What Is A Leader? – Connections2Communities (C2C) – Mutumwa Mawere

I was invited to a group with the title: People’s General (PG) by Mr Goodman Musariri.

I have been in the group for sometime now. I have contributed occasionally in the form of questions rather than in form of solutions as expected by many.

In 2006, Mr Mduduzi Mathuthu who was then the editor of NewZimbabwe.com after my prolonged complaints at the manner in which my issues were being covered, gave me space to write a weekly column.

I became a leader of my column and the author of my unrestricted content.

This was followed by similar gestures by the Daily News and Newsday.

We were also initial funders of the Daily News through Diamond Insurance, a company that was part of the group of companies under my control.

Some may recall the TV program, Talk to the Nation, that was eventually banned in 2001 on the instructions of the then Minister of Information, Professor Jonathan Moyo.

It is significant that Professor Moyo has sought to deny that he had no prior knowledge of the decision and action to ban the paid for program.

At the time, Dr Gono, was the Chairman of ZBC. I am informed by Mr Musariri that Dr Gono is in this group (What Is A Leader?).

He may be persuaded by members of this group to give his own account of the facts and circumstances of the ban.

Coming back to the People’s General group, what was instructive is that the wall picture is that of General Chiwenga, the Vice President of Zimbabwe, to confirm the view that the group’s establishment was inspired by the person of General Chiwenga.

This naturally led me to dig deeper to establish the link between General Chiwenga and the idea that informed its formation.

It was represented that General Chiwenga was an ideal leader which led me to ask whether one had to be military person to qualify automatically to be a leader.

I did not get any satisfactory answer. Then last week a person who identified himself as a businessman shared his take on what he regarded as the root cause of the Zimbabwe problem.

He identified a deficit of men and women clothed with the right vision to take the country forward.

This provoked me to respond to the share in the group. I then in the quietness of time thought deeply about the absence of any shared understanding of what a leader is and is not.

It occurred to me that instead of quietly battling to understand the causal link, if any, between the construct called leadership and national prosperity, it could be beneficial to create a group under this title and not Who is a Leader to provoke a generalized awareness of the pervasive illiteracy associated with the idea of leadership and its reality in operation.

I then proceeded to create a group and the rest is history.

What is the link between the group and the C2C initiative? The link is that the only power that people who don’t have it or who are fond of complaining about being powerless, is the power to organize and not agonize.

If leadership is the missing X-factor to restore Zimbabwe to its original factory settings, then it behooves on all forward leaning people to build a circle around this factor.

We are connected in this group yet disconnected and disorganized in developing our own faculty to test the existence or otherwise of this creature commonly called Leader.

If those who claim and looked up to as leaders commonly behave as fools who are not accountable, what would be incentive of any rational person to aspire to rise up the ladder?

This observation alone must ignite any person endowed with common sense to use the sense to raise awareness that change has no legs of its own but requires human causation and agency based on shared values.

Is humanity divided on the leadership conundrum? Yes and guess what? The division knows no race, creed, gender etc.

Illiteracy and ignorance are best friends and prejudice is the best cousin of both.

I have watched the discourses in this group and actions.

On the challenge and promise of concerting loose personal connections into an organized group, I must say that those one would ordinarily look up to as the natural go to leaders are largely missing in action.

There are some in this group who would respond only if a bribe of consultancy fee is offered for them to open their mouths.

Others are simply in this group to use their ears without suffering the burden of discharging any civic duty to promote active citizenship and the culture of accountability.

I have written this input for it to be carried on the iniAfricaNews platform.

Africa belongs to anyone who lives in it and also those who see it as a brand vehicle to change the traditional and tired narrative.

I believe that a battle of ideas holds a better promise to negotiate inclusive outcomes.

I also believe that a rebellion of ideas allows for thought and action to be interrogated to avoid repeating the same lived mistakes.

A festival of ideas would be the ideal but if this group is a microcosm of what the universe is, then we all have work cut out for all of us.