Jay Naidoo champions ‘spiritual activism’

GILLIAN KLAWANSKY

He discussed how self-reflection and working directly with rural communities, has helped him find greater purpose and spiritual awareness. 

Having headed up the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) in former President Nelson Mandela’s Cabinet at the dawn of democratic South Africa, Naidoo’s focus has always been on correcting social injustices. What’s changed, though, is the way he believes this can be done.

He is now less concerned with the politics of politics and more with how we as individuals need to work on ourselves to help others and protect our world for future generations.

Warm, passionate and exuding the humanity he says we all must strive for, Naidoo started his talk with a question: “What does it mean to be human?” Being lucky enough to work with Mandela, Naidoo had direct access to one of the world’s greatest teachers.

“While we were working together, Mandela said: ‘We’re so busy building roads and houses, what about the RDP of the soul?” I said we need to focus on the physical, measurable changes that people were judging us on but in the last 10 to 15 years, since I’ve left government, I’ve been thinking about this concept. I’ve realised that change is a very powerful but threatening concept, because it’s the unknown, uncertainty that scares us.”

While the post-apartheid ANC did succeed in changing the country, said Naidoo, they often only focused on the changes that could be seen – like of the political system – rather than on the ones that we as humans make within ourselves.

“Mandela taught me you have to spend quiet time with yourself before feeling the energy of other people. This started me on a journey of looking at how we behave and relate to each other. My life is a constant learning journey – I listen and learn something about myself.

“What we need to understand is that our biggest challenge is changing ourselves and understanding our rights and responsibilities. So, I started examining the question of human consciousness, what we are, where we come from. What gets me is the question of what we’re leaving to the future generations.”

Naidoo once had an enlightening conversation with his daughter who told him that that while he lived his whole life fighting for social justice, everything he stood for, humans were busy killing. She also spoke about how earth itself is under threat, threatening humanity itself through water pollution, disease, lack of food security and so on.

This got him thinking: “Our fundamental problem as humans is that we think we must seek dominion over Mother Earth,” he said.

“So, I started looking at how people lived thousands of years ago, going back to the beginning to gain understanding. Uncertainty and volatility isn’t a new thing; what’s changed is how we deal with it.

“I visited different cultural groups; I sat with Bushmen of the Kalahari, with traditional healers in the Amazon and asked how they look at life. And the common trend was that they see everything as sacred. So, sacredness must be the human relationship with everything, people, the land and so on.”

In adopting this philosophy, Naidoo has also explored different faiths to look at how they suggest we live with kindness and generosity.

“Many religions echo the Jewish concept of tikkun olam, acts of kindness to repair the world – so, why are we killing each other if we come from the same place?”

Naidoo works in villages around the country, talking about change and how we implement it so that farmers and workers can co-create a different way of learning to live with each other.

“I’m interested in working with communities directly – to build the path as we walk it. My role today has changed, to create a safe, sacred space for these conversations and to find a way to shift consciousness from material living to building a life without harm, with kindness and generosity.

“I’m living a life of spiritual activism – the intersection between spirituality and activism – to learn what it means to be human.”

Concluding his talk, Naidoo was asked about President Jacob Zuma and what he terms “the lost moral centre” of the ANC.

“Leaders today have lost balance of mind and heart,” he said. “I’m more interested in how the person who ultimately replaces Zuma acts as opposed to who the person is. We all need to ask how we must change as humans to become beings of light.”