I met Don Manuel in 2007 in Cape Town, South Africa where I had occasion to do an internship with the Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS). The first thing you must know is that Don Manuel has a lot of things to say. He is a Spanish-speaking Rasta who makes ‘Afro-Cuba’ reggae; is well travelled and his a Capoeira Master/instructor. Both being immigrants; we often found ourselves comparing Cape Town to other places in the world with which we were familiar and discussing our 'world views'. It made for some interesting conversation, which (along with other topics) inspired this interview.

In Pt I, Don Manuel introduces himself

Pt II and III after the jump

Who said cynical people cannot be or are not optimistic and vice versa? In order to be an idealist, one has to balance on the fine line between cynicism and optimism.  Although opposite, those two emotions fuel the minds of idealists who are cynical enough to be dissatisfied with the status quo and optimistic enough to believe that positive change is possible...

During his lifetime, Bruce Lee formulated a complex personal philosophy that was a synthesis of Eastern and Western ideas that promoted the virtues of knowledge and total mastery of one’s self. A clear example of this can be shown from Bruce himself, whilst talking about his son.

“Brandon is being brought up in the midst of two cultures. There are good points in Chinese culture; there are good points in Occidental culture. He will be taught to take some principles from one, some from the other. Brandon will learn that Oriental culture and Occidental culture are not mutually exclusive, but mutually dependent. Neither would be remarkable were it not for the existence of the other.”

Bruce believed that ultimately all knowledge meant self-knowledge. Although Bruce’s philosophy was deeply rooted in Taoism and the principles of Ying-Yang, he read widely, including Western philosophers such as Aristotle and Alan Watts  as well as the likes of Lao-tzu, Chuang-tzu and Krishnamurti. Consequently, Bruce constructed his own philosophy that took positive aspects from both eastern and western philosophies and merged them into his own, one that at the same time embraced and yet was free from tradition...

It's all down to interpretation. They say; one man's freedom fighter is another's terrorist. A logical conclusion that can be drawn from all this is that most of the dictators of today were heroes to some people yesterday. It's sad that over long periods of time; power, greed and dissent corrupts the best intentions of leaders, just as it did the pigs of George Orwell's Animal Farm.
From this, one can predict that today's heroes could potentially become tomorrow's dictators. The developing world (where poverty is rife and most of the time democracy is in its infancy) is most vulnerable to this culture of personalities, which lends itself so well to the creation of political heroes and dictators. Enough of the theoretical - in terms of dictators that used to be heroes, the prime example that comes to my mind is Zimbabwe's own - Robert Mugabe

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