Johannesburg – The ANC does not appreciate the difference between law and morality.
The distinction is crucial to ethical leadership, and the failure to understand the differences between them lies, in part, at the heart of the political leadership crisis we are experiencing in South Africa.
Behaviour is lawful if it is not inconsistent with the laws of the country. Legal standards matter profoundly because sources of law are obviously designed to regulate our behaviour for the sake of a coherent and thriving society.
Lawlessness is not in anyone’s interest. If leaders break the law, then a leadership crisis kicks in, especially if there are no consequences for breaking the law.
But legal standards have their limits. While law is important to democracy, more is required to ensure that we have leadership excellence. If someone never breaks a law, that does not mean that they are leadership material.
Two more sets of requirements, besides compliance with the law, are important. The first, obviously, is that they need to be technically skilled for the job they are asked to perform, unlike, for example, Tourism Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane asked to look after our health.
There are way too many cadres who are assumed to be leadership material because they do not have criminal records. That is an appallingly low bar to set for appointment to critical positions within the state.
Besides technical competency, the other leadership theme that is willfully ignored by the ANC is morality and ethics. Morality and ethics mean slightly different things in different disciplines, but for our purposes the definitional quandaries are not salient.
The nexus point is that the political leadership required within our state is leadership that is answerable to moral and ethical standards in addition to compliance with the national laws of the country. When we appoint someone to the government, we must not just ask whether they are criminal and whether they are technically skilled.
We must ask: “Is Eusebius McKaiser an ethically skilled leader? Does he know and respect ethical codes even when these codes are not legally obligatory? Will he hold himself accountable by moral standards and not hide behind legal standards?”
The deployment bosses of the ANC do not grapple with these questions when they divvy up positions within the state. This is because the ANC has not made ethics part of the political DNA of the party. That is why so many unethical politicians can shamelessly try to hold on to their positions of power even in the face of unambiguous evidence of ethical wrongdoing.
This brings me to our Health Minister, Dr Zweli Mkhize. The idea that his close associates and family members could benefit from work flowing from his department without his knowledge is simply bullshit.
The distinction between law and morality kicks in here. We should not have to wait for what a legal investigation into these claims of impropriety finds. Morality is more fundamental than law.
Mkhize should step down voluntarily in recognition of the fact that he has violated basic requirements of ethical leadership. He should, before his peers in the ANC do so (or fail to do so), hold himself ethically accountable and not defer to the law. But that will not happen because morality is not seen as a necessary
feature of political leadership by the ANC.
Where does that leave us? It is up to us as citizens to punish all politicians and public servants who do not meet the standards of ethical leadership. We should insist that being law-abiding is necessary but not sufficient to get our vote.
By Eusebius McKaiser
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