In explaining the importance of a trust relationship, a South African scholar tells of a story where a child would jump from an elevated position into the arms of a parent because the child trusts that the parent won't shift or fail to catch him or her. Similarly, continues the scholar, if the child grows into a teenager and the parent asks the child to do a similar jump into the arms of the parent, the child who has become a teenager has information about himself or herself as well as about the parent that will be factored into what decision to take with regards to jumping.
The teenager knows its weight, and can measure the capacity of the adult to withstand the weight in motion, in free flow, and subject to the rules of gravity. The risk of injuring the parent before itself is what will determine whether the teenager will jump or not. Whilst the parent might be nostalgic about being able to catch the child in previous jumps, the child, and with his/her passion to be a good child might be reluctant to get into 'jump to me' games that would endanger a father that believes is strong enough to handle the weight. Whilst the child might still be having full and potentially better trust in the parent, it will be the maturity of the child about the abilities of the parent to can still catch him/her down that historic and nostalgic jump that will define the relationship further. Jumps on to each other might have to take different forms as life would pressures and opportunities for the child of a parent to always jump into the ever wanting to catch the child hands of parents.
Similarly, the parent is expected to understand his/her frailty, in all respects, as she exercises the child catch role as a parent. This is the moment where eldership converges with parenthood to produce wisdom that should be transmitted to the child, thus undergirding posterity with new parents as the old decrease for the then children to increase. The jumps to parents will in such circumstances be for the purpose of taking from those that have been there and gazing to where they can never be. The boldness of parents, who are for all intents and purposes now elders, to speak into the future of those they broad up, will for as long as their role to be jumped into, be dependent on their display of being unencumbered to the prosperity of the next phase of children.
This condition introduces in the relationship stalwartness and veteranship with which humanity can interact as others exit spaces that the new must occupy. This is according to the natural order of things that parenting and leadership required for society, institutions, and organizations require to be building blocks or threads in the journey of humans through humanity. Because organizations are creatures of humans, they can only be as successful as their preparedness to follow the natural order of how the humanity they are part of dictates
One of the fundamental pillars of relationship (practically all relationships) building is trust, defined by Jacquelyn Schneider as "the firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, and/or strength of something or someone". Such trust plays a key role in the various dimensions of human relationships and domains of societal co-existence such as politics, economics, International relations, business transacting, family life, and love relationships. It creates in humanity a pecking order of relations within which delegations and devolutions of responsibility amongst and/or between organizations could thrive and thus releasing to humanity at various levels energies with which the idea of innovation and posterity shaping could be possible.
Trust in society establishes contexts within which complexities that come with relationships could survive. It allows humanity to hold on to instruments that define stakeholdership and stakeownership in conditions where no human interaction has occurred but systems have facilitated a relationship. Instruments such as taking a decision to be a member of an organization and subjecting your followership to individuals you don't or will never know as persons. Our volunteering to subject ourselves to their leadership is in most instances based on what the organization we joined stands for, and our belief that they will lead it for the purpose for which it was established. As we follow because we are members of the organization we joined, it will over time be an institution whose policies, rules, and regulations will lead us many a time without the need for any person or leader to remind us of our obligations.
To anchor ourselves as members of organizations, fraternities, and/or fellowships we will also embrace rituals that we have not been part of establishing, and yet follow because we trust what they are about is what the organization stands for. These anchors include wearing regalia that distinguishes us from those we 'other' as not being 'us' and yet want them to co-exist with 'us' to give meaning to the 'perceived' uniqueness that is 'us' in the common journey of humanity we are all part of.
This is where belonging to organizations such as the ANC becomes interesting because by continuing our membership to it, we are extending our trust in it so that it is enabled to win the ultimate prize of human interests co-ordination which is government. Through our extended trust in it, which we would also persuade others that have not subscribed to It, to join us in extending their trust to it to govern society, we do so to enable those that lead it to transact on behalf of society through time and space defined by arrangements with which as a society of many organizations have agreed to govern ourselves. Through that trust, we, as members of the ANC, believe that the transactive power we would have given it as an institution, as well as leaders who are supposedly its human institutions, would be used to the benefit of more complex, differentiated, and diverse societies other than us who are its members.
In its 110-year polyvalent history, those that entered its domain as members have invested in the main their trust which played an essential role in its progress to date. Many came into it and shaped aspects of what it became and left it to others that carved it to meet the demands of all moments it went through. In this journey of being an organization of diverse human beings, it mastered how to be an organization of particularised trust, trust of only known others, as well as generalized trust, trust of going beyond those that are in its known circles. Whilst it succeeded in engendering, and for the purpose of struggle against adversities it met as it pursued its objects and mandates, particularised trust, it would be its life as an organization where society's trust was extended into the domain of generalized trust that it started to experience challenges bordering on failure. The leadership demands of society from the ANC expected it to have mastery of delegating beyond those in particularised circles of trust the responsibility of using government or public power based on their abilities more than their membership to the ANC. The inability or reluctance of those trust has been extended to (and purely because the majority in society, who are by the way not members of the ANC, believe in the persuasive power of what the ANC stood and stands for, its history, and what past leaders that came through it represent) to delegate the trust relationship to individuals, organizations, and processes with whom they are not familiar with has to the contrary been eroding the very trust society gave to it.
In fact, what the ANC has over time been able to communicate to society, through its actions and behavior with and inside power, is that it thrives on the allegiance of the inner circle, distrust of those they don't know, wariness of unfamiliar processes and institutions, and an almost dogmatic posture to be suspicious including rejecting what has worked before it became governing party.
Renewal of the ANC, the thematic thrust of its dominant discourse requires of its leadership to have a posture of the parent this rendition started by introducing. It should come with a value proposition that foregrounds the interests of society as the core currency of its politics and dislodge from the pornographic display of its leadership's interests as the only value proposition they have for society through its members. The trust that society can extend to the ANC beyond its members operates within the rules whose criteria to amass social capital includes a deliberate display of respect and embracing of values that society lives by.
Like the proverbial child herein, society has in the past twenty-five years been observing the frailty of the ANC. It has seen how its structures are gradually becoming weaker for it to jump into. It has seen how its elders have been at each other to levels where stalwartship and veteranship have become a particularised aspect of membership. It has seen how the young have gradually become their own elders, operating on short-term intellect without due regard to accumulated wisdom. Society has seen how leadership has become the core interest of the ANC at its conferences since Polokwane.
In a most dramatic way, the conduct of the ANC, especially to each other as members, has generated distrust in how they themselves come to the conclusions of who should lead them that it erodes society's ability to extend its trust to it as an organization. The social capital it had accumulated as a leader of society is in deficit as a consequence of the in-ANC political contestations that are discounting the required political capital to govern South Africa, as the last three national elections results have empirically shown. Our craftily manufactured, and legitimately so, save for absolving the role of corrupters and state captures in the act, anti-corruption value system, and pursuit for normative government is particularly vulnerable to the degradation of trust.
Using the nomenclature of an ANC youth leader on what should constitute a branch of the ANC in good standing, in which he argues that it should be one that consistently accounts for what is happening in a ward, we should start thinking of what constitutes a trusted leader of the ANC. Whilst the eye of the needle is authoritative on the subject, we need to translate it to start dealing with what would constitute trust-building activities of leaders in layman's terms CUT!!!
🤷🏿♂️Se ku laveka timburhi ta maribye
🤷🏿♂️Kanyani mahembe makwerhu
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