BUSINESS Cases in Corporate Ethics: Contemporary Challenges and Imperatives; Strategy & General Management, Ethics and Social Justice, Organizational Behavior, Human Resource, Operations.

Case 3.1: A Giant Passes:

Nelson Mandela and his

Great Human Personhood

Ozzie Mascarenhas SJ, PhD DRD Tata Chair Professor of Business Ethics, XLRI Jamshedpur, India

| Published: June 2015 |

Redistribution or use without the expressed, written permission of The Global Jesuit Case Series is prohibited. For information on usage rights, contact the Global Jesuit Case Series at [email protected] ______Cases in Corporate Ethics: Contemporary Challenges and Imperatives Jesuit Series, Madden School of Business, Le Moyne College, Syracuse, NY Donated by: Ozzie Mascarenhas SJ, PhD JRD Tata Chair Professor of Business Ethics, XLRI, Jamshedpur, India June 15, 2015

The fifteen cases in Business ethics included here represent the first installment of the thirty cases promised to the Cases in Business Ethics – The Jesuit Series at the University of Le Moyne, Syracuse, NY. We have added three more. The remaining eighteen cases will follow shortly.

The thirty three cases illustrate and depend upon the content of corporate ethics outlined in Table 1. As might be clear from Table I, the Course in Corporate Ethics has three parts:

 Part One explores the ethical quality of moral agents embedded in the capitalist markets such as the human person, the fraud-prone person, the virtuous actor (virtue ethics) and the trusting executive (ethics of trust).  Part Two investigates the ethical quality of moral agencies of executive decisions, choices and actions when supported by ethics of critical thinking, moral reasoning, ethics of rights and duties, and ethics of moral leadership.  Part Three examines the ethical quality of moral executive outcomes as seen through the ethics of executive moral responsibility and ethics of corporate social responsibility.

Even as research method and methodology are determined by the specific subject matter of inquiry, so also a course method and pedagogy and business cases are dependent upon the specific subject matter of managerial ethics.

The Business ethics theoretical framework visualizes eleven chapters as indicated in Table 1. Each Chapter is illustrated by three contemporary business cases, cases that happened or that got closed during the course of the semester when the courses was taught in 2012-2015.

In general, one of the three cases is international in character, one is national (relating to the Indian economy and markets), and the third relates to industry market situations.

The ethical questions provided at the end of each chapter are best answered with the aid of the corresponding chapter content. The cases and content are part of the Book on Corporate Ethics: Contemporary Challenges and Imperatives that is prepared for publication (Sage) by the end of 2015 by the author of the Cases.

Most of the cases capture major current market events during 2012-2015, and the content of the cases is presented without much stylizing and dramatizing as is usual with formal cases. The cases pose several ethical and moral questions, responses to which welcome group dialog, debate and discussion. Some of the cases reflect “Shades of Grey Areas” in business ethics that do not necessarily require one correct answer in terms of right or wrong, good or evil, true or false, just or unjust, fair or unfair. The cases stimulate ethical and moral reasoning, deliberation, dialog, discussion, decision, choice, analysis of decision-choice consequences, and responsibilities of due compensation for harmed stakeholders. Multiple competing answers should be encouraged, and 1 the students should argue which solution alternative is better, more objective and defensible, and more socially desirable.

