Sodibana eLimpopo (we will meet in Limpopo) says a song gaining popularity in the tripartite alliance in the run-up to the African National Congress’s (ANC) December national conference. This serves as a reminder to all those who aspire to lead the ANC about the power of ordinary members to choose their leaders.
As we approach this defining moment, it is critical that we examine the factors that will guide us in choosing our leaders, rather than focusing solely on who those leaders will be.
One of the qualities I will be looking for in the leaders who emerge from the conference is humility.
When I met Oliver Tambo for the first time in Maseru after a raid by the South African Defence Force there, what struck me was his humility. We had gathered in a hall at Roma University to meet Tambo. He wanted to greet “the people from home”.
When we were told that Tambo would greet us, I imagined that we would stand in a line, waiting to quickly shake his hand as he filed past. I did not expect that Tambo would come to us and ask us to take our time to tell him anything we wanted to. As I returned home from that experience, I did not want to wash the hand that had touched Tambo. We felt that we had been embraced and respected by a great leader of our movement.
Another quality I will be looking for can be described as “servant leadership”. The modern concept started with Robert Greenleaf who, in 1970, published an essay The Servant as Leader. This contemporary iteration built on the work of Indian thinker Chanakya, who wrote in the fourth century BC that “the king shall consider what is good, not what pleases him, but what pleases his subjects”.
When we choose leaders, we need not give up our own power by putting them on pedestals that distance them from those that they lead. We need not accord them hero worship or fear them so much that we cannot tell them what we think or feel, that we can only tell them what they want to hear. We need not allow them to think they have the last word and that they may not be challenged. True leadership is about giving people the feeling that they can be heard, regardless of who they are and how junior they may be.
I remember having this feeling with Nelson Mandela. In Parliament one day leaders of the opposition surrounded Mandela to congratulate him on a speech. I happened to be passing in front of the small crowd that had gathered around Madiba and was trying very hard to pass quickly, without being noticed. To my utter amazement, Mandela stopped and asked these men to excuse him as he turned to speak to me. I could not believe it.
When I met our exiled leadership in London in March 1986, I was given a chance to explain my anxieties about working with Bantustan leaders. Coming from KwaZulu-Natal, this was an important issue for me; to understand that not all Bantustan leaders were sell-outs. My leaders patiently explained this to me and when I returned home, I was able to help my comrades inside the country to gain the insights I had received.
A true leader has compassion, warmth and love. In other words, a true leader cares about the people. As a child, one of the issues I had with religion was the way it projected God as a person who punishes people with fire and brimstone. I could not accept that a loving God would want to do this, condemning us to perpetual suffering in hell, instead of being a loving parent, caring for us and correcting our mistakes. A caring leader empathises with the people and shares in their pain.
A true leader earns the respect and consent of the people. During my days as a student and activist, one of the greatest influences on me was the Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci. Of all the concepts used by Gramsci, the notion of hegemony is perhaps the best known. To win the support of the population at large, an emergent social group must give leadership and direction before, during and after the revolution. When these conditions are fulfilled, the new social group can be said to be hegemonic.
A good leader exercises collective leadership. This concept needs to be clearly understood to mean listening to and accepting diverse views. It should be understood to mean effective consultation. There are many situations when the term “consultation” has been misused to mean informing people about a decision that has already been made.
Effective consultation involves seeking the people’s support in the decisions that a leader makes. When decisions have to be made quickly, without time for consultation, every effort should be made to report back to the people.
Truth and consensus in decision-making are basic values of a vibrant democracy. The Freedom Charter stresses these values when it states, “The people shall govern” and that “No government may lead without the consent and will of the people.”
This requires ensuring that the people are able to hold their leaders to account. It requires the kind of leadership that values a commitment to the citizens as paramount, instead of being informed only by loyalty to the party. It accepts the notion of speaking truth to power where party members and the citizenry can openly raise issues of concern without fear of being sanctioned. It requires that the citizenry may from time to time exercise their right to protest if they feel their concerns are not being heard. Party loyalty and discipline should not be allowed to instil fear and inertia among members and the public.
Accepting that citizens and ordinary ANC members can speak out and raise issues of public interest in the public domain requires the kind of leadership that upholds respect for difference and open debate.
It is the kind of leadership that promotes accountability to the citizens who have put their trust in politicians by electing them. It is a leadership that engenders open engagement by politicians with members of the public. It is a mature leadership, where party members are not silenced by unwritten rules and traditions, applied selectively in a kind of party discipline that says “we are all equal but some are more equal than others”.
Our constitutional democracy needs an active citizenry that holds all politicians accountable and calls on all of us to exercise our right to speak out in defence of the gains of our democracy. Speaking truth to power is not insubordination, disloyalty or lack of party discipline. It is an expression of constitutional freedom and protection.
Deliberative democratic leadership involves people in true dialogue, listening to one another and arriving at the best answers to achieve the common good, through deliberation and consensus, rather than conflictual debate. Together, people involved in deliberation determine the way forward.
The media play a crucial role in informing the public and raising issues of public concern. Whether it is the issue of babies dying unnecessarily or women and the poor being denied justice by an ineffective criminal justice system, these are issues that the public needs to know and do something about. Our democracy needs all of us to speak truth to power.
The experience of the struggle for democracy taught us to value mass participation. In order for the struggle to be mass-based, we recognised that the people must be their own liberators.
As branches of the ANC prepare for Polokwane, there should be open discussion and consensus on the values and criteria for leadership, so that our choices are informed by the values that we hold dear, which are protected by our constitutional democracy.
Limpopo must give us leaders who care, who unite us and who see themselves as servants of the people.
Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge is an ANC MP