By Nelvis Qekema
AZAPO is so allergic to personality and leadership cults that there prevails a tacit promotion of what I prefer to call the value of Leadership Anonymity, which is itself a contradiction in terms. How can you be a leader and still be “anonymous”? By convention and general expectation, to lead is to be in the forefront and visible. It is said you lead from the front. The challenge of leading from the forefront is, you have to be exemplary. You have to do the things you expect of those you lead. As the overall accounting officer, the failure of the organisation may be blamed on the Leader.
What is this Leadership Anonymity I am talking about? To be anonymous as a Leader is not the same as to be nameless, silent, invisible, absent or non-existent. In fact, the opposite is true. A Leader has to be a brand that is vocal, visible, present and living. I should add. This Leader must also be visionary and inspiring. If this Leader leads by example, as is expected, they have to be ethical and principled.
By Leadership Anonymity is meant a situation where the Leadership Brand functions to direct the spotlight on the Organisational Brand. The attributes of the Leader should serve as the reflection of the Organisational attributes. In AZAPO’s informal language, this principle is best expressed in the reference that “the President is the first among equals”. For this reason, and in principle, AZAPO does not have “Number Ones” and “Number Twos”. All the elected officials are equal in structural importance, though protocol will dictate that they be differentiated in functional authority. Therefore, to say the elected leaders are equal is not to say there are no leaders of leaders. That is why the President becomes “the first among equals”. This operational and authority protocol finds expression in the AZAPO Constitutional principle of “Collective Leadership and Recall”. There you have it. The emphasis is on the Group, rather than the Individual. The Individuals transfer their attributes to the Group, which, as the beneficiary of those attributes, becomes stronger than the loose Individuals. In this way, personality and leadership cults are not just discouraged, but disabled by removing any favourable habitat.
Where the Leader eclipses the Organisation, a personality or leadership cult is likely to take root. While there may be temporary benefits, but there are potential longterm problems if the Leadership Brand becomes so strong and overbearing as to dwarf and replace the Organisational Brand. The disappearance and death of such a Leader is the day of the disappearance or death of the Organisation. The temporary benefits are that the fear of such a Leader force everyone to tow the Leader’s Line, which is seldom the Organisational Line. The immediate consequences in disobeying the will of the Leader in question are severe punishment that might include expulsion. Unfortunately, that lack of inner-democracy may mean there is no buy-in of the imposed decisions. The lack of consultation may deprive the Organisation of the benefit of the ideas of the rest of the members and leaders. Such an Organisation will not live long before it dies of the deficiency of fresh ideas to take it forward.
Of interest is that there is nothing written down in the documents or policies of AZAPO that talks about the concept of Leadership Anonymity. But the prevalent organisational culture promoted Leadership Anonymity. During the era of settler-colonialism, Leadership Anonymity was an operational necessity for security reasons. All the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) organisations adopted an operational principle of changing the leadership on an annual basis to ensure no one became so prominent as to be an easy target to the enemy. This shield of rapid leadership turnover survived into the era of AZAPO, which became the institutional heir of the BC organisations that were banned on 19 October 1977. While the yearly change of leadership operated as some security, it also functioned as a training opportunity for a greater number of leaders. With the fall of apartheid nearing, and the rise of electoral politics around the corner, the 1992 AZAPO Congress held at the Great Centenary Hall (now Nangoza Jebe) in Gqeberha introduced a two-year term for the elected leadership. The 1994 Congress held at Shaft 17 in Johannesburg increased the term to 4 years.
The rational was that AZAPO would need a bit of leadership stability and familiarity to help the masses and the electorate to recognise the face and voice of the leadership for election purposes. This need for face recognition overrode a longstanding AZAPO tradition that no face of a living leader was to be printed on the T-shirts of the organisation. The faces of the AZAPO Presidents soon became a normal spectacle on the organisation’s T-shirts, especially around election times. The justification was not so much that the leader’s face would bring about votes as it was for the recognition of the leader’s face by the masses and the electorate.
Other measures to promote Leadership Anonymity were rife in the writing of documents. Almost all the documents of AZAPO tended to be anonymous in authorship. The documents were remembered by their titles and content than their authors. If there was any merited praise for the plausibility of the document, such praise went to AZAPO. At the funeral of AZAPO founder Mlungisi Mavana, I took liberty to praise Cde Khangale Makhado for a 1981 seminal Paper titled “Black Consciousness as a Driving Force” under his authorship. I couldn’t believe it when he declined the praise and revealed that the Paper was written by a number of Comrades that included Mpapa George Wauchope and Letsatsi Mosala. For some reason, it was decided that the Paper would go under his byline. To this date, I remain taken aback by such humility. Almost everyone in AZAPO had accepted that the document was written by Cde Makhado. Besides, both Cdes Wauchope and Mosala are no more. But his values of Leadership Anonymity prevail upon him to somehow distance himself from the document and the glory.