Table 1: Business Ethics Theoretical Background for Situating the Cases

Part Corporate Chapter Title Business Ethics Cases Focus: 1. Ethics of Free Enterprise Case 1.1: Worldwide Collapse of Financial Markets in 2008 Capitalism: Case 1.2: Europe’s Boat People: A Moral and Political Disgrace The Free Case 1.3: Radiation Village: The People of the Nuclear Test Market Fallout 2. Ethics of Capitalism Case 2.1: The Enron Corporate Fraud Context: Abused: Fraud and Case 2.2: Satyam Computer Services Ltd PART ONE: Corruption Case 2.3: Sherron Watkins and Whistle Blowing at Enron Ethics of 3. Ethics of the Corporate Case 3.1: and his Great Human Personhood Corporate Human Person Case 3.2: Freedom Fighter, Doctor, Communist, Lakshmi Sahgal Business Case 3.3: Dr. Amar Gopal Bose, Acoustics Pioneer and The Inventor Inputs 4. Ethics of Corporate Case 4.1: Panama Nature Fresh Pvt. Ltd. Corporate Virtue Case 4.2: The Horrors of Chicken Farms Moral Case 4.3: Sexual Harassment at the Workplace: A Violation of Human Personhood Agent 5. Ethics of Corporate Case 5.1: Managing Trusting Relationships in Indian Organized Trusting Relations Retailing Case 5.2: Bain sues EY over $60-m loss in Lilliput Kids-wear Case 5.3: Building Indo-Japan Trusting Business Relationships 6. Ethics of Corporate Case 6.1: GAIL Pipeline Blast Kills Critical Thinking Case 6.2: Closing of Nokia Plant at Chennai Corporate Case 6.3: POSCO: South Korean Mining Project in Odisha, India PART TWO: Agency: 7. Ethics of Corporate Case 7.1: Dassault Aviation and the Defense Ministry, India Moral Reasoning Case 7.2: Arun Jaitley, Modiy’s Chanakya Ethics of Decisions Case 7.3: Mukesh Ambani: The New Media Moghul in India! Corporate Dilemmas, 8. Ethics of Corporate Case 8.1: The Glory and Decline of Merrill Lynch: Violation of Business Acts and Moral Rights and Duties rights and Duties? toward all Stakeholders Case 8.2: The Debacle of “Paid News” Media in India Process Actions Case 8.3: Vedanta’s Rights on Bauxite Mining in Niyamgiri Hills, Odisha 9. Ethics of Moral Case 9.1: Infosys: Leadership Crisis with Top Management Corporate Leadership Case 9.2: Headhunting for CEOs Case 9.3: SBI Complies with BASEL III Reforms PART Corporate 10. Ethics of Corporate Case 10.1: The Tata House: Icon of Corporate Responsibility Justice Case 10.2: Dubious Outcomes at Starbucks Coffee Company THREE: Decision- Case 10.3: Bajaj Auto: Chakan Plant Relocation and Labor Ethics of Outcomes & Displacement Corporate Social 11. Ethics of Corporate Case 11.1: Should Reliance Industries Ltd Reform? Responsibility Case 11.2 : Maruti Plant Violence at Manesar and Thereafter Business Externalities Case 11.3: India’s Super Rich: The High Jumpers Outputs

2 ______Case 3.1: A Giant Passes: Nelson Mandela and his Great Human Personhood Ozzie Mascarenhas SJ, PhD JRD Tata Chair Professor of Business Ethics, XLRI, Jamshedpur, India June 15, 2015

Nelson Mandela, the freedom fighter who led the emancipation of South Africa from white minority rule, who emerged from 27 years in prison to become South Africa’s first elected black president and a global symbol of reconciliation, died, age 95, on Thursday, December 5, 2013, at 8:50 pm at his home in Houghton, Johannesburg, South Africa, after a protracted illness. As flags flew at half-mast across South Africa, a sense of loss, blended with memories of inspiration, spread from President Obama in Washington, DC to the members of the British royal family and on to those who saw Mandela as an exemplar of a broader struggle for peace, harmony and equality.

