Ethical Leadership: Lessons from Africa
On paper South Africa is a global powerhouse, internationally recognised for our strong, highly diversified economy, solid infrastructure, and many world-class tourist attractions.
Our country is rich in natural resources, boasts the two best high schools on the continent, and is a sought-after hunting ground for top professional talent.
Last year, we also had the highest GDP in Africa – estimated at over USD 400 billion.
In theory then, we should be the jewel in the African crown; the country the rest of the continent looks to for inspiration and guidance.
Sadly, the reality is very different.
In Transparency International’s recently released Corruption Perception Index (CPI), South Africa scored just 41 points, way behind several of our African neighbours, including Mauritius (51), Rwanda (53), Botswana (59) and the Seychelles (71).
One of the key issues is that although our GDP is the highest in Africa, our debt-service ratio is right up amongst the highest, too.
In fact, the cost of servicing debt is rising faster than our spending on any other government service, greedily consuming a larger and larger slice of the national budget every year.
So although we look economically healthy on paper, we’re spending over R1 billion per day (yes, per day) servicing our R6 trillion debt.
That’s a whole lot of money that’s not being spent on health, education and housing.
It’s beyond frustrating, and yet that frustration is about more than just the money. When we compare our trajectory to our neighbours, the reason for the stark differences is clear – ethical leadership, or rather, a glaring lack of it.
At face value, a country like Rwanda, for example, should not be outperforming us. It’s landlocked and tiny – around 90 times smaller than its immediate neighbour, the DRC – and has a per capita GDP about a 7th of the size of ours.
And yet, in the 30-odd years since the catastrophic genocide that left nearly a million people dead, Rwanda has become a well-run, resourceful, and peaceful state. Moving beyond once divisive tribal identities, the country is now focused on a shared and united vision for the future.
Rwanda is often cited as one of Africa’s most efficient governments, with zero-tolerance anti-corruption laws, highly digitised public services, and a pro-investment regulatory environment that not only supports economic growth but also inspires international confidence.
One of the most striking aspects of Rwanda’s leadership – especially when compared to ours – is its composition. Smart, young and highly educated, the age of the average cabinet member is just 47 (compared to 60+ for South Africa).
Their ICT Minister, for example, is an MIT graduate committed to building a digital-first infrastructure – hugely important to their youthful constituents, whose average age is just 20.
The Seychelles, too, has pioneered a governance model centred on digitisation and innovation. President Wavel Ramkalawan’s focus on a paperless administration is designed to not only foster global connectivity, but, critically, to remove the opportunities for graft that thrive in manual, bureaucratic systems.
Not surprising, then, that the country is rated the least corrupt in Africa. Its robust anti-corruption enforcement and modern legal framework has created a secure, investor-friendly environment, high quality of life for its citizens, and global accessibility.
And it’s this that is, perhaps, the greatest lesson we can learn from high performing African nations. When you bring corruption under control, everything else becomes a whole lot easier.
Corruption is undoubtedly South Africa’s biggest enemy. It transforms the State from being a supportive guarantor of our basic human rights to something we have to “navigate” and “work around.” When high-level decisions are influenced by money and personal connections, public trust is eroded, incentives are reshaped, and power imbalances are widened.
We are a resource-rich nation with massive potential, but our once proud reputation as the “economic powerhouse of Africa” is tarnish almost beyond recognition. For too long now, we’ve relied on our industrial head start to excuse systemic stagnation.
But while we’ve been simply managing the hollowed-out reality of our state institutions, our neighbours have been building blueprints for resilience that rely on the one thing we lack: institutionalised ethics.
It’s critical for our survival that we transition from a consumption-based state to an investment-based one, and for this, we could do worse than take a few leaves from other African countries’ books.
I’ve mentioned the Seychelles and Rwanda, but our immediate neighbour, Botswana, is also a worthy example. Often cited for its diamond-based riches, a huge part of Botswana’s success lies in the way it manages its sovereign wealth.
Where South Africa frequently operates in a reactive, emergency mode – pouring overly-stretched funds into the bottomless pits that are our failing state-owned enterprises – Botswana uses the Pula Fund to ensure diamond revenues are invested for future generations instead of being consumed by current bureaucracy.
It’s inspiring to see so many African countries climbing out of national collapse into a more prosperous and hopeful future.
South Africa must follow suit, because standing still means death by a thousand cuts. We must stop letting the rot win and start making accountability our default setting instead. This is how we’ll create an environment for a thriving, functioning and growing economy.
Surely we owe it to those who fought so hard to take us from colonialism to democracy. Our fight now is to move us out of a culture of extraction to one of professional service and ethical leadership.
It’s time to stop protecting the “fixers” and start backing the experts who are prepared, willing and able to get stuff done.
We have the resources and inherent skills to once again be a shining light on the African continent. What we need now is the collective spine to do so.