SA Needs Strategic Leadership. Its Presidents Have Not Been Up to the Task

Unlike other countries in southern Africa, where political independence came after gruesome liberation wars, the leaders of the ANC, which led the liberation struggle, managed to negotiate a transition to democracy.

There were many “wins”, including assent to the election of a majority-led government and the enactment of policies that would ensure broad-based economic transformation.

This transition may be seen as a point in history where the nation navigated one of its greatest crises.

But its current leadership is confronted with multiple challenges. These range from extreme poverty and high unemployment to the severe undermining of democratic institutions by corruption and state capture.

These “wicked problems” are so difficult and complex that there is no single, silver-bullet answer.

There is only a range of clumsy solutions, all of which are imperfect. The policy-making puzzle, therefore, is as much about recognising the nature of the problem as seeking to mitigate risks.

Our new book, ‘The Presidents: From Mandela to Ramaphosa, Leadership in an Age of Crisis’, assesses the leadership of South Africa’s five post-apartheid presidents – Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki, Kgalema Motlanthe, Jacob Zuma and Cyril Ramaphosa.

We wanted to see what lessons can be learned, especially in relation to their strategic abilities.

Strategy is one of the critical leadership attributes necessary to cope with the strong headwinds leaders often encounter.

We concluded that there has been a shortage of truly strategic leadership, with a few exceptions.

Thus, the country has been unable to succeed with the underlying structural problems that are the fundamental cause of its socio-economic precarity.

What do we mean by “strategy”? Here we defer to former UK member of parliament and now (UK) Times columnist Matthew Parris.

He says although the meaning has become diluted through promiscuous and often inappropriate use  …  strategy remains the best word for expressing attempts to think about actions in advance – in the light of our goals and capacities.

Many leaders, governments and organisations confuse planning with strategy. So this is an apt consideration to keep in mind: Have South Africa’s post-1994 presidents addressed the fundamental question of what is wrong with society and its economy in a strategic way?

MANDELA

Mandela, South Africa’s first president, made big strategic choices – not necessarily the right ones, but certainly ones that were befitting of the times.

A primary strategy choice faced Mandela at the very advent of the democratic era. He opted for national reconciliation as his political motif.

It was strategic in the sense that the alternative was to drive a strong transformational agenda without seeking to get the powerful and privileged white minority on board.

Crudely put, he could have opted for redemption and even revenge, rather than reconciliation.

This was accompanied by a deep personal commitment to the rule of law and constitutionalism.

He used his presidential power to drive that message and execute that strategy, leaving the detail of management of policy and government to his number two, Thabo Mbeki.

The transition from his government’s Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) to the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) macroeconomic strategy is another debatable case in point.

The RDP was the ANC government-in-waiting’s flagship programme for socio-economic transformation.

Left-of-centre commentators and players within the broader ANC-led alliance saw it as a neo-liberal approach to fiscal and monetary policy that would constrain the government’s ability to drive redistribution of wealth and opportunity.

MBEKI AND MOTLANTHE

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