Pope Francis praised “the steadfast commitment shown by Mandela in promoting human dignity of all the nation’s citizens and in forging a new South Africa.” USA President Barack Obama eulogized thus: “He achieved more than could be expected of any man. I am one of the countless millions who drew inspiration from Nelson Mandela’s life. My very first political action, the first thing I ever did that involved an issue or a policy or politics, was a protest against .” Paying a tribute to Nelson Mandela, India’s Prime Minister said, “A giant among men has passed away. This is as much India’s loss as South Africa’s. He was a true Gandhian. His life and work will remain a source of eternal inspiration for generations to come.” As other public figures competed for superlatives to describe Mandela, British Prime Minister David Cameron declared in London: “A great light has gone out in the world.” Russian President Vladimir V Putin added: Mandela was “committed to the end of his days to the ideals of humanism and justice.” The French mourned differently: they bathed the Eiffel Tower in Paris in green, red, yellow and blue – the colors of the South African flag. This is a testimony to the immense love, admiration, respect and inspiration Mandela evoked across continents.

1 Nelson Mandela struggled against apartheid for more than half a century. He was a cofounder and leader of the African National Congress (ANC). Mandela rose to prominence within the ANC at several critical junctures. In 1961, he founded the party’s armed wing, transforming the movement with inspiration he drew from Mahatma Gandhi’s peaceful resistance in India to one that had used bombs.

Mandela’s quest for freedom and emancipation of South Africa from white minority rule took him from the court of tribal loyalty to the liberation underground to a prison rock quarry to the president’s suite of Africa’s richest country (Keller 2013: 11). Released from prison in 1990, Mandela negotiated a peaceful end to the old regime with leaders of South Africa’s White minority government. Three years later in 1993, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, declined a second term, before stepping down voluntarily, unlike so many of the successful revolutionaries he regarded as kindred spirits, and cheerfully handed over power to an elected successor, Thabo Mbeki. Nelson was and became an international emblem of human dignity and forbearance.

There was a memorial at the huge World Cup soccer stadium in Soweto on December 10, 2013. Thereafter, he was buried on December 15 after three days lying in state (December 11-13) where more than 90 sovereign dignitaries paid him tribute, besides millions of other people of good will from all over the world. After a state funeral, he was laid to rest, following his own wishes, in his own native village Qunu, in the Eastern Cape region, where he grew up. After a service in Cape Town, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, also a towering figure in the struggle against apartheid that defined much of Mandela’s life, expressed the hopes and fears of many of his compatriots when he told his congregation at St. George’s Anglican Cathedral early on Friday, December 6, “Let us give him the gift of a South Africa united, one.”

Nelson Mandela’s Life

He was born on July 18, 1918 in a royal family of the Xhosa-speaking Thembu tribe in the South African village of Mvezo. Mvezo was a remote hilltop village, a tiny hamlet of cows, corn and mud huts in the rolling hills of the Transkei that still is snaked around by Mbashe River in the southeast of South Africa. His mother spent most of her working day drawing and hauling gallons of fresh water using a pair of donkeys to the white master she worked for in the nearest town. His father, Gadia Henry Mphakanyiswa, was a chief of the Thembu people, a subdivision of the Xhosa nation. Mandela was named Rolihlahla, meaning “troublemaker,” until his first day at school, when at age 7 his teacher, Miss Mdingane, unceremoniously renamed him Nelson to conform to the British bias in education.

Mandela was drawn to politics in his teens while listening to elders talk about the freedom they had before white rule. Educated at a Methodist missionary school and the University College of Fort Hare, then the only residential college for blacks in South Africa, where two years later he was expelled for leading a student protest. While in college Nelson fell in love with , another leader-to-be of the liberation movement. On returning to his home village, however, Nelson learnt that his family had chosen a bride for him. Finding the woman unappealing and the prospect of a career in tribal government even more so, Nelson fled home at 23 to the black metropolis of Soweto. There he was directed to , who ran a real estate business and was a spark plug in the African National Congress. Sisulu was charmed by the tall young man with his aristocratic bearing and confident gaze. Impressed by Mandela’s legal skills and his persuasive powers, Sisulu immediately felt that ANC had the right type of hero.

