TONY LEON: Cyril Ramaphosa would do well to take leadership lessons from leaders of yesteryear
Visionary leadership has become a rare thing and has almost disappeared from public life and politics, in SA and around the world
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President Cyril Rampahosa confirmed recently that his government plans to expropriate property without compensation, following examples of Zimbabwe and Venezuela."
The comparisons might be both alarmist and overstretched, but for the investor world, the people and funds who buy our bonds and equities which in turn fund our current account and ballooning budget deficit, it might ring true.
Actually, in many ways Ramaphosa is an amalgam of May and Corbyn rather than Mugabe and Hugo Chavez.
Visionary leadership is much commented on these days precisely because of its absence. It has almost disappeared from public life and politics, here and everywhere. When you think of Winston Churchill or even Margaret Thatcher, you do not place in the same bracket their current party and prime ministerial successor, Theresa May. Readers might recall that in June 2017 she summonsed her voters to the polls under the rallying cry of "strong and stable leadership"; her electorate found her wanting and swept away her majority, converting her to "weak and wobbly". And in the past 14 months the Brexit nightmare continues with every outcome unknown and none of them, at present reading, good for her party, country or economy. More a navigator of treacherous tides than a political weather maker, May’s hold on power can be reduced to the old political acronym "Tina" — there is no alternative, or at least any of them who can keep her party together and win an election. But another increasingly ...
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