Where have all the leaders gone?

Interesting questions flowed to the panel in the open discussion, particularly the ones around the absence of moral and ethical leadership.

“I am not going through life with rose-coloured glasses,” said Hills. “I am aware of what is going on and what I see is that we get caught up with ourselves. Wherever I travel, everyone loves South Africa and wants to come here. As South Africans, we are all leaders and need to play a role in enhancing South Africa the brand, and its reputation.”

Mkhatshwa said: “Whoever aspires to leadership must fully understand the environment they operate in. The biggest challenge is the cancer of materialism, and that replaces the struggle and Ubuntu. Materialism makes people easily corruptible and this negates all the other positive things.

“Capital markets destroy kinships and replace these with pursuing wealth, which in turn translates into the way people behave. Even drug-lords can appear attrac- tive, yet they are extremely toxic.

“Do some social decoding and diagnostic analysis. There are many people out there who want to be good leaders, but citizens themselves must take ownership, and it is not good enough to give a mandate to others for five years.”

Posed the question about whether we are ready for King IV, Pogrund said: “It is essential to be ready. We can have all the legislation in the world, but it is useless in a culture where there is a sea of different values. You can have sophisticated rules, but if people don’t buy into them, and circumvent them, the outcome is obvious.”

Asked whether bad behaviour is being rewarded in the boardroom, Booysen reiterated that the rot exists right now in our nationwide leadership. “We are not a unified country and leadership is rotten from the head — government, business and society. We don’t have a common purpose and without effective, robust communication programmes, we will allow for civil leadership chaos.”