RW Johnson: Why leaders who don’t read can’t lead - South Africa’s literacy deficit at the top

Key topics:MK party launches Jacob Zuma lecture series to defend his legacyKissinger laments decline of leaders shaped by deep, humanistic educationSouth African leadership seen as regressing due to lack of rigorous learning.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..By RW Johnson.Listen to this story instead:.When I switched on my TV this morning there was Floyd Shivambu explaining that the MK party was mounting the Jacob Zuma Lectures, to be given in every province, all with the aim of dispelling the familiar accusation that Zuma’s presidency was “nine wasted years”. To be fair, Shivambu was smiling as he spoke, so he may well have realised that a better adjective than ”wasted” was “catastrophic”. Or he may have simply enjoyed the joke of a lecture series commemorating the barely literate Zuma.I’ve been reading Henry Kissinger’s Leadership – portraits of Adenauer, Sadat, Nixon, De Gaulle, Thatcher and Lee Kwan Yew, all of whom Kissinger knew and frequently spoke with. But in conclusion he looks at the question of why leaders of this stature are now unusual. The problem, he suggests, is that the West’s schools and universities seldom now offer the “broad and rigorous humanistic education that shaped prior generations of leaders”. Instead they tend to educate technicians and activists but neither tends to have the thorough grounding in history or philosophy that a leader needs.There is also a problem of what Kissinger calls “deep literacy”. Under modern conditions “reading a complex book carefully and engaging with it critically has become as counter-cultural an act as was memorizing an epic poem in the earlier print-based age”. For we have moved from the print age to an age more based on images – film, TV, YouTube, podcasts, plus the internet and social media. Undoubtedly this has greater emotional impact but their greater immediacy and intensity have a high price. All events have to be understood in their context and in their historical background and this is now often lost and there is a consequent weakening of analytic abilities.There is, basically, no substitute for books and reading. Intense reading provides a sense of proportion, lends itself to reflection and expands memory. Moreover, books offer a sequential and orderly reality that can be mastered and they create “a skein of intergenerational conversation, infusing learning with a sense of perspective” and also providing inspiration. Someone who reads throughout their life gains a deeper and more layered understanding, something really approaching wisdom. But the reliance on images tends to produce image-conscious spin doctors and populists. Under such circumstances it is simply not possible for a Churchill, a De Gaulle or an FDR to emerge. All the leaders “with a world-historical impact” such as those examined by Kissinger, benefited from a rigorous and humanistic education. Moreover, “such an education begins in a formal setting and continues in a lifetime through reading and discussion with others”. Modern universities no longer, either explicitly or implicitly, teach statecraft. All the leaders studied by Kissinger had a capacity for analysis and strategy, as well as courage and character and they all tended to cut to the chase, penetrating a fog of events and verbiage by pointing out what was really important. Today’s leaders, by contrast, may have remarkable technology and algorithms at their disposal, but they will seldom have a proper grasp of the strategic and philosophical implications of these wonders. An algorithm gives you a result but it’s up to you to work out what the theory was behind that – and many don’t or can’t do that. Illustrating these points, Kissinger points to Adenauer. Though not naturally a humble or submissive man, Adenauer carefully assessed the constraining regime exerted by the occupying Western powers on West Germany after the war. While many of their rules were irksome he realised that things could have been a great deal worse: all three powers were democrats, they had plenty of reasons for not trusting Germans and anyway there was no resisting them. So while many German politicians played to the gallery by criticising the Allied powers, Adenauer decided that it was better to adopt a posture of humble compliance. The more he could win the Allies’ confidence the sooner their constraints would be removed. On occasion this provoked angry criticism from within his own party – to which he angrily retorted “Who do you think lost the war, then ?” His strategy worked and the independent republic of West Germany was born far sooner than had been imagined.After Adenauer gave up the Chancellorship and was followed, briefly, by Ludwig Erhard and then by Kurt Kiesinger, Kissinger asked him for his assessment. Adenauer said Kiesinger was making mistakes but at least he was better than “that stupid fool Erhard”. Kissinger, conscious that Erhard had masterminded West Germany’s economic miracle, suggested that Erhard was more non-political than stupid. “For a political leader”, replied Adenauer, “being non-political is the definition of stupidity.” There was no dissembling with Adenauer. He said what he thought, he had a