position in the world.
It is that improvisational approach to identity that made it possible for Biko and his black consciousness comrades to redefine blackness to include coloureds and Indians. That is why Malcolm X came back from Mecca a changed man – less essentialistic about the white man as the ‘devil’. Just as we speak of Arabian-Africans like Colonel Muammar Gadaffi, we should be able to talk of Jewish-Africans, Italian-Africans, or whatever. Improvisation, adaptation, hospitality, generosity and inclusion are at the heart of the African personality, encapsulated in the notion of Ubuntu. Black intellectuals have the potential to bring those values to bear on the process of generating a new social vision for South Africa. But that’s all it is at this point: a potential.
Mbeki, visionary at large, is the manager at home
Sunday Independent, 6 February 2000
In his seminal article ‘Managers and Leaders: Are They Different?’, the Harvard University leadership guru Abe Zaleznik argues that managers and leaders are indeed different kinds of personalities. Managers value stability, predictability, efficiency, and rational control over organisational processes. They are infatuated with strategy. Leaders, on the other hand, are in a constant process of what Joseph Schumpeter called ‘creative destruction’. In fact, leadership arises out of the ability to mobilise people around what may initially seem to be hopeless causes.
While managers rely on mounds of strategy manuals to guide their action, leaders inspire change through sheer talent, imagination, intuition, and effective relationships with followers. Drawing on William James’s classic work The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (1902), Zaleznik describes managers as once-born people for their reluctance to venture beyond inherited patterns, and leaders as twice-born people for their restless search for change. To paraphrase the late Robert Kennedy, managers see things as they are, and ask why; leaders see things as they never were, and ask why not.
President Thabo Mbeki possesses both leadership and managerial qualities, but displays them at different levels. He has been a visionary leader on the global stage. South Africa and the African continent at large could not have asked for a better spokesperson in world forums – whether we are talking about the United Nations, the European Union, the G-8, the Commonwealth or the World Economic Forum. He has almost singlehandedly placed the idea of the African Renaissance at the centre of global policy discussions.
As South Africans, we should be thankful for the manner in which he has shepherded our country back into the community of nations, establishing important bilateral relations with powerful nations such as the United States, Britain, and China. His experience as head of the ANC’s international mission in exile helped hone the grace, comfort, skills and talent he shows at these forums. However, the opposite is true of the president’s performance on the domestic front, where he has acted more like a manager concerned with strategic problem-solving. Here, he has followed a frenetic pace of institution-building, administrative reform, and legislative enactments.
While the president has shown bold leadership in respect of racial transformation, he has been more guarded on the economic front. Given that there is greater consensus on the need for racial redress than there is around economic policy, the managerial strategist in him knows which fight not to pick. The managerial mystique extends beyond economic policy to domestic policy in general. There is a widely held perception that the president is a stickler for detail. Cabinet ministers are like managers directly accountable to the chief executive. As it happens in many organisations, daily transactional leadership has been substituted for long-term visionary and inspirational leadership around issues of values. This is what James MacGregor Burns would call ‘transformational leadership’. The privileging of strategic details gains a momentum of its own, and detracts from the development of an overarching leitmotif for the country. Loyalty, survival, and ‘not rocking the boat’– the hallmarks of managerialism – take precedence over risk-taking, experimentation and innovation – the hallmarks of leadership.
And so, here we are with a president whose leadership potential, at least on the domestic front, remains half-fulfilled: a global leader of the African Renaissance shrouded in managerial mystique at home, a leader of racial transformation held back by the strategic managerialism of economic and domestic policy.
Plot debacle suggests opposition is the new treason
Sunday Independent, 29 April 2001
I was at a private dinner with former United States president Bill Clinton in Johannesburg the other day when my cellphone rang. What a rude intrusion, I thought, as I fumbled for the phone. It was one of my friends. ‘Hey man, turn on the TV! The minister of safety and security, Steve Tshwete, is alleging that Cyril Ramaphosa, Tokyo Sexwale and Mathews Phosa have been spreading rumours that Thabo Mbeki was involved in the murder of Chris Hani!’
Here we go again, I thought. Our politics have become an embarrassment, a joke and a farce. Our political leaders have given official sanction to the insidious and deadly politics of rumour-mongering. One of the dinner guests asked: ‘What if the movement hotheads just decide to go and shoot the alleged plotters?’ After all, we come from a history of blind loyalty during the anti-apartheid struggle in which the slightest disagreement could lead to instant death. All that was needed to eliminate a political enemy was for someone to shout ‘impimpi!’ (informer). And how long would it take before we all got caught up in ever-widening intrigues about who’s plotting against whom? Are we really becoming just another banana republic in which power is wielded through political intrigue? What price political power?
I believe the answers to these questions will be revealed in how the public responds to Tshwete’s allegations. Let me begin with the scarier response. The day after the minister’s remarks, I got into my car and drove to my home town of Ginsberg in Eastern Cape. As soon as I arrived, I stopped off at one of my favourite watering holes, and found tongues wagging. One guy said: ‘Kungaqhuma kubasiwe (there is no smoke without fire); the minister would not have said it if it wasn’t true. Those three guys are ambitious.’ Another one chimed in: ‘Thabo must now get the support of the Xhosa people.’ And then a conspiratorial masterpiece that could have come out of a John le Carré novel: ‘You see, Cyril, Tokyo and Mathews were involved in the arms deal, and Thabo wanted to expose them. That is why they want to remove him.’ All this would be comical if it wasn’t so dangerous.
By contrast, Nelson Mandela has shown us the way to respond to this politics of innuendo. Ever the honourable statesman, he spoke for many people when he came out in defence of the integrity of the three alleged ‘plotters’. I suppose he was demonstrating, as only he knows how, that democratic leadership is first and foremost about building trust, and not about sowing suspicion and division.
The political economist Albert Hirschman once drew a distinction between social capital such as trust and financial capital such as money. Whereas money decreases with frequent use, trust accumulates through frequent use. The question then is whether Mbeki and his party have done enough to build the social trust necessary for citizens to compete openly for political office without fear of being labelled plotters. Mbeki and the ANC must face the challenge that democratically elected leaders face all around the world: they must either shape up or ship out. And we must get to a point where that is a ready sanction for our leaders. Challenges to leadership should be viewed as democratic contestation instead of ‘plots’.
Countdown to the politics of adaptation has begun
Sunday Independent, 6 May 2001
The other night, I watched the ANC MP Mnyamezeli Booi on television congratulating the minister of safety and security, Steve Tshwete, on a job well done. I have known ‘Nyamie’ since our days in the student movement in the mid-1980s. His loyalty to the
