Tafelberg Short: A chief is a chief by the grace of his people. Max du Preez
target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_4d6da00a-0d36-561d-a43b-e09b93fad4e2">3. Mostert, p 369
The teacher and his student
But there was an early southern African leader who did have enough space – or made enough space – for his vision, ideas and approach to flourish.
This leader was an extraordinary statesman following a clear vision of what leadership should be, and we have enough reliable material on his philosophies and the remarkable mentor that taught him. The fact that these two men were untouched by Western or any other external influences when they developed their doctrines on governance and leadership makes them an ideal case study.
The statesman was King Moshoeshoe of the Basotho and his mentor was Chief Mohlomi, Africa’s most underrated philosopher of all time, who ran his own leadership academy in central South Africa more than two centuries ago.
Mohlomi (1720-1815) lived during the same time as the famous Western philosophers Montesquieu (1689-1755), Voltaire (1694-1778), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) and Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).
If Mohlomi had had the ability to write down his thoughts and philosophies, I have little doubt that the whole world would have known about him and that he would probably have been as famous as Montesquieu, Rousseau, Voltaire and Kant.
Mohlomi’s thoughts and teachings were aimed at the community he was living in and the problems of his time. Voltaire, Rousseau and the others of course did the same; only their communities and circumstances were radically different.
Mohlomi’s student Moshoeshoe stabilised central South Africa at a critical time in history; without his interventions the black societies of his time would have been much more weakened when they first encountered white settlers.
Most of the British colonialists and Afrikaner farmers regarded Moshoeshoe as a sly, unreliable and primitive African chief. When he declared simply ‘I am Moshoeshoe’ to Paul Kruger’s rude questions, Kruger didn’t understand that he probably meant: ‘I am a proud and accomplished African king. I am the product of a successful, spiritual civilisation that had been on this land many generations before you arrived. Your sense of superiority is purely a reflection of your own ignorance and arrogance.’
Peace is my sister
Mohlomi was born around 1720 in today’s eastern Free State province. He was the grandson of Monaheng (also known as Kali), the Bakoena chief that first led his people into the Mohokare (Caledon) Valley in the 1600s. ‘Mohlomi’ means Builder.
Somewhere in the 1730s, when Mohlomi was about thirteen or fourteen and undergoing his initiation, he had a powerful vision while sleeping in his initiation hut. Basotho elders explain that this wasn’t just a dream, a toro in Sesotho, but a vision, a pono, a kind of psychic connection with the ancestors – an epiphany.
He told people later that in his vision there was a strong hurricane and it became very dark. Then he saw a bright light descending on his hut. The roof opened up and a giant eagle landed inside. Mohlomi got on its back and the eagle took him over the mountains to the highest peak, where it dropped him off. Mohlomi noticed that he was surrounded by a multitude of old men and women. In his vision one of these elders welcomed him and told him they were the souls of his departed ancestors, the Balimo. This old man then told him that he was destined to become a great leader and that they were there to advise him on how to live, to lead and to rule.
From the 1930s onwards, the scholar and former prime minister of Lesotho Ntsu Mokhehle started interviewing Basotho elders on their memories of Mohlomi and Moshoeshoe. Some of these people had been born before Moshoeshoe’s death in 1870; most had been born before 1890. Mokhehle constructed a narrative out of all these memories and published it in a book in 1976.[4]
According to these interviewees, the ancestors told Mohlomi to be a man of peace and love; to be fair and just; to see all people as his brothers and sisters; to have compassion and patience; and to give special consideration to children, women and old people. He was also told to study medicine and to become a healer of bodies and minds.
Mohlomi did become the chief of the Bakoena in his early adulthood and he was soon well loved and respected in his region. His great herds of cattle made sure his people were never hungry. (In 1840 Moshoeshoe called Mohlomi ‘that renowned king’ in a conversation with French missionary Thomas Arbousset.[5])
Mohlomi’s unorthodox philosophies started to show very early on. Unlike every other chief in central South Africa of the time, he did not build a strong army. Instead, he disbanded his fighting units completely, telling his able-bodied men to get involved in agriculture and to be better husbands and fathers. He also delegated many of his chiefly duties to his counsellors. This was radical behaviour in those troubled times.
Mohlomi was starting to live according to the instructions he believed he had received from his ancestors. By his forties he was an ascetic with a high degree of self-control. He was extremely fit and ate very little, certainly no rich foods. He never drank alcohol or smoked tobacco or dagga – in fact, he lectured everybody with whom he came into contact against smoking and drinking. He wore large earrings and a brass collar around his neck. Later in life, admittedly after fathering a number of children, he opted for celibacy so that he could purify his spirit – he did not even have sex with his favourite wife, Maliepollo. He loved spending time with children – the young are the better, he used to say, explaining that their minds had not yet been corrupted and they could still understand the natural truths; that they were the future.
Mohlomi’s favourite pastime was to have long philosophical discussions with other wise men of his region. Long after his death, people remembered that he often engaged others in conversations on questions such as: Where does the universe begin and where does it end? What is the essence of life, and how is life created?
Mohlomi, who had never come into contact with Christians, argued that there had to be one Creator of all things and that souls were immortal. In some respects his beliefs corresponded with oriental beliefs and the law of karma, despite the fact that he never met anyone other than fellow Africans. Conscience, he said, rather than pressure from society or norms dictated by others, was man’s only guide and monitor of his behaviour. He called it man’s inner guide. If you are kind and generous to others, especially the unfortunate and weak, fate will be your friend, he said.
Most of the Mohlomi sayings that have become a part of Basotho morality and survived until now have to do with these issues. ‘It is better to thrash the corn than to shape the spear’ was a proverb that was repeated long after his death. As was ‘Peace is my sister’, a sister being a person who was in a fragile position in society and to be looked after, protected and nurtured. Another was ‘A knobkerrie is far more valuable when used to thrash the corn than to kill men on the battlefield’.
His advice to chiefs and headmen was: ‘When you sit in judgement, let your decisions be just. The law knows no one as a poor man.’ It was Mohlomi who started the custom, still alive to this day, that one should greet a stranger with an open, raised hand and the exclamation ‘Khotso!’ (peace).[6]
But possibly the most famous saying of all, now proclaimed by some Basotho historians as a call to democracy, was: ‘A chief is a chief by the grace of his people.’