Daily Dispatch
Leadership is ever important
LEADERSHIP matters. South African intellectuals and those aspiring of such grand status who may once have been drawn to that little post-modern idea about social hierarchies flattening out in our globally connected world have surely been disabused of this delusion – if not in the past year, then certainly in the past week.
Indeed, evidence about the impact of leadership has been in front of our noses for the past three days, pressed down, shaken together and overflowing.
Consider, on Monday half our world waxed lyrical as we marked Mandela Day. With good reason. Nelson Mandela shows us the very best of ourselves and makes us proud.
Why exactly? Certainly Madiba changed the course of this nation and certainly profoundly touched the world, but the real reason we all rush back to his memory with unbridled eagerness is because of the quality of his character.
As Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa noted in his Mandela Day speech, Madiba was defined most of all by the selfless choices he continued to make through his life. It was, above all things, a life of service to the people of South Africa.
But Mandela was not only selfless, he was also self-aware. He knew very well that his actions would be the measure of conduct for the nation he led. So he intentionally set out to demonstrate his respect for the people of this country and the systems and values we have chosen to set in place.
Fast forward to Wednesday and the nation was offered a display of behaviour entirely to the contrary. Not from President Jacob Zuma, but from individuals emulating behaviours and utterings that citizens are now exhausted from seeing exhibited by the leader of the country.
First was Police Minister Nathi “Firepool” Nhleko’s paper-thin attempt to duck questions in parliament about his factional wrangle with Independent Police Investigative Directorate head Robert McBride. It was a performance replete with disingenuously paranoid sproutings about “sinister attempts” being made “to tarnish the work that we do”.
Worse was to follow as ANC parliamentary committee member Livhuwani Mabija amplified this approach, speaking not of witches but “a dangerous serpent under the grass” causing trouble. It was nonetheless “a serpent” that Nhleko could not name.
Meanwhile, Zuma’s tendencies were also being modelled in another committee chamber where SABC board chair Mbulaheni Maguvhe, CEO James Aguma and corporate affairs head Hlaudi Motsoeneng had been summonsed to appear.
After fighting tooth and nail to circumvent having to appear before “this particular ad hoc committee”, Maguvhe stormed out, claiming the “poisoned” inquiry had “belittled” him.
His reasoning is almost too painful to rehash. Suffice to say, Maguvhe is the only remaining member of a board that has long since been rendered inquorate but which enigmatically continues to defy dissolution.
It is not possible to imagine the ANC under Mandela’s leadership ever treating South Africans or their most important institutions with such reckless disdain.
Nor is it possible to avoid the conclusion that a leader’s quality of character, not his or her level of charisma, is what counts – and that this example filters down.