In the 1940s, he became an enthusiastic boxer, exercising everyday at 4:30 am each morning, a routine habit that lasted most of his life. Later in 1944, while a still young lawyer in Soweto, Mandela married a nurse, Evelyn Ntoko Mase who gave him four children, including a daughter who died at nine months. But the demands of his political life kept him from his family, and the marriage ended with an abrupt divorce - Evelyn got the house and the custody of the children in settlement. Not long afterward, a friend introduced Nelson to Nomzamo Winifred Madikizela, a stunning and strong-willed medical social worker 16 years his junior. Mandela was smitten, declaring on their first date that he would marry her. He did so in 1958, while he and other activists were in the midst of a marathon trial on treason charges.

Though, allegedly, Mandela never completed his law degree, he opened and established the first black law partnership firm in South Africa with Tambo in 1952. Impatient with the seeming impotence of the black elders in

2 the ANC, Mandela, Sisulu, Tambo and a few militants soon reorganized and converted the dormant ANC from an organization of teachers, preachers and intellectuals into a mass movement backed by labor unions. Later in 1961, the patience of the ANC liberation movement was stretched to the snapping point – it was triggered by the police killing 69 peaceful black demonstrators in Sharpeville Township the previous year, who were protesting laws requiring non-whites to carry internal passports.

Mandela even advocated armed struggle and became the first commander of the ANC’s armed wing named , Zulu for “Spear of the Nation.” He even studied guerilla warfare in Algeria, and helped set up training camps in Tanzania before being arrested on his return to South Africa. Mr. Mandela and his colleagues were acquitted of treason in 1961. Mr. Mandela went underground and formed a military wing called Umkhonto we Sizwe. Mr. Mandela becomes the first commander in chief of the guerrilla army. Nelson led the ANC onto a new road of armed insurrection – almost a 360 degree shift from the nonviolence stand he swore not many weeks ago. Nelson then had proclaimed nonviolence as an inviolable principle of the ANC. He later explained why he changed so abruptly: “forswearing nonviolence was not a moral principle but a strategy; there is no moral goodness in using an ineffective weapon” (Keller 2013: 11).

Nelson got arrested again in 1962 on the charges of leaving the country illegally and incitement to strike - sentenced to five years in prison. In 1963, the police raided a farm in Rivonia where the A.N.C. had set up its headquarters. The raiding police found a few documents disclosing that Mandela and his members were planning a conspiracy to overthrow the government. Consequently, the South African white rulers were determined to put Mandela and his comrades out of action. That same year in 1963, Mandela and eight other ANC leaders were charged with sabotage and conspiracy to overthrow the state capital. It was called the – named after the farm the defendants had conspired.

At Mandela’s suggestion, his comrades, certain of conviction, set out to turn the trial into a moral drama that would vindicate them in the court of world opinion. They admitted they had engaged in sabotage and tried to spell out its political justification. The four-hour speech with which Mandela opened the defense’s case was one of the most eloquent of his life. Conducting his own defense in 1963, Mandela spelt out a dream of racial equality. Mandela said in court: “I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to see realized. But, my lord, if it needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.” (Bloomberg News 2013; Keller 2013: 11). The Rivonia trial seemingly established Mr. Mandela’s central role in the struggle against apartheid. He was sentenced to Life in Prison in 1964.

Under considerable pressure from liberals at home and abroad, including a nearly unanimous vote of the United Nations General Assembly to spare the defendants, the judge acquitted one and sentenced Mandela and the others to life in prison. P. W. Botha, then South Africa’s president, refused pardon. He offered to release Mr. Mandela if he renounced violence. Mr. Mandela refused saying that government should abandon apartheid first. Mandela was 44 when he was escorted on a ferry to the prison in July 1963. Robben Island was shark-infected water shed seven miles off Cape Town. Over the centuries the island was a naval garrison, a mental hospital, and a leper colony. But for Mandela and his comrades, the Island was a university. Mandela honed his skills as a leader, negotiator and a proselytizer. Both black and white prison administrators found his charm and iron will irresistible. Perhaps because Mandela was so much revered, he was singled out for gratuitous cruelties by the authorities. Still Mandela asserted that the prison had tempered any desire for vengeance by exposing him to sympathetic white guards.

