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The problem addressed in this paper is the need for fresh resources for enhanced ethical leadership in South Africa and elsewhere in Africa. To respond to that problem the paper uses two valuable but insufficiently known sources from the culture of the Sesotho-speaking people of southern Africa, now found in Lesotho and much of South Africa's Free State province. The first one is a set of concepts that pertain to sound human relationships. The second one is Basotho history in the persons of the founding monarch of the Basotho nation, King Moshoeshoe I (ca. 1786–1870) and to a lesser extent his remarkable mentor, Chief Mohlomi (ca. 1720–1815). A final section of this paper draws these sources together into a set of contentions about successful leadership in which ethical quality is seen as paramount.

Australian business consultant Ted Scott and his colleague, psychologist Phil Harker, have developed a model of ethical leadership in the workplace, involving two basic and contrasting styles of business leadership. Given their location in a wealthy, Western-type society, their model, which this paper describes, generates the following question: Does the model also have validity for Africans in southern Africa? To answer this question, the paper gives a profile of a widely held, traditional African view of human existence and correlates it with the Scott/ Harker model. This leads to the conclusion that the Scott/ Harker model is well suited to the challenges facing African business leaders.Â

Embedded in the thought of Whitehead is an extremely interesting but relatively neglected ethic which has relevance to current attempts to reflect creatively on the ethical dimension of human existence both in South Africa and the wider world. This paper notes the main features of the context in which such reflection is taking place, and then proceeds to give an account of process ethics. Thereafter it offers a critical discussion whose main conclusion is that process ethics has more to commend it than other approaches to ethics.

Judging by New Testament material like the parable of the Good Samaritan, the heart of Christianity consists of the central religious vision and example of Jesus of Nazareth declaring that the world exists within the power of an everlastingly and perfectly loving God. With this to inspire and unite them, and numbering some three quarters of the total population of the country, South Africa’s Christians could clearly be a significant and even vital factor in the search for a post-apartheid era providing equal rights, opportunities and safety for all. Among Afrikaans-speaking whites this factor could be especially significant because theirs has historically been an exceptionally devout culture, and because they are a majority among those who control power in South Africa.

Part 1 Christianity and the black people of South Africa: African and Christian - from opposition to mutual accommodation, James Kiernan Christian mission in South Africa - achievements, failures and the future, Willem Saayman black theology in South Africa - achievements, problems and present prospects, Takatso Mofokeng. Part 2 Christians and apartheid: the theology of separate equality - a critical outline of the DRC's position on apartheid, Johann Kinghorn Christian resistance to apartheid - periodization, prognosis, James Cochrane Christianity's impact on race relations in South Africa, G.C.Oosthuizen implications of apartheid for Christianity in South Africa, Martin Prozesky. Part 3 Christianity and social issues: the impact of Christianity on socio-economic developments in South Africa, Klaus Nurnberger Christians and education in South Africa, Calvin Cook Christianity, evangelization and the social factor in South Africa, Denis Hurley OMI. Part 4 Contemporary challenges: is the armed struggle justified?, Charles Villa-Vicencio religious pluralism and Christianity in South Africa, Gerrie Lubbe. Part 5 Christianity and the future in South Africa: the Church and the struggle for a democratic South Africa, John De Gruchy a Christian vision of the future of South Africa, Desmond Tutu.

On Pietermaritzburg station in 1893, a young Indian lawyer, newly arrived in South Africa, was ejected from a train to Pretoria for insisting on his right to travel first class. It was to the cold night hours spent in the waiting-room that Gandhi himself traced the genesis of his great resolve - to fight injustice by non-violent means. Crucial as this episode was, it was but one of the manifold influences which shaped the Gandhi-to-be during his sojourn in South Africa. This title arose from a conference held a century later, in 1993, at the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, to reaffirm the South African Gandhi. It traces some of the influences which effected his transformation from an unsuccessful and insecure young man to a mature political and spiritual leader ready to carve his niche in history after his return to India in 1914. The Mahatma's moral vision, of a way to resolve conflict and right injustice without resorting to violence, remains relevant to post-apartheid South Africa and to the world. It also remains a difficult vision to grasp; but a better understanding of his vital formative years will perhaps help to make it more accessible.

