The idea for this special issue originated at the inaugural conference of the Center for Leadership Ethics in Africa, at the University of Fort Hare. The articles do not cover all of the various countries in Africa, but they touch on some of the common themes and challenges of leadership across the continent. Moreover, this volume brings the voices and perspectives of African scholars into the ongoing conversation of leadership studies

Ciulla, Joanne B.

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University of Richmond

University of RichmondUR Scholarship RepositoryJepson School of Leadership Studies articles, bookchapters and other publications Jepson School of Leadership Studies2-2012Introduction: Leadership ethics in AfricaJoanne B. CiullaUniversity of Richmond, jciulla@richmond.eduFollow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.richmond.edu/jepson-faculty-publicationsPart of the African Studies Commons, and the Leadership Studies CommonsThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Jepson School of Leadership Studies at UR Scholarship Repository. It has been acceptedfor inclusion in Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications by an authorized administrator of UR ScholarshipRepository. For more information, please contact scholarshiprepository@richmond.edu.Recommended CitationCiulla, Joanne B. "Leadership Ethics in Africa." Leadership 8, no. 1 (2012): 3 - 6.Introduction: Leadershipethics in AfricaThe idea for this special issue originated at the inaugural conference of the Center forLeadership Ethics in Africa, at the University of Fort Hare. The articles do not cover allof the various countries in Africa, but they touch on some of the common themes andchallenges of leadership across the continent. Moreover, this volume brings the voices andperspectives of African scholars into the ongoing conversation of leadership studies.Before we introduce the articles in this issue, we thought that we might say a few wordsabout the University of Fort Hare and its role in developing some of Africa’s most distin-guished leaders. Fort Hare is the oldest black university in Southern Africa. Scottish mis-sionaries founded it in 1916, and they supported a culture that was open to other religiousdenominations. The ecumenical nature of Fort Hare’s beginnings gradually produced aculture of diversity and heterogeneity and an ethos of tolerance and intellectual creativitythat generated progressive ideas on social justice, democracy, and reconciliation that even-tually reverberated throughout the country, the continent of Africa, and around the globe.In 2005, Fort Hare became the only South African university ever to receive the SupremeOrder of the Baobab (gold class) by State President Thabo Mbeki, in recognition of itsexceptional contribution to the development of leaders in South Africa and Africa.In keeping with its historical legacy that the university calls ‘The Crucible of AfricanLeadership’, the Center for Leadership Ethics in Africa (CLEA) was established in 2008,with Petrus Strijdom as its founding director. The center focuses on curriculum develop-ment, courses, and research on leadership. In his address at the formal launch of the center in2010, the current Vice-Chancellor, Dr Mvuyo Tom, noted that the university had already‘spawned leaders who took a leading role in the liberation of the continent’. Such leadersinclude Charles Njonjo in Kenya, Yusuf Lule in Uganda, Seretse Khama in Botswana, NtsuMokhehle in Lesotho, Julius Nyerere in Tanzania, and Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. Manyof the great South African leaders also studied or taught at the University of Fort Hare, suchas ZK Matthews, Govan Mbeki, Oliver Tambo, Robert Sobukwe, Chris Hani, MangosuthuButhelezi, Desmond Tutu, and of course, Nelson Mandela. What is striking about this list isthat almost all of these leaders are admired as much for their integrity as for their accom-plishments (with the exception of Mugabe in recent years).The main campus of the University of Fort Hare is located in the Eastern Cape in therural town of Alice, which is about 120 km west of East London. The local language there isCorresponding author:Joanne B Ciulla, Professor and Coston Family Chair in Leadership and Ethics, University of Richmond, 28 WesthamptonWay, Richmond, VA 23173 USAEmail: jciulla@richmond.eduLeadership8(1) 3–6! The Author(s) 2011Reprints and permissions:sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.navDOI: 10.1177/1742715011426954lea.sagepub.comXhosa. The campus sits in the Tyhume River valley with stunning views of the AmatholeMountains. Dotted on the rolling hills that surround the university are shacks and houses ofthe poor, most of whom are Xhosa. On a cold winter’s morning, their cooking fires cast ablue haze over the land, and thin