Escaping mediocrity and graduating from the age of charlatans: What about Patrice Motsepe? – SABC News

If successful leadership at presidential level is measured in terms of GDP growth rate, reduction in unemployment and levels of Investment in Infrastructure (Gross Fixed Capital Formation). Then there is no leader that has matched the success of the Thabo Mbeki presidency at municipal, provincial or national level not even the Western Cape and the City of Cape Town. That is to say nothing of leading Africa and gravitas on the international stage, that were achieved at that time. After that from 2007 to 2026 South Africa and the ANC has been engulfed by worsening mediocrity and a culture if false messiahs have developed and entrenched itself.
Here we seek to pull South Africans towards some form of robust and rigorous leadership selection process. Scholars of leadership such as Jim Collins, Warren Bennis and John Maxwell among many others make clear that the most decisive factor in all human progress and especially in human institutions is leadership. Leadership is the most critical ingredient of all success and the elements that make leadership success up are known through research and we can therefore formally scrutinise all candidates based on historical evidence against know leadership performance qualities, skills and core competencies. Leadership resides in the individual- either you have it or you do not, certainly once you are above 40 years old, the nation should be harvesting from prior leadership development not trying to create it in a given person.
Unfortunately, the supporters of many presidential candidates including those of Patrice Motsepe (PM27) have actually not taken the trouble to formally table the evidence against any leadership matrix or framework. We are flying blind going into the prese=identical race in South Africa.
The core competencies that are needed in any presidential candidate include the following Strategic Vision & Direction, Risk and Crisis Management. Communication and Persuasion and Political Acumen. A leader needs to clarify the ultimate destination and also what the team must do to win. Simply, where must our best energies and time go? South Africa has had the NDP but has never had the ability to create detailed plans, with credible budgets of money, capable human resources and other equipment to achieve the plans and vision within the set time frame.
Once formal detailed plans are in place, we need a leader who can create a vivid mental picture of where we are and where we need to go and the most crucial steps in between the end-goal and the starting point. This must be vivid and with no confusion. Every formal plan and strategy always comes with risks, leaders must manage risks and have credible crisis management plans so that the end-goal is achieved within the set time frame regardless of what happens or what goes wrong. A leader accepts that South Africans have diverse and conflicting interests including tendencies of wanting to bully and dominate each other. Each person, group and the leader must all be given clarity of their role, deliverables and rewards within each time frame to moderate clashes. Energy must be focused on the correct work that needs to be done correctly in the correct period within acceptable budgets and correct standards of quality. Not on fights and unnecessary internal friction. Unity of purpose and teamwork is actually created by collective positive results.
A leader must make popular and unpopular decisions for the long-term prosperity of the nation as a whole and have empathy relative to local , individual and group sensitivities. But many times, a leader must teach people to do things they do not like regardless of how they feel, progress is about leaving the comfort zone after all,
A national leader must have training and experience in governance, legislative knowledge, completed specialised training in public sector leadership and public administration. Ideally by the time you become a credible presidential candidate you must have experience and training in running a municipality, province, national department, a state-owned enterprise and a political party with credible and high performance scores.
In today’s global environment more than 50% of national leaders have postgraduate degrees and generally 44% of presidents have social science degrees including economics, international relations and political science. Furthermore between 17% to 25% have law degrees. I many ways we can say more that 80% of heads of state have meaningful tertiary education. Still a significant proportion has military training and experience. This high level of formal training gives scope for extensive reading and structured thought as well as the ability to see areas where one is not knowledgeable and learn from others and still synthesize the inputs of many disciplines.
In terms of character traits integrity and honesty are the most valued character traits in a leader. A leader is marked by resilience under trying conditions and the ability to find a way of winning in the direst circumstances. Lastly a leader is characterised by humility and that ability to give all credit for success to the team and fierce ambition for the institution not for the self and also that ability to accept all failures as the failures of the leader not of the team and not circumstances. Humility fosters self-improvement all the time for the benefit of the team and the institution not personal glory.
The world as we have known it from 1970 until now is changing permanently, new markets, new financial, new payment systems, new technologies and new hegemons. In this context South Africa needs to emerge as a high value nation, with high quality human resources, competitive indigenous technologies in crucial areas such as robotics, AI, medicine, agriculture, water security, energy security, defence, mining and mineral beneficiation among others. In this case our next president cannot be a gifted amateur which was the downfall of the UK public sector-
“In the context of the UK public sector, the “gifted amateur” refers to a traditional, historical model of civil servant: a highly intelligent, often Oxbridge-educated generalist who moves between departments and policy areas without deep technical, functional, or specialist knowledge. “
Our next president must be intellectually deep on the key issues and opportunities that are before South Africa today. We cannot have a ‘wise guy’ or some know-it-all who is not deep in enough to compete effectively on the continent, in the Global South and against some of the hegemons who may want to recolonise South Africa. Depth must be tested, scrutinised and proved with concrete evidence that is also checked. The next leader must be able to engage satisfactorily and productively with the left as led by the EFF and the right as led by the Freedom Front Plus and create a productive but diverse nation.
I would want call the PM-27 lobby to take us through the evidence against the criteria set here or by the major leadership scholars of our country as to whether empirically Patrice Motsepe is a credible presidential candidate here in South Africa. Many others must also be tested, nothing is obvious.
Sandile Swana is a widely quoted independent governance and political analyst local and internationally by major media houses.

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