We Have a Leadership Vacuum

History provides evidence that when people or communities are leaderless, people lead themselves as those elected or imposed fail.
This can also be seen in a family when parents have passed on when children take leadership responsibility as their parents are no more.
This is the case today in South Africa when communities are creating their own leaders because the ward leadership is not serving community interests but their own selfish egos.
After King Bambatha’s death in 1920, African people were leaderless and there was a leadership vacuum. Hence young people formed themselves into what was known as the Congress Youth League (CYL) in 1944. Radical young people wanted to help militarise and radicalise the ANC and remind them of the purpose of their existence.
After the CYL was unsuccessful in its mission to revive the ANC, the CYL was drowning in factions and created what was known as the Africanists and Charterist groups.
There was again a leadership vacuum that caused the formation of the radical and revolutionary PAC which was not apologetic and confronted the system in 1960.
After the PAC was banned, people of South Africa were depoliticised and felt leaderless until Steve Bantu Biko, Onkgopotse Tiro and their contemporaries saw fit to orchestrate what was known as the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) which was a social movement aimed at bringing about self-confidence in African people and to instill a certain attitude of the mind to oneself.
The BCM provided leadership in awakening African students to stand-up for their fundamental freedoms. In the late 70s, the African movement experienced a dark cloud when many of their comrades were brutally murdered.
Many died during the “Soweto Revolution”. Steve Biko and Onkgopotse Tiro were assassinated while Robert Sobukwe was poisoned by the authorities.
Many comrades from BCM and the PAC suffered this ordeal and in that regard the country became leaderless and this created an opportunity for the rise of workers’ protest in the 1980s when Cosatu became popular under the leadership of the likes of Jay Naidoo.
We then saw the United Democratic Front emerge which was led by leaders like Terror Lekota. The churches or religious organisations also played a crucial role in providing leadership.
We became excessively excited with euphoria when we held elections for the first time under the guise of democracy. We were of the impression Nelson Mandela was our Moses and he would make our problems, which we had encountered for centuries, disappear. We realised in the beginning of the 2000 millennium that neither Thabo Mbeki nor the ANC would do away with our problems.
The timing of Jacob Zuma to become the president of the Republic was not friendly. It is very necessary to concur with Zuma when he says that some challenges are not only in this country but are global.
Zuma cannot take responsibility for the bad leadership of Mandela and Mbeki.
We must do a proper reflection and do away with our emotions. South African citizens have realised we have a leadership vacuum and are leading themselves hence we saw the tabling of many “motions of no confidence” against the president.
The current leadership vacuum has yielded Joseph Mathunjwa, Andries Tatane, Julius Malema, Irvin Jim, the Marikana massacre, students’ riots, community protests and many other ills.
Young people, especially the students in universities, realise a need to be led and in this regard they are leading themselves as they deem they are not led.
Workers also suffer the same fate, township dwellers are burning schools, libraries and other government assets in a bid to symbolise their “braveness” and ability to lead by lighting a match.
It is this time when strong leadership is needed and shall be provided. What one sees is the presence of a party voted by the majority of the eligible electorate and not everyone.
When serious decisions about the future of the country should be taken, we are often told about the National Executive Committee meeting of a party and this undermines the ineffective and malfunctioning executive leg of government.
Zuma is not the problem here but a symptom of the whole. The problem is not even the ANC themselves because replacing the ANC with the DA we are likely to get the same result but also increasing dominance of the bourgeois class of Motsepes, Ramaphosas, Oppenheimers.
The only solution to our problems is the seizure and repossession of land by the African people because in every struggle the land is at the centre of the revolution.
The current government has been unable to at least repossess half of the land stolen by Jan van Riebeeck which he left for his grandchildren who have an impression that they deserve our land.  Source:   Sunday Independent