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The coronavirus pandemic has placed the leadership of presidents and prime ministers around the world in the most ruthless spotlight. He revealed underlying weaknesses and revealed hidden strengths.
An extreme crisis like this provides the most scrutiny of a political leader – a very acute form of accountability. Such a crisis can make or break a leader.
South Africa is a country facing a leadership crisis. Against the backdrop of a former president jailed for contempt of court for failing to appear before a commission of inquiry investigating state capture and corruption, public confidence has unsurprisingly declined. This has manifested itself in research, including studies by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC).
This implies that there is a need for a form of leadership that responds to ethical crises. In South Africa and around the world, the “normative core” – the underlying values and ethical principles that hold a society together – is being seriously challenged, as the recent devastating unrest has underlined.
This is the starting point of our chapter, Presidential Leadership and Responsibility from Mandela to Ramaphosa, in a new State of the nation publication of the CRSS.
Our conceptual approach to comparing presidents of the democratic era of South Africa has been guided by the notion of “ethical presidential leadership”. We asked questions such as: What were the main characteristics of three of the presidents who preceded Ramaphosa (Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma)? And what are the appropriate and useful deductions for his tenure as head of government?
We have developed a presidential leadership assessment framework based on five criteria: constitutional loyalty, institution building, socio-economic transformation, political decision-making and judgment, and strategic vision and the art of governing. .
Our chapter applies the first two – constitutional fidelity and institution building.
We have found that in the 25 years since South Africa became a democracy, there has been both impressive constitutional loyalty and blatant constitutional infidelity. There has been impressive institution building and destabilizing institutional destruction.
So South Africa’s experience of leadership and presidential accountability since 1994 is a confusing and often contradictory mix of strength and weakness, success and failure, resilience and vulnerability.
Constitutionalism and governance
South Africa is a constitutional democracy. The establishment of a rules-based society was fundamental to its transition out of the arbitrary, authoritarian and discriminatory regime of the apartheid era. In this, executive power should be exercised against the harsh test of what South African activist, scholar and lawyer Etienne Mureinik has called a “culture of justification”. Any exercise of public power would be publicly explained in an open and transparent manner.
Moreover, the founding document of the new South African democracy was conceived as more than just a map of the new distribution of power and authority. It was also seen as a constitution with a “transformative” purpose. In other words to change “the political and social institutions of the country and the balance of power in a democratic, participatory and egalitarian sense”.
This is what the South African constitution does. It lays out the core code of democratic governance as well as social change – although we recognize that it is a contested paradigm. Former Presidents Jacob Zuma, left, and Thabo Mbeki, discuss after the premier’s State of the Nation address to parliament in June 2009.
Therefore, the extent to which presidents adhere to the written constitutional code will have profound implications for their use of executive power and leadership.
Mandela, with his unequivocal support for the principle of constitutionalism and the supremacy of the rule of law, has set the bar high.
For his part, Mbeki has done everything possible to strengthen the capacity and coherence of democratic governance, including with reforms of the presidency itself. It is difficult, however, to avoid the conclusion that his complicated and often turbulent approach to the art of governing and political management of his own party has led him to undermine the constitution and the rule of law. It may have been done unintentionally, but infallibly nonetheless.
We conclude that he will therefore not be remembered as a great constitutionalist or ethical leader, even if compared to his successor, Zuma, history is gentler on him.
In Zuma’s case, the country’s highest court said he had broken the constitution. In addition, a large body of evidence was presented before the Zondo Commission of Inquiry which suggests that Zuma abused the power entrusted to him as president. And that it enabled the systemic form of corruption that is now commonly referred to as “state capture”.
Institution building
Institution building is a close relative of constitutional loyalty. This is because South Africa’s constitution is notable for the vast constellation of “institutional infrastructure” it establishes. It is the reverse of the same coin. Institution building ensures that the vehicles of transformation have the necessary organizational drivers, suitable in every sense of the term.
As Ghanaian lawyer and educator H. Kwasi Prempeh argues, it is necessary to no longer focus on
strong leadership to build credible and effective institutions at national and local levels.
We agree that institution building is essential. But institutions without conscious, visionary and responsible leaders are vulnerable to abuse of power and loss of integrity.
In other words, ethical leadership requires strong and competent institutions. As Ramaphosa discovered last week, leaders will be made vulnerable by weak institutions. There has been a massive failure of both criminal intelligence and the police, as the president has been forced to publicly accept.
And after that
The mixed results of the past 25 years have many implications for Ramaphosa and future leaders.
First-rate individual ethical standards are essential. But these must be underpinned by strong and competent public institutions. Mbeki recognized this and set about building them. Zuma dug them out and made them vulnerable to “capture”. Ramaphosa is now in a process of reconstruction, but faces a perfect storm of interlocking social, fiscal, economic and health crises.
The influence of strong ethical leadership from heads of state is crucial. But a culture of “ethics of care” must be reflected at all levels of governance.
In the face of a serious, protracted and multifaceted crisis, the stakes for presidential leadership could not be higher – for the authority of the presidency and the democratic state, the integrity of the constitution, socio-economic stability and the advancement of South Africa.
Richard Calland is a founding partner of the political risk consultancy, The Paternoster Group, and a member of the advisory board of the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution.
Mabel Dzinouya Sithole is affiliated with Civic Futures Africa, African Governance Futures Initiative, a range of civil society groups working on issues of democratic governance, youth participation, youth leadership and international organizations.
By Richard Calland, Associate Professor of Public Law, University of Cape Town And
Mabel Dzinouya Sithole, Program Officer – Building Bridges, University of Cape Town
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