Let’s safeguard and build on Africa’s progress
Our gains have been eroded in time
This weekend in a workshop in Muldersdrift, western Gauteng, led by Dr JJ Klaas, he alerted us to a severe weakness of African culture and African leadership strategies.
Klaas said Africans in history and until today have demonstrated brilliance and innovations among the best of the best on Earth. For example, the strategies of Prince Maqoma and King Sandile in dismantling the British invading armies in the Cape.
Maqoma and Sandile destroyed the most decorated British commanders including Lieutenant-colonel John Fordyce of the 74th (Highland) Regiment, Colonel John Hare and Major-general Sir Harry Smith in three successive wars, in a fashion never seen anywhere in the British Empire.
Klaas argues that where African leaders have failed dismally is in safeguarding the positive results and progress and building on that long-term.
Other cultures such as the Americans, British, Chinese, Indians and Europeans have generally been safeguarded and built on every little progress they have made.
Over time our failure to safeguard our successes, innovations and inventions has meant that the gap between us and our competitors has widened over the past 150 years.
Many prominent leaders in the ANC and among the opposition parties have reported that the gains made since 1994 have been reversed and not protected.
It is in this setting that we have to link the teachings of Klaas with the principles of continuous improvement. One articulation of this shows how you can make more than 360% improvement in one year:
“I really liked the 1% Rule. The concept is disarmingly simple – make a one percent improvement in what you do every day… logically that would amount to a 365% lift in results over the course of a year, but author Tommy Baker points out compounding will boost those results even more. If you consistently do one percent better over the course of a year, you can potentially boost what you do 30-times or more. Awesome.
This culture of 1% improvement every day was perfected by the Japanese and then adopted over time by the West across all disciplines.
Many of us struggle to accept that there were quite a few black Christian schools that were in fact ahead and of superior quality to white schools in the country before Bantu Education was imposed.
Adams College in Amanzimtoti was one of them. It was tested by the Natal superintendent of schools in 1867 who declared that few white schools could match some of the learners at Adams College.
“In 1867, the Natal superintendent of education visited the high school (Amanzimtoti), tested the students, and afterwards declared few whites had ‘higher attainment” than those from Amanzimtoti.”
This point of superior education of the native population is echoed emphatically by Prof William Hutt writing in 1964 in Economics of the Colour Bar.
The critical cultural, strategic and leadership question, would be what would have happened had the senior leaders of the African people, even across KZN, applied the principles of continuous improvement from 1867 to 2024. Clearly, the African population would have been world beaters many times over.
Another illustration, which shows poor culture, strategy and leadership – where gains were not protected and improved on is the energy sector. This weekend we learnt that once again we have continued to lose ranking in the energy sector where we were once world leaders.
“South Africa has fallen five places to 69th in an annual global energy system ranking by the World Energy Council. The 2023 World Energy Trilemma Report features its annual
Energy Trilemma Index, which measures the energy security, equity, and environmental sustainability of 126 countries’ energy systems.
We cannot look at this statistic and not remember that under the leadership of Thulani Gcabashe as CEO of Eskom and Thabo Mbeki as state president of SA, Eskom was rated the number one electricity supplier in the world in the year 2001.
“In what national electricity supplier Eskom views as an indication to the world that South Africa produces worldclass businesses, the company was last week awarded the Power Company of the Year award in the Financial Times’ annual Global Energy Awards.”
What was needed was to safeguard all the systems and processes that produced that superior performance and create conditions for not only reproducing superior performance but also conditions that would be fertile for continuous improvement.