INTRODUCTION
Since South Africa’s democratic dawn, in 1994, we have navigated through stormy waters. Citizens continue to face great disappointment and many are disillusioned with the fruit of our rainbow nation, which once held such promise. Fruit is the end goal of cultures, and as Chuck Palahniuk wisely said: “The first step to controlling your world is to control your culture. To model and demonstrate the kind of world you demand to live in”. [4] So we see the crucial role which culture has in shaping our society.
In reflecting on this and examining our current context, it seems as if leadership has lost its way. But it is a specific kind of leadership which has gone missing over board.
In previous articles, we unpacked the definition and characteristics of culture. [1] [2] This highlighted that humans, like all other animal species, assimilate into groups for biological and psychological reasons. These groups provide safety, efficiency, and a sense of belonging: making life easier and more secure when faced with the challenges of the world. In our group dynamics, we find purpose and companionship, a sense of belonging. Wherever a group of people assimilate for common cause, Culture exists because the collective value of a group always surpasses the sum its individual members. This is epitomised in the Latin phrase: “e pluribus unum – out of many, one”.
Moreover, we acknowledge that small groups (micro-cultures) play a pivotal role in transmitting knowledge, skills, and values. The family is the most obvious, and important, example of such a micro-culture. Families are the heart and soul of community, shaping character, habits, and destinies. Therefore, the home, not the school, is the primary place of learning. We find another good example of micro-cultures, where learning is nurtured, in the practice of medieval apprenticeships. Here apprentices would spend the best part of their youth under the watchful eye of a master craftsman, learning and developing the hard skills associated with their trade. Today, there exist many other micro-cultures which contribute to knowledge transfer and personal development, from local churches and sports clubs to the business departments in your workplace.
In our third article, we explored the definition of culture and considered the external and internal forces at play, which influence a culture’s inevitable path of change. We emphasized the significance of maintaining a delicate balance between internal and external forces, which can either be technical or social in nature, for the sustainability of a culture.
With this understanding, we now turn to examine the specific issue at hand, where it seems that our society has lost its compass for technical leadership. In subsequent articles, we will delve into the implications of this loss and explore the monsters that have emerged within the borders of South Africa as a result.
HIERARCHY OF COMMAND
At the helm of any culture, is a hierarchy of command comprising of a group of elders. It is this group’s choices and actions that defines a culture’s internal social and technical cultural force. Their visionary outlook shapes the collective’s path, allowing members to focus on doing the tasks needed to make progress towards a future destination. The leadership provided by this group of elders is the catalyst required by a culture to provide a balanced response to the external forces exerted on the culture. But these leaders are not only decision-makers and visionaries, they also lead the way by setting an example of what it looks like to live out the vision.
Establishing a sustainable culture’s hierarchy of command is a gradual, bottom-up process which evolves over time. Over time, the development of skills and mutual trust among the members gives rise to this leadership structure.
The first of Niall Ferguson’s so called “killer apps” developed by Western civilization, is competition. According to Ferguson [5], competition is the driving force behind technological development and advancement within civilizations. Jordan Peterson, in his book titled “Beyond Order: 12 More Rules For Life” [6], echoes the importance of competition as a key element required for the development of a culture’s hierarchy of command. According to Peterson, every culture is in constant pursuit of victory (success) and respect, while either playing games, or solving problems in response to opportunities, challenges or threats that influence a culture’s future state of being. The games played and problems solved by a culture ultimately define its internal technical force. Competition is not only a reality to the individuals comprising a culture, it is also pertinent to the collective. Competition compels individuals to collaborate in pursuit of common goals. It is this reciprocity between competition and collaboration that drives the process of developing hard skills, technical leadership qualities and trust among a culture’s members. Healthy cultures are cultures that struggle and compete.
Another driving force that fosters the development of a culture’s hierarchy of command, its world view and mind set. Effective leadership within a culture requires a moral compass to shine the light on the path of change and development. This guiding light emanates from the basic beliefs, religious convictions and ideological principles that a culture aspires to, comprising the internal social force developed within a specific organization.
