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NewsDay

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The leaders we deserve

Opinion & Analysis
Many years ago, when I made my foray into the world of branding, I worked for advertising guru, Michael Hogg, who owned Michael Hogg Young and Rubicam, then the leading agency in the country.

Many years ago, when I made my foray into the world of branding, I worked for advertising guru, Michael Hogg, who owned Michael Hogg Young and Rubicam, then the leading agency in the country.

Opinion: Thembe Khumalo

Thembe Khumalo
Thembe Khumalo

It was my first job in the industry and I was hungry to learn, in a hurry to progress and constantly enchanted by the pace and glamour of the media industry.

I learnt many important things about advertising, about business and about life in general during those years, and one thing I will never forget is what Michael told us once after we had lost a major pitch to a rival agency: “Clients end up with the agencies they deserve, and agencies end up with the clients they deserve”.

This piece of simple wisdom carried me through many disappointments, as I applied it not only to clients but also to other situations — friends who elected to unfriend me without explanation, boys who broke my heart, and jobs that just didn’t pan out.

More recently, I have heard this adage being applied to the leadership in our country.

I am meeting more and more people, who openly declare they are “going into politics”, something which previously was only mentioned in whispers and never in the first person.

I am aware of an alarming number of political parties being registered, I read the headlines about coalitions and lack of cohesion, and I hear the urgent debates about presidential candidates:

MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai
MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai

Can MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai really lead? What about former Industry and International Trade minister Nkosana Moyo — will he or won’t he? Would Zimbabweans agree to be led by a woman, by National People’s Party leader Joice Mujuru? Is Evan Mawarire of #ThisFlag movement making a come-back?

The conversations are endless, and many of the frustrated disputants have ended up saying: “Uh, Zimbabweans! You have the leadership you deserve!”

I don’t want to assume, for purposes of this conversation that they mean our leaders are not good, so I am wondering what it is that we deserve and how we might have earned it, because to deserve something you must surely have merited some sort of right to it.

But let’s assume, for argument’s sake, that good leadership is like a basic human right — we deserve it simply because we are human.

The same way we deserve food, water and freedom.

All people deserve leaders that are honest and accountable, leaders that care for the people they lead and recognise that they are servants to these people.

We deserve leaders that take charge and stay on course; leaders that can articulate a strong, clear vision for our future and acknowledge, then walk away from our past.

The leaders we deserve are leaders who can command authority, organise their teams, take action and produce results.

We deserve leaders who are consistent and who know how to prioritise; leaders who live out their beliefs faithfully and with respect to those who believe differently.

At a minimum, I would say these are the leaders we deserve.

So what do we have to do or say in order to obtain leaders like these?

How should a people like the people of Zimbabwe behave if they want to be led by the leaders they deserve?

Don’t be disappointed because I am not going to suggest mass stay aways, revolutionary speeches, and formation of political parties.

I am not going to tell you that to get the leaders we deserve we should organise ourselves to heckle the ones we don’t like or plot to overthrow the current political regime.

In fact, I respectfully submit that the regime we need to overthrow is the regime inside each of us, and inside our communities.

Because, you see, the leaders people deserve are not just political leaders, they are also business leaders, they are church leaders, and they are leaders in communities and families.

If we cannot cause the type of leadership we want in our families, what right have we to clamour for a different type of leadership in our government.

In many ways, we have earned poor leadership simply because we have not required any more from our leaders than what they dish out.

Let’s park politics for a moment and consider this.

National People’s Party leader Joice Mujuru
National People’s Party leader Joice Mujuru

Zimbabweans tend to be a passive aggressive people, given to complaining and murmuring quietly in the background, but seldom confronting the source of their discontent.

When things go wrong in a business deal or at work, we don’t say to the other party: “But this is not what was in our contract. This is not okay!”

We simply walk away feeling sad, disappointed, possibly outraged and tell our neighbours, relatives and friends about it — never the person with whom we have a problem.

We send our children to schools with rules that we don’t agree with, or systems that make us feel like we are doing more of the teaching than the teachers themselves, but we don’t speak up.

Instead, we huddle in the car parks muttering about the system, before we rush home to do our children’s homework.

When a brother or a cousin brings a woman other than his wife to a party or a family gathering, we do not raise our voices and ask him what sort of nonsense this is.

We giggle and send someone to ask them what they are drinking.

If you cannot say to your spouse: “Darling, it is not what we agreed.”

Or to your mother: “I love you very much, but you have no business talking to my wife this way.”

Or to your pastor: “Please help me understand how this verse can come to mean that.”

Then you surely have no business demanding better leadership at national level.

Let’s fix the leadership crisis in ourselves first, then in our families, communities and so on, so that by the time we get to national level, we have exercised our leadership-fixing muscle and it is nice and strong.

The way we relate to our leaders now is a model to our children for how they should run the next generation of families, schools, businesses, and communities.

We don’t just deserve the leaders we have, we create them!

Thembe Khumalo is a brand-builder, storyteller and social entrepreneur. Find out more on www.thembekhumalo.com or follow her social media accounts @thembekhumalo