The Return of Heroes
Bongi D D M Radipati | Monday June 19, 2023 06:00
As the progenitors of the term ‘hero’, the ancient Greeks admired and honored their heroes so much that they worshiped them as if they too were their gods. But heroes have lived before and after ancient Greek times. Even now, they live in our midst, ordinarily but not anonymously.
Therefore, again and again heroes return and in turn remind us how persevering effort is the wellspring of all human accomplishment...
In 1997, at the age of 21, Tiger Woods won his first PGA Masters Cup.
That win made him the youngest player ever to win golf’s most coveted prize. (This record is yet to be broken.) As he walked to claim his historic prize, Earl Woods, Tiger’s father and coach, hugged him as only a proud and joyous parent could do. At that moment it might have been too early for Woods’ father to appreciate the significance of Tiger’s win on his legacy both as a father and a coach.
For Tiger Woods, the improbable campaign to win the 2019 PGA Masters championship began amidst catastrophe. He had suffered a series of personal setbacks. He had lost at every significant golf competition for 11 consecutive years and perhaps it was fair to accept that his glory days - of consecutive Masters’ wins - could be behind him.
In any case, he appeared to have morphed successfully from sports prodigy to middle age domesticity.
But as his play melded suspense and self-awareness, it put us, the viewers watching on television, on tender hooks. Then as they saw his composure and grace under pressure and high expectation, it electrified the spectators. Remarkably though, he was playing as if he was not competing, his swings were deceptively easy and that together with everything else provided a rich loam for sports commentators.
Anyhow you looked at it, it was clear that maybe there would never be another elite golf competition such as this. Then, in the denouement, Woods overcame a two-shot deficit to win one stroke over, surpassing three other serious contenders. Woods, a man of African descent, was back as a golf champion. Do not forget that this is a sport whose professional level is predominantly White.
Do not forget that notwithstanding this, he had succeeded in dominating it as its greatest attraction. As he made the victory walk, this time his children hugged and hung onto him. Everybody knew that he had won it in their presence and with their youthful understanding of triumph. But, with the inflection of time, that victory - his fifth and last Masters’ cup win - confirmed his heroism, first experienced under the prideful eyes of his father and then repeating itself to his own prideful children. For that, happy Father’s Day to Tiger Woods and all athlete fathers...
What passes between a father and his children is often not originally defined by his love at that moment. It is also often not defined by his confidence that he could be as good as the next father. Rather, it is usually defined later in the children’s life by the echoes of his fatherhood; his presence; his devotion; his counsel, his courage; and his belief in the ability of his children to be a better version of himself...
One of Africa's greatest moviemakers, Souleymane Cissé was born in 1940 in Bamako, Mali. Since his father was employed in neighboring Dakar, Senegal, he spent his childhood and youth in that country. But at Mali's independence in 1960, his family relocated back home. Nonetheless, Dakar was the place where he had developed his curiosity and interest in people and their stories, and where his love for cinema started and was nurtured. Unsurprisingly then, in 1963 - 1969, he trained first to be a projectionist and later a moviemaker in the then Soviet Union, now Russia.
Like some creatives, Cissé had a period at which he was most confident and conscientious of his talent, had a blaze of energy, and thus was most prolific. His was the years 1975 - 1987 when he directed four movies.
These were ‘Den Muso’ (The Young Girl), ‘Baara’ (Work), ‘Finye’ (Wind) and ‘Yeelen’ (The Light.) (Since 2000, Cissé has directed three more movies.) Because of the hardships of making movies in Africa, in a career spanning 50 years, he has directed only nine movies. Still, he has managed to cast his imagination wide while simultaneously affirming the power of African storytelling and acting. For ‘Yeelen’, Cannes, the world's most prestigious movie festival, awarded him the Jury Prize in 1987.
It was the first time an African movie received such an award and the first time an African moviemaker won a prize at Cannes. Although lately he has not been as productive as he was originally, Cissé continues to be widely admired and honored for his revelatory portraiture of Africa less as an outsider to it than an integral part of it.
This year, 2023, he became the recipient of Cannes' Carrosse d'Or (the Golden Coach) award. By this award, Cissé joins movies’ most inventive directors such as Martin Scorcese, an American and directorial virtuoso, and Ousmane Sembène, a Senegalese and Cissé's (some might say Africa’s) cinematic hero. In a recent and thoughtful documentary, Fatou Cissé aknowledges Cissé as both her father and her hero. She must be applauded for that public tribute. Anyhow, to those closest to this kind of filiation, only a few things in life really rival a father’s admiration by his daughter. With that, happy Father's Day to Souleymane Cissé and all creative fathers...
As with the ancient Greeks, there are many ways of admiring and honoring our heroes, short of worshipping them. Woods has received every conceivable sports award, including the highest civilian award of the United States. Cissé has received every conceivable cinematic award, including civilian awards of both Mali and Burkina Faso.
Clearly, applying themselves to reach the pinnacle of their chosen careers was never far from Woods’ and Cissé’s intent. Yet perhaps their lesson to us was to place no more weight on their gifts alone than to their fidelity to personal talents and doing so in defiance of the odds and in service to others. These then are examples of regular men as fathers as heroes in our times and in the best understanding of those three terms. Happy Father’s Day!
*Radipati is a regular Mmegi contributor