Great expectations

War. That’s the fighting talk coming from Minister of Higher Education Blade Nzimande as he uses the intense media spotlight on the ANC’s National Health Initiative (NHI) to rabble rouse in his role as SACP general secretary.

Making capitalism the enemy
Speaking at the SACP’s 88th birthday in Virginia, the Free State, he promised to take the war against anyone who opposes the NHI to the streets. His speech makes agents of the media and the free market the enemy, and calls on communist cadres to declare war on capitalists that oppose the proposed health system: “The capitalist classes have already started a huge campaign in the media to try to discredit this system and we want to say to them as communists today, war unto you. Prepare for a huge battle because we are going to mobilise the workers and the poor of the country to fight against you so we can have a national health insurance scheme.”

The NHI has long been part of Nzimande’s artillery of populist pitches. The FM reports that in April before the election, Nzimande scaled the stairs of the Cape Town city council to address supporters after a protest march, saying of the NHI: “This means you will be able to go to any doctor or private hospital without having to pay anything.”

Without going into the problems or politics of the NHI, Nzimande’s approach of promising much should offer a telling insight to those who aspire to being good or great leaders. At a time when service delivery protests spark across the country, Nzimande’s war talk and divisive rhetoric serves the obvious political ambitions of an alliance rather than the constituency that alliance purports to serve.

Nzimande lives large
A fact that becomes increasingly obvious when one considers (as the Mail&Guardian reports) that the Communist Party’s Nzimande lives in the leafy suburbs of Emmarentia, owns up to four luxury vehicles, swans around town in a Jeep Grand Cherokee and earns between R700 000 and R800 000 a year.

While Nzimande’s self-serving communist propaganda may sound alien to business leaders, politics and self-interest is too often a divisive affliction found in industry. Typically these “leaders” and middle managers are found in organisations that put shareholder needs above all else, which glorify greed and acquisition, and propagate an ideology of fractious competition.

True leadership is contribution
Real leadership is, of course, all about service and contribution. That’s the first point that Anglican Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu makes in an interview on leadership with The Nobel Foundation. Tutu, the 1984 Nobel Peace Laureate, says: “Ultimately, you want a leader who is also a servant. A leader is a leader because he is a servant. If you look at some of the greatest leaders like Nelson Mandela, he is not in it for his own aggrandisement. The great leader will show just how he or she is a leader for the sake of the land, by suffering. You are not seeking self-glorification or to feather your nest. You will see a great characteristic is that they are doing something sacrificial for those they are serving.”

Like Tutu says, leaders don’t create great expectations for their own benefit. Real leaders deliver greatly on the expectations of others for the benefit of those who put them in power.