In a country with an ethical leadership deficit, the likes of Pravin Gordhan are like fresh air after a long-haul flight, says Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya.
Durban – By the end of Thursday we will know whether Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan met the deadline to answer the 27 questions asked by the Hawks regarding the so-called South African Revenue Services rogue unit.
Opinion has been divided about whether Gordhan should answer the questions. South Africans even differ on whether the questions are routine law-enforcement processes or part of a plot to shake down the minister.
Gordhan also seems to have the media’s and the public’s backing in what is playing out as a war between himself and Revenue Services commissioner Tom Moyane.
If you follow the media and social networks’ take on the matter, you would have to conclude that Moyane is the villain of the piece and Gordhan the persecuted hero.
The markets too seem to have taken a side. The rand dropped last Friday and has been volatile since then with fears that Gordhan could be fired.
That is why the Presidency took the unusual step of announcing that “Minister Gordhan remains the minister of finance and any positing that the position of the minister is under threat is dismissed with the contempt it deserves”.
This comes from the office of the man who famously summarised the head of state’s prerogative to hire and fire ministers by saying “the president has the right to appoint or disappoint”.
If you ask me, I have no idea what is going on. I do not know who is the good guy or the bad guy here.
I do note though that we have an unprecedented situation where the president of the Republic feels the duty to reassure a cabinet minister and the various publics that the minister’s job is safe.
I am impressed by how Gordhan has been able to cultivate a reputation of trustworthiness that many of his colleagues representing the different parties (or factions of the parties) can only wish for.
Gordhan has become the kind of person who, were it to be necessary, would have his lies more believed than the truths of others.
I need to emphasise here that I am not suggesting that Gordhan is untruthful or in any way of dubious character.
On the contrary, I am suggesting that he has a lot to teach fellow politicians about building a reputation of ethical leadership.
In a country that has an ethical leadership deficit, the likes of Gordhan are like fresh air after a long-haul flight.
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Of course, this ethical leadership vacuum is not only in politics.
One of the reasons for industrial unrest is labour and capital simply do not trust each other.
Unions find it hard to trust that businesses are unable to match what in the greater scheme of things is their meager increases, when they see executives pocket millions of rands as bonuses while declaring losses.
Business leaders have also learnt that many in the trade union movement use workers to advance their own political career aims while faking a radicalism.
Workers are left in limbo, not knowing who, between the business owner and the union representative, they must trust.
In Durban, there is a standing conflict between the city council and the company that runs the municipality’s bus services.
The municipality says it has often had to bail the company out of financial difficulties, but the company disputes this.
It argues that the money paid to it by the council was due it and, in fact, the municipality owes it tens of millions of rands.
As with the Gordhan issue, which of the two versions you choose to believe will be more about who between them has a better or worse reputation of being truthful and ethical.
This year’s Oscars touched on the credibility of leadership in spaces that preach higher morality.
The winner of the best picture award went to Spotlight, a movie about the Boston Globe’s investigative team’s exposé of rampant sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergymen and the subsequent attempts to cover up.
Speaking of the Boston Globe, it would be remiss of me to exclude the media from this trust deficit situation.
An honest appraisal of our media will find that media practitioners have contributed to the decline of their industry by choosing to be factional and unbalanced in our coverage of news. This is true for sports and arts as it is for political reporting.
In other instances, we have been downright dishonest, and if allegations made against a Sunday tabloid prove to be true, even criminal, in how we go about the news-gathering and dissemination enterprise.
That is why all of us, regardless of where we walk our lives, must reflect on our reputations and take a moment to imagine ourselves caught in the same position as Gordhan.
Can the public – without adequate information to decide whether to believe you or others – choose you?
To ask the question in a different way, are we the kind of people of whom others would believe our lies before they believe the truths of others?