He left the Victor Verster Prison, on Robben Island, near Cape Town, on February 11, 1990, after spending 27 years in apartheid jails. Nelson was now 71. He walked to an inevitable moral and political victory cheered by much of the then world. Mandela called it the “” in his 1994 Autobiography.

In 1990, when released from prison, Mandela persuaded the ANC to renounce violence in favor of peaceful negotiation. He won the trust of Frederick Willem de Klerk, the last president of South Africa in a Whites-only election, in their first meeting. This relationship helped to keep the negotiation on course for the next four years as violence raged on the streets of South Africa’s townships. Aside from de Klerk, Mandela won most white South Africans, who were reassured by his words of reconciliation. Mandela and de Klerk shared Nobel Prize for peace in 1993. The A.N.C. wins majority in election – Mandela assumed the role of the president of South Africa in 1994.

3 Mandela even established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission that granted amnesty to soldiers, policemen and even assassins, provided they confessed to what they had done. “Our goal was general amnesty in exchange for the truth,” said Bishop Desmond Tutu (who chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission) to Bloomberg News in a 1999 interview. Tutu was also awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

The level of endurance, persistence and altruism displayed by Nelson Mandela was exceptional and brought a major change in human thinking that all men and women are equal in each respect and all persons should live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. For all purposes it was a lonely and apparently hopeless struggle. First and second generation successors to Nelson have been few and far between. Other lions of the struggle, contemporaneous to Nelson, like Oliver Tambo, Walter and Albertina Sisulu, and Joe Salvo, had been dead for years.

The governance he formed as the first black elected president of South Africa was an improbable fusion of races and beliefs, including many of his former oppressors. When he became president, he invited one of his white wardens to the inauguration. As a president from 1994 to 1999, Mandela devoted much energy to moderating the bitterness of his black electorate and to reassuring whites against fears of vengeance. “Mandela overcame a personal mistrust bordering on loathing to share both power and a Nobel Peace Prize with the white president who preceded him, F. W. de Klerk” (Keller 2013: 11).

The next generations of leaders struggled to live up to their legacy. Thabo Mbeki, Nelson Mandela’s successor as president of South Africa, was roundly criticized for his resistance to broadly accepted methods of treating and preventing AIDS, a stance that contributed to the nation’s death toll from the disease. South Africa’s current president, Jacob Zuma, has been under a cloud for years, investigated for corruption and rape cases. Younger leaders like the firebrand Julius Malema have attracted a following among the disgruntled and jobless youth, but his radical views and harsh criticism of ANC’s veteran leaders got him expelled from the party (Polgreen 2013).

Analysis

In all of the great liberation movements, said William Gumede, an analyst who has written extensively on Mandela, there is the problem of producing succession-leaders. In the case of Mandela, there has really been a failure to pass the torch. Even the lives and leadership of his former wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and her children and grandchildren have been too sordid to pass the Mandela banner (Polgreen 2013). Tragedy and turmoil marked Nelson’s private life. While he was still incarcerated, one of his sons died; another succumbed to AIDS in 2005. Mandela divorced his second wife Winnie in 1996 for “brazen infidelity.” She was earlier convicted in 1991 for kidnapping an alleged police informant while Mandela was still in prison.

“Mandela was no ordinary leader; he was a leader of leaders. His life was remarkable for its achievements. … During his 27 years in jail, Mandela attained renown for his uncompromising commitment to fighting injustice. This made him an icon of the oppressed. His fight against apartheid was all the more laudable in that he engaged in principled negotiations with the white rulers to end it. … When he walked out of jail in 1990, many believed that long decades in jail would have made him bitter and angry with his oppressors and that he would seek retribution. He showed the world there was another way to reach out and forgive one’s tormentors,” thus said the Deccan Herald Editorial (Saturday, December 7, 2013, p.10). During the brutal years of his imprisonment on Robben Island, thanks to his own patience, humor and capacity for forgiveness, he seemed freer behind bars than those who kept him there, locked up in their own self-demeaning prejudices (The Financial Express: Editorial, Saturday, December 7, 2013, p. 7).

