HERE, NOW &

TOMORROW

Bonisile Makubalo

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Agenda

South African Context:

Constitutional aspirations
Our societal values
Poverty
Inequality
What is your role?
Some Questions on Leadership
Know thy Self
Summary
Questions
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CALLIBRATION

My views:

Can and should be challenged

The inverse often has merit
Positives and Negatives are acknowledged
I dont hold dogmatic views
Feel free to criticise I dont hold intellectual
property to wisdom

My Request from you:

Open mind
Critical assessment

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CONSTITUTIONAL
ASPIRATIONS
Section 198(a) of the Constitution provides for a
South Africa where its people, as individuals and as
a nation shall live as equals, in peace and harmony,
free from fear and want and being able to seek a
better life.

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OUR SOCIETAL VALUES

Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair
Discrimination Act provides for:
The transition to a democratic society, united
in its diversity, marked by human relations that
are caring and compassionate, and guided by
the principles of equality, fairness, equity,
social progress, justice, human dignity and
freedom.

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POVERTY
The states own report, Towards A Fifteen Year
Review, while pointing to a six to seven
percentage reduction in income poverty amongst
African people, acknowledges that African people
continue to account for a disproportionate share
of poverty. According to the report, while African
people made 77% of the population in 1995 and
79% in 2005, they accounted for in both years
93% of those living on less than R322 a month.
This trend cannot be left to continue if we are to
achieve our constitutional aspirations.
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INEQUALITY
A more worrying development is the increasing gap
between the rich and the poor over the last 16 years.
According to the states Towards A Fifteen Year Review
report, national income inequality as measured by the
Gini coefficient increased from 0.64 to 0.69 between 1995
and 2005 and continued to do so from 2006 to 2007.
The income inequality and other forms of inequalities in
South Africa are still manifest. In the context of our history
and the current global food and financial crises, these
challenges constitute a serious threat to social cohesion
and stability of the country and inform, to some extent,
many of our current political, economic and social
challenges.
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Role of Business in General

Business Power:
On the power of corporate entities and their influence in society, Joel
Bakan, in his book, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit
and Power, observed:
Over the last 150 years the corporation has risen from relative obscurity
to become the worlds dominant economic institution. Today, corporations
govern our lives. They determine what we eat, what we watch, what we
wear, where we work, and what we do. We are inescapably surrounded
by their culture, iconography, and ideology. And, like the church and the
monarchy in other times, they posture as infallible and omnipotent,
glorifying themselves in imposing buildings and elaborate displays.
Increasingly, corporations dictate the decisions of their supposed
overseers in government and control domains of society once firmly
embedded within the public sphere.
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Role of Institutions of Higher Learning

Challenges:

Transformation

Viable Funding

Producing skills needed by the economy

Producing graduates with soul

Managing change

Leading social discourse

Courage for intellectual independence

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Intellectual Absence
Another important issue on the curriculum is the
broad challenge to have innovative methods to
expand the intellectual horizons and critical faculties
of our students. For example most of our social,
economic and management sciences are dominated if
not enslaved by a single idea that the market is the
answer to all of our societal and developmental
problems. Yet this idea has just been cruelly exposed
by the current global economic crisis, such that it is
an idea that in itself is in crisis. One does not get a
sense that these matters are being critically
examined in our academic institutions and public
discourse.
By Minister of Higher Education
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What is YOUR role?

In any society, ours included, citizens either
play a positive or negative role. While some
citizens uphold the law, promote positive
values of the society and advance its
interests; some citizens break the law, ravage
other citizens and plunder their resources.
What role do you play??
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Questions on
Leadership

Who of you are leaders?

What makes you a leader?
What do leaders do?
Would you be elected leader if
your subordinates/friends
could vote?
How do you define leadership?

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What is Leadership in the 21st Century?

Conventional Leadership

Leadership Reinvented

Leaders in business lead AND manage.

Leadership = promoting new directions.

There is no sharp distinction between

Management = getting things done.

All employees can promote new directions.

Leadership can be shown bottom-up or

leadership and management.

They occupy positions of authority.

Leadership is a formal role.

They make strategic decisions.

They are good at managing people.

They have emotional intelligence.

They sell the tickets for a new journey AND

sideways to people who don't report to you.

take the group to the destination.

Leadership has nothing to do with managing

people - that's management.

Leaders don't make decisions. The ACT of

leadership is one of pure informal influence.

Leaders sell the tickets for the journey,

Managers drive the bus to the destination.

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Challenges facing
Leadership

1. Family, peers and societal pressure to succeed ahead of our talents and
skills.
2. The market pressure to perform ahead of business realities.
3. Different ethical norms when dealing with people from different cultures or
countries.
4. Short term perspective Quest for instant gratification.
5. Success itself.
6. The worst is greed.
7. Abundance of bad role models.

KNOW THY SELF

By Plato

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If theres no enemy inside, the

enemy outside can do us NO
HARM
African Proverb

Success or Failure is always an

inside job
John Maxwell

What do YOU stand for?

When did you last take stock of
where you are and where you are
going?
How clear are you about your
strengths and weaknesses?
Do you have a strategy for your life?
Have you defined success for you?
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Know Thy Self

You are Totally responsible for your LIFE

!
Are you in Total CONTROL of your life??
Have YOU made a choice to be here?
If you have, are YOU achieving your
OBJECTIVES?

Summary
We must show that intellect, application, diligence, creativity, innovation,
service, judgement, integrity and just plain hard work will succeed long
after the dishonest opportunists have been forgotten.
We must protect our reputation with strong character and sound
judgement and we must nurture it in the knowledge that we cannot talk
our way out of a situation we have behaved our way into.
We must accept that we cannot apply one set of ethics for our family, a
second for the office and a third on the golf course.
We have to accept that theres an expiry date on blaming others for your
actions.
You have to claim and take full charge of your life. What is there to loose?
Your future will only be limited by the choices you make

WHAT WILL MATTER.

By Michael Josephson
Ready or not, some day it will all come to an end,
There will be no more sunrises, no minutes, hours or days.
All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten, will
pass to someone else.
Your wealth, fame and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance.
It will not matter what you owned or what you were owed.
Your grudges, resentments, frustrations and jealousies, will finally
disappear.
So too, your hopes, ambitions, plans and to-do lists will expire.
The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade
away.
It wont matter where you come from or what side of the tracks
you lived on at the end.
It wont matter whether you were beautiful or brilliant.
Even your gender and skin colour will be irrelevant.
So what will matter? How will the value of your days be
measured?

WHAT WILL MATTER.

By Michael Josephson
What will matter is not what you bought but what you built,
not what you got but what you gave,
What will matter is not your success but your significance,
What will matter is not what you learned but what you taught,
What will matter is every act of integrity, compassion ,courage
or sacrifice that enriched, empowered or encouraged others to
emulate your example.
What will matter is not your competence but your character.
What will matter is not how many people you knew,
but how many people will feel a lasting loss when you are
gone.
What will matter is not your memories but the memories of
those who loved you.
What will matter is how you will be remembered, by whom
and for what.
Living a life that matters doesnt happen by accident.
Its not a matter of circumstance but choice.

Live each day as though it was your

last, cause one day it will probably be
true!

Thank You