We need a values-based, not an ‘out of sight out-of mind' leadership in South Africa

Mail & Guardian

20-06-2025

Too often politicians talk about 'our people', yet seem not to care deeply.
Our political leadership could learn a lot about embodied, empathetic and compassionate leadership from a vlog by the dynamic young musician, Zintle Kwaaiman. In it, Kwaaiman cries, deeply moved by witnessing the plight of people affected by abject poverty in a place she had just visited.
Her tears were born of compassion for the people and of frustration that the leaders who have the power to change that situation were not doing enough, fast enough.
What she described in her vlog was what Hennie Swanepoel and Frik de Beer, in their book Community Development: Breaking the Cycle of Poverty, refer to as 'the deprivation trap'. This is characterised by five realities:
Powerlessness
: Lack of social and economic influence. It's also the ease with which people can be exploited.
Isolation:
Exclusion from systems and structures that can change their lives.
Poverty:
Lack of productive assets such as land, money and income-generating skills.
Physical weakness
: Malaise, lack of physical strength and exposure to chronic illnesses.
Vulnerability
: Lack of reserves and choices, which drives the ease with which the poor can be coerced.
As I watched Kwaaiman lamenting her powerlessness to effect the change needed at the scale and speed necessary, I wondered whether our political leadership, who have the power and the resources to change the situation, have any compassion for the plight of the poor.
Do they ever allow themselves to feel the pain of the pangs of hunger, the fear of crime and the hopelessness of lack of income? I wondered if the leadership cared about people's lives. Or do they just simply go through the motions, talking about 'our people', yet do not care deeply. This is what I call 'out of sight, out of mind' leadership.
According to
'Between 2021 and mid-2022, 400 000 to 500 000 children dropped out of school in South Africa, bringing the total number of out-of-school children to 750 000, according to the United Nations Children's Fund. Teenage pregnancy was identified as one of the reasons why children drop out of school in the country. Over half a million children with disabilities are excluded from education,' the report noted.
To remedy the above, to muster the level of decisive action needed to transform the economy, improve service delivery, create conducive conditions for income generation, lift people out of poverty and combat corruption, South Africa requires a new leadership framework. It needs an embodied and compassionate leadership which is able to feel deeply for the people, because at the centre of the human being is the 'heart' or the 'inner being'.
It informs our cognition, affections and volition. What the heart loves, it will pursue. If it loves self, it will abandon empathy for the poor. If it loves others, it will think, act and feel in a way that truly serves the least of these.
It is a leadership firmly undergirded by ethics, good governance, compassion and care. We need a shift toward embracing embodied, empathetic and compassionate leadership.
It is for this reason that Good Governance Africa (GGA) is partnering with Values 20 South Africa, a global community of values experts and practitioners seeking to actively work with the G20, providing it with evidence-based, human-centred policy solutions that contribute to overcoming global problems. Its focus is on how we, as global citizens, can collectively and consciously apply values to the benefit of the planet and the people who inhabit it.
GGA shares this vision and is continually striving to embed effective democratic processes — in which the voices of citizens are really heard and responded to — across Africa through its programmes and projects. So, this synergy with Values 20 is a natural one and we hope that, together, we can have more impact in the relevant policy spheres.
In his book The Art of Somatic Coaching: Embodying Skilful Action, Wisdom and Compassion, Richard Strozzi-Heckler tells the story of a Mr Duffy who lived a short distance from his body. He says Mr Duffy was a one-dimensional bureaucrat who lived a bland, colourless life. 'He is the postmodern everyman — cut off from his feelings, defined by rules and protocols, drifting aimlessly without purpose or meaningful connections.'
In the article
Embodied Leadership: A Cure For What Ails Us?,
which appeared in
Forbes
,
When leaders are distanced from themselves, like Mr Duffy, they lose the embodied feelings for others necessary for effective leadership. This prevents them from feeling the pain of the majority and undermines their resolve to take the actions necessary to implement change.
Sadly, we seem to have an abundance of such leaders, from the local to provincial and national levels, travelling from meeting to meeting and making speech after speech. They are good at raising points of order and pontificating in legislative chambers, yet the resources at their disposal with which to effect material changes in people's lives continue to be embezzled without consequences. Hence, we need to embed the value of embodied leadership in our body politic.
Claire Yorke and Maria Sklodowska make a compelling argument in their essay, Is Empathy a Strategic Imperative? about the strategic importance of empathy in offering solutions to policy failures. They argue that, when empathy is used wisely, it engenders the value of what we in South Africa call batho pele (putting people first) and creates new approaches to dealing with intractable governance problems in new ways.
They state that, 'If strategy is about achieving certain desired ends and meeting core objectives — whether in warfare, politics or policy — then empathy is critical to understanding the contours of the human landscape in which such aims are to be achieved.' It is for this reason that empathy should 'sit at the heart of government, built into how the government approaches its strategic vision and aiding the longer-term pursuit of its national objectives and international standing'.
Without the value of empathy built into our governance systems, the future of society is doomed. But, with empathy at the core of our leaders' way of being and their decision-making, humanity's future is bright.
According to Laura Segovia-Nieto and Andres Ramirez-Velandia, in their paper, titled Do We Need Empathy or Compassion in Our Political Leaders? A Case of Colombian Political Leaders, leaders need to embrace the value of compassion, not only empathy. They state that, 'Empathy as the core of social engagement allows us to share others' psychological experiences, but it does not entail necessarily the need to act toward specific community well-being. Compassion, on the other hand, drives action to relieve the discomfort of others.
'Due to the importance of the target in the definition of compassion, political leaders must choose which sector of their nation deserves their compassionate actions, even though empathy lets him or her understand other national actors' situations.'
Unlike Kwaaiman, our political leaders appear to be numb and indifferent to the plight of the sectors of society who live in squalor and poverty.
For leaders to embrace the value of compassion, they need more proximity to the people. I am not talking about the occasional dropping in to electioneer and cutting ribbons. I am talking about an embeddedness in the human struggles of the poor that opens the leader's eyes and ears to see and hear them. It is in this connectivity that compassion will take root. If leaders do not expose themselves to the conditions and experiences of people, they will never identify with them and they will never have the impetus to make changes.
The problems South Africa is facing will not be addressed successfully with mechanistic, legalistic and formulaic solutions. We cannot construct genuinely pro-poor policy that will generate broad-based development without compassion and empathy. Policy built in a way that is congruent with ubuntu is likely to be the most implementable too.
To burst open the deprivation trap and release the poor from its clutches, we need a values-based — not an out of sight, out of mind — form of leadership in South Africa. An out of sight, out of mind form of leadership is careless, clueless and indifferent. We need embodied, empathetic and compassionate leaders to lift us out of the quagmire we are stuck in.
Patrick Kulati is the chief executive of Good Governance Africa's Southern African regional office.