In our previous article we unpacked Newton’s 3rd law of motion, which emphasizes that balance is required between forces to ensure a stable state of being. Any culture is just as much about being as it is about doing, and therefore a sustainable culture must exercise as much social force as technical force in response to its environment. Any culture, therefore has both a technical and a social hierarchy of command balanced among its masters and leaders. In this process of establishing balance within a culture, a landscape of value is established by its leaders, which is shaped by reality and constructed socially. Things of import must be done, or people die of hunger, thirst, exposure, or loneliness. What needs to be done must be specified and planned, the requisite skills for doing so must be developed [6]. Everything that is done within a sustainable culture, happens within the construct of relationship based on mutual respect and trust.
THE ISSUE
Since the onset of South Africa’s new democracy in 1994, the African National Congress (ANC) led government has been hard at work to redress the injustices and legacy of the apartheid policies implemented during the previous regime. A wide range of strategies have been considered and implemented over the past 30 years, with the government opting to address the issue primarily by executing its legislative powers, with 116 pieces of race legislation having been passed by government between 1994 and 2022 (Institute of Race Relations (the IRR). The success of these strategies and legislation is debatable, as the list of apparent failures in the state’s attempt to govern a complex social compact is a lengthy one.
As a result of the socio-economic challenges faced by the country’s citizens, social media is flooded with the opinions of many who are voicing their reasons for the dismal failures of organs of state and their disappointment with the fruit of our young democracy. The previous apartheid regime’s legacy: poor education standards, corruption within the public and private sectors, incompetence, a lack of ethical leadership, state capture, neo-colonialism and imperialism are some of the reasons regularly debated.
With reference to our previous articles, we argue that one of the primary driving forces behind the country’s current disposition, is a lack of TECHNICAL leadership within society.
Both the private sector, and more particularly, organs of state, have lost their technical voice due to a combination of factors which have created ecosystems that fail to nurture technical competence and leadership. A key influence has been the many race-based laws that have resulted in an over-emphasis on external forces of a social nature, forcing cultures onto a path of change in line with the state’s prevailing ideological objectives. Both the Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) Amendment Act 46 of 2013, as well as Employment Equity Amendment Act 55 of 2022 are examples of the government’s good intentions to provide equal opportunity to previously disadvantaged people groups, increasing access the workplace and economic benefit from doing business in South Africa. Similarly, the National Sports and Recreation Act 110 of 1998 aims to redress past imbalances on the sports field, by promoting equity and democracy in sport and recreation. These legislative interventions are good examples of external, social forces applied to South African cultures, by the state, in an attempt to manipulate the development of cultures in the business sector and sport.
As a result, much success has been achieved by government in pursuit of a more racially representative demographic, when it comes to sport and business. Much has changed since 1994, within the public and private sectors as well as our national sports teams. No South African leader, educator, sports coach, or business owner has remained un-challenged to go the extra mile in creating opportunities for development, growth, management, and ownership distribution among previously disadvantaged and marginalized people groups of South Africa. Opportunities for previously disadvantaged people to become active participants in the country’s dynamic, socio-economic environment abound. Every day, people are contributing time and effort, skills, resources, and management to devise and implement solutions to the country’s economic, social and political challenges. Wherever one looks, fertile African soil is ready to be worked.
However, despite the good intentions of government’s interventions in an attempt to re-distribute wealth and provide equal opportunities, the legislative avenue chosen by the state to force transformation has come with a tremendous price tag from both an economic and social perspective. State capture and the elevated cost of doing business with the state to compensate for BBBEE strategies and inefficient service delivery are well documented in the media. Contrary to the norm, the purpose of this article is to create awareness regarding another socio-economic price tag due to the state’s modus operandi. South Africa has lost its technical leadership and it is costing us dearly in more ways than state capture and corruption.
At the core of race-based legislation to redress demographic disparities, is a strategy to manipulate the competition field to give advantage to previously marginalized people groups. In the process a socio-economic environment has been established where there is little remaining competition and fair play. As a result, very little value is attached by society to hard skills, experience, and technical competence. Race-based ownership and management responsibility have been prioritized, as desired outcomes of the BBBEE Act and the Employment Equity Act, while very little priority is given to the development of hard skills, associated leadership, and technical expertise. The evident result of these legislative interventions is the silencing of technical leadership in various cultures representing the people of South Africa. This is yielding a crisis of technical competence.
