unjustly exercised” At its core is discouragement of, even opposition to, physical resistance to an enemy. It is considered a very principled, disciplined form of nonviolence and pacifism at its purest.
How sad that we never learn. The disasters of racism, as they play out again in Ferguson, MO, need to end. Why can’t we just decide that we don’t hate each other and get rid of apartheid of the heart? What will it take?
I’m a little stressed as I’m on the search for a new agent, but such stress pales in light of what’s taking place in Missouri.
Michener, James. The Covenant. Fawcett, 1987.
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