South Africa is suffocating under the weight of bad leaders

In the midst of the circus that our politics has become, it is easy to forget that we were not always like this.

The dearth of leadership we are experiencing in all tiers of government is not something we have always suffered from, and it need not be our fate.

There are many examples of women and men who have provided sterling leadership over the decades — some of them world famous, but many more known only to the tiny communities they lived in.

Some did this in the political space, but scores more provided leadership in other fields ranging from religion and sports to science and technology.

In our darkest hours of apartheid repression — when resistance movements were banned, anti-apartheid newspapers were closed down and political leaders were jailed, restricted or exiled — the political leadership vacuum was, over time, closed by the clergy, artists, students and worker-leaders who took on the regime on behalf of their communities.

By the mid-1980s leadership talent was emerging in almost all spheres of South African life as people demanded an end to an oppressive system that divided us according to race.

Some of them were barely out of their teens when they took up these struggles, often at risk to their education and even lives.

These township youth leaders were sometimes dismissed as “the lost generation” by those who argued they ought to have stayed in school and concerned themselves with issues that preoccupy youth in “de-politicised” countries.

But politics had become attractive to them as the only viable vehicle to change their lives, and their communities, for the better. Politics to this generation was about service and sacrifice, and hardly about personal reward.

I attended a funeral of one such leader and activist recently. By the time he turned 20, Elias “Bhut-Bhut” Maloma had long gained a reputation in Daveyton, on the East Rand, as a student, youth and civic leader involved in community struggles against apartheid authorities in the area. For that he was often at a receiving end of police harassment which, in turn, made him a fugitive who would spend many months a year hiding out in the then Lebowa bantustan.

Listening to his childhood friends and those who knew him best over the years, I was reminded of so many other youth leaders of the 1980s who engaged in politics when it was dangerous to do so but who, somehow, found themselves either sidelined or disinterested in politics after 1994.

Bhut-Bhut, as he was popularly known, was one of those who used the opportunity provided by the end of apartheid to upskill himself by training to become a mechanic.

Clearly, even the opposition is struggling to attract leaders of a higher calibre as many upstanding, skilled and capable South Africans see politics as a dirty game that is best left to the deceptive and dubious.

He continued to be thoroughly engaged with South African politics. I remember many evenings spent listening to his criticism of the ANC administration during the state capture years, but he found political office unattractive.

In this he wasn’t alone. Too many others of his calibre and generation are put off our politics by the corruption and the other shenanigans that have come to dominate it.

But as they walk away from political activism, the vacuum is filled by charlatans and political con artists who, it seems, are destined to dominate our politics for the foreseeable future with devastating consequences.

The recent developments in Tshwane metro, where disgraced mayor Murunwa Makwarela was forced to resign amid a forgery scandal, point to the fact that the problem is not exclusively limited to the governing ANC.

Clearly, even the opposition is struggling to attract leaders of a higher calibre as many upstanding, skilled and capable South Africans see politics as a dirty game that is best left to the deceptive and dubious.

At what cost to the country though? With the general election a year away, and with many analysts and surveys telling us that the next national government is most likely to be an outcome of a coalition agreement between several parties, isn’t it scary that the dearth of leadership is making some of our citizens sit up and seriously listen when a former crime boss speaks politics?

Given the opportunistic nature of the talks that often lead to the formation of coalition government, who is to say that at national level we will not end up with the parties engaged in horse trading, giving us a version of Makwarela as the country’s president?

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