What sets businesspeople apart is their remarkable skill in transforming anything or anyone into a marketable entity. They establish the terms of trade, the shelf-life, and the 'sell and use by date '. Their approach to all relationships, be they human or otherwise, mirrors that of investment bankers. The return on investment is a universal metric in their lives. They define their identity based on their bottom-line objectives. Their conscience is a product of their contribution to their projections and scenarios. Certainty is a prerequisite, and they will either purchase or engineer it.
In
their pursuit, they acquire all forms of intellectual capital that can alter social and political dynamics. Political capital, which they
recognize as abundant among the otherwise purchasable politicians and the body
politic, is a variable investment they commit to over time.
As
a society, we neither learn civic skills nor experience civic practices in our
schoolwork classroom or community nor think of ourselves as possessing any
‘freedom to participate in the power capital organises for their bottom-line
objectives. With government being the ultimate prize of politics and the
residue of powerful interests, it is in many corporations, just with special
characters and characteristics.
When
revolutions happen, they only introduce new power networks into power
matrices the established must contend to either co-exist with or control
towards their set or templated objectives. "Large corporations, and when
ideological or otherwise gaps present themselves, will always push, with
whatever political, technological, economic, marketing and cultural tools required,
the frontiers of domination in all directions. They will create and remove
regimes to their wishes.
The
capacity of the state to step in when private sector dysfunction disrupts the bottom-line
objectives of capital is the reason capital will, in times of boom and
profitability, seek to ensure that those they trust manage the state to their
favour. Because we live in an age of astonishing inequality where income and
wealth disparities have risen to intolerable and revolution-igniting heights, how
power is organised has become the greatest of preoccupations by capital. The
binary of race, which defines the character of South Africa's inequality, has
made the organisation of black power the most researched and strategised matter
in almost all funded and private ideation spaces and institutions.
With
all its capabilities and biases, the market has become an amorphous
abstraction of dominant and dominant interests. The way economics has recently
been bent empirically makes it more difficult for those outside the benefits of
its workings to idolise markets. This is simply because of the expectation that
lived experiences must ignore inconvenient facts and yield to the power of the
market. This happens in a context where lived experience elsewhere has produced
evidence of economics having helped build both fairer societies and do more to
live up to the productive potential of all citizens.
In
South Africa, because of its past realities and how they have created templates
of its present, political competence has been about what the status quo can't
let go and what the future dictates as conditions of stability. In the build-up
to the 1994 democratic breakthrough, a duality of political competence emerged.
Some built a competence to fight and deconstruct a system, and there were those
whose competence was built to defend what they have constructed and sustain it
with all its resilience. Without the latter of competence, political power will
achieve short-term success, which will likely doom society to long-term
failure.
In
such conditions or circumstances, politically competent leadership becomes a
function of having the ability to develop consensus and build coalitions to
bridge the 'fight-and-deconstruct' and 'defend-and-sustain' dualities. Taking a
nation forward requires the death of certain selves for new ones to emerge and
thrive. In crafting these coalitions, there will be those whose past privileges
will be projected as dominant and powerful and vice versa. It will be how each
coalition member understands the responsibility of their power and commands about
the consequence of its abuse.
As
the sobriety of the responsibility settles, revolutionaries,
counterrevolutionaries, and any label attracting participants will be managed
to their sell and use by dates to allow new ones the opportunity to bridge the
dualities and create a stability-seeking context. Because all are in a
coalition which enables them to keep the national unity initiative alive and
achieve societal goals, a vision of the future should be the glue that holds it
together. Naturally, dealing with broad strategic issues first and then working
out the nuts-and-bolts details is the point of departure. In a context where
bread and butter-issues are profoundly pronounced, they become so strategic
that the function of leadership gets compromised. CUT!!
THE
GNU IS HERE; LET THE DIALOGUE BEGIN.
Comments
Post a Comment