“By the year 2020, Lesotho shall be a stable democracy, a united and prosperous nation at peace with itself and its neighbours.”
~ National Vision 2020 for Lesotho
A paraphrased version of the key contentions that I wrote last week bears repeating:
I am of the firm view that holistic personal development should be central to our developmental policies and laws as a Nation. Our values are questionable, our spirits and souls are hollow, we are astoundingly corruptible, we believe we only have crumbs to fight over, and we invest our immense creative capacities dreaming up ways to hurt each other and steal from the fiscus. What we need in this country is a Person and People Transformation Revolution. We need to pause on the Reforms and have THIS conversation.
Right, that was last week.
Politicians are the brand ambassadors of a failed partisan political system. Nowhere is this more evident than in the discredited Reforms process. If the process was so watertight, why was it successfully challenged before a court of law? Think of all the monies wasted on the Reforms? I have written a piece or two since 2017 about the Reforms and always warned that this would happen because this was never, organically, our idea.
What level of transformation can we expect when we do not think nor act outside the box? If we insist on using such a low-energy word as “reforms” please, be my guest and reform people, not institutions! We need to insist on using words and phrases that are far more energetic and generative, so that we can “Revolutionise the Person!” “Revolutionise the People Inside their Interiors Where Real Change Occurs!” When that happens, you will experience a totally different society. What we need is a revolution of moral codes and ethics codes, of personal values and beliefs codes, and we need to seriously interrogate the spiritual foundations of our religious practices. It cannot be that we attend churches every weekend, so routinely, and yet some of our ugliest battles occur inside churches. They are so ugly that they spill over onto social media platforms, and I ask myself one simple question: What Would Jesus Do (WWJD)?
What do I propose? For starters:
- Amend our Constitution to reflect, in the Bill of Rights, the right to personal and spiritual development. The spirit is not, in my view, a religious entity because religion is manmade and has its limits, it is a container for what are sometimes spectacular failures in imagination and imprison spirits instead of liberating them. A recognition of the expansiveness of the spirit and the universe will set us on a surer path because we have lived religion for decades and cannot point out any of its revolutionary societal impacts.
- Revolutionise and massively invest in the public education system at all levels by including creativity and innovation studies and integrating useful approaches from the Montessori, Waldorf and Reggio Emilia alternative schooling methods, and home-schooling, that have been proven to unleash creativity and unlock human potential. This Free Primary Education (FPE) that we seem to be so proud of is a massive failure and that is why very few, if any, public officials, and politicians, send their children to schools that marginalise their majestic inborn capacities. How in the world are we going to build a thriving society with this kind of education system? We are deceiving ourselves majorly.
- Formulate personal transformation coaching plans that are gender and age differentiated and appropriate. Said plans should also take heed of positive cultural and spiritual, even religious, practices and beliefs. I emphasise the word positive because there are toxic ones I’m afraid and those we should be bold and realistic enough to get rid of; they will not propel us forward into any kind of revolution worthy of the name.
- Train a large cadre of personal transformation coaches distributed according to region and population size. Each of our 5 regions should have centres where holistic programmes integrating mind, body and spirit practices are offered as a matter of right. These integrated practices will help people to heal, get rid of their toxic personal baggage, devise personal visions and programmes of action that will benefit them, their families, their communities, and the entire country.
Mothepa Ndumo writes in her personal capacity.
Adv Ndumo is a Legal Academic at the National University of Lesotho, a Pension Law Scholar in the Faculty of Law registered for a PhD focusing on the domestic investment of pension funds, a Thomas Psychometrics Practitioner, an Industrial Sociologist and Certified Executive and Leadership Coach. She is an Alum of the National University of Lesotho, the University of Cape Town and the University of Namibia. Advocate Ndumo is the Founder & CEO of the Tataiso-Bhotani Group which has interests in corporate training, accredited coaching and mentorship and film, tv series and talk shows and publishing across multimedia platforms. Her passions are Lesotho, Afrika, indigenous systems of governance, history, young people and she is a lover of animals and of The Creator.