We need a madman in charge
Seriously, in times of tumult, mental illness can produce great leaders
SOUTH Africa is missing two key ingredients: a mad person at its helm and a national enemy, or enemies. These two are key if we are to pull successfully out of the crisis of low economic growth, stubbornly high unemployment and poor delivery of public services.
President Jacob Zuma doesn’t cut it. He is too sane. By his own confession he doesn’t even have stress. He has explained that in his native language, Zulu, there is no word for stress. On that basis alone he is not the right person to lead South Africa right now.
Academic psychiatrist Nassir Ghaemi writes in A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness that most of us think sanity produces good results, a reasonable assumption. But in times of crisis, argues Ghaemi, “we are better off being led by mentally ill leaders” than mentally normal ones.
Ghaemi is a professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts, where he specialises in mood illnesses, especially bipolar disorder.
His argument is based on the study of the histories of American Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman; CNN founder Ted Turner; Britain’s World War 2 prime minister, Winston Churchill; India’s freedom fighter Mahatma Gandhi; American civil rights leader Martin Luther King jnr; and US presidents Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D Roosevelt and John F Kennedy.
Ghaemi identifies four elements of some mental illnesses — mania and depression — that appear to promote crisis leadership: realism, resilience, empathy and creativity. All four are associated with depression; two (creativity and resilience) with manic illness.
“Depression makes leaders more realistic and empathic, and mania makes them more creative and resilient. Depression can occur by itself, and can provide some of these benefits. When it occurs along with mania — bipolar disorder — even more leadership skills can ensue,” writes Ghaemi.
He explained in an interview with the US’s National Public Radio that an average person had what psychologists referred to as a “mild positive illusion”.
“We think that we’re slightly more intelligent, slightly better looking, than we really are. We tend to overestimate our control over our environment. And that can be quite fine under normal circumstances. That may actually help us to get more done because of that confidence, but a political leader needs to be realistic rather than just optimistic for the sake of optimism,” Ghaemi said.
Many scholars have also argued that nations need enemies. Umberto Eco argues in Inventing the Enemy, a book of essays, that we cannot manage without an enemy. “The figure of the enemy cannot be abolished from the processes of civilisation. The need is second nature even to a mild man of peace. In his case the image of the enemy is simply shifted from a human object to a natural or social force that in some way threatens us and has to be defeated,” writes Eco.
The Italian semiotician, writer, philosopher and literary critic adds: “Having an enemy is important not only to define our identity but also to provide us with an obstacle against which to measure our system of values, and in seeking to overcome it, demonstrate our worth. So where there is no enemy, we have to invent it.”
Eco is not the only purveyor of this view. Syndicated American columnist Charles Krauthammer has argued that nations need enemies. “Parties and countries need mobilising symbols of ‘otherness’ to energise the nation and give it purpose,” wrote HERO IN THE MAKING: Mahatma Gandhi in London circa 1931, representing the Indian National Congress and rallying support for Indian independence Krauthammer, a psychiatrist.
Krauthammer was named by the Financial Times in 2006 as the most influential thinker on US foreign policy for more than two decades.
As we have been reminded, sometimes rudely so, we have an identity crisis. So, having an enemy we can all focus on can help us resolve our identity. Alternatively, a national enemy whose performance we would like to surpass can help us mobilise our collective energies to solve some of what look like intractable problems.
A madman at the helm will also help. Take the economy. The current global environment isn’t helping, but the biggest stumbling blocks to faster growth are domestic factors, not the least of which is a shortage and unreliable supply of electricity. Uncertain when or whether electricity supply will be stabilised and increased, the private sector is not expanding or building new production capacity.
Then there is high unemployment — more than a third of South Africans of working age are not working or have given up looking for a job. This isn’t a recent phenomenon. But it will get worse over the next decades as millions of young people reach working age. If the economy remains stuck on low growth, these young people will merely lengthen the unemployment queue.
And as the World Bank pointed out last year, failure to raise the level of economic growth will result in South Africa facing “a worsening economic situation” of rising unemployment and greater dependency by the unemployed on those with jobs, as well as on the state.
As we have seen in recent years, having too many of our young people idle and without hope of a better future poses a threat to a stable, prosperous and democratic South Africa. We need a leader with a good dose of realism, resilience, empathy and creativity. Put simply, a madman. Or madwoman.
Parties and countries need mobilising symbols of ‘otherness’ to energise the nation
Sikhakhane is deputy editor of The Conversation Africa Comment on this: write to letters@businesstimes.co.za or SMS us at 33971