A call for servant leadership

 In November 2021 South Africa saw the convening of municipal councils and the election of troikas (Mayors, Speakers and Whips). Although this process has become a norm in our democracy what made these elections different was the campaign of #MochaPalong which advocated for young people to occupy seats of great importance in municipalities. This new generation comes to the fore amidst voter despondency, a stubborn Covid19 epidemic and the triple challenges which have relegated many people to live lives that are not fit for human beings. The new administrations in general come at a point when South Africa is at the stage of crossing the Rubicon. Either the country charts a new path or it will end up like a typical African country.

The continents of Africa and Asia come from colonial backgrounds where liberation movements had to fight to attain freedom for the people of their countries. Admittedly the dynamics on the different continents are not the same but the most vivid difference is that Asia has largely managed to rise above its colonial past and chart a new future for its people. Leadership has played a critical role in the paradigm shift that saw the emergence of the Asian tigers and the world’s second-largest economy in the form of China. China under president Xi Jinping has a targeted poverty alleviation initiative which has taken over 700 million people out of poverty in the last 40 years and on average 10 million people being taken out of extreme poverty per year since 2012. Imagine, just imagine if African leaders could target and achieve such.

It is with great disappointment to note that leadership in an African context has, in my humble opinion, not been about improving the lives of the people but ostentatious materialism. To be ‘leadership’ has unfortunately come to mean living an extravagant lifestyle of consumption. ‘Leadership’ wears expensive clothes, drinks expensive or just a lot of alcohol drives luxury cars and has a magnificent house. If you have attained the above-mentioned materials then you have reached the real status of ‘leadership’. You can go to any African country (even the poorest) you will find that it is the people who are poor but not the political leadership of the country. These riches in most instances are acquired through the abuse of power for corrupt ends. Africa has remained in this poor state because the appetite of the corrupt is never filled or as PLO Lumumba puts it: “Corruption is like salt water, the more you drink it the thirstier you become”.

A paradigm shift is required in the continent beginning with those tasked with political power in South Africa’s municipalities. The first step in the shift is to strive to decolonise society in general. Colonialism was more than the subjugation of one nation by another it dehumanised black as a means to justify their oppression. Dr Lwazi Lushaba notes that the ethic of black in this country is one in which black people are not valued. This country needs a political leadership that will value black people so much as to dedicate themselves to uplifting black people out of the poverty and misery they are subjected to. Political leadership that prides itself on taking people out of poverty instead of priding itself in wearing Gucci, Louis Vuitton or Salvatore Ferragamo. A leadership obsessed with production as well as poverty reduction instead of one-way consumption as Moeletsi Mbeki posits in his book Architects of poverty.

The task ahead for those who are young and new to local government will be an uphill battle due to the loss of morals and patronage networks in public administration. Some of the previous incumbents

have dedicated their tenure in office to loot municipalities dry. They did this through a network of corrupt officials and business people who would not want to give up their hold on municipalities without a fight. The decline of morals in public service has also meant that many young people admire the lifestyles of the corrupt as they feel that it will liberate them from poverty. The regeneration of our morals in society lies in decoloniality as a theory which posits that African people must revert to African values. In the African value system, the community comes before individual interests thus a decolonial leadership will put people before their interests. 

Africa and its people deserve a new type of leadership that will have the courage to swim against the tide of backwardness. A leadership that is obsessed with development and improving people's lives. The poorest in society hope that you- the new incumbents are the ones they have been waiting for. For the poor, unfortunately, we can import Cuban doctors or bring western investors to our communities but we cannot import good political leadership.

We are angry and our anger will boil over

 When you go through the country- you see it and you have become so accustomed to it to such an extent that you just bypass it. There is anger on the faces of our people who are by and large black, oppressed and marginalised. When you go into the townships, squatter camps, farm workers’ houses and streets where some of them live no one should be able to deny that the conditions that black people live in are not fit for humans. However, to come to the latter conclusion you will have to first acknowledge that colonialism is alive through coloniality and that apartheid did not die it was privatised as Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh asserts.

We were told that education is the key to success and believed it. We have come to realise that it was not entirely the truth. Increasingly many young people are going to TVET colleges, and universities and doing short courses with different institutions only to ultimately add to the unemployment rate. Now even those who did not make it to higher education ask us: what is the use of getting higher education certificates when all of us are unemployed? Those who continued with postgraduate studies as a form of avoiding unemployment have indirectly lessened their chances of being employable as mere entry-level jobs are hard to come by and those that need postgraduate studies go with experience.

Then there are those among the youth that reached matric or dropped out who are even more despondent in their state of unemployment. Those that dropped out mostly did not drop out because they wanted to but rather it is because the education fed to us in schools only caters for the talents of those who are academics. The education system does not cater for the different talents that different people have in society. Schools should not be institutions whose outcome is to give you the NSC certificate but rather they should nature all the talents of individuals as a means to ensure that young people make a living out of their talents. Someone recently said to me that we must open soccer schools where we just focus on naturing this talent because at the end of the day good soccer players earn more money than medical doctors.

The solution coming from the highest office in the country for this unemployment problem is R350 grants and employment schemes that last for 6 months. Although the effort is appreciated there are no long-term solutions to these initiatives. The state can ease the burden by limiting the scope of tenders and empowering public works to implement public employment schemes; aggressively implement the three-stream model in education; support SMMEs to become producers instead of intermediaries; capacitate the state by having skills audit to root out unqualified and incapacitated state employees to replace them with unemployed graduates. However, there is no political will to take such bold moves so the youth find solace in abusing drugs and alcohol.

The people have made a bold statement through the low voter turnout which is that they refuse to be pawns (voting cattle) in the games of kings, queens and bishops (monopoly capital and political elites). While the lives of the kings, queens and bishops improve, the lives of the pawns continue to drown in increasing poverty, unemployment, and inequality. The youth leaders that used to be seen as a beacon of hope are increasingly becoming a political elite themselves. Being a friend of a leader now means that you are also a leader regardless of whether you have the capacity. Genuine youth leaders are increasingly being co-opted into the political elite or being marginalised.

The July riots of 2021 in Kwa-Zulu Natal and Gauteng showed what can happen when anger boils over. Besides the instigation from pro-Zuma supporters, the environment was fertile for looting as many people went to loot items that they needed and did not have. In the North West province, there was an initiative to protect properties like malls which by and large are owned by the real owners of the economy. The real owners who climbed with their dogs in the front of the bakkie while the working class are being slapped by the wind, sun and sometimes rain are the back of the bakkie. However, it seems like this treatment of the working class is does not stem from racism as there are horrific stories of how Indians treat our people working in their homes. There are also lived experiences of how African tenderpreneurs disappear on the African workers when the money is paid to them for the work they didn’t do themselves. Capital has a tendency of exorcising the ubuntu out of people.

Just because I am okay and comfortable financially does not mean that everything is okay. It is not okay that black people, especially women, remain the face of poverty. It is not okay that some people are so rich while most of our people languish in poverty. Meanwhile, there is no political apatite to implement a wealth tax. The situation in this country is already at a crisis point something needs to be done to save the future of the country. We should not solely look to the government for solutions because it will not only affect the government but all of us. We all can do something for someone.