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A study of Nelson Mandela’s
educational experiences has revealed the global icon to be an exemplar of
lifelong learning. Research by Dr Peter Rule of the school of education at
South Africa’s University of KwaZulu-Natal shows “deep fascination with
education and learning”.
Mandela’s autobiography, Long
Walk to Freedom, is written “almost as a learning story. These are my
teachers, this is what I learned and, as a result, this is who and what I have
become,” Rule told the 9th Annual Teaching and Learning in Higher Education
Conference that was held in Durban in September 2015.
“Often when Mandela introduces a person he will talk about his education, or he
will talk about what he learned from that person, whether a friend or an enemy.
There’s a very specific emphasis on learning.”
The purpose of the study, Rule told the conference hosted by the University of
KwaZulu-Natal, was to draw insights and implications from an analysis of
Mandela’s lifelong learning, as reflected in his autobiography, biographies
about him, his speeches and other sources.
“If you look at Nelson Mandela’s writings, there is a very rich reservoir of
material about lifelong learning,” he said. “It is interesting to plot how and
what he learns.”
Mandela’s education
Mandela had an interesting and complex education. It included a traditional
Thembu upbringing in Eastern Cape province, which Rule described as the
“foundation of the whole structure of his education”. Mandela also had a formal
Wesleyan mission education, higher education, professional education as a
lawyer, a political education and a prison education.
Being brought up a Thembu, said Rule, was a “powerful, formative part of
Mandela’s education". He learned the history and the culture of the Thembu
people, folklore and the law, stories of the group and a civic education.
Key experiences included going through circumcision, and growing up in the
chief’s court. “When Mandela’s father died he became part of the chief’s
compound, and saw first hand what was happening in that court. That had a
strong influence on his own leadership style.”
The oral tradition was central in this education. His father told stories about
battles and heroic warriors. Mandela wrote in his autobiography that his mother
“would enchant us with Xhosa legends and fables that had come down from
numberless generations”.
It also included a civic education. Mandela wrote: “I was groomed, like my
father before me, to counsel the leaders of the tribe.”
Mandela’s formal education took him through a number of mission institutions in
the Eastern Cape. Three generations of African leaders went through the mission
system. Many rebelled against it, but at the same time embraced some of the key
elements.
“They rejected the imperialism, colonialism and domination, but admired the
system of parliamentary democracy, Christian values such as order, public
service, good conduct and the English language as a unifying force against
ethnic divisions. The formal mission education had a continuing influence on
his life,” said Rule.
Higher education
Mandela studied at the University of Fort Hare, an institution created for
black Africans. He obtained a bachelor degree via distance education at the
University of South Africa, and a high-level law degree at the University of
the Witwatersrand, or Wits.
“His university education was probably not as significant as we think
university education is. But of particular importance for Mandela was the people
he met. At Wits he met lawyers from other racial and cultural backgrounds, and
interacted with them at a political and professional level and that was
powerfully formative for him.”
Mandela’s professional education was also interesting. After Wits, he did an
articled clerkship at a law firm in Johannesburg – probably the only law firm
that would take on black clerks. Lazar Sidelsky was his mentor at the firm. In
his autobiography Mandela talked about learning from Sidelsky about law as
public service and making law available and accessible.
Subsequently, Mandela became a partner in a law firm with Oliver Tambo, a
fellow anti-apartheid struggle hero.
“Within that partnership he was exposed to all the kinds of suffering and
problems that black people experienced in apartheid South Africa. There were
queues of people waiting at the door, and having to deal with these cases, one
by one, and through that becoming familiar with how the system worked and how
it impacted on ordinary people’s lives.”
Regarding his prison education, Mandela highlighted learning to survive in the
prison environment. “Knowing the authorities’ purposes, developing strategies
to undermine the purposes, and cultivating collective strength through sharing
and solidarity. He saw prison as another site of struggle, part of a broader
struggle for liberation.”
Robben Island, home to Mandela for most of his 27 years behind bars, was known
as a ‘struggle university’. “Prisoners created their own curriculum, both
academic and political. You could choose to go to classes on Marxism or the
Indian struggle, trade unions or English literature. People who knew about
these things would teach,” said Rule.
“Often the methods were innovative. There would be study circles at the quarry,
where people would stand in groups as they were working and have somebody
lecturing on a topic.”
