LEADERSHIP SHOULD RESOLVE TO SERVE SOCIETY

Sir,

The year is finally approaching its zenith, and a new year is just around the corner.
As it is always practiced when a New Year begins, it is normal for people around the world to make New Year resolutions. Sadly, few of us realise our dreams, let alone achieve those resolutions.

For one reason or another, our dreams are shattered through for instance, poor decision making, lack of resources to fulfil our resolutions and a myriad of other reasons.
As individuals, and collectively as a nation, I urge each one of us not to only make or plan for New Year resolutions but with determination, to do all in our power to realise them.

One resolution I earnestly pray for to be made by our leadership is committing to serving our society with diligence, transparency, belt tightening in fiscal matters and listening to dissenting voices among other wishful wishes.

Reports that our government is broke and living from hand-to- mouth are daunting. Channelling our meagre resources to projects which have least benefited the man on the street has made this government the most unpopular of all previous governments. People, throughout the year, have been moaning about the sheer lack of strong leadership in our government such that our society has resigned itself to the fact that the only concern our government has is looking after its own interests.

One glaring flaw I have noticed with our leadership is failure to accept and act on criticism - the constructive type. Arrogantly ignoring constructive criticism has been our major letdown as a nation. Our leadership’s knack, especially at government level; of arrogantly turning a deaf ear to criticism has been one of the major impediments of growing and developing us as a nation.

A major mistake made by those in authority is thinking that leadership is forever. One writer once noted that leadership, like medication has an expiry date. No condition is permanent. It is imperative for leaders to listen to voices of criticism. You cannot  always be right. It is disheartening to hear society labelling this government as the worst ever in terms of poor service delivery. We writers don’t take any pleasure in exposing the shortcomings of our leadership. We do it out of concern for transparent leadership. People remember a good leader. The opposite is true. Bad leaders are not remembered.

Who in his wildest dreams can remember with fond memories leaders of the calibre of Robert Mugabe? Even those who made it their culture to grovel and sing his praises have turned their backs on him. His status as a liberation hero has been tainted by his bad leadership skills. We do not want that to be the case with our leaders. We need to be concerned when a majority criticises us.

It means there is a lot we are not doing right. We must not view criticism as hatred and need to refrain from being resentful when others criticise us.
I would love to throw the gauntlet at both our leadership and individuals across all spheres of our society to follow Winston Churchill’s advice on accepting criticism:

Criticisms may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.’’ Good leadership skills is to have the ability to understand, encourage and make meaningful use of unrelenting criticism - something which was glaringly lacking in our government this year.

For instance, the delays in decisive, decision-making could have averted the lack of medication in hospitals; the dragging of feet in solving the Swaziland Christian University (SCU) impasse and other challenges affecting tertiary institutions.
This could have prevented sowing the seeds of hatred between government and students that will have far-reaching future consequences for our future leaders.

Because I am patriotic and I love our leadership, I will say that people out there are speaking ill of our leaders. It is heart-rending to hear people saying the country belongs to a privileged few. The rest are just objects to be taxed their hard-earned money to benefit the status quo.
We love our one and only Swaziland. It is the only one we have, albeit with its unique ways of doing things.

By Alex Nxumalo

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