Mandela founded the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) aimed at providing victims of the apartheid years with closure. The TRC did help uncover the truth about violence unleashed by the apartheid regime as well as its opponents, but it was only partially helpful in healing wounds or ending racial hatred. Mandela never hesitated to speak truth to power. He was uncompromising in expressing his anguish, even anger, over injustice. In 2003, Mandela lashed the United States for committing “unspeakable atrocities” and for risking a “holocaust” by invading Iraq. His words were prophetic and appealed to the conscience of millions, compelling even warring groups to lay down their guns to build peace. It will not be easy for the post-Mandela world to accept the challenge of his death – his moral authority will be sorely missed (Deccan Herald editorial, Saturday, December 7, 2013, p.10). Ever since

4 Mandela voluntarily left the presidency of South Africa in 1999, he has brought his moral stature to bear elsewhere around the continents of the world – he was a broker of peace.

The question most often asked about Mandela was how, after South African whites had systematically crushed and humiliated his people, tortured and murdered many of his friends, and incarcerated him into prison for 27 long years, he could be so evidently free of spite and retribution. When preparing for the Mandela obituary in 2007, Bill Keller, columnist of International New York Times, asked Mandela, “After such barbarous torment, how do you keep hatred in check?” Mandela’s answer was almost dismissive: “Hating clouds the mind. It gets in the way of strategy. Leaders cannot afford to hate.” He was an apostle against apartheid – a word that literally means “apartness” in the African language, but in reality means a system of racial gerrymandering that stripped blacks of their citizenship in the country of their origin and relegated them to USA-template “reservation” of so-called homelands and townships, a system that denied 80% of South Africans any voice in their own affairs.

Some South African blacks, including Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Mandela’s former wife, who cultivated a following among the most disaffected blacks, complained that Nelson Mandela had moved too slowly to narrow the vast gulf between the impoverished black majority and the more prosperous white minority. Even some whites contended that Mandela had failed to control crime, corruption and cronyism. Undoubtedly, Mandela had become less attentive to the details of governance, and had turned over the daily responsibilities to the deputy, Thabo Mbeki, who would one day succeed him. But wherever and whenever it was necessary, Mandela did exercise his patriarchal authority and political shrewdness without which the country could have descended into civil war by now (Keller 2013: 11).

Among Mandela’s many achievements, two stand out: 1) he was the world’s most inspiring example of fortitude, magnanimity and human dignity in the face of oppression and opposition, serving over 27 years in prison for his belief that all men and women are equal. 2) Little short of the miraculous was the way he engineered and oversaw South Africa’s transformation from a byword for nastiness and narrowness into, at least in intent, a rainbow nation in which people, regardless of caste or color, were entitled to be treated with respect and human dignity.

His charisma was evident from his youth. He was a born leader who feared nobody, debased himself before no one, and never lost his sense of humor. He was handsome and comfortable in his own skin. In a country in which the myth of racial superiority was enshrined in law, he never for a moment doubted his right to equal treatment, and that of all his compatriots. For all the humiliation he suffered at the hands of white racists before he was released in 1990, he was never animated by feelings of revenge. He was himself utterly without prejudice, which is why he became a symbol of tolerance and justice across the globe. He was quite simply, a wonderful man (The Financial Express: Editorial, Saturday, December 7, 2013, p. 7).

His persistent struggle against apartheid teaches us that if we are determined to achieve something, if we have true willingness to change something for humanity, it is never impossible to strike hard and win the battle. A right path could be difficult, long and full of obstacles but it will definitely lead to success. His message of reconciliation, not vengeance, reaffirmed Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy that fighting violence with violence is never a good idea. The way he handled the South Africa’s affairs after he assumed the presidential powers demonstrates the highest human values with regard to forgiveness, truth and altruism and social justice.

