Traditions of leadership

It is common in social science discourse to bring together beliefs, attitudes and behaviour as if it were a cohesive whole. It is also common for theorists of power to delink these three parts and look at the interstices between them, and how beliefs, attitudes and behaviours are brought to bear upon each other, to appertain the dynamic ways they reveal and conceal and enable the formation of relationships of power. Looking at what people do versus what they believe and say they are doing is important in understanding how ideology functions and how traditions are enacted. And of course, this has a bearing on inequitable relationships.

One needs only to look at traditions of leadership on the African continent, particularly by leaders who were at the forefront of liberatory struggles and the kinds of inequities they allow to flourish whilst mobilising talk about liberation. How the people, the actual real living people who their policies and practices fall down on are treated versus what leaders believe they are giving, to realise that these leaders are dazzled by their beliefs and their rhetoric. Their behaviours, the what is done in practice is soothed away by an attitude that justifies and of course, placates the restless populace. Its why the management of persona is important to despots, the paternalistic air, the distancing from actual details of the everyday, the gestures through talk of grand ideals that are not lived out by them, but of course should be lived out by the populace. The belief suffices and is treated as if it were behaviour. It is a peculiar kind of blindness, and all the more sad because the belief has so entrenched itself in the attitude, that the behaviour is not easily reflected on.

Sacrifice for the cause, it is worthy, tirelessly give your labouring body and relationships to the cause for it is worthy, occupy your hovels and your slums, for the cause requires it. And of course, the leader needs his respite from the hardness of the cause that the populace is fighting on his behalf, for how can he (and it is invariably a he) lead to glory if not supported, for he is the exception that will turn all the populace into exceptions, if only they worked hard enough. If they are disgruntled, it is because they have not worked hard enough, they are weak, angry, morally deficient, uncommitted and a whole host of other ills and the disease at the centre of the cause, is really their fault. And how can he the leader lead them to glory with so many among them that are deficient.

The cause becomes the spectacle and an explanation in and of itself, the ends of the cause is not meant for the populace for they are part of the cause. The ends have to be deferred by the populace, the expectation of fair treatment deferred for their is much work to be done elsewhere, the expectation not to be preyed on by the corrupt and bullies deferred for the world is not fair and there is work to be done, the expectation of the structures that support the work to be done deferred for there is much work to be done, and so it goes. And so corruption thrives, and small cruelties and the explanation is that it is so difficult to change a deficient system and therefore we must work harder at the cause. It is the disbelieving individuals who are at fault and rarely that a concerted practicing ethic of care, accountability and responsibility is absent from the leader. After all institutions and political systems are populated by individuals.

An ethic of care is meaningless if it is not practiced on a daily basis. No matter how strong the belief that grants it legitimacy, no matter the hard-won history. Within liberatory movements, if the behaviour and the belief do not coincide, then it is as dangerous as any fascist, totalitarian regime. We see this with Western democracies too, who will protect the belief at all costs, regardless of the terror it sows elsewhere. For the cause deems it necessary to exploit, deceive, classify who deserves consideration based on old, uninterrogated prejudices. And so the traditions of inequity remain, the beliefs that found them just have a new flavour. It is how a liberatory movement like the ANC can give lip-service to gender equity and yet allow practices that harm women to flourish, it is how most men still have power and the women who work themselves to the bone to support their causes are valued arbitrarily (and it is invariably women).

To change traditions of leadership, we need to change what we do and what we enable leaders to do. We have to look to their practices and not to their rhetoric to see which beliefs are embodied. It is not enough to believe differently, tradition is a praxis. Transformation is something that must be attended to on a daily basis. Some of the introspective questions we should expect from our leaders are what did I do today to foster an ethic of care, how was I accountable to the people in my charge, did I consider them responsibly before directing them instrumentally, am I treating them all fairly, what is my responsibility within this turn of events, how can I serve them so that they may reciprocate and enable me to bring about this equitable vision of the world? And mostly we should look to what they do and not the flourish of what they say.