Captured leader lacks ability to serve the people

The Italian philosopher and statesman, Nicollo Machiavelli, once cautioned that a leader should never solicit forces stronger than he is to do the battling on his behalf. When such forces win the battle they will rule everyone, including the leader.

In his guidance for leadership he also noted that there were healthy states and unhealthy states.

Healthy states were unified, orderly and their citizens were generally happy, feeling secure and honoured.

Citizens in unhealthy states were despondent and needed a strong principled leader to restore national pride and dignity.

Africa desperately needs such leaders to develop itself and arrest the exodus of its people from it upper parts down to South Africa, the burgeoning mecca of the continent.

As a continent we once had visionary leaders such as Julius Nyerere of Tanzania; Patrice Lumumba of Congo; Sir Seretse Kgama of Botswana and many others. President Quett Masire of Botswana was one of the last vestiges of such leadership treasure, a humble thoughtful statesman who strengthened the legacy of Seretse Kgama by winning friends for Botswana.

These leaders understood that the greatest threat to democracy is the absence of criticism, which includes self-criticism.

Machiavelli has sometimes been misunderstood as an advocate for unscrupulous leadership that clings to power at all costs.

Benito Mussolini and Vladimir Lenin, used Machiavelli’s The Prince as their bible but understood it differently.

With the support of Adolf Hitler, Mussolini destroyed Italy and caused untold suffering to the people of Ethiopia. In the end he tried to escape with his mistress but was trapped and executed by the angry masses.

A similar fate befell other despots in Africa such as Idi Amin, Seseseko Mobutu and many others who fled as their personal empires collapsed.

However, Lenin understood Machiavelli’s message and served his nation selflessly.

His death was an irreparable loss to his people. However, his economic reforms were reversed by the short-tempered Joseph Stalin, the son of a bankrupt cobbler who had become a drunkard and a wife basher.

In his “Last Statement”, which was circulated only to the senior leadership of the Bolsheviks, Lenin cautioned that Stalin was too arrogant and rude to unify the party.

But Stalin survived this crisis, outsmarted Leon Trotsky and became the head of state. He then ruthlessly crushed any dissent. Tried and tested revolutionaries such as Trotsky and many others were hounded out of the party and executed.

Stalin’s name became synonymous with a general abuse of power, torture and mass execution. The revolution had lost its way.

The capturing story of Ityala Lamawele in The Lawsuit of Twins by SEK Mqhayi teaches us much about leadership. Throughout the hearing it describes, King Hintsa carefully listened to all the speakers and was the last to speak.

He convinced the twins to return home and work together as equals.

It is fitting that the skull of this great leader is returned to the land of his ancestors.

But all things being equal, free and fair elections do not necessarily deliver leadership of stature. The best method for estimating the intelligence and agenda of a leader is to look at the people he has surrounded himself with.

Similarly, the best indicator of the maturity of any democracy is the quality of its leadership.

Democracy gives the voters what they deserve, according to their choices.

In the meticulously researched biography, Fortunate Son, a book which the American authorities tried to ban in their country, James Hatfield asserts that George Bush was elected, in spite of his questionable past and due to the ignorance of the public as to what he stood for – the escalation of war against perceived enemies.

In America’s Secret War, George Friedman describes the justification for these wars as “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”.

However, September 11 2011 will always remain the worst attack on American civilians and biggest humiliation of the US intelligence services.

Be that as it may, the worst crime against any democracy is when a democratically elected government is diverted to serve private interests. A captured leader lacks the power to do as he likes and serve the electorate as he should.

That is why the Americans are currently investigating the allegations that the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, possibly had a hand in the presidential victory of Donald Trump. If any adverse evidence is uncovered, Trump may well be impeached.

On the domestic front, the decision to establish an investigative commission on the state capture report is a sign of leadership on this thorny issue, something which should not be left to society and future generations to have to judge.

The allegations are extremely serious and should be further investigated before any implicated party replies.

The endless e-mails will not serve the legacy of Madiba, instead public confidence in the ANC government may be further eroded.

There is no perfect universal system for the election of a head of state. All constitutions have their shortcomings. Britain is a winner-takes-all system and America is relatively transparent as candidates are publicly scrutinised.

Ours is predominantly party-based and does not sufficiently subject candidates to scrutiny. This perhaps explains some of the current problems.

Constitutions are not holy cows and may be amended if it becomes necessary to do so. But hasty decisions for constitutional amendments are not the panacea for all the problems of today, ones which could not have been foreseen by the founding fathers of the Constitution.

Democracy always assumes that there will always be good men and women around who respect and follow the Constitution on patently obvious issues.

Ntsiki Sandi is a Grahamstown-based lawyer writing in his personal capacity