Does South Africa have a national succession plan: A leadership challenge.

Global competitiveness is a function of (national) leadership. The predictability of societal stability is measured through the depth of the leadership it has on the horizon. Investor confidence is directly related to the capability of would-be key persons in the national leadership grid a society presents to those not interior to an existing or emerging establishment.  

The brute fact is that the domain of leadership is inevitably national. When leaders create strong bonds that show society that they’re integral to its great outcome and want to be a part of their future, they won’t just lay bricks for you. Together, they would build cathedrals within which they would offer prayers and loyalty. The question is, does South Africa have cathedrals within which national prayers can be made about its leadership future? 

 

Society seeks or resonates with leaders who know they are mortal and believe in the eternity of their national or institutional visions. Leaders whose relationship with their vocation is beyond themselves. In a context where leadership is about the nation's aspirations, leaders who weave visions which require sacrifices of present generations on behalf of future generations tend to attract quality followership from society. On the other hand, the absence of a strong state nationalism has almost always been found to have impeded a nation's (cap)ability to pursue and execute a national development plan. 

 

This type of leadership requires national leadership development, which produces leaders at all levels at the nation's disposal to be commissioned to its service. South Africa is at the crossroads of having to hand over its various batons to the next generation decisively. In business, the oligopolistic character of entrepreneurship and the racial vector of business monopolies seem to be running out of old males to recycle throughout the leadership value chain. The fear of opening up the leadership market to all South Africans is not only a function of race as a dominant vector of investor confidence analysis but also a sheer problem of succession planning across the board. 

The equation of euphemisms of exclusion disguised as a lack of undefined competencies and the socio-political reality of racism is untenable. The choice cannot always be between tacit exclusion of others and building a non-racial human resource base, devoid of a convergence of chauvinism tormented by a past we must ditch, but instead between what is in the national interest divorced from our trust deficit-inspired fears. 

 

Our tormented past and opposition to it have created 'situational leaders'; thus, politicians who are in career paths some of them are stuck in should not be the reason not to tackle the leadership question. Thirty years into a new democratic order can only mean a new generation of would-be leaders of society is born and shaped by what was modelled to it, or what it has formally learned is leadership. Starting in 2016, millennials became the most significant single generation in the workplace. And yet, it is still acceptable for people to openly express stereotypes and biases against this generation, notwithstanding its uncomfortable demand to lead. This demand is not because they are in maturity terms ready; it is arguably because the leadership gap is too big to be left as a vacuum lest dangerous breeds grab it. 

 

The appointment of a seventy-year-old CEO for Pick n Pay, the challenge to fill in the ESKOM CEO, and the general age median of South Africa's leadership where it matters all point to a hollow base of capability to ascend and succeed incumbents. Whilst management and leadership theory generally advocates for a future anchored on a younger generation, evidence is that when those occupying positions have to vacate in favour of a generational mix, intransigence foregrounds all related discourse. The situation is interestingly worse in politics and has now permeated where it is least expected.

The RHINO in the leadership debate room of South Africa is that there has been an erosion of leadership development institutions other nations use to breed cohorts of capability. Leadership development becomes deliberate when there are custodial institutions within which hierarchies are created, ritualised, and sustained throughout the lifeworlds of affiliates. 

Practice-based leadership is often found in a country's national security and defence custodial systems, state-owned enterprises and entities built around a national patriotic ethos with the army as its epicentre, an education system which dovetails into the nationalistic image a country or society has of itself, and a deliberately hegemonic social cohesion program led by the state and defenders of its nationalist rituals. 

 

The predominant language of separateness in South Africa has created a context of leadership that does not display the true intentions of freedom of association but is, in essence, the fractionalisation of society into unexplained us and their cohorts. The various identifications and expressions of being South African, which are settling as normality and are in direct conflict with the founding values of society, have become the dominant vector of analysis and a resurgence of anarchy. 

 

To regain credibility as a people capable of being a nation will always be a function of how to build the next generation of leaders. The general intellectual consensus is that cohorts of leaders are glued together by their values, ethics, and trust relationships with and about each other. Whilst what is important to leaders personally will drive their motivation to lead, it will still be the common values of honesty, integrity, trust, public service, excellence, and teamwork that shape the leadership environment. 

What has not instructed South Africa's science and art of selecting the most capable of its leaders is the vision of the future that leaders represent in the broader scheme of things. This might be why the personalities we end up inheriting (national) leaders from political coalition cohorts that win through an election have the right to suggest to us who amongst them should be our leaders instead of us having complete control. 

The truth is no leadership succession proceeds in a vacuum. A national strategy should determine who is best to take society to the next level. The test of such a strategy must permeate all other leadership appointments in society. It is, therefore, an indictment that South Africa still looks to its old to lead institutions that require its young. CUT!!!