WILLIE THABE: The dearth of attuned, ethical leadership in SA

When rapper Coolio lamented in Gangsta’s Paradise, his seminal song, how out of touch the US system was with the plight of a significant section of civil society, we could not have envisaged the new SA version of this nonchalant behaviour on the part of those newly advantaged.

I wrote in a previous article on the subject of leadership: “We have always been aware of how easy it is for people from privileged communities to lack perspective, however the new SA has spawned a new class of people who lack perspective.”

Many black people who find themselves in the middle class today lack the lived experience of those who live on the periphery of society, or they have conveniently forgotten the experience of those who are treated badly by virtue of being the “underclass”.

Publicly we are constantly bombarded with reports of government leaders acting against the welfare of their constituencies, and companies prioritising profits over the health and safety of citizens following the end of their mining activities, leaving open tunnels that resulted in the internecine wars of the “zama zamas”, which have no foreseeable end.

Parliament has finally instituted an impeachment inquiry into the public protector’s fitness to hold office, and the Judicial Service Commission has voted for Western Cape judge president John Hlophe to face impeachment.

All spheres of our lives are adversely affected by current developments, and these carry all the hallmarks of moral decay. On the country’s leadership in general, ordinary citizens are tempted to ask that old Latin question, “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes”? (Who will guard the guardians?)

These developments call for a determined search for the ethos of leadership embedded in the African way of ubuntu, which binds both leadership and followers in human solidarity. This would spawn leadership that is compassionate, accountable and introspective, seeing themselves in the circumstances of those who are disadvantaged.

As the response from those in power does not exhibit ubuntu as envisaged, we as members of civil society owe it to ourselves to respond in a values-based manner, utilising some of the principles of decision-making outlined in Stanford academic Susan Liautaud’s book Power of Ethics.

If one accepts that the Covid pandemic was a metaphor for all complex binary and nonbinary socioeconomic challenges that require careful navigation, one ought to accept the binary that ethically we must eradicate incompetent, non-delivering officials from the system of governance.

The nonbinary lies in the solutions, which call for a careful balancing of the removal of underperforming government officials while maintaining the integrity of the state’s delivery systems. Lest we throw out the baby with the bathwater in the process of seeking efficient solutions to these crippling challenges.

The rampant misallocation of funds intended to alleviate the effects of the pandemic were rogue actions that occur when power is scattered and defiant of the law. In a similar vein, each person had the power to ethically harm another by refusing to follow the prescribed protocols or hoarding supplies. Or, in the case of some government officials, to procure supplies at inflated prices.

We should accept that we each had the power to save lives. In practical terms those in leadership who allowed or participated in the destruction of value and the increased risk of losing lives should ethically be brought to book.

If the greatest fear of epidemiologists was biological mutation, then our greatest fear should be the contagion of corruption, which has become endemic and affects both corporate and government echelons. But we should take courage from the responses of many citizens showing that ethics are far more contagious than the calamity of a contagious disease.

We should each respond in an individualised ethical way that accepts no predetermination from corrupt modes of behaviour in doing business or carrying out our social responsibility.

The pressure on health-care workers forced by Covid because of the overwhelming lack of supplies and equipment led to hurried, unconventional decisions. Ordinarily there are three respected pillars that buttress our ethical decision-making process:  transparency  (the open sharing of important information), informed consent (agreeing to an action based on an understanding of the action and its consequences) and effective listening (grasping the speaker’s meaning).

SA experienced the consequences of ethically lacking decision-making at the highest level during the pandemic, as did many other countries. Civil society’s trust had to be placed on officials, and without the pillars of ethical decision-making many of their actions did not comply with the three pillars, introducing unprecedented uncertainty about our lives and wellbeing.

The required agility was compromised by the relaxation of the vetting process for procurement purposes, followed by the system being overwhelmed by the influx of patients, and most decisions became rushed. Ethically we must keep human beings and humanity front of mind, especially the most vulnerable among.

Boundaries were blurred in dealing with this pandemic — symptomatic of the need to hold on to ethically founded values even when artificial intelligence becomes a more viable option.

The last and most difficult part was that consequences depend on truth and compromised truth filled our media platforms. Ethically, we had to insist on truth, but there was fear-mongering, fake news, politicisation of medical advice and conflicting presentations of what was purportedly scientific.

Like Coolio, we are painfully aware that “the ones they hurt” in their failure were you and me. The 21st century calls on us to learn, and governments are set to facilitate this process. But in the words of Coolio’s song: “I’m livin’ life do or die, what can I say? I’m 23 now, but will I live to see 24? The way things is goin’ I don’t know.”

It would seem the only lever we have in our hands is nonnegotiable ethical decision-making, which underpins the solutions and resilience of the human race against the avalanche of moral decay. As Liautuad put it: “Ethical decision-making requires agility even in the best of times — but there is space (and responsibility) for responsive and rigorous ethics, now more than ever.”

I concur with US civil rights lawyer and judge Thurgood Marshall, who said: “We must dissent from a nation that has buried its head in the sand, waiting in vain for the needs of its poor, its elderly, and its sick to disappear and just blow away. We must dissent from the poverty of vision and the absence of moral leadership.”

• Thabe is managing executive of Angavu Ethical Solutions.