Wisdom or intellectualism in leadership, which is better?
Dear Editor,
IT is very strange on the African continent how people view leadership as something that should be in the intellectual realm. We are just too impatient that anyone who renders something from a platform, we quickly say they are intellectual and they should be leaders.
Yes intellectualism is very much needed, but the most important aspect is wisdom. Wisdom is the most important aspect of leadership. What is intellectualism? The Chandler And Holliday, 1990; Strijbos, 1995 defines intellectual knowledge as ceterris pariibus implying that it is knowledge that is only valid for a certain domain, time and place.
What is Wisdom?
Wisdom presumably should have many positive qualities such as maturity, superiorities, patience in judgement skill in difficult times and the ability to cope with the many vicissitude situations in life and wisdom does not diminish with age unlike intellectualism.
It is not wise to make a boom and sit on it and say, "I do not what to die."
Many African nations have intellectuals such that if one went in town or indeed in some African villages and threw a stone in public; definitely, the stone will fall onto a professor of some kind.
Unfortunately, these African countries that have so many intellectuals are always at wars and they fail to understand what democracy is. Democracy requires more of wisdom than intellectualism. Wisdom is self-regulatory, self-understanding and self-human preservation.
And intellectualism alone, does not define a country.
I think that in politics, one does not need to be an intellectual but certainly be a wise person.