VALUES BASED LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT: 2014 & BEYONDA Concept Note

OVERVIEW As the Steve Biko Foundation enters its 15th year, the institution seeks to expand its leadership development offering through the creation of a consolidated leadership development curriculum. Comprised of the elements outlined herein, the curriculum will be based on the following core values:

Agency; Community; Critical analysis and inquiry; Culture, identity and history; Self-reliance.

Drawing on the rich political leadership tradition of the country, the curriculum will be informed by corresponding principles from the vast body of knowledge on traditional, business and religious leadership. The syllabus will be used to support current organizations and individuals within SBF’s network, while also serving as a useful tool for the constituencies of similar minded partners for whom leadership development is central.

The curriculum will also include a practical element of focused skills development that will equip participants with the tools to actualize their respective visions. Particular emphasis will be placed on cooperatives as a means to facilitate development; as well as social entrepreneurship for the benefit of the individual and the collective.

The curriculum will be based on critical and timely issues and will provide platforms for participants to engage a wide variety of stakeholders, ranging from community members to international actors. This engagement will in part consist of facilitated dialogues that have a direct bearing on participants’ lives. Polices such as the Patient’s Rights Charter, which outlines the rights and responsibilities of healthcare practitioners and patients; black economic empowerment; and land redistribution will feature in the curriculum alongside issues of culture, heritage and identity.

PROGRAM RATIONALE The impetus behind the proposed leadership development curriculum is the reality that two decades into its democratic dispensation, South Africa has made significant strides in advancing socio-economic development; yet, the nation has fallen short in fulfilling a number of the promises enshrined in its constitution. The gross disparities that continue to exist in South Africa are evident in education, health and housing among other areas. Compounding these developmental challenges are political contestations around the role of the judiciary and freedom of the press; as well as deep concerns over social

cohesion. In order to overcome these challenges, and for South Africa to achieve its full potential, the Steve Biko Foundation is of the view that the active participation and engagement of all of the nation’s citizens is required. Further, new, innovative leadership—reflective of the principles of humanity—is required to meet the challenges of the 21st century. Increasingly, the tremendous progress on the policy front, which characterised the first ten years of democracy, does not seem to translate seamlessly into a compelling public-intervention plan. As a result, a number of public institutions have habitually returned funding to the treasury, failing to deliver on key transformation objectives such as education, housing and health. One such example is that of the Eastern Cape Provincial Government, which despite leading one of the poorest regions, returned R 1.4 billion to the national treasury in the last fiscal year. Of this amount R500 million was designated for housing and R400 million for health.

The country has also witnessed the sluggish response of the private sector to the challenge of transformation. Apart from the transfer of equity, which is but one criterion on the Black Economic Empowerment menu, few companies have successfully integrated skills development, enterprise development, community social investment and other mandates into their transformation plans.

Lastly, civil society, which has been the mainstay of the tempo and texture of the struggle against apartheid, has not been successful in inculcating an alternative culture of citizenship. Historically, civil society’s strategy was to render South Africa ungovernable. This was done through a culture of protest and disengagement which, among others, took the form of rent and service boycotts. The ensuing culture of “entitlement” has continued to be an indelible part of civic life. It explains the current dependency discourse in which government is viewed in the context of “service delivery.” The challenge of civil society is to infuse a culture in which communities frame the development discourse informed by notions of self-reliance and of agency.

It is important to recall that historically, much of the capacity to develop leadership was embedded in the political formations and expressed in all facets of South African life. Few organizations if any have retained this capacity in their journey from liberation movements to political parties. It is the nation’s ability to create alternative leadership paths that will yield the capacity to stabilise and entrench its democracy. In the absence of such avenues South Africa will be vulnerable to an erosion of its newfound democratic gains.

CURRENT SBF LEADERSHIP INTERVENTIONS Given the dual challenges of leadership development and consolidation of democracy in South Africa, the Steve Biko Foundation has channelled many of its efforts toward leadership development. Drawing on Biko’s legacy, the Foundation recognizes the inexorable link between history and biography, between consciousness of self and national ideals. While the tangible elements of leadership development such as time-management, decision making and project management, are rightly seen as central to leadership, the intangible elements, namely identity, values and history are often overlooked.

