The binary leadership of the planter and the binder is what we should reflect on in these challenging times. The decision by the president of the US that perpetual dependence is a disease and has to be eliminated is correct but not novel. How he expressed it and implemented it as abruptly as he did needs to be addressed with minds that are steadfast and bold and stand up to all forms of adversity and bullying. If we do not, this decision, which has been a long time coming from President Donald Trump regardless of what happened in between, as ambassador Ebrahim Rasool explicitly and correctly said, leaves irrecoverable destruction in its path. In its trail is destruction in the termination of lives, livelihoods and mortality of time-series — the only precious value of statistics.
Mistra, in its online seminar series, organised the most significant stadia to unmask the “Your Excellency veneer of diplomacy into the open of what everyone always knew of what we have always meant to Trump and what Trump has always meant to the ‘shithole countries’”. Only Botswana responded on record that Trump has been “reprehensible and racist” and subsequently summoned the US ambassador in Botswana to explain the remarks.
There is nothing new in what Rasool said — Botswana had said it before — and accused Trump already in 2018 of the conduct Rasool intimated about Trump and the US two weeks ago. Has the straw man who was challenged by Botswana created an exclusive language protocol between itself and Botswana as a senior makoti and created a junior makoti syndrome out of Rasool and South Africa such that they cannot engage in the high-table language of questioning?
And has South Africa acquiesced to this junior makoti assignment or has it not been alive to Trump’s “shithole country” antics and to those who took exception, such as Botswana, to this notion? Steven Friedman would have not put it more appropriately in his “realignment of politics” interview in Newzroom Africa on the ambivalence and hypocrisy towards Rasool’s apt intervention.
What would have the planter and the binder said to the Trump moment? Of course, a contemporary answer is offered by Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He weighed the uranium and expelled France and the Sahel now sees where it is headed and sets an example for the continent.
We therefore have to draw from our millennia-long knowledge and our collective learning out of struggle as black people in our first encounter with white people. Trump has brought this historicity into sharp relief and has assisted in precipitating not only the class but the race-based contradictions on red rights that were brought to the fore with the rise of the USSR. Southern Africa, the stadia of the current drama as we welcome one who captured the spirit of struggle back home, bears historical relevance in the making of the region.
What would have the planter and the binder said to the Trump moment? Of course, a contemporary answer is offered by Ibrahim Traoré of Burkina Faso. He weighed the uranium and expelled France and the Sahel now sees where it is headed and sets an example for the continent. This is what the Trump response is about. But this response is etched in 1652 and the struggles we have endured over the past 500 years. This can be punctuated by the past 300 and what we learn from mercantile capitalism and conquest.
The binary leadership of the planter (mohlomi) and the binder (letlama) is part of our 300-year heritage of great leadership that faced up to torment, ridicule and exploitation. This grounded us to face new forms of adversity well beyond myopic “we will smoke them out” antihistory rhetoric. Two-hundred years ago in our territorial midst was planted a seed that bound us together, and we need to draw from this as a region affected and afflicted by a modern-day system of economic misgovernance.
A fight against perpetual dependence is a principle that the sage Morena Mohlomi anchored in his responsible-leadership model. The Venda women are an epic example of how to pursue economic independence. They are the first to take to heart establishing an authentic black bank that emulated Mohlomi’s ethic of new instruments of power. Sadly, the Venda VBS, rich with lessons, is being opportunistically smoked out and to be buried and forgotten. History fortunately does not forget and we dig deep to answer Trump.
Mohlomi, the son of Morena Monyane, was a Mosotho philosopher, medical doctor, humanitarian, traveller, mentor and a leadership expert. He established a leadership academy in Ngoliloe in what was then Lesotho before it was annexed by a joint marauding force of the Afrikaner and British during the frontier wars. This stolen land was never restored as a matter of legitimate expropriation. Mohlomi was born in 1723 and died in 1813 at 90. His most visible successful mirror is the founder of the Basotho Nation, Morena Moshoeshoe, whose country is 200 years old today. Bicentennial celebrations continued up to March 12, which is Moshoeshoe Day in Lesotho.
Moshoeshoe’s name as he transitioned into leadership as a protégé of Mohlomi was Letlama. He became the magnet of people-centred development and at the height of cannibalism and the Lifaqane in Southern Africa, he continued to build a Basotho nation by accommodating the hungry, the wounded and those fleeing from these wars and from pestilence. He also accommodated the marauding land-hungry settlers only to the extent that they would remain neighbourly in their economic interests and conduct — a condition they betrayed. The Basotho as a nation are an amalgamation of many totems, ethnic groups and tribes of Sotho and Nguni and a product of responsible leadership that Mohlomi embodied and advocated for in his extensive travels in Southern and East Africa, the praxis of which Moshoeshoe is a great exemplar. The accomplished Afrikaner journalist and author, Max Du Preez, describes Mohlomi as the Aristotle of the Caledon Valley.