sharply analytic mind and his logic was penetrating. Two of Kissinger’s six leaders came from the developing world, Sadat and Lee Kwan Yew – though the latter was a top First at Cambridge and brilliantly able. Yet Kissinger’s admiration for Sadat is enormous. Sadat had spent his whole career in the shadow of Nasser, whose charisma and spellbinding oratory had made him an unchallengable leader. And like all other Arab leaders Nasser had sworn never to make peace with Israel. Yet once he took over Sadat reflected at length: Egypt’s three wars against Israel (in 1948, 1956 and 1967) had brought nothing but loss and humiliation. And Egypt absolutely could not afford a continuing state of war. On the other hand the humiliation of 1967 was still deeply felt. Sadat decided that Egypt had to achieve at least a partial victory before he could negotiate and so he secretly planned the Yom Kippur war of 1973 which carried Egypt deep into Sinai. Having thus restored his country’s honour, Sadat negotiated with Israel and finally made peace with it – ignoring the furious denunciation of the rest of the Arab world. Sadat had realised that Nasser, like many Third World leaders, had become the prisoner of his own bombast, promising eternal war against an enemy he could never defeat while his country cried out for peace. Sadat paid with his life for that peace but none of his successors have reversed his policy and other Arab states have gradually made peace with Israel too.Nonetheless, Kissinger generally reserves his remarks for Western leaders alone. One can see why. Africa stands at the opposite pole: it is a long-established truism that Africa has been badly let down by the poor quality of its leadership. Only a minority of African leaders have been university educated and none of them has achieved any lasting stature. Of all Africa’s leaders only Jan Smuts (another top Cambridge First) was the sort of analytic, reflective leader that Kissinger admires and none of them except Smuts were intense, lifelong readers. If one looks at South Africa’s post-1994 leaders the only intense, lifelong reader was probably Tony Leon. Tony read voraciously and all the time. I remember discussing one of his DA successors with him. Of that person Tony said “the trouble is that X doesn’t read and frankly I don’t see how you can do the job if you’re not reading all the time” – yet the oddity is that many South African politicians don’t even realise the truth of that statement. ANC politicians generally belong to a more verbal culture, with the possible exception of Mbeki, though most of his reading seems to be done on the internet rather than books. In the Kissinger view, that wouldn’t count.The truth is of course that since 1994 South Africa’s leadership has been less well educated than hitherto and in a host of ways it shows. Thus FW de Klerk’s decision to end apartheid and opt for democracy was based on a careful reading of the international situation, particularly the collapse of Communism. Similarly, in the 1930s Smuts had refused to resign from the Herzog government because he was carefully following the world situation and was certain that war with Hitler was inevitable. He believed that when that occurred he had to be in the Cabinet to ensure that South Africa took the right side against Hitler. Yet it is difficult to imagine a South African leader now following, understanding and acting upon changes in the international situation. Whatever happens abroad now hits us as a surprise.When De Klerk made his epochal speech in February 1990 Van Zyl Slabbert was in Oxford as a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College. I saw him a great deal at that time and he was much excited by his reading of the four volume Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Prospects for Democracy by Schmitter, O’Donnell and Whitehead. Again, it is difficult now to imagine a South African leader devouring and discussing an academic work of that sort. (And De Klerk contacted Van at that point to seek his advice about the forthcoming changes. These too we discussed.) The fact is that, across the board, we have regressed. One result of this regression is that our leaders now know very little history, the key discipline for understanding and evaluating politics. Another result is the way that ANC leaders – even the more intelligent ones – are stuck in the 1960s. One gets the impression that they were deeply impressed by the Marxism and Pan Africanism of that period and have never been able to move on from there. Yet we are now as far removed from that era as the 1960s were from Queen Victoria. Yet it is what it is and we are where we are. Here too one can see the necessity of a continued – indeed, a permanent – GNU, for that will infuse government with a better educated, better informed and more energetic spirit, which it desperately needs. Currently South Africa is slipping backwards from its long-established leadership of the African continent. There is no need for this to happen. We still have the material and human resources to be No.1. It’s just a matter of using sensibly what we have got.

RW Johnson: Why leaders who don’t read can’t lead - South Africa’s literacy deficit at the top

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