SBF focuses on developing leadership with an approach that integrates the personal, political and professional. In this model, an individual’s sense of self—their values and beliefs—finds expression in both their political representations

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and professional conduct. The pillars of SBF interventions to date are as follows:

Values-based LeadershipIn post-apartheid South Africa much has been made of the skills shortage and leadership development. Consequently, alongside the provision of access to traditional training grounds such as business schools, a number of programs have been developed to address these needs; among them are: the Sectoral Education Training Agencies (SETA); various youth councils; and leadership academies. While these initiatives do address the skills and leadership challenges facing the nation, the reality is that they are geared toward producing professionals, not citizens. Furthermore, access to these institutions tends to favour urban communities over rural locales.

The proposition of the Steve Biko Foundation focuses on developing a cadre of leadership whose mandate extends beyond the boundary of the firm. The Foundation focuses on developing leadership not only for success, but for significance. This approach is underpinned by five central values:

Agency Community Critical analysis and inquiry Culture, identity and history Self-reliance

These values are inculcated through school programs, lectures, seminars, workshops, community dialogue sessions, conferences and publications. (A detailed description of these initiatives can be found in SBF’s programmatic overview.) They are designed to enable a culture of decision-making which emphasizes the common good over individual gain at the expense of the collective.

Focused Skills DevelopmentWhile the bedrock of the Foundation’s intervention is values-driven leadership, SBF seeks to compliment these elements by creating access to skills development opportunities. The objective of this facet of the leadership development program is two-fold. First, the aim is to equip individuals and communities with tools with which to express their values. By creating avenues to access vocational training, business skills and entrepreneurial opportunities, SBF seeks to assist communities in actualizing the principle of agency. The Foundation recognises that without basic skills in community organizing and organizational development the values SBF seeks to disseminate remain an unattainable ideal.

The second impetus behind skills development as a component of leadership development is the reality that poverty and economic hardships shape the lives of the majority of South Africans. Many individuals, who could contribute positively to development and democracy, are bound by the need to provide not only for themselves but their families. At its worst, poverty not only undermines the dignity of people, but can contribute to decision-making that violates the values articulated above.

Accordingly among the Foundation’s interventions in the arena of skills development are:

Entrepreneurial development as a vehicle for sustainable livelihoods

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Business skills Organizational development

Community Based LeadershipAll too often, individuals and institutions outside of mainstream political formations, and recognized opinion makers, are excluded from social discourse. In seeking to create a culture of interrogative leadership, the third pillar of the Steve Biko Foundation’s leadership development program centres on increasing the capacity of communities to produce organic leaders through a self-replenishing leadership culture, sustained by consistent engagement with contemporary social issues.

The Foundation seeks to empower communities to not only serve as respondents to national dialogue, but to feature in framing the issues and developing alternative paradigms. This kind of leadership is endowed not only with the capacity to regurgitate policies and programmes; it is possessed with the aptitude to synthesize ideas and to originate policies and interventions, furthering the democratic project. A strong culture of critical engagement assists communities in developing successive generations of leadership that is responsive and grounded in local issues.

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT: 2014 & BEYOND While SBF has carried out this work since the inception of the institution, in 2014, the Foundation seeks to create a comprehensive leadership development curriculum based on its experiences to date. Suitable for newcomers, emerging or established leaders the curriculum will focus on:

Consciousness: What Does it Mean to be a Leader Community: How to do Well While Doing Good Core Skills: Practical Skills to Advance the Vision of an Individual or

Institution

Although the envisaged leadership development curriculum will be facilitated in locales throughout South Africa, the Steve Biko Centre, based in the Ginsberg Township of King William’s Town in the Eastern Cape, will serve as the fulcrum for the initiative. Designed to translate global interest in the legacy of anti-apartheid activist Bantu Stephen Biko into an intellectual and economic resource for the reason, the Centre is an ideal space for women and men from South Africa and abroad to interrogate the ideals of leadership. Already, in its first year of operation, the Centre has received 20,000 visitors from all walks of life.

Moving beyond the Centre, SBF will partner with organizations in other locales, employing a train the trainer model and facilitating its own workshops, to teach the values based leadership curriculum.

OUTCOME As a result of this intervention, within a five year period SBF anticipates notable gains in the entrenchment of democracy and a culture of engaged citizenship. Within that time, the Foundation will have created an environment in which South Africans, would have had an opportunity to interrogate the principles of leadership and been empowered to facilitate change—based on the principles of humanity enshrined in the South African Constitution—in their own lives, the lives of their communities and the life of the nation.

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