Long Serving Leaders Are a Sign of Disaster
- Category: Governance
- Date 22-08-2010
- 296 views
The massacre of the old guards during the Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party primary elections is proof that the Bongo community wants to part with the past. Not that the past was not glorious and worthy of undying admiration but that the present and future must not be buried in the shadow of history. The Comrade was pleased that many CCM senior leaders lost the polls and were left in the dust, licking their wounds.
Long serving legislator, former prime minister and ambassador, John Malelecela lost to a mere district youth secretary; oh, what a feat! Veteran lawmaker William Shelukindo kissed dust at the feet of maverick Yusiph Makamba.
Traditional legislator Joseph Mungai could not secure the party ticket; it was the same for about ninety incumbent parliamentarians and some cabinet ministers. One hopes the process of elimination of long serving politicians, among them Prof Lipumba (or even President Kikwete), goes on during the general elections. Elections will become boring and worthless if they return the same faces to administrative positions all the time.
When the same office bearer is elected and re-elected again and again, it is not evidence that such a leader is a star performer in that office. Rather, it shows that the society he leads is stark. The man or woman in question has reclined into comatose but remains stuck in the redundant institution, community or nation he leads. Yet, there are many cases in Africa where undisciplined leaders, no matter how tyrannical, provoke sporadic protests so much that some governments collapse - as happened in Ivory Coast during the reign of Robert Guei.
The society that seems contented with one leader forever means that it is static and in need of literal resurrection. It is dead. Look at Rwanda’s Paul Kagame, Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, and Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe. They have been in power for decades, but they are eager to monopolise government as though it were their own business.
To stick to power, many leaders cite specific achievements they may have delivered to their subjects in the past as though they already did nothing and thus have the only opportunity to do something in the future. A past achievement is no reason to insist on doing the same job over and over again. It is a reason that you have done your part, so someone can do his.
Any person can achieve anything, for even a chimpanzee, if it continuously pounds on a keyboard, can produce a correctly spelled word at some point. Someone might say that democracy demands the rule of the majority but majority does not mean right.
Russel once said that ‘if fifty million people say a foolish thing, it will still be a foolish thing’. If people were awake and aware of what they want, they would each struggle to take leadership and do what a leader believes he is the only person that can do it, or they would regularly replace him with another from within or outside their community. They say, ‘power corrupts’ but absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Overstaying in power shows that a leader lacks vision and commitment. A good leader must know that all attempt to reach the apex of ambition is more like trying to reach the rainbow; the closer you advance, the further it recedes. A leader that sticks to one office for life does not know why he is in that office in the first place; if he did, he would know what to do there, accomplish it, and quit – in public interest.
If there is anything a public servant hates to do, it is something that benefits the public. Most leaders elected to serve the public good are more inclined to serve personal interests than to find out what the public needs and work towards realising it.
In the initial stages of taking office, however, a leader may seem to proceed in the direction of the common good, but as they settle in the office for a while, they begin to realise that their private desires surpass communal ones and must be satisfied first. Someone once said that the service we render to others is really the rent we pay for out room on this earth.
The best leader is one who holds an office but is willing to or actually knows when to leave.
By Venansio Ahabwe
Source: The Comrade, The Guardian on Sunday