This Leadership Anonymity explains why it is that no AZAPO Leader has ever been stronger and more powerful than the AZAPO Brand. So strong is the AZAPO Brand that the Leaders that were, so to speak, made by AZAPO, remain linked to AZAPO by the public long after they left the organisation. The worst result is when such leaders evaporate out of the public radar as soon their connection with AZAPO is severed. As SASO did with its leader Themba Sono, AZAPO could expel its leader Curtis Nkondo without any turbulent consequences. That speaks to the tenacity of the AZAPO Brand.
More examples of the operations of Leadership Anonymity are the protocol that the AZAPO Standing Committee (SC) tends to report to the Central Committee and Congress as a Collective. That is what is known as a Composite Report. No one leader is glorified over the others. The glory goes to the group. Admittedly, this has its positives and negatives. This collective reporting norm may benefit the lazy members by letting them ride on the wave of hardworking ones. However, the higher value seems to be to highlight the Group over the Individuals. In this way, the phenomenon of Leadership Anonymity helps to eliminate any individualism or narcissism. By promoting the Group over the Individuals, this Leadership Anonymity encourages the values of cooperation and helping the struggling leaders without anyone wanting to claim individual glory for such positive help. The negativity of destructive competition is nipped in the bud in this way. Destructive competition means that some leaders may withhold help from their colleagues whom they wish should fail so as to highlight their own glory. This withdrawal of help may degenerate into actively sabotaging colleagues to gain personal glory over the group and fellow colleagues. We can already see that Leadership Anonymity is an effective antidote against the development of cliques and factions in the organisation.
Like I have said, Leadership Anonymity is not namelessness or silence. An Organisational Brand does get enhanced by the Leadership Brand. That is why organisations work hard to build the brand of their leader in line with the Organisation such that the good attributes of the Leader can be synonymous with those of the Organisation. As a matter of fact, the Leader, as “the first among equals”, does bring to the Organisation his or her individual attributes that define their style of leadership. The leadership style may contribute in distinguishing one leadership era from another. The change in leadership style should not be confused to mean change in political or ideological direction of the Organisation.
There is one more fundamental principle that harnesses the value of Leadership Anonymity in AZAPO. It is the principle of Democratic Centralism. In simple terms, Democratic Centralism means the Individual is subject to the Group; Lower Structures to Higher Structures; the Minority to the Majority. Put differently, an Individual/Minority/Lower Structures cannot change or undermine the decision of the Group/Majority/Higher Structures. Democratic Centralism highlights the importance of the Organisation over the Individual.
In music, there is a principle that closely illustrates the value of Leadership Anonymity. For instance, there might be 5 sopranos in the choir. One soprano might be chosen as a reference to which the rest of the sopranos should align their tones. As a result, these sopranos will sing as though they are one person and one voice. They also have to pitch at the same level so that there is no one soprano that will be prominent to be recognised as a particular person’s voice. I see this kind of Vocal Anonymity in similar ways we have talked about Leadership Anonymity. Of course, there will be a need for solos.
We may extend this musical illustration to a Jazz Quartet of a Pianist, Guitarist, Drummer and Bassist. You may find that all these four musicians are respected recording artists in their own right. The Pianist might have an idea on whose basis he invites the other three artists to cooperate in the development of the idea. Each artist will bring his individuality into the project in such a way that the developed project is much better than the initial idea. When they perform, they do so by switching roles such that one artist plays the melody, while the rest keep the rhythm section. Everyone of the four artists gets an opportunity to improvise when it is their turn to play the melody or lead role. But they do the improvisation within a structure. While the album may go under the byline of the artist who brought up the original idea, but the rest of the artists will be duly credited such than they appear on the sleeve and individually acknowledged as the contributors even during radio airplay. The group emphasis over the individual is quite prominent. This is one more way to illustrate how Leadership Anonymity operates.
Leadership Anonymity just means the Organisation/Group takes precedence over the Leader/Individual without stifling Individuality. However, take note that Individuality is not Individualism. The former is positive and constructive, whereas the latter is negative and destructive.