Nelson Mandela led a struggle against apartheid authorizing equal rights, equity, and fairness for all regardless of the color of the skin, and built a placid, amalgamated, and democratic South Africa. Nelson Mandela was a man with vigorous conviction to stand by his values through the toughest periods of his life; a man whose integrity, humility and commitment to the cause of gregarious equity is un-parallel; a man who voluntarily stepped down from power at a time when his popularity was at peak. Mandela was of course a human being and hence, not perfect. He was a man of complexities. There were many controversies surrounding him like instances of armed rebellion which he had organized. At times, he also made controversial statements. But the political landscape of his time justified controversy - political discourse from the emergence of apartheid, to emergence of ANC, ANC rebellion against Apartheid and then negotiation of Apartheid.

Humanity, Leadership, commitment to fight injustice, forgiveness, fierce determination, and conviction – these were the virtue of Mandela. He stood up for fight against the apartheid, standing up for the rights of millions of people. His strong leadership qualities, determination, and commitment to fight injustice made him stand strong in

5 all the ups and downs of his life. The conviction to give up one’s entire life for the betterment of the community requires fierce resolve and persistence. The ethical quotient was definitely high in the cause and process that Mandela followed.

The end state solution to the long standing social issues in South Africa was a vibrant democracy with equal rights and opportunities to all citizens irrespective of the race or the skin color. Only the path to reach there could have been violent and non-co-operative movements or non- violent and co-operative process of a negotiated settlement. Mandela often chose the better course of peace and harmony. The solution in this context can be optimal when it is supported by the general populace at large and supported by the principles of universal justice and respect for human dignity. Nelson Mandela chose this path which was a continuous and arduous process that lasted more than four years. The outcome was a new constitution that defines South Africa as one undivided nation with equal rights for all and which has become the benchmark of the country’s democracy

Newspaper References

Bloomberg News (2013), “Long Walk Ends: Mandela Passes Away,” The Financial Express, Saturday, December 7, 2013, p. 12. Keller, Bill (2013), “A Rarity among Revolutionaries and Moral Dissidents,” Deccan Herald, Saturday, December 7, 2013, p.11. Polgreen, Lydia (2013), “Disappointment in Successors to Mandela,” Sunday Business Standard, Kolkata, Dec. 8, 2013, p. 8. The Financial Express (2013): Editorial, “A Giant Passes: The Greatness of Nelson Mandela Challenges us all,” Saturday, December 7, 2013, p. 7.

Assignment:

1. Nelson explained why he changed his non-violence stance so abruptly to an armed one: “Forswearing nonviolence was not a moral principle but a strategy; there is no moral goodness in using an ineffective weapon.” Do you agree or not with this ethic, and why?

2. Before he would be sentenced for life imprisonment in 1963, Mandela said in court closing a four-hour long speech, the best of his life: “I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to see realized. But, my lord, if it needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.” How do you see the depth of Mandela’s human person from this statement?

3. In 2007, when Bill Keller asked Mandela, “After such barbarous torment, how do you keep hatred in check?” Mandela answered: “Hating clouds the mind. It gets in the way of strategy. Leaders cannot afford to hate.” How do you read Mandela’s compassionate human personhood in this statement that he lived and witnessed during his entire life?

4. Describe, analyze and illustrate the simple “individuality” of Nelson Mandela as a human person. 5. Describe, analyze and exemplify the unique “sociality” of Nelson Mandela as a human person. 6. Describe, analyze and assess the profound “immanence” of Nelson Mandela as a human person. 7. Describe, analyze and unfold the awesome “transcendence” of Nelson Mandela as a human person. 8. Hence, unravel the deep mystery of the Human Person of Nelson Mandela as a dynamic interaction of individuality, sociality, immanence, and transcendence. 9. How can Nelson Mandela be a beacon of light, encouragement and empowerment in the complex and fraudulent world of today?

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