Overview
Since Africa comprises 54 countries with numerous cultural groups, clans, and tribes, it is unsurprising that African leadership discourse is just as diverse and eclectic. This chapter explores leadership principles of the amaXhosa, a South African cultural group, through a desktop study, and compares these with transformative leadership theory. The author seeks to establish the leadership principles of the amaXhosa by referencing lessons from the oral traditions, literature, and folktales of the amaXhosa – thereby gleaning from ‘yesterday’. amaXhosa leadership practices are relational and inculcated from a young age and in a community. The amaXhosa exercise their power and authority to achieve harmony within their community. These practices align well with Eric Weiner’s transformative leadership practices of justice and democracy. In addition, the dialectic between individual democratic accountability and social responsibility compares well with Archie Mafeje’s interpretation of amaXhosa leadership practice.
Introduction
Dominant leadership concepts have been studied and applied as ‘universal’, even though they have been studied in selective cultural contexts such as the individualistic traditions of the United States. So-called ‘third-world’ thinking is usually regarded as ‘local’ or not global enough – perhaps even backward (Nkomo, 2011; Wa Thiong'o, 1993). According to Alimo-Metcalfe and Alban- Metcalfe (2005), formal leadership studies started in the 1930s. The 1970s introduced leadership as relating to ‘management’ practice, while the 1980s brought what came to be known as ‘New Paradigm’ models, which largely related to ‘charismatic leadership’, ‘visionary leadership’, and ‘transformational leadership’. However, leadership in the 21st century needs to be less transactional and more transformative by beginning with ‘questions of justice and democracy, critiqu[ing] inequitable practices and address[ing] both individual and public good’ (Shields, 2010, p. 559).
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Conclusion
A few lessons can be drawn from this chapter and used to construct a more inclusive leadership discourse. Disharmony is caused by leaving people without solutions, a lack of arbitration, and a sense of social injustice. Undeserved power and its questionable use breeds despotic leaders who lack morals, ethics, and societal responsibility towards their followers. The lack of understanding of subordinate values and aspirations is the first level of disqualification for effective leadership. The leader sometimes earns sufficient trust from followers that they can take calculated unilateral decisions about where the group needs to venture next, believing in the correctness of such a decision; otherwise, leadership as a function of leading is pointless. A judge who attends to people’s issues might not necessarily conform to their wishes. Likewise, a leader, as a judge, is not preoccupied with conforming to the wishes of their followers, but with resolving issues and leading through change to better conditions. This is leading change and it, therefore, brings the transformative moment. Leaders have a moral responsibility to tell the truth and apportion credit or blame without favour or bias. According to the amaXhosa, leadership is transformative in that it introduces new and better conditions for the subordinates through negotiated use of power, democratically or non-democratically, as long as the objective is to uphold the values and aspirations of the people.
Culture and traditions do not generally support change, and this remains true with the amaXhosa. While some maintain that all leadership should facilitate social change, in some cultures, consistency and harmony are valued more than evolving into something new. On the other hand, the amaXhosa can learn from the transformative leadership discourse and be more critical about knowledge, culture, and traditions, especially those that have normalised the suppression of views and freedoms based on gender and class.
To read more, download the book chapter below and you can reference as follows:
Mnqwazi, O. (2024). What amaXhosa leadership practices offer to the discourse on transformative leadership. (Chapter 7). In: Swartz, S., De Kock, T and Odora Hoppers, C. (eds). Transformative leadership in African contexts: Strategies for just social change. Cape Town, SA: HSRC Press.
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