In 2017, the Mail and Guardian [8] published an article stating that South Africa has one registered engineer per 2600 people, compared to the international norm where one engineer serves 40 people. By 2021 the South African figure had been revised to one engineer per 3041 people (Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA) [9] and the Department of Statistics South Africa [10]).
Within this context, the engineering profession should be considered a very lucrative career opportunity for any young citizen. However, despite the urgent need for engineers and state intervention to redress past injustices, the engineering field of discipline has shown very slow reform. In the year 2021, previously disadvantaged individuals accounted for only 19% (11% African, 6% Indian, 1% Coloured) of registered professional engineers. Referring to ECSA annual reports, during the 10 years (2011 – 2021), the total number of black registered professional engineers increased by a number of 1417, compared to 2955 white engineers.
This crisis of the imbalance between technical and social leadership is further evidenced in the state’s published sectoral targets (May 2022) in terms of the Employment Equity Amendment Act. The Professional, Scientific and Technical Activities Sector targets for gender representation in top management are set at 54.4% male to 43.5% female representation. Yet, females account for only 6% of all professional engineers (2021 ECSA annual report). Similarly, race-based sectoral targets aim to achieve 46.7% representation from the black African population group and 4.5% from the white population at management level. Yet, only 11.4% of professional engineers are black, compared to 81.2% white. There is a clear disparity between available technical competence in the form of women and black professional engineers, to comply with the sectoral targets set by government for management positions.
The lack of appreciation for hard skills and technical leadership is evidenced across industries. As an example, the South African government’s strategy to implement the controversial National Health Insurance (NHI) plan might seem like a noble strategy from a social point of view, but a visit to a typical state hospital will quickly reveal dilapidated infrastructure, dysfunctional management systems and a lack of technical expertise necessary to serve the public. The quality of infrastructure and technical expertise reflects the state of the health industry’s technical leadership. Prioritizing the NHI (social intervention) over budget allocations toward maintaining and upgrading infrastructure (technical interventions) is evidence of an overemphasis of social priorities over technical requirements pertaining to the health industry.
Towards the end of June 2023, the ANC Youth league (age for members is 14-35) had an elective conference to select new leadership and to decide on resolutions for the organization’s future. Newly elected ANCYL president, (Collen Malatji), was quoted as saying [11] that the target for youth representation in Parliament and ANC leadership structures is 50%. This suggests society’s lack of appreciation for technical leadership derived over years of experience, as very few individuals younger than 35 will have gained sufficient life and work experience to provide the technical leadership required to respond to the challenges of a complex economy and society.
South Africa is suffering due to a lack of technical leadership. As a result, the prevailing social forces which have been legislated by government are charting our country’s course towards uncharted and troubled waters. We have lost our technical voice and cultures are without balanced hierarchies of command. Jordan Peterson gives the following, appropriate warning to his readers. “When ignorance destroys culture, monsters will emerge.”[6]
In our next article, we will discuss some of the monsters that have emerged within the borders of South Africa.
REFERENCES
[1] The Fruit of Our South African Culture.
[2] Culture: Structures and Dynamics.
[3] Culture: The path of inevitable change.
[4] Palahniuk, C. (2004). The first step — especially for young people with energy and drive and talent, but not money — the first step to controlling your world is to control your culture. To model and demonstrate the kind of world you demand to live in. To write the books. Make the music. Shoot the films. Paint the art. Closing remarks made on an eClass forum (Barnes & Noble University) (2004-12-05).
[5] Ferguson, N. (2011). Civilization: The West and the Rest. Penguin Random House UK, London SW11 7BW.[5]
[6] Peterson, J.B. (2021). Beyond Order – 12 more rules for life. Penguin Random House, Morris Chambers, 32 Nassau Street, Dublin D02 YH68. p 4-17, 70
[7] https://www.politicsweb.co.za/documents/116-race-laws-passed-by-anc-since-1994–irr
[8] The Mail and Guardian. (17 March 20217). South Africa urgently requires engineers for development | The Mail & Guardian. www.mg.co.za
[9] Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA) Annual Report 2020/2021.
[10] Department of Statistics South Africa, Statistical Release P0302, Mid-year population estimates 2021.
[11] ENCA. (3rd July 2023). YouTube – Discussion | Will we see 50% youth representation in Parliament? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EypsEFvblw.
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