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Quraysha Ismail Sooliman writes that because women are capable of putting another’s needs and rights over their own, they are exactly the kind of leaders we need now.
Leaders who bring back humanity into their decisions and actions are the leaders we so desperately need. This is the bottom line.
From my research on women as social partners in leadership positions, I am finding that women embody these values.
Let us reflect on the quote, "We have not inherited the land from our fathers, but have borrowed it from our children." There is a duty implied here. A woman who looks out for her children is more adept and vigilant in securing her children's rights.
Part of this involves being consciously present and aware of what is happening in the now. It is knowing that what one is securing and sacrificing is not for immediate gratification. It is a long-term goal. Women are able to work for these outcomes because they are capable of putting another’s needs and rights over their own.
In South Africa and Africa, in communities, localities and hubs, women are steering the human compass, working to secure our futures.
Despite the threats, cyber-misogyny and social media attacks that women journalists face, Qaanitah Hunter, News24' s Assistant editor of Politics and Opinions captures this duty, saying:
It is this resilience that allows women like Hunter and Denise Van Huyssteen, the CEO of the Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber to break comfortably into male-dominated spaces and take ownership of them. If you are comfortable and confident in your space, you radiate good energies, and people gravitate around you.
In these spaces, the work gets done with care, empathy, dignity and accountability. Everyone is vested in the best outcome to sustain the positive energy that drives them.
In the same way, leaders with good values will rotate towards people who mirror their action-oriented approaches and ethics.
Van Huyssteen has worked with organised business for many years. She says women "bring unique characteristics which enables a more solutions-based approach. When one operates among common values, there are always opportunities to work together for the common good." To get this outcome, one needs to be "sensitive; everyone has different experiences and perspectives, it is important not to prejudge based on your own circumstances, everyone has walked their own path, and everyone has their own story, and in a country like South Africa there are some difficult stories."
You also need to be responsive, adaptable, exercise humility and listen to others. This is an alertness to the human component in the daily work space, and when it is prioritised it follows that all tasks and responsibilities carry the 'humanity approach.'
Women's contribution
Little is known about the contributions that women are making to bring peace and ease to our communities. From building a 160-bed capacity at hospitals, mobilising businesses to donate and convert a motor vehicles conversion distribution centre into a medical storage hub to circumvent the corruption around medical supplies during the pandemic, to motivating big business to "adopt a substation" and secure nineteen of them from criminal elements and sabotage to fixing water leaks in seven impoverished areas that saves the municipality 1.6 million litres of water per day and investing in 77 schools in the Nelson Mandela Bay area, Van Huyssteen is changing the way in which social partners work to build trust, drive solutions and contribute to the humanity of all people.
Hers is an all-human approach that pragmatically considers capacity, capability, creativity, care and change. In South Africa, social partners (business, civil society and NGO's) are countering the negativity and mistrust felt by citizens towards some in the government and towards big business.
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The SA Reconciliation Barometer (SARB) survey results of 2017 and 2019 shows low levels of trust in government. The 2021 Indlulamithi Barometer, which looks at what socially cohesive societies look like, reported that "that South Africa has already been trending towards the 'Gwara Gwara' scenario (defined as a demoralised land of disorder and decay) since 2017."
But demoralised is not where we want to be. Women leaders are building from the ground up through ethical leadership, driving the idea of positive peace which focuses on sustainable investments in economic development and institutions and nurturing societal attitudes that foster peace. They are reinvigorating ethical values, institutions and structures that sustain peaceful societies.
Asking the right questions
Journalists like Hunter open the space for difficult questions, stirring slumbering citizens to demand ethical governance and honest leadership. They also force us to take a long hard look at ourselves where we have to rethink our roles as ordinary South Africans and then ask, "What part do I play in allowing bad politics to ruin the future of the country?"
Hunter’s passion to dig deeper, think clearly and understand the context is what contributes to lasting solutions. When a problem is correctly identified, we can address the issues using the best approach.
For Hunter, it is also about asking the right questions. She says that "the question that we have to ask ourselves in 2023 is different to the ones we asked ourselves previously. This representative democracy has given us 30 years of how it has served us, now we have to ask, 'Is it helping us?'" It also means that "we have to go back to an era where this is not about me and my family but who we are as communities" and create the space for ourselves and for all people to inhabit their full humanity.
Women in South Africa are showing us how to do this, reminding us "that to promote change in a violent society… it is not about politics but about life."
From enhancing the legitimacy of an institution to empowering vulnerable communities, mitigating risk or transforming community relations, leadership ethics, as shown by these women, can contribute to peace-building processes and growing trust between different sections of society.
Where it exists, it contributes to better economic outcomes, measures of well-being, levels of inclusiveness, and environmental performance.
- Dr Quraysha Ismail Sooliman is a researcher with the National Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences (NIHSS) and Centre for Mediation in Africa.
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