Mandela: A values-based leader

The world came together on Wednesday to honour the deeply loved African statesman who helped bring freedom and constitutional democracy to South Africa.
July 18, is now designated as International Mandela Day by the United Nations, and rightly so, Nelson Mandela’s illustrious life deserves to be patched up there in the annals of international history, as one of the few and rare breed of inspiring values-based leaders to grace this universe. Not many can fit into his shoes except the likes of Martin Luther King Jnr and Mahatma Gandhi.
Nelson Mandela relentlessly championed the cause of the marginalised precipitating the fall of the nuclear-powered and once feared apartheid regime. His character embodies the pan-African values and all that we have aspired for as former subjects of colonialism. Mandela’s character symbolises freedom and success in us, and today we celebrate with him his 94th birthday as his enigma broadens to signify global peace, racial harmony, universal human rights, economic emancipation, and eradication of poverty and diseases.
The spirit of selflessness and sacrifice; the spirit of forgiving, integrity and ethical leadership. His magnanimity, generosity and grace, are some of the values he has revealed to all of us, and today we feel inspired to do more and even better for the oppressed, the poor and vulnerable in our societies.
Yes, we are inspired to take the baton from him and make sure the African continent is freed from all the ills it has become known for. Africa is crying out for freedom from mass exploitation of its mineral wealth by outsiders. Africa is crying out to be freed from some of its own leaders who have turned against the people bludgeoning them for questioning their misrule. Africa is yearning to be freed from the grip of the unethical who have turned businesses on the continent to vehicles for personal aggrandisement without any regard for their sustainability.
Nelson Mandela is a rare breed of world leaders. He is our father, our teacher, our champion, and we shall continue to be inspired by his great works. During his reign as ANC leader and South Africa’s first black president, Mandela was always able to see situations from multiple perspectives and differing viewpoints, and he always considered all sides and opinions with an open mind.
And it is because of this Madiba magnanimity that white business in South Africa today is experiencing an unimaginable boon after South Africa’s economy was opened up to the outside world following years of isolation. Today the owners of these businesses gloriously curse why they feared majority rule in South Africa when it could bring such business success in their own backyards.
The business boon is an apparent reflection of some of the immediate benefits of the new democratic dispensation in the country.
Majority rule in South Africa hasn’t yet brought about the mass benefits anticipated by the majority poor black South Africans because their aspirations are intertwined with the dismantling of the heavily fortified white minority privilege regime.
South Africa’s economy firmly remains in the hands of the white minority, and its an open secret that white business in South Africa has benefited tremendously with the dawn of independence more than the institutionally impoverished blacks have benefited from it.
And because of the business boon, white South Africans have in recent times been at the forefront of hailing Nelson Mandela as a “great African leader”.
However, much as white South Africans can celebrate their business growth and success, they should understand that their honour for Mandela will remain meaningless for as long as black South African townships and rural communities remain impoverished.
The poverty manifest in black communities in South Africa is not a result of a natural phenomenon but a major product of a deliberate and highly institutionalised policy of marginalisation which the white minority governments pursued. White South Africans must as a matter of principle go beyond hailing Mandela as a “great African leader” to directly participate in development programmes in black communities in that country. They have a moral obligation to do so, and helping to eradicate the apartheid inspired poverty in these former apartheid dormitories is the noblest way they can pay back for Mandela’s benevolence.
White business in South Africa must honour Mandela’s spirit of reconciliation and forgiveness by ploughing back part of their profits towards eradicating poverty in South Africa and make that their birthday present. They must initiate, and fund development projects in black townships. They should form development syndicates and partner the government and international development agencies in doing so.
Mandela led the struggle against apartheid from the front because he wanted to see an end to the disgusting poverty that was manifest in black townships and rural communities of South Africa. He fought the apartheid system with his heart because everyday he witnessed how poverty can be such a dehumanising condition.
A visitor to South Africa today is greeted with the apartheid hangover of entrenched black poverty and marginalisation. You smell and feel it as you walk down the streets of Pretoria, Johannesburg, Cape Town, etc, and you find it in almost every sector of the economy except in trade unions. You see it everywhere, and it is so disturbing that you’re provoked to quickly think, “but there must be an immediate solution to correct this error”. Sadly this cannot be done overnight.
Nelson Mandela founded the new South Africa and passed on the baton to younger leaders in the ANC because he knew that logically he could not have changed it all in his lifetime. He understood that undoing the societal damage caused by centuries of apartheid rule could not be an all-at-once job.
He had the wisdom to see this, not that he was weak to do so. He passed on the presidency to a younger leader to carry on with the struggle. He set the tone from above, and left a legacy of smooth transitions in leadership.
Mandela’s predecessors must never decimate this legacy. I say this because greed, and corruption are social ills that are permeating the ranks of the liberators in South Africa at an alarming rate. Sometimes you wonder why they cannot learn from what has become of those who secured their independence before them, and from some across the border where greed and personal gain have become more like grand philosophies that are used to plunder national resources.
Be warned that because such mistakes only help to arm your erstwhile enemies and give them the armour to even try and reverse the gains you made in the last 18 years of your liberation.
Bradwell Mhonderwa is an Ethics Coach and Trainer with the Business Ethics Centre. Send feedback to [email protected] or visit www.businessethicscentre.co.zw, or call 0772913 875.