Political Leaders Who Lack ‘Decisive Vision’ Risk Becoming Corrupt

By Dr Masimba Mavaza

It seems that politicians often struggle with decision-making, despite that being their supposed primary responsibility. In cases where politicians are not sure of their decisions, they are found struggling with six possible responses to any situations they might have to deal with. They can accept, reject, ignore, reframe, change, or prevaricate on what they are faced with. In that case what is particularly worrying is the tendency of politicians to prevaricate, which leads to inaction and suggests a lack of competence in decision-making on their part.

Zimbabwe welcomed the new dispensation as an upright and direct leadership which indicates to turn where they are turning. One would think politicians should be good at decision-making, but they aren’t. Of all the options available to them, they usually choose prevarication when there are usually five other alternatives they could use. As a result, our politicians are paralysing our political processes. This gives the country a very bad name as no one could be sure what the direction the country will take.

It seems that most politicians have an enormous problem with decision-making, and yet that is their entire job.
If you are a politician, you want to make a decision about the future of your government, your department, your town, your village, or whatever it might be that you are responsible for. And the vast majority of politicians don’t seem to have a clue about what decision-making involves.
And then there is the choice, and it’s a real one, to change the situation. What we can do is, in response to a situation where we’ve been presented with somebody else’s decision, is present them with a decision in response. So changing the situation is to open a negotiation. It’s not a rejection. It’s not an acceptance. It’s a statement that the world is not as the person who’s made a decision would like it to be because you have the freedom to change things. This isn’t reframing: changing involves a precise counteroffer. And that is, of course, very commonplace.

And finally, there’s the sixth option, which is beloved of every politician of recent years, which is to prevaricate.
Prevarication means that we’ll appoint a committee to review this situation, we’ll have a Commission, we’ll look at all the consequences that have arisen, we will assemble the great and good to prepare a report. This is prevarication. It always delays things.

COURAGEOUS political leadership requires a “decisive vision”, give a decision which spares the country a great deal of stress. Corrupted courageous leadership seeking power without restraint could have “the most terrible consequences in national affairs.The courageous leadership that is required needs a number of aspects if it is not to be corrupted by the exercise of its own strength. It must carry a decisive vision. It is a sign of good leadership to stand on the side of the truth regardless of its popularity. We have seen leaders like Tongogara,Chitepo, Tekere, Nkomo and Mugabe, we may differ with any or all of them, but they set out ideas well formulated in opposition and in government.

“Certainly obstructed by events, inevitably failing in many of their dreams, they did not believe in their own infallibility, and were accompanied, by a company of rivals. They drew on deep thinking in numerous areas from philosophy through the sciences to philosophy.”
These leaders were also honest and had achievable aims,“Courage must relate those aims, especially when they’re overseas, to the needs and hopes of domestic life.

“The next election here poses questions in economics, of productivity, stagnation, equality, infrastructure, and many others. It poses questions of rearmament of the means and ways to peace, and a foreign policy on which depends not only our security but our contribution to the rest of the world. It has high challenges in health, housing, university, and other further education.

President Mnangagwa has done well in his term. It is this term which clearly shows us that the president is surrounded by weak people who cowardly wish to forward a narrative which does not comply with the current affairs. The leadership which must surround the President should at least set a vision for this nation’s place and prominence in the world.

Now we are presiding over a party that had “serious internal differences on a range of issues. We must talk about them without fear. And in this we are an example of a bigger social truth. The fact that the ability to disagree as fellow human beings rather than as enemies seems increasingly elusive in our culture, and not only our political party. People are afraid to talk because they will be labelled the enemies of the president. Courage rested on absolute values, such as “loving your enemy”, and required the desire to serve, not to be served, A political culture that sees politics as a step along the way to wealth is built on sand and will be corrupted. We see both.

It must be mentioned that there is no problem so bad in our party and country that we have not shown in the past that we have the capacity to overcome it. We have an extraordinary story of overcoming the greatest obstacles, rising above our worst selves, and coming together when we need to.

“We can do so again; but, to do so, we must set our sights on developing courage of the right kind across our society.
We must be courageous to stand for decisions which do not demonise our country.
Many people in the leadership positions cannot imagine a life outside parliament or cabinet and to that end they are pressuring the President to stay beyond the Constitutional mandate.

It is not love for the president but clearly selfish power hungry people surrounding the President.
We must know what rationalizes voters’ preferences for decisive leaders. Greater decisiveness entails an inclination to reach decisions more quickly conditional on fixed information. Although speed can be good or bad, agency problems between voters and politicians create preferences among voters for leaders who perceive high costs of delay and have little uncertainty about how to weigh different aspects of the decision problem, and hence who make decisions more rapidly than typical voters. Officials who aspire to higher office therefore signal decisiveness by accelerating decisions.

In elections, candidates with reputations for greater decisiveness prevail despite making smaller compromises, and therefore earn larger rents from office holding. Making a decision saves the nation from anxiety and unnecessary squabbles.
The world measures good leaders on how they relate to their own constitution.

Zimbabwe does not need toxic people around the president. We take pride in that the president is a celebrated constitutionalist and not a man motivated by power.

The pressure on the president to break the law is demonic and must be stopped.