Leadership all about solving problems
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Leadership is solving problems.” This was said by United States General Colin Powell. I think that he could not have been more pinpoint than this in defining the main purpose of leadership in any and all situations. In my many decades of existence and also in my many decades of working life experience, I have come to appreciate the importance of leadership; not just of leadership, but of good and good quality leadership. Good quality leadership is the kind of leadership which solves problems. Leadership which cannot and does not solve problems or challenges is at worst not leadership at all, and at best not good leadership. With this in mind, and considering the myriad of persistent problems and challenges which the world faces today at all levels of human and social existence, maybe we must admit that this world suffers from a dearth of leadership, or at best just a dearth of good quality leadership! If individual families, communities, towns, cities, countries and national governments all had good quality leadership, today there would definitely not be all these persistent or perennial problems which bedevil this world at all social levels.
And yet there are, and plenty of them too. Hence the correct verdict is that this world suffers from a paucity of good quality leadership everywhere!
What I have observed over the years is that many people who go to work every day just go there to perform their pre-planned daily work routines, to do what they are told or assigned to do, and then to go back home after having put in a shift and earned their daily wages or pay.
Their work is so routine and so repetitive that they do not even need to think at all, hence they actually do not think at all while they execute it. Take our modern day supermarket till operators for example. All they do nowadays is to just sit there at the till, scan customer merchandise, look at the total due as displayed by the till machine, extend their hand to receive the required cash from the customer, punch in the received amount, look at the till machine to see how much the change is, and then
TOBSERVED
HE removal of Prince David from the position of Chairman of the University of Eswatini Council is not a solution to the problems that have engulfed the University ever since the departure of Professor of Sam Guma way back in the 1980s.
The majority of emaSwati were never interested in University matters because such institutions, by their nature, were not everybody’s daily business. To those that are short sighted, the removal of Prince David was the best move because the prince had suddenly paid himself a sum of E100 000 per count out the change and hand it over to the customer, and their job is done.
In some more modern countries, till operators don’t even need to do anything at all. They are just there to assist a few customers who may not be able to operate the automatic till machines in use. Customers just drop the goods which they want to buy into a till chute. The goods are then automatically price scanned. The customers then insert the required cash or bankcard, automatically get change from the machine itself if there is any, and then get their bagged merchandise out at the other end.
QUALIFICATIONS
Contrast this mind dulling routine with that of our old shopkeepers who had no till machines or calculators but had to work out all the transactional arithmetic by themselves. Automation has negated the need for good academic qualifications. It has also made the active, intelligent and logical use of the brain redundant in many jobs. Unfortunately, this has bred a class of techno-savvy but brain dead workers. Such machine dependent people have no capacity to solve any problems or to lead because thinking and reasoning are no longer part of the routine way by which they do the things which they do at work on a daily basis.
And yet they spend most of their brain active and functional time at work. Hence the dearth of good quality leadership in the world today! This is the scourge of the so called fourth industrial revolution. It is actually a big myth that the fourth industrial revolution is based on the exploitation of the knowledge economy.
The truth of the matter is that a lot of month according to newspaper publications. This matter is on the perimeter of university arena.
When Prof Sam Guma left the university, Prof Lydia Makhubu took over. What did Makhubu bring with her to the university? How did she get there in the first place? What was her vision for the university in her first and second term if she had any?
ATTENTION
What I am bringing to your attention is the fact that the university remains an unread book to the nation. The only time it comes to our attention is when the students embark on class boycott due to unpaid allowances or semesterisation as in the times of Mancoba and company. Then came Prince Phinda who was running the university like a personal entity. The Prince had no one raising a finger and then he was answerable to no one. In people in the general population were more mentally awake, intelligent, innovative, learned and knowledgeable about the world around them in the good old days of homebased smokestack factories than they are now during this age of high speed internet and electronic technology. Today, only a very few people, these being the ones who invent and operationalise all the technology which we now use, are the only ones who actually know what exactly is going on.
IDEA
The rest of us just happily press buttons and see things automatically happen without knowing anything about the how and why of it. For example, I bet that 99.99 per cent of people who use cellphones everyday have got absolutely no clue or no idea how these gadgets actually work! And they do not care, or have to care about that either, just as long as they get these gadget to do what they want them to do by just pressing buttons on them! The same applies with the use of computers, motor vehicles and the rest of them all electronic and other gargets. Unlike in the past, nowadays it is no longer necessary to know how a machine works before one can operate it. It’s all automated now. Automation limits the use of the brain to the barest minimum, thus creating dullness. Based on the above elucidation of the paucity of brain use in today’s world, is it any wonder therefore that in today’s world, we are persistently bedevilled by very simple day to day life challenges which cannot be automated or which cannot be solved by the use of machines? For example, regardless of the hype around artificial intelligence, view of this gross maladministration of the university, emaSwati did not care a damn about it. This country attained independence in 1968. This independence was given to a leadership that had no idea what it had to do for the country and Eswatini’s future generation. Independence was given to a people whose leadership had not been prepared for culture and traditional shock. Independence from Great Britain was inherent with accountability and transparency. The culture of most emaSwati does not embrace these principles. Our fathers had no alternative but to take orders. This is not our father’s time but our time. I represent a generation that believes in these principles. We see public office as an opportunity and an honour to serve the people of this country and never as an opportunity to enrich our families and ourselves. The university debacle came to the we have not yet been able to make a machine which can think de novo (from scratch or from nothing) in the same way that the human brain does. Hence we have not been able to develop a machine which can automatically provide leadership as and when needed. For good quality leadership, we still have to look up to bona fide human beings. Unfortunately, as argued above, today’s human beings have had their mental capabilities and capacities dulled by the constant and widespread use of automated machines, hence they cannot provide the required good quality leadership! It is the lack of good quality leadership which has led to the persistence of financial, social, economic, religious, environmental, political, educational, housing, transport, safety, security and all other challenges in this world today! I urge you all to take a close look at your very own national government ministries to see if you have got good quality leadership in there. For example, new government ministers responsible for finance and the economy usually take over office with a lot of fanfare and promises to solve all the country’s financial and economic challenges and turn things around for the better in a very short space of time (usually 100 days).
