Mondli Makhanya

The world will remember a bungling man who did not hear the people's clamour for him to exit.

"Have you noticed how we only win the World Cup under a Labour government?" a joyous Wilson was reported to have said.

England had just won the world's most prestigious trophy for the first (and only) time. The nation was happy. A few months earlier his bold gamble in calling an early election (just two years after he had been elected prime minister with a narrow margin) had paid off nicely with the Labour Party increasing is majority from four to 96.

That quote is now widely used to chart the link between sporting triumph and the political fortunes of an incumbent government.

When Wilson lost the election in 1970, shortly after England was bundled out of the World Cup in the quarter finals, many put it down to a depressed nation.

How Gordon Brown must wish history could carbon copy itself.

When Britain goes to the polls next year he will have been prime minister for less than two years, about the period Wilson had been in office when he called the early election. The England team, the only one from the British Isles to have qualified for South Africa 2010, is arguably the strongest assembled since that glory team of '66. For the first time in decades, the gurus of the game are punting England as a favourite, alongside Spain and Brazil.

If Wilson's dictum holds true, Brown ought to delay the election as long as possible and call it after the World Cup. Because maybe, just maybe ...

Brown is not in good straits right now. Whereas Wilson won the election fair and square, albeit with a sliver of a margin, Brown was gifted the premiership by the party and the public's disdain for his predecessor, Tony Blair. He has never had to face the voting public and test his own appeal .

Brown is finding that the public's disdain for him is worse than anything Blair experienced. As his minuscule popularity has plummeted, he has seen power slipping through his fingers.

Just last week he was humiliated and treated like the ruler of a tiny Pacific island nation when his nominations for president and foreign minister of the European Union were ignored by the continent's decision makers. Instead it was the leaders of France and Germany who held sway. Thus has the power of Great Britannia declined on his watch.

Two weeks earlier he was subjected to national ridicule when, in a handwritten letter of condolence to the mother of soldier who had died in Afghanistan, he misspelt several words, including the surname of the dead man.

Adding fuel to the fire was the traditionally Labour-supporting The Sun newspaper 's decision to break with the party with a bold front-page rebuke.

Brown looks increasingly forlorn, and his demeanour is that of an abused pet. It has been left to his one-time party enemy Peter Mandelson to deflect the many knives being flung in his direction.

So when he is ousted from office next year, Brown will go down in history as the prime minister nobody voted for, the prime minister nobody loved and the prime minister everybody could not wait to get rid of.

History will not remember him as one of the world's finest finance ministers, who helped his country weather many storms. History will not remember that it was he who assembled leaders of the G20 nations to plot a unified response to the global economic crisis.

No, the world will remember a bungling man who did not hear the people's clamour for him to exit.

Sound familiar? But let's not go there.

The disease Brown is suffering from is one that afflicts many leaders. They do all in their power to reach their destiny and once they have reached the summit it all falls apart. They do some good here and there before the intoxicating fumes of power get the better of them. In the process they lose all perspective of why they wanted to be in power in the first place. It becomes about them and, before long, they trip over their own egos.

They are deaf to the people's voices. The louder the voices, the more obstinate they become.

So when they are eventually ousted, they retire into ignominy.

In recent times we have seen examples of this. But let's not go there.

The lessons of these leaders are lessons President Jacob Zuma would do well to learn from as he contemplates a lengthy stay in power. Even though he stated that he would serve only one term, there are now calls from some quarters in the ANC for him to remain the president of the republic until 2019.

And this seems to be music to his ears. When asked whether he would stick to his undertaking, he has mumbled something about "the ANC will decide".

He is likely to want to seek a second term as ANC boss in 2012, putting him in position to have another go at the state presidency in 2014 (possibly after a sterling Bafana Bafana performance at the World Cup in Brazil).

It is, of course, his legitimate right to do so, but he should remember the curse of leaders who do not hear the clamour of a people pointing their fingers towards the doorway.