ITGS 400 Explorations in Leadership

ITGS 400 Explorations in Leadership

NEED RESPONSES FOR TWO STUDENT’S POSTS

This related for Module 5 (Read Mandela Part 6)

Response Posts: Respond to the posts of at least 2 other students. Each response should be at least 150 words. Statements like “I agree/ don’t agree” are not helpful unless they are supported with arguments and reasoning. Remember everyone’s right to freedom of speech and the importance of ensuring a safe environment by being respectful: we don’t criticize people, we argue thinking.

STUDENT’S POST #1

Christine,

As I watch the movie and read Part 5, I realize the significance of the struggle and how deeply ingrained the belief system of inferiority among the black population is in South Africa. Even Mr. Mandela, the fierce Freedom Fighter had caught himself several times trapped in that vicious belief cycle. Being oppressed for so long has reinforced their low self-esteem and destroyed their self-worth at the perfect benefit of the Apartheid rule under white supremacy.

Breaking an old habit to replace a new healthy one is no easy feat.

Learning about Steve Biko, one can tell he was a great personality and the hope for South Africa. He would have been a powerful leader alongside Nelson Mandela.

As leaders of the great cause, there will be times to encompass with great challenges where one must lie low as a criminal and carry on a life “underground” under incognito identities to continue on the great mission, spreading the word of freedom and attending secret meetings, away from authorities’ eyes.

Both Steve Biko and Nelson Mandela braced that challenge, despite both having an established family with wife and children, they were ready and willing to endure the difficult task of living in disguise and rarely able to see their family.

Steve Biko was banned with strict set of rules while still engaging in speeches to preach to his people the imperative need to change their mentality and their belief system. They all must start to believe they are well worth it and capable as any human being regardless of color and race. Only then with the power of positive beliefs, comes opportunities, at that moment Freedom will belong to them.

Mr. Biko asserted to Mr. Woods that his people know more than too well how the whites live, as his people tend to the whites, cook in their house for them, garden for them and such.

Nelson Mandela warrant for his arrest was just as serious, but he also manage to gather meetings and travel around even internationally to spread their mission, their actions to gain favors, support, training and funds to reach their goal of freedom. Traveling has opened Mr. Mandela’s eyes to many aspects of the no color bar and standards of living.

Both Biko and Mandela wanted for their people to break the barrier belief that limit them and unleash the potential as equals among every race in South Africa.

STUDENT’S POST #2

Matthew Yaghmaei,

This weeks movie took me back about 1000 stages. I simply did not know up until this point (you may call me knowledgeable by all accounts) that such incredible inhumanity, outright evil behavior has been occurring in south Africa all the way up into the 1990’s! I was nearly quite sure of myself up until this point that the injustices were taking place primarily in the early half of the twentieth century. The film has opened my eyes to a new world so to say. I believe I have been taught from a young age that the world is relatively free from injustice on a physical level since the dawning of the USA after WW2. Perhaps it is not as it seems.

Regardless the film was extremely enlightening and showed me a multitude of new facets to look upon such as the time period in which this continued, the assistance of whites to help the Native Africans gain their freedom as well as the abominations that many whites faced from other whites that were in support of the blacks gaining their freedoms. The unexpected death of Denzel Washington’s character took me by total surprise, as I was under the impression that he was in fact the protagonist of the movie. Also, it shocked me to no extent the long list of Africans killed in prison by police, and the false causes of death written down by officials. The movie as a whole was probably the most enlightening one that I have viewed in this class to this point.