Mohlomi’s praxis is anchored in his four principles of transformative leadership: peace, productivity, intergenerational value and integrated reporting. Nothing to date beats this model that guided this sage of the 18th century, which was put into practice by Moshoeshoe. The binary leadership of the planter (Mohlomi) and binder (Letlama) is evident not only in the names given to these Basotho leaders but in their relationship to leading and leadership.
It is at times such as these that we can draw from Mohlomi the Planter and Letlama the Binder as a nation. In this regard Mohlomi provides clear guidance in his definition of leadership. Mohlomi understood the concept of leadership. It was in mentoring Moshoeshoe that he displayed his deep understanding of it. By the time Moshoeshoe was brought to Mohlomi by his troubled parents, Moshoeshoe had murdered five people. It was in Moshoeshoe that Mohlomi saw leadership but one that was terribly misguided and needed to be corrected. In fact, through asking questions he understood Moshoeshoe’s misguided thinking.
When Mohlomi asked Moshoeshoe what he wished for, Moshoeshoe said he wanted medicine for power. Mohlomi’s retort to Moshoeshoe was that there is no medicine for power. The only medicine for power is to know yourself, know your people and love them sincerely. That formed the basis of Mohlomi’s code of leadership: “A responsible leader pursues peaceful and productive alliances, accommodates stakeholders and uses new instruments of power to create intergenerational value through integrated reporting.”
A responsible leader pursues peaceful and productive alliances, accommodates stakeholders and uses new instruments of power to create intergenerational value through integrated reporting.
— Mohlomi’s code of leadership
Through this policy advice during his training by the planter (Mohlomi), Moshoeshoe became the binder who would successfully build a nation by uniting many ethnic groups running away or intending to attack. For each he sought to understand their proposition and their motive. He looked into the root cause. Where Letlama shows understanding of root cause is when he led his nation from Menkhoaneng in 1824 to a secure fort in Thaba Bosiu. His grandfather Peete and others were ambushed by cannibals who devoured him and other subjects who were at the tail end of the caravan heading to Thaba Bosiu. The soldiers were deployed and arrested the cannibals, who were then brought to court.
Moshoeshoe unleashed the most astonishing judgment imaginable. He said, no-one in their right minds can desecrate the graves of his people and ancestors. Punishing the cannibals will constitute desecration of the graves of his grandfather. He understood the root cause of human beings choosing to eat their own. He pardoned the nation for having created cannibals by handing ploughs and seeds to the cannibals to join the nation in being productive. By that act alone Moshoeshoe, Letlama the Binder, stopped cannibalism in his country. Moshoeshoe continued to display profound appreciation and understanding of Mohlomi’s principles of pursuit for peace at all times, seeing stakeholders in all avenues or leaving no-one behind in pursuing creation of economic, social and cultural value in time and space — in short, productivity — and integrated reporting.
The US president’s actions remind us to go back to Ngolile to search for answers to our poverty of thought. The answers are not far, for Traoré of Burkina Faso is a practitioner of dumping this dependence. He understood the Basotho saying that “Mphemphe ea lapisa molekane, motho o khonoa ke sa ntlo ea hae” — an unending philanthropic response to begging undermines your own independence and self-reliance. Dr Arikana Chihombori-Quao puts it correctly that the NGO gifts to Africa in the form of USAID are peanuts and Africa has to use its God-given resources to achieve what the Sahel region of young leaders in Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali has displayed, that when a country takes charge of its God-given resources there is no need to beg, but there is a lot to give unconditionally to address the scourge brought about by colonial mercantilism and latter-day imperialism.
Trump is clumsy and uncaring and hopes for an outcome that accumulates for the rich, but his approach can only serve to highlight why Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger are on the right path. The question is with similar if not greater endowments, what holds South Africa back from deploying them to restore dignity to its citizens? After all, the constitution in its preamble is explicit and facilitative for making restorative justice possible.
Ours is to visit the graves of Mohlomi to ask for what we already know would be the answer — look in the mirror and say whether what you see fits the bill of responsible leadership. In that mirror we will see the trumping of the VBS and Ithala among many other small and big skeletons and more recently the hanging out of Rasool to dry. Therefore, what we see in the mirror must form the basis of the national dialogue. Trump has rung the bell and Rasool is out of the bottle — the game is on.
• Dr Pali Lehohla is a professor of practice at the University of Johannesburg, a research associate at Oxford University, a board member of Institute for Economic Justice at Wits and a distinguished alumni of the University of Ghana. He is the former statistician-general of South Africa
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