goats and cows forage along the road or among the dryscrub. The contrast between this vibrant university and the poverty of the local communityexemplifies the challenges leaders face in South Africa and on the continent at large.The legacy of great leaders is evident throughout the campus, from the Nelson RMandela School of Law to the east campus buildings of the former Federal TheologicalSeminary where Desmond Tutu once taught; and from The Oliver Tambo and The RobertSobukwe Walks to Freedom Square where Nelson Mandela, as a young student councilleader, attended rallies about things that students perennially complain about, such as thequality of the food in the dining hall (Smith, 2010). Mandela attended Fort Hare in 1937–8and studied English, anthropology, law, and a course called native administration,which would prepare him for a job in the Native Affairs Department. At the university,Mandela also ran track and went ballroom dancing. He played football with Oliver Tambo,who later became his law partner, collaborator in the struggle against apartheid and lifetimefriend.In his autobiographies, Mandela reminisces about his teachers and how they encouragedstudents to become leaders: ‘We were told by our teachers, ‘‘Now you are at Fort Hare, youare going to be a leader of your people’’’ (Mandela, 2010: 26). Mandela felt privileged to bethere: ‘Fort Hare was a beacon for African scholars from all over Southern, Central andEastern Africa. For young Black South Africans like myself, it was Oxford and Cambridge,Harvard and Yale, all rolled into one.’ And he goes on to say, ‘I felt that I was beinggroomed for success in the world’ (Mandela, 1994: 43). Mandela acknowledges the profoundeffect that his professor DDT Jabavu’s commitment to promoting African rights had onhim. He describes the distinguished black scholar ZK Matthews, as ‘the very model of theintellectual’ (Mandela, 1994). Matthews taught the work of Booker T Washington, theHarlem Renaissance writers, and other black American civil rights leaders, and he encour-aged his students to dissent when they saw social injustice (Smith, 2010).The University of Fort Hare offers a compelling example of the role that education canplay in developing moral and competent leaders who are willing to take on responsibility forleading in the diverse and often divided nations in the African continent. But it is not theonly example. The first article in this issue, ‘The socrates of Africa and his student: A casestudy of pre-colonial African leadership’, is the story of a leadership academy operated over200 years ago in central South Africa by Mohlomi. He was born in the early 1720s, and hiswisdom and worldview emerged without any contact with the white world. He was a chief, ahealer, a philosopher, and a teacher. Max du Preez’s case study examines the leadership ofMohlomi and one of his most successful pupils, Moshoeshoe, a chief and king. Du Preezobserves that Mohlomi’s ideas about leadership, society, and morality are on a par with thegreat Western philosophers of his time, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant.If Mohlomi’s ideas had been expressed in writing rather than through an oral tradition, wewould be reading them today as part of the canon of great thinkers.In ‘The paradigm of ethical development for civilized leadership in Africa’, AbiodunSalawu examines the lessons of ethics and leadership that are found in the African oraltradition. He argues that these lessons are ‘indispensible for inculcating in Africans, rightfrom childhood, the values of good citizenry and leadership, necessary to create a civiliza-tion’. Drawing from a variety of sources, such as Yoruba children’s poems and Igbo4 Leadership 8(8)proverbs, Salawu demonstrates how the moral lessons found in the oral tradition of stories,poetry, and song can be applied in the modern world to teach morality to children anddevelop moral leadership in African societies.Among the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa today, Botswana stands out as a success storyabout stability and economic progress. In their article, ‘The critical role of leadershipin Botswana’s development: What lessons?’ David Sebudubudu and MokganediZara Botlhomilwe examine the history of leadership in Botswana. When Botswana gainedindependence, many doubted that this desperately poor region would survive as an inde-pendent country. Sebudubudu and Botlhomilwe analyze the qualities of its early leaders andhow their ethical and effective leadership made a difference in the development of theircountry. They describe Botswana’s first president, Seretse Khama (1965–80), as having ‘anethic of performance and good governance’, and they tell us that Khama ‘was determined todo better than the leaders next door in South Africa’, who, at the time, oppressed themajority of their population. (Note that Khama received his BA from the University ofFort Hare in 1944.) The lessons in this article go beyond the qualities of Botswana’s leadersto the ways in which they managed to incorporate traditional leadership into a modernnation state.The last two articles in this issue are by philosophers – Osam Edim Temple from Nigeriaand Abraham Olivier from South Africa. Temple explores the metaphysics of cults, religions,and clans as a means of understanding why ethical leadership in African countries is sodifficult and why so many African countries have had bad leaders. He notes that, very often,people trace bad leadership in Africa to corruption, greed, poverty, ethnicity, or colonialism:‘Whenever we attempt to interrogate these perspectives we find ourselves sailing through alabyrinth. In the end, we are led into a vicious circle where we know not whether thesefactors are causes, or are, in themselves, effects of unethical leadership in Africa.’ Templeshows how cults, clans, and religions cause many of the leadership problems in Africabecause of their worldviews and ideas about reality.In the last article, Olivier makes a unique contribution to leadership ethics with his ideaof bearership or humane ethics as a viable alternative to the idea of ethical leadership. Heraises the question: if leadership requires ethics does ethics require leadership? Olivieranswers no–humane ethics does not necessarily require leaders to show people the way.Its goal is to recruit people who are willing to ‘bear’ their moral and practical problemswith each other. Using examples from South Africa to illustrate his theory, Olivier showshow his model of bearership appeals to the justice of symmetrical power relations. Heargues that in this model, people do not follow or represent each other, ‘but rather theyare all to take full responsibility to sustain the abode they share and bear together. Thus,each, according to his or her own interests and capacities, is to be empowered to partic-ipate as a bearer of sustainable justice.’ Olivier’s article is a fitting conclusion to thiscollection of papers. The ethical challenges facing leaders in Africa, and for that matterthe rest of the world, are best met by educating citizens who are capable and willing toshare the responsibility for creating just and prosperous societies with each other and withtheir leaders.We would like to thank the University of Fort Hare and the Center for Leadership Ethicsin Africa for sponsoring the conference where the idea for this issue was born. Our gratitudealso goes out to all of the contributors of this special issue for the time and energy that theyput into their papers and the unique insights that they have given us into the ethical chal-lenges of leadership in Africa. Leadership is a fundamental part of the human condition and,Ciulla et al. 5as such, can only be understood by learning how it works in all corners of the earth andhearing about it from the scholars who live there.The EditorsSeptember 22, 2011ReferencesMandela NR (1994) Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela. New York: Little,Brown and Company.Mandela NR (2010) Conversations with Myself. New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux.Smith DJ (2010) Young Mandela: Revolutionary Years. New York: Little, Brown and Company.Joanne B Ciulla is Professor and Coston Family Chair in Leadership and Ethics at theJepson School of Leadership Studies, University of Richmond. She is also an adjunct pro-fessor at the Center for Leadership Ethics in Africa at the University of Fort Hare andVisiting Professor at the European Institute of Business Ethics at Nyenrode BusinessUniversiteit in the Netherlands. She has a BA, MA, and PhD in philosophy, and publisheson leadership ethics and business ethics.Vincent L Luizzi is Chair and Professor of Philosophy at Texas State University-San Marcos,USA. He works in applied philosophy and ethics and was a Senior Fulbright Fellow at FortHare during the spring of 2007 before becoming an adjunct professor there. A member of theState Bar of Texas, he also serves as a municipal judge in San Marcos, TX.Petrus DF Strijdom was born in Zambia to missionary parents and grew up in the Transkei.He obtained the degrees BA, BA Hons (Xhosa), BTh, the Licentiate in Theology, MTh andDTh in Old Testament from Stellenbosch University. At Fort Hare he taught theology andbiblical studies and served as Dean of Theology, Special Assistant to the Vice-Chancellorand Executive Dean of Research. In 2008 he became the founding Director of the Center forLeadership Ethics in Africa. He is the author of a variety of academic and popular publi-cations and a part-time minister in the Uniting Reformed Church.6 Leadership 8(8)

Introduction: Leadership ethics in Africa

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