In general the term ‘Pietist’ signifies a type of dedicated, personal faith in which deep devotion to Christ and strict morality were prominent. Emphasising the emotions, rebirth, a changed life and religious experience, it often generated a sense of separation from the unredeemed world in its adherents, who typically made use of sermon, Scripture, devotional works and small gatherings of the devout to obtain spiritual edification, often also espousing missionary work. For them experience counted for more than knowledge of doctrine, dedication for more than ecclesiastical status and the personal for more than the institutional. The word was first used of the followers of the Lutheran churchman Philipp Jakob Spener (1635–1705), who, as is well known, formed an important reform movement in Germany late in the seventeenth century and whose successors were influential there until well into the next.

The previous chapters have brought us to the threshold of the promised account of religion by providing all but one of the necessary requirements. They have outlined the data, worked out an explanatory strategy and developed a set of global, regional and personal factors capable of revealing why people live religiously. The one item still to be produced comprises the initial conditions or activating circumstances in which the spiritual life emerges and develops historically. The first aim of this chapter is therefore to provide that remaining explanatory ingredient. The other aim is to combine all the relevant factors into a systematic theory capable of showing why some people are religious while others no less intelligent and moral repudiate that pattern of existence altogether, and why faith has the various global characteristics noted in Chapter 2.

Attempts at explaining religion have seldom paid any attention to the crucial problem of working out an adequate and defensible explanatory method. Instead they plunge ahead and take this extremely important and difficult question for granted, as though it were perfectly obvious what was involved. The result, as we saw in chapter one, is a predictable impoverishment of the theories in question. This is as much true of believers as of sceptics, and it applies to the authors of all our best known accounts of religion: Feuerbach, Marx, Durkheim, Otto, Freud, Barth and others. In consequence valuable insights and proposals are undermined or even vitiated altogether. Explanatory theories of religion are thus badly in need of methodological rigour and refinement, and the best way to achieve these improvements is to build on and adapt the work done by thinkers who have explored the philosophy of explanation most thoroughly. It is they, chiefly in the physical and social sciences, who have made the greatest progress towards pin-pointing the steps that should be taken in order to explain a phenomenon satisfactorily. That is the purpose of the present chapter. After a review of the procedures recommended by these philosophers there is a systematic discussion of central issues in their work, followed in the last section by an adaptation of their methods for the special purpose of explaining why people think and behave religiously and why others choose a secular way of life.

This book adds its voice to the growing call for a radically new understanding of religion, because the ones we have inherited cannot do justice to the global phenomenon of faith in all its basic forms and characteristics. And since this phenomenon has been a dominant concern of people in virtually every society for thousands of years, until we improve our understanding of it we are unlikely to develop reliable concepts of what it means to be human either.

Whatever else it may be for a pilgrim in Mecca, a Buddhist meditator in California, an English country parson or a Zulu diviner in Africa, religion everywhere involves a hunger for blessing from or in an invisible, transcendental world of the spirit, a sensing of the powers that give and withold that favour, a sharing of traditional modes of thought, speech, ritual and lifestyle, a faith-filled quest involving the whole personality. To understand why people have come to live like this in such huge numbers for so long we must grasp two basic points. Firstly, human existence is part and parcel of and must come to terms with an environing, pulsating, partly unseen external reality, alive and mobile with power. To live is thus to interact with a larger, enveloping, conditioning totality, like a plant rooted in and fed by the soil, with leaves spread to draw on the sun and the surrounding air. Secondly, human existence is marvellously though fallibly equipped to navigate the cosmic ocean with its fair winds and foul: vulnerable and limited, to be sure, but also creative and resourceful, powered by an immense need for satisfaction and steered across those unknown seas by the ability to tell with some skill the difference between success and failure. To cope with the force-filled cosmos people must use all their resourcefulness to think, feel, communicate and be endlessly inventive, and among the most remarkable pieces of equipment they have ever made to help them find a safe anchorage is religion.

Before a phenomenon can be explained there must be an accurate and thorough familiarity with it, so that the enquirer can be quite clear what it is that needs explaining. Given this requirement, it follows that the present chapter should provide a general description of religion to serve as a factual foundation for the ones that follow. Bearing in mind the conceptual narrowness of inherited ideas, it is essential that all the main spiritual traditions of the earth be covered, and because those ideas pay too little attention to salvation and related matters like redemption, liberation or enlightenment, it is also essential to present in some detail the evidence for their importance in the religious life wherever it is lived. And while all this is being done it will also be necessary to introduce several key terms as expressions for the dominant, global characteristics of religion which this chapter identifies.