“Why is the question of African leadership so important in a world so fast globalising that some political analysts are predicting the collapse of the nation state as we know it? The answer lies in an understanding of modern history and how it has impacted on the African continent and the African. My colleague and Chairman of Eskom, Reuel Khoza, has long championed the idea that Africa can not only rediscover the roots of its own leadership principles but can lead the world to an ethically better, more humane, and more effective style of leadership.

Reuel has worked on a book that breaks entirely new ground as a business text and should become the foundation for a new discipline of study. Let Africa Lead applies African leadership principles, and specifically the philosophy of Ubuntu, as a management method to improve teamwork and spur innovative thinking. The author has himself explored the business applications of Africa’s moral philosophy, proving not only that it works but that is appropriate, as a set of guidelines, for leaders who wish to transform themselves and their businesses.

We as Africans have relied for far too long on Western models of leadership and this has undermined our Agenda for the renewal of our continent. For Eskom, sponsoring the publication this book, along with other initiatives, amounts to a strategic intervention aiming to bring about an intense engagement of minds through which, I believe, lasting solutions can be found to the continent’s leadership dilemma.

At Eskom our Leadership Development project draws on the experiences of other groups, such as the West, Jews, Indians and Afrikaners, and asks the central question: what are the factors that have made these collective identities a success? The project is also consulting with those who have shown themselves to be insightful thinkers on leadership. We are establishing an Institution of African Leadership, with implementable strategies to shape the course of change now and in the future.

The tradition of African leadership has been growing over centuries, and will no doubt continue to develop far beyond our children. If every African in every village and every city throughout the diaspora had a thought about some aspect of the issues that are raised, then we shall have succeeded.”

Lions of leadership
Until lions have their own historians, all stories about hunting will glorify the hunter.
– African proverb
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Africa shaped my life and being, and African philosophy has guided my intellectual, professional and business career. I have had to wonder where the ideas came from, and wonder at the depth and range of them. Throughout my 30 years in active service as a lecturer, consultant, and change agent in business, for me African beliefs and values have remained a clear and positive beacon in the dark of oppression and the dust of liberation. Equally, the moral and practical guidelines of African philosophy have given me my bearings in business, underwriting my determination to achieve even when excluded from the full fruits of the apartheid economy. Today, as Chairman of a large corporation, I am guided by the same ideas, in situations that are becoming increasingly complex as a result of globalisation and the demands of African development. Today there are voices in the air, academic papers flying this way and that, magazines and shebeen talk urgently demanding that we define who we are, political tracts developing the themes of nationhood and Pan Africanism, even business pronouncements on the need to plumb the depths of African philosophy for the inspiration that will make us more competitive.

Where does all this talk leave us? Certainly, for such a huge and varied continent as Africa, there is no single pathway for change and no simple blueprint for the leadership that will take us where we want to go.

Transformation
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Transformational leadership is a term arising from business literature and now spreading into other domains of leadership study. I have been fortunate, as Chairman of Eskom, to take part in the
transformation of the business to serve its customers better, reach out into Africa, and become a world class provider of power and related services. Much of what follows is based on my study of how Eskom set out to achieve business excellence through African leadership innovation. I draw heavily on the work of others and base myself on the realisation, shared by many, that businesses seeking a cultural identity, starting with our own in South Africa, can translate Ubuntu into a principle of workplace cooperation and thus make it a living business process. The defining features of Ubuntu in organisational life are probity, integrity, compassion and humility, all grounded on the self-worth that comes from belonging to a community.

African leadership, properly understood, means service to humanity – servant leadership – a phrase that have taken from the writings of American management theorists on leadership such as Warren Bennis, though I believe that South Africa itself has produced the greatest exponent of this style of leadership in the person of Rolihlahla Nelson Mandela (“Madiba”). This Introduction paints a broad picture of what is meant by African transformational leadership, laying the basis for the more detailed
and analytical chapters to follow. The first third of the book tells the story of the development of African leadership ideas from earliest times to the present, comparing them with models of leadership in other cultures. The next third opens up perspectives on African leadership in business, both
locally and abroad. The final chapters deal with future directions for study, research and the development of leadership models appropriate to the
world of business.