Cde Mduduzi Sibeko
The point I was aiming to put across is that in leadership and management
skills there's a requirement for objective approach, and for the individual to
understand that the opposite side will always work on your weaknesses and spot
character traits they can use against you and your organisation. If you are
open to attack, you will unwittingly become a liability to your team and be
used as a weak under belly of the politics and programmes you represent. With
tools and techniques such as emotional intellegence, we are empowered to
overcome weaknesses personally and to learn from the errors we've made in the
past.
I'd argue that the main thrust of the PAC Basic Documents is about
leadership. It describes the form and content of that revolutionary
leadership, and places it at the centre of the activities of the African
people. It also attacks and exposes the wrongs-doings of a prevailing
leadership, who conform to the authority of white domination while pretending,
through clever talk, to be representing the people. The concrete ideas
expressed by Sobukwe and others (Mda, Raboroko, Pokela, etc.) have found
resonance with the aspirations of the Azanian masses. The PAC Code of Conduct
offers a disciplined approach to serving the people, and offers the PAC
membership a revolutionary imperative in conducting its affairs. That is why
members of the PAC, from all walks of life, will question their representatives
and put leaders under scrutiny. The quality standards of leadership and
democratic centralism in the PAC are high - comparably speaking. In other
organisations you must trust and obey, period. I would agree with Cde Ray
Mkethi, as he spoke at the 50th Anniversary of APLA in Pretoria last Sunday,
that the leadership crisis in the PAC is actually a blessing in disguise and we
must sum up our experiences over the years as a tool to utilise as we go back
to the basics. I'd say that every member takes leadership responsibility in
their communities in every sphere, and they have their destiny in their hands.
Mangaliso Sobukwe is always pleasant-looking and sure of himself in tone and
meaning. There is no shrill and out of control emotions, and his writings do
not even have an exclamation mark. He maintains his dignity throughout - like
a man on a mission. I believe we should learn from him. In the Gail Gerhardt
interviews he laughs at the excesses and cranky ideas of his comrades like
Josias Madzunya, PK Leballo and Lennox Mlonzi. He was put in a spot when Benjy
Pogrund secretly arranged the Greatermans encounter with Mangosuthu Buthulezi,
but in the pictures taken he seems uncomfortable without exploding emotionally.
It takes a measure of a man/woman to control their emotions.
I used my own experiences to demonstrate how opponents would take you off
track, using your weak emotional control. Paris Mashile tried to hold his
emotions in the meeting and did not disclose openly what has happened. He knew
and understood what the aim was. I'm not sure if I'd have handled it the same
way. Ramaphosa with his union negotiation experience and his legal background,
tried to set me down in an inferior position for wearing the same tie as my
opponents. These are devices of deception. I have observed many such tricks,
raw as they are. You also allude to some that you have come across. I have
done countless blunders where I lost my temper, even though I'd say I have a
long fuse.
We used to say - in my fraterny of creative writers - that Uncle Zeke
Mphahlele was mellowed, not mature. He insisted in his workshop presentations
that intellectuals must be disciplined and work hard to grasp fully the
concepts they were putting across, so that they are fully understood. He also
said we must reinvent ourselves from time to time, making movements going
forward.
Izwe
Jaki
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: [PAYCO] EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE - A LEADERSHIP IMPERATIVE
Date: Mon, 12 Sep 2011 15:25:54 +0000
Cde Seroke:
I saw your email Saturday,l as I was working an overtime. Due to workload, I
could not read nor have time to decipher its import. Suffice to say it was more
of an academic discourse. My supervisor picked it up on top of the printer as I
had forgotten it there when I went outside. Curiously, she asked “ Mdu, what
going on” putting her finger on the passage that read “and went on to say "B -
Bloody, L - Lazy, A - AIDS, C - Carrying, K – Kaffirs” I urbanely responded as
“ no it’s just an email I received from my blog group, I haven’t read it “
latter I went to her and explained that it was just a recounting of event that
deal with emotional intelligence. Politely she said “ if it were me, I would
not have only retorted, instead I would have screamed if someone made such a
remark on me“ . you see, you are touching a very imported aspect in human
existence. Mastering the art of putting emotions at bay is one of the daunting
task in human species. Some years ago, browsing on an internet, I saw a book
penned by Michael Muendane, which was a biography of Vusimuzi Make, who was a
chairperson of the central committee after the deposal of PK Leballo. The
website happened to belong to an organization which Mike was a founder. I
telephoned the organization and asked his admin assistant to put me through to
him. Gasping as a result his tone which exhibited some abrasion, I aid to him
“Ma-africa Muendane I see you wrote an autobiography of Vusi Make” the first
thing he said angrily, what do you mean I wrote an autobiography because Vusi
did not write this himself. I did not even know the difference between an
autobiography and a biography. He then called his admin assistant ,as I could
hear from the other end of the line, and began to scold at him for putting me
through to him. From then, I have been asking people that worked with him, one
thing I established was that he had uncontrollable temperament. Again, I can’t
