Valuable Rubbish

Jacob Zuma

Leadership in South Africa. It’s looking a little dismal these days.

That Jacob Zuma guy, who’s ostensibly running the country at the moment, seems really nice.  He’s very affable. People like him. He’s charming and makes you want to be his friend. He cracks jokes. He has a jolly laugh.

But the President of the country isn’t supposed to be a stand-up comedian. Not saying that comedians can’t become presidents of countries, but they should probably take a sabbatical from comedy until after their term of office

Why is Jacob Zuma not exactly inspirational?

Some people might go on about his dubious history, refer to scuppered corruption trials and other dodgy dealings (all political conspiracies, of course). I don’t want to do that. It’s irrelevant because even if Jacob Zuma didn’t have this doubtful haze clouding our perceptions of him, he still wouldn’t be a great president.

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Techcrunch has an interesting article discussing the qualities of a great CEO. It’s written in the context of the IT industry and Venture Capital, but the points they make apply easily to political leadership too.

Techcrunch list these characteristics that should be present in a leader:

• The ability to articulate the vision
• The right kind of ambition
• The ability to achieve the vision

It’s over the first point that JZ already trips and stumbles, waving his arms about desperately, trying to regain his balance. Hey Jacob! What’s your frigging vision dude?

Nelson Mandela had a pretty good vision that he fought for. A non-racial South Africa. That’s a vision. He did a pretty damned good job of articulating it too. The Apartheid Government locked him up in Robben Island because they disliked his vision so much. If Mandela had been vague, then the Apartheid apparatus would never have taken him very seriously.

Jacob Zuma was chucked in prison too for fighting against Apartheid, but he was in a following role.

“The Struggle” is over now. South Africa has got a wonderfully liberal constitution. What’s the vision dude? Something about “Working together we can do more,” I think. It’s vague, and Jacob’s State of the Nation address didn’t do too much to fill in the details. As far as I can tell there is no vision so, to give JZ the benefit of the doubt, perhaps he’d be able to articulate the vision had he and the ANC got around to figuring out what it should be.

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The second point needs a little elaboration before I can comment on whether or not Jacob Zuma possesses this quality. What is the right kind of ambition?

According to the Techcrunch article,

Andy Grove once remarked that a company needs highly ambitious executives in order to achieve its goals. However, it’s critical that those executives have “the right kind of ambition”: ambition for the success of the company rather than the “wrong kind of ambition”: ambition for the success of themselves.

In our case, the company is the Republic of South Africa, goals are things like poverty alleviation, job creation, and reducing crime-rates, and our highly ambitious executive is Jacob Zuma.

JZ is on a great wicket at the moment, with the state supporting his multitude of wives and offspring. He’s got enough for two cricket teams and reserve players for both teams. These teams are proudly sponsored by the South African tax-payer. JZ and all his family should have to wear a SARS logo on their clothing whenever going out into public.

Most of the the people of South Africa live in terrible poverty and always have the threat of violent crime hanging over them.

What kind of ambition would you, dear reader, say Jacob Zuma has? Does Jacob Zuma have ambition for the success of South Africa, or is it just ambition for the success of himself?

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Point 3. The ability to achieve the vision.

It should be readily apparent that if there is no vision, then having the ability to achieve the vision is a moot point of discussion.

For the sake of argument, let’s say there is a vision. Something concrete, viable, and worth achieving. Would Zuma have the ability to achieve this undefined noble goal?

Jacob Zuma tries to be everything to everyone. Depending on the audience, he’ll say whatever that particular audience would most like to hear. A leader needs to be decisive and make the right decisions to pursue the vision and achieve the goals. The right decisions are often not the popular decisions.

If Jacob Zuma makes unpopular decisions, it will erode his popularity. Without popularity, what does Jacob Zuma have left?

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Photo credit: World Economic Forum (Photographed by Monika Flueckiger)