ECONOMIC
But five years down the line, the country’s financial and economic status and challenges would still be there, or be even far worse than before! The Honourable Ministers would have dismally failed to provide good quality leadership. Usually, the same dismal leadership failure would also apply to all the other government ministries as well, even up to the whole government itself as well! Leadership is all about solving problems. The fact that most of our countries are constantly and persistently bedevilled by the very same bad old problems and challenges year in and year out is a vindication of the failure or lack of good quality leadership. There is no two ways about this, ladies and gentlemen. Good quality leadership would solve problems once and for all time’s sake instead of having the very same bad old problems rearing their ugly heads again and again after they had been reportedly taken care of! Political, economic, civil and social violence all continue to bedevil our countries today just because of the lack of leadership. Our national housing, education, health delivery, transport, agricultural, food production, safety and security systems continue to face challenges and lie in tatters today not
limelight when Prince David spelled it out that this university was on the brink of collapsing due to being under funded by government. This was over two or three years ago. This was not about the university per se but much bigger than that. The university management was answerable to the council. The council was Prince Phinda’s garden boy through use of contracts.
The university was established by an Act of Parliament. Honestly speaking there is no ‘Parliament’ in this country.
EDUCATION
The architects of Tinkhundla set up did not embrace higher education as a cornerstone for building Eswatini. How does one expect unlearned people to oversee university council when education qualification is not even a basic qualification to be Member of Parliament (MP)? Taking this approach further I know for a fact that politically, Cabinet is answerable to no one including His Majesty the King because these challenges are insoluble. Only natural or God created challenges are insoluble. Otherwise, all the man-made challenges which we daily face can be solved through good quality leadership. It is solely the lack of good quality leadership at all levels of society which perpetuates all our problems. This is not good at all ladies and gentlemen. Something must be done to solve this problem of perennial lack of leadership in society. What has gone wrong with us?
How can one tell that an organisation lacks leadership? As already describe above, this must be very simple. If a leader is hired to provide leadership in any organisation which is faced with certain problems or challenges at that point in time, a true or good quality leader would be able to solve those challenges, or at least make clearly visibly, tangible and appreciable strides towards solving them within a very short period of time such as one or two years. A leader who is not a true or good quality leader would not at all be able to solve those problems or challenges, and might even make them worse within the very same period of time. This is a very simple yardstick which should be used to measure the quality of leadership in any situation or organisation. Such being the case, can you please now apply this simple yardstick to each and every one of your own current government ministers both as individual ministers, and also as a collective (i.e. as national government)? In order to do this, you must look at and list all the problems or challenges which were faced by each and every one of your individual government ministries at the time when each one of the current ministers took over.
PROBLEMS
After that, you must then list all the problems which are currently facing each and every one of the very same government ministries right now. If the ministry is still being faced with exactly the very same or even more problems or challenges right now as it was faced with two to five years ago, then there is a total lack of, or failure of leadership in that particular government ministry. You can also do the very same simple scrutiny with your national government or even with the whole country. This very simple exercise will show you if you have or do not have any leadership or good quality leadership at ministerial, national government or country level. It can also help to reveal the same presence or absence of leadership at personal, individual, family, community, village, chiefdom, town or city level. Leadership is all about solving problems, hence wherever problems persist, there is no leadership, or no good quality leadership! It is as simple as that, unfortunately!
(HMK). Do not ask me to give you the facts because they will shock you. The next big question is to whom is HMK answerable? This was not a commoners’ making, but that of the architects of Tinkhundla and it was set up to isolate and remove the King from the throne. This is why we are not for executive power to any man but all power to MPs. Lastly I would like to turn my analysis to the June 29, 2021 and 2022. The events that led to June 29 last year took most of us by surprise. Two days before June 29 saw the country in the hands of unknown people. There was chaos on the roads and money was paid to unknown road kings to move from point A to B. On the evening of the Monday and Tuesday, properties and shops (generally those being run by foreigners and white emaSwati) were vandalised then set alight again by unknown people. Then on Wednesday Security forces were released in a bid to restore order. Many lives were lost.