recall exactly, however, it must have been one of the congresses we had in post
1994. I was in a group with Bamba Ndwandwe who was a national organizer,
someone ask him a question. He got irked, and said to the comrade use your
p*nis. The point I am making is that, there were leaders in this organization
which I had admired dearly, but when I came to the management of their
emotions, I was disappointed. I slightly disagree with how you put Mbeki to the
group of those that have failed to control their emotions. Admittedly, the
drama of pushing Winnie Mandela attracted a lot of censure from the always
outspoken media, critics and populace at large. My assessment of him is that,
he does have a knack of circumscribing his emotions. Take for instance, ever
since his waterloo, in what was known as Polokwane. He has suffered a lot of
tirade from his ANC family detractors chiefly among them was Malema. Mbeki has
elected to refrain from rebutting those attacks,(weather they were legitimate
or not, that is beside the point). Today the same detractors are hailing him as
a hero, albeit, they haven’t, and surely will not recant their attacks. He
doesn’t get carried away by excitement to the media. Peter Raboroko once told
me that PK Leballo would discredit Selby ngedame at meeting, because of his
playboy penchant, sometimes Selby would come to the meetings accompanied by
girlfriends. As Robs recounted, Selby would deal with PK appropriately. I
agree, we in the PAC need to learn these things. Of course, “emotions play a
major role in the process of thinking, decision-making”
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jaki
Seroke
Sent: Friday, September 09, 2011 12:59 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [PAYCO] EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE - A LEADERSHIP IMPERATIVE
Cde Mduduzi
After a nasty experience with my work mates, a friend recommended that I read
what was by then a new publication, 'Emotional Intelligence - Why it Matters
More than IQ', Bloombury 1996, by Daniel Goleman, a psychiatrist who captured
the issues over emotions and leadership and represented his ideas with actual
cases in order to reach the lay reader. The concept of emotional intelligence
is now used in university courses that deal with leadership at business schools
worldwide. It is worth exploring this issue in our discussions too. I want to
make two examples of my own.
We were a committee tasked to deal with transformation and empowerment matters
at this JSE-listed company in the defence industry. Paris Mashile, a highly
qualified scientist and electronics engineer, was head of the committee and I
was the only other black person in a committee of five management policy
makers. Some of the white directors were not happy with the envisaged changes,
and almost all the time sabotaged the process deliberately. Paris convened
this crucial meeting where final recommendations were to be adopted. I later
learnt this from him after the meeting was adjourned, that a few minutes prior
to us sitting in the meeting one of the directors openly asked him a rhetorical
question - "Do you know what BLACK stands for?" - and went on to say "B -
Bloody, L - Lazy, A - AIDS, C - Carrying, K - Kaffirs", and the rest laughed
uproariously. Paris was fuming and totally lost his mind in the meeting. He
never handled the proposed resolutions and the objectives of the meeting well.
I did not understand his behaviour - my approach with these colleagues at the
time was to come to the meeting right on time, to avoid small talk. Their plan
was to shake Paris Mashile emotionally in order to sabotage the crucial
decision - and it worked.
Mashile later resigned and joined Siemens and went on to be appointed
chairperson of ICASA, the communications regulatory body. I also left the
company at a later stage for entirely different reasons: in the corporate world
there are invisible dog collars and chains, which come as perks, and I was not
cut out for such things. As a rule, I follow the dictates of my conscience.
At the CODESA forum in Kempton Park, I was once invited to a private discussion
with Cyril Ramaphosa and his ANC comrades like Joe Slovo and others. Their aim
was to influence the PAC delegates in a particular direction. Before the
meeting Cyril told me that he couldn't help noticing that my neck tie was the
same as that of the white oppressor in the NP leadership. The tie was a gift
from the Sowetan newspaper and it had no exclusive choice or implied similarity
of taste properties between me and the "white oppressor". This was a ploy to
destabilise me emotionally so that I'd lose my train of thought before the core
issues were tabled. Needless to say, we came out poles apart from the meeting.
Jacob Zuma has no emotional intelligence as a leader. The blunders over SA
endorsing no fly zone in Libya and therefore suppporting NATO and regime
change, and the way he handled himself at a Youth League conference trying to
explain his sell-out foreign policy when he berated a heckler on the matter,
and, the Mogoeng choice to spite Moseneke in the appointment of Chief Justice,
clearly attest to that. Thabo Mbeki also falls in this category. He slapped
Winnie Mandela with a back hander at a public forum because she arrived late as
a crowd favourite who stole the thunder from him. He sulked openly in the
glare of the media when he lost at the infamous Polokwane electing conference.
Academics and thought leaders are now saying emotions play a major role in the
process of thinking, decision-making and individual success. They say
emotional intelligence helps to perceive, control and evaluate emotions. It is
a required package in the leadership personality and collective, and in the
process of day to day decisions-making. Are we in the PAC alive to this
development and can we relate to it in the past mistakes we have made?
Jaki
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