“What’s striking for me is how Mandela is an exemplar of lifelong learning. He
learns throughout his life, from being a child to being in his 70s and 80s,”
said Rule.
“But also it is life-wide learning. It is not just confined to formal spaces
like schools and universities but includes prison, the struggle – it’s an
embracing learning. And also life-deep learning – not simply about politics or
law but about how the person develops and grows.”
Four levels of dialogue
In trying to understand how lifelong learning worked for Nelson Mandela, Rule
found four levels of dialogue – with others, with self, with the collective,
and with context.
Dialogue with others was crucial. “A striking thing about Nelson Mandela’s
story is how he refused to dehumanise ‘the other’. Whether the person was an
opponent or enemy – even prison warders or Afrikaner politicians – he insisted
on seeing ‘the other’ as a person who he could acknowledge, understand,
interact with and learn from.”
Long Walk to Freedom, said Rule, “is full of dialogues with friends and
mentors, with comrades and rivals”. For example, although Mandela never became
a communist, he had a continuing, strong dialogue with communists through the
1940s and 1950s. “We see this pattern of dialogue that runs through his story.
And dialogue with others is very important.”
The second level is dialogue with self. An example is when Mandela met a
Basotho queen in the 1940s and she asked him why he could not speak Sesotho;
why, with his royal Thembu background, he could not speak a language of the
people?
“He was forced to confront his own parochial identity as a Thembu and start to
think what it meant to be a South African,” said Rule. “He captures this as
quite a transformative moment, when suddenly his mind opened and he embraced a
wider African identity.”
Another example is Mandela’s use of the Xhosa phrase, Ndiwelimilambo
enamengamo, which means “crossing famous rivers”. Mandela used it when he
returned from Johannesburg to the Eastern Cape for the funeral of a chief.
“In that journey he realises how he has changed, how he’s moved from a rural
area to the city – how he’s become an urban person, a lawyer, from being a
Thembu, a tribal person.”
There were a number of significant river crossings for Mandela, and he
reflected on what they meant for him. “Dialogue with the self is about critical
self-reflection and moments of transformative learning.”
Regarding dialogue with the collective, said Rule, there was an interesting
dialogue through Mandela’s life with the former liberation, now ruling party
the African National Congress, or ANC.
“Often it is about endorsing ANC policy but sometimes it is about contesting
it, and occasionally he disobeys ANC policy. At other times he initiates new
policy, for example entering into negotiations with former apartheid leaders
before that was ANC policy. “So there is a complex dialogue going on with the
collective.”
Dialogue with context was also a crucial aspect of Mandela’s learning
experience.
“One thing that is characteristic of Mandela is this ability to reflect on
what’s going on around him and understand what it means. You can see this
clearly when he comes out of prison and is having to adapt very quickly to a
very different South Africa – a violent country in transition in the 1990s –
and having to learn and read the signs of the time.”
Learning from Mandela
Rule said that what he was trying to show through Mandela’s dialogic lifelong
learning was that the dialogues were all related to each other, and there was
continuing, evolving dialogue.
“What I tried to do is understand Nelson Mandela’s learning as part of a
broader South African dialogism” linked to people like Albert Luthuli, Sol Plaatje,
Steve Biko, Helen Suzman and, recently, Vice-chancellor of the University of
the Free State Jonathan Jansen.
“It’s a dialogue of people who don’t necessarily agree with each other but who
are committed to engaging. So there is an emphasis on connectedness. Various
human beings are connected to each other and also to those who have gone before
and to those who are coming after.”
Mandela’s emphasis was on humanism – the insistence on seeing all people as
human beings – and an understanding that dialogue rests on difference.
“In fact there can be no dialogue without difference, if you think about it –
there would be nothing to say. So dialogue is about engaging with difference.
It doesn’t mean coming to consensus, but is about recognising and appreciating
difference.”
Another lesson from Mandela’s life was critical reflection and openness to
criticism. “He wasn’t always fond of criticism but he listened and embraced
it.”
There were possibilities of personal and collective transformation. “This kind
of learning means being open to change,” said Rule. “And the good of humankind
stands above that of any sectional interest – that’s one of the key things that
we learn from Mandela’s life.”
This article was first published on University World News.
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