Of Leaders and their Comparison

One of the people from whose words I draw wisdom, the late Dr Myles Munroe, once gave a sermon on unnecessary comparison. He talked of the situation in which someone driving a good Toyota Corolla which is normally functional begins to feel bad about it upon seeing someone passing by in an AMG Mercedes Benz. I added the car brands myself but the point he was making was that sometimes people desire some material posessions when they have other materials that work as well.

So where is this leading to pachisanu ngati pano? Well. Today management, for some reason has decided to compare two people; one who was on a BBC interview recently and the other who was in the streets shoving rubbish in a bid to have a clean city. Does that ring a bell?

Yes. Leadership. I am told that in Malawi there is a general outcry that there is lack of direction from our first citizen. While that is happening, Tanzanians happen to have found a leader who is being impressive and has gained a bit of a spectacle from the rest of Africa and beyond; John Pombe Magufuli. Guess what has happened? Malawians have joined the world of people who have taken it to the social media to praise worship Magufuli and to talk about how much we need a leader like him. Bad? Obviously not. I am in fact one of the people who took it up to Twitter with the #WhatWouldMagufuliDo hashtag. Some of these things are just fun but I have just noticed that some of the people are taking this too seriously and blowing it out of proportion.

To begin with, our president. He recently found himself on an interview she had on BBC's Hard Talk. On the overall, people have commented that the interview was a disaster. I better not comment on that but having listened to it, the president mentioned a couple of important points. Some I have forgotten but the one that struck me was the fact that he acknowledged that aid is not the way to go and we need to move towards having our own resources. Well. Good talk, and I hope it is not just a cheap talk.

Then came the part I partially agree with; the fact that we need some transitional period between the current state of donor dependency and complete independence from donors, and that farm diversification will do the trick. Well. Those were half truths we have learnt to believe in over years. Better not comment on that. You know how those things work, if you really are interested in your country.

Of course then came the part I totally disagree with; the one of blaming the predecessor on almost all things that have gone wrong in this country's economy. With all due respect to our leader I just find that wrong. No need for emphasis on that.

Again, one thing HE said was that we might move from the current situation to a better one in 5 years. Well. I think that that is an overstatement. I know how short 5 years is. I have spent 5 years and 6 days in college and I don't yet have a degree so I don't think it is reasonable to talk about 5 years as a period to resuscitate a nation in a crisis (or is it a dilemma?).

It is not surprising, then, that in the wake of this Malawians have joined the choir of Magufuli praise worshipers. The thing that we know but forget to ignore is that we can never have him be our ruler and that we may as well not have someone exactly like him. If we had him we would probably be swearing at him, anyway, because we are not used to doing business the unusual way. We probably have already insulted one or two leaders for doing that.

If you look at what Magufuli has done to get the world sick with this Magufuli fever, some who are too critical thinking would call it "pulling off a stunt". He paid surprise visits to places and sacked people who were responsible for things that were not working well (as opposed to some staged "surprise" visits). He has set up austerity measures so that they can spend less and he has worked on the ground with his people in trying to make sure that the cities are clean. Stunt or not, I take that as something impressive and the hype is somehow justifiable.

The question I am asking myself, however is that of whether we have to be excited about this son of Africa who is doing business in a very unusual manner. Could it be some "Bingu's first term" phenomenon? Maybe yes. Maybe not. All I know is that the man seems to know what he is doing but for the many that read this blog, you and I have our APM to sort out. It is either we deal with him (the unlikely) or learn to deal with what his leadership brings on us (the recommended).

In the introduction I talked of comparison. Well. Yes. We are in the Corolla and I am not saying that ours is fully functional. It might have a couple of flaws but as long as we cannot afford a Merc, I guess we have to hold our peace (or maybe fix it) and try to work out with what we have till the time when we can afford our own better thing. Crying over Magufuli will not help us in any way and yes, no one is coming to magufulify the nation. As for our leader, let us bear with him. He is not the first leader to have issues, is he? You have issues too, so why should you point to him?

Having said this, I would like to quote some pastor who said that our problems as a nation will not be sorted by the current generation of leaders, because they think at the same level where the problems were created. Very true, in my sense.

So what do we need? Someone who thinks at a different level. Might not be level Magufuli, but a different level. The Tanzanian leader has gained higher ratings by being different in the positive way and that is one thing that all those who desire to lead this country should have; an idea of what they want this place to be like and the courage to make some radical changes to make it so. You could be the one, so think of one positive thing you could learn from these leaders in Africa, the Kagames and the Magufulis.

On the other hand, I think it is time to sit down and observe what happens in Tanzania and see where they go with the new leadership. I am not saying the new president will nosedive into a crisis, but I think it might be too early to be over praising him this much.

Probably not as important as the last four articles, but sometimes we need to read and write for the fun of it, do we not?

Anyway. I shouldn't spend much time here. Got exams around the corner and I am done commenting on comments.

Nice weekend, and yes. Magufuli is overrated. Oh! Might be overrated.