Homogenization is the key to overcoming CCD - connection/commonality deficit. When two groups are completely alien to one another, the challenge is to find and elaborate their commonality. This is the challenge that Nelson Mandela faced when in 1994 he became president of South Africa. The South Africa he was leading was emerging out of 30-plus years of oppressive apartheid. Apartheid (apartness) was the embodiment of CCD: South African blacks were deemed to be an entity apart from their white Afrikaner overlords, and so, given a solid case of CCD, it followed that: marriage between blacks and whites was prohibited, desirable jobs were listed as "whites" only, blacks were required to carry passbooks with fingerprint and other identification, blacks could vote in homelands but not in the country that controlled the homelands; blacks needed passbooks to enter South Africa from their homelands; simply protesting these and other apartheid laws was punishable by fines, imprisonment, and whipping. When organized protests did arise, they were put down savagely as in the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960.
One of the cultural features that sharply divided blacks and whites was rugby. According to John Carlin in Playing the Enemy, blacks, if they thought of it at all, considered rugby "the brutish, alien pastime of a brutish alien people." So what does Mandela do? Ignore Rugby, condemn it, criminalize it? Uh uh. He embraces it! He agrees to host the 1995 rugby world cup games in South Africa. He sets out to transform black South Africans into Springbok (the South African team) fans. He becomes the Springbok's leading fan.As he embraces the Springboks and rugby, the Springboks set out to learn Nkosi Sikele Africa, one of South Africa's national anthems.
This is powerful stuff. Mandela is brilliant in his commitment to homogenization in the face of a history of massive oppressive differentiation. His goals is not revenge or winning but creating a nation for all, differentiated and homogenized.
It is one thing to admire Mandela's brilliance, his heart, and his commitment to South Africa; it is another to consider the lesson for the rest of us. Is there something about the "enemy" that we can embrace, not as a phony transparent gesture, but truly embrace?
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