Deputy President Paul Mashatile. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)
In Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, three sons wrestle with the sins of their father, a man consumed by greed, selfishness and power.
Each brother embodies a path: Dmitri the impulsive, Ivan the rational sceptic, Alyosha the spiritual and compassionate. The tragedy of their family and of the wider society around them is not simply one man’s corruption, but the way silence, denial and failure of courage let that corruption metastasise.
So too with nations. Leadership falters not only because of those who abuse power, but because of those who stay silent, rationalise wrongdoing or retreat from moral clarity.
At the UN, US President Donald Trump delivered a performance, half-speech, half-sales pitch. He spoke of sovereignty and greatness, but sovereignty for whom? Greatness at whose expense? It is not just what leaders say that matters, it is what they deliberately leave unsaid.
Power often hides behind omission as the powerless suffer. Climate change and immigration are painted as enemies, but the real threat is leaders who reduce justice to words while protecting their own ambitions.
In stark contrast, Barbados’s Prime Minister Mia Mottley used her address to remind the world that “they make a desert and call it peace”. Her words cut through the fog of diplomacy, warning that cloaking injustice in silence or polite ambiguity does not preserve peace, it fertilises tyranny. She challenged leaders to resist the erosion of truth and to confront injustice directly, no matter how inconvenient.
And then there was Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who used his moment not to obscure but to confront. He warned of would-be autocrats and called for the defence of democracy itself. That is what courage sounds like — the refusal to confuse comfort with principle, or to trade truth for applause.
Here at home, Democratic Alliance federal chair Helen Zille says she cannot call Gaza a genocide because she hasn’t been there. Imagine Martin Luther King Jr saying, “I cannot call it segregation because I haven’t sat in every diner in Alabama.”
Moral courage doesn’t wait for a boarding pass. It does not require you to touch the rubble before naming the injustice. Leadership means calling it as it is, even when the cost is political isolation. If no true leader would stand with Hamas, then surely no true leader can stay silent while genocide unfolds before our very eyes.
And then there’s Jimmy Kimmel. A comedian with a microphone, cracking jokes at the powerful, only to find himself at the centre of an attempt to be shut down. When those in power start trembling at satire, you know the punchline hit too close.
But we know the truth is funny until it’s about you. History shows us this is always the first act — before regimes break bones, they break voices. Apartheid South Africa used laws to choke dissent. Nazi Germany quelled the truth with fear. Silence was never peace — it was the breeding ground of tyranny.
Even our institutions falter under the weight of secrecy. The Madlanga commission, created to reclaim accountability, now finds itself unable or unwilling to explain its own fractures. Its silence deepens suspicion and weakens the very mandate it was supposed to fulfil. An institution built to expose silence cannot itself become silent.
Then there is the hypocrisy of leaders who demand trust while withholding clarity. The revelations of Deputy President Paul Mashatile’s luxury mansion were not met with disclosure, but with shields of political protection. Party allies circled wagons. Government defenders downplayed the scandal. Citizens were told once more: “Trust us.”
But trust is not a blank cheque. It is earned through openness. Leadership is not a gated compound; it is a glass house, open to scrutiny and accountable to those who placed you where you are.
King warned: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” Silence about Gaza matters. Silence about corruption matters. Silence about hidden wealth matters. And with biting irony, the joke, in the end, is on us if we keep laughing while leaders loot, hide and lie.
Still, the pattern is global. The US has even threatened to revoke Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s visa for his criticism of US foreign policy, a chilling reminder powerful nations are not immune to the temptation of punishing those who refuse to fall in line. Whether cancelling passports, throttling platforms or freezing voices, the impulse is the same — protect power by muting the messenger.
The lesson for today’s leaders is clear. Speak with courage, not cowardice. Do not hide behind omissions, excuses, or distance. Protect the critic, don’t prosecute them. Name injustice; don’t dance around it. Open the books, open the houses, open the truth. Because citizens are watching and listening.
South Africa has never lacked voices willing to speak truth to power. What we lack now are leaders willing to hear it. The courage we need is not about puffed-out chests on a podium, but about honesty under scrutiny. Courage is not the absence of fear. It is the presence of principle spoken, lived and seen.
So the mic is still here. The stage is still lit. The question is: will today’s leaders pick it up and speak truth or will they silence themselves into irrelevance?
Professor Armand Bam is head of Social Impact at Stellenbosch Business School.