Followership, a capacity or willingness to follow a leader, is a new area of focus for an inquisition by humanity, especially when leadership is increasingly becoming a burden to the peace that humanity perpetually yearns for. The rise and growth of civil society movements and politically unencumbered social activism is a sure sign that in matters of politics, followership is fast growing into an important aspect of regulating the often contradictory interests of society, otherwise also called the currency of politics. As society is shedding its collective sovereignty in favor of that of the individual, the right to the volition of individuals redefines their ability to subject themselves to leadership whose habitual behavior in variance with them is elevating the importance of followers to those leaders in society.
The diffusional prowess of followers in a sovereign individual protecting democracy is the new currency of political coalitions. The networking capability of social media-based coalitions and ideational establishments that have surveillance powers over what cyber societies are coalescing around is followership-dependent. It is followers that lead society than leaders. In fact, ideas and discourses that have the most followers shape the publicness with which those in authority can prevail over society.
As South Africa is trying to extricate itself out of the whirlpool of post-liberation politics fatigue, struggle history nostalgia, preoccupation with the pursuit of creating an enemy out of fellow South Africans, and a progressively no growth economy when population growth figures are factored in all equations, its leaders will in a not so distant future have to face their followers. Already the country's followers of political parties have in all of the economic nodal points, save for Cape Town, pronounced their preference for shared political power, albeit to politicians that are of a maturity that seems to only understand non-coalitions politics. Confronting followership that is increasingly becoming hostile and indifferent to the traditional playbooks of politics which valorized elite compacting and politicking, will be a rude awakening to democracies that chafe at the limits imposed on a winner takes all type of politics.
The elevation of followership has in essence disrupted the established order of manipulating society through one-person-based democracy. There is however a competing force that seeks to downplay the centrality of followership in the renewal of party politics in South Africa. The quest to overthrow centrist leadership is not only in crisis because of the participation appeal of elections-based democracy but also as a result of followers wanting to maintain their power and sovereignty, including the capacity to bond and unbound to positions without the necessity of ideological loyalty. The conviction is neither leg to the right, it has no ism it is following, save for creating self-reinforcing networks that split into organic networks with real and tangential relationships with parent cohorts in the network.
In this context, as members of the ANC, we should evaluate if there can be new followership for a new ANC. In not a distant time, ANC followership will be called to duty at both its policy and elective conferences. Fundamental to this call will be the extent to which a capacity or willingness to follow those in leadership would be made available as capital to leaders as they carve policy paths for South Africa. Despite the compromised standing of all in-ANC factions or coalitions as a result of the integrity of leaders, the response of followers will give society a glimpse of what in-ANC followership values. We all know that the habits of those that lead shape the values of those that follow, and that no followership has been able to rise above the imagination or bar set by leadership. This might mean the country could be faced with an integrity problem that is organic and thus operates in an ecosystem. Bringing integrity into such a context might be terminal, and the organization might die.
In the last 14 years, ANC leadership received little resistance when matters of integrity were put aside. The new organizational order found itself migrating towards an 'its our turn to eat' mantra. Included in this era was a period where this mantra was rejected by a faction that introduced an 'it is our turn to eat in a sophisticated manner' mantra whose ways were on display in how the criminal justice system and new 'Bell Potingers' chose to build a narrative about comparable scandals. Because stopping eating is disruptive to ecosystems that depend on it, the ability of followers to be decisive on what they want to see as replacing the two mantras is compromised by their beneficiary statuses when both prevail.
The benevolence that was showered to leadership that promised the end of an era where integrity is not a core criterion to decide who to follow was in abundance that it is opium to those it was entrusted to. Non-public sector crooks, autocrats, and mafias were embraced as paragons of integrity at the altar of a manufacturing integrity-type that only saw others but not the embraced. Business people that fund causes that undermine what should accrue to the beneficiaries of the freedom promised in the constitution became uncompromising allies to those the choice to follow included.
As followers congregate, the question is, has the fifteen-year reign of deceit and lies about what constitutes integrity ended? Do followers have a chance to influence the organization? What powers do conferences give to followers? What is the quality of followership that will be delegates at the conference?
In as much as the country fears food and nutrition insecurity, energy insecurity, and water insecurity, it must fear followership insecurity because majority-rule democracies thrive on it. It can be a tyranny whose diffusion can create cancers in the freedoms we think we still have. WHO WE FOLLOW IS AS IMPORTANT AS WHAT WE ARE FOLLOWING.
🤷🏿♂️EISH!!!
🤷🏿♂️A ndzo tivulavulela
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