• OAVM Nederland
• OAVM HRM
• OAVM Zuid-Afrika

African Leadership

The new horizon of leadership.

Foto: left, Eric Mafuna (Group Chairman & Project Leader) right, Marc Habets (MD OAVM)

The July 13 2006 launch, by South African President Thabo Mbeki, of a twin organisation comprising the African Leadership Development Trust (Trust) and the African Leadership Group (Group) is the culmination of years of work by Mr Eric Mafuna and his colleagues and associates.

The African Leadership Trust is a progression, Mafuna says, of the Black Management Forum (BMF) that he founded 30 years ago that gave black managers a valuable space in which to network, share ideas and build affinity. However, the BMF experience also made it clear that African leaders needed more than a mere ‘management forum’… they needed (in the context of the marginalization through apartheid of their culture, their mythologies, their experience…) to understand conditions that give rise to human effectiveness and success.

“We began to wonder what it was, exactly, about different groups of people… Jewish people, Indian people and Afrikaans people, for example, that made members of these groups effective… and that made the group effective. Effectiveness and success were phenomena that demanded exploration. We wanted to know exactly how people organised themselves to be successful. In their communities, in their families, in business, in government.”

Mafuna approached Eskom to help find an answer to these questions. Eskom was a natural choice… it was the best representative example of both private and public sector business; an entity that was celebrating its centenary and an organisation with a tradition of seeking young, intelligent, pioneering young people to lead it. Eskom’s assistance enabled Africa Now to embark on a two-year research project that resulted in seven volumes of research and that explored the relationship between leadership and ethnicity. The research volumes identified and analysed the leadership experiences and lessons of diverse ethnic groups that are key players within the South African democracy, namely, Africans, Afrikaners, Jews, Indians, and Coloured/Khoisan. The other two volumes dealt with Western leadership trends and development and the recurrent theme of ethnicity and ethnic leadership.

The documentation was enthusiastically received by President Mbeki who has followed the evolution for the African Leadership from its early research work up to today… and who has given his full and fervent endorsement and support to the initiative. It was the primary quest of the African Leadership Group to find a ‘formula’ for effectiveness; to take the best of leadership models and experiences and make them accessible to private structures, to public structures, to communities, to families and to associations.

“Ordinary people will benefit from this work as much as champions and future champions of industry, commerce and government will benefit,” Mafuna says. “The research and leadership models are contrived to help people live productive, effective lives. They take the guess work of out successful living. They encourage people to think about who they are and to be ever mindful of the fact that they have choices over their actions, their ambitions, and the outcome of their decisions.”

At the heart of the African Leadership initiative is what Mafuna calls five ‘noble’ objectives:

• To make the 21st century a truly African century;
• To entrench democracy on the continent;
• To develop Africa through effective, authentic African leadership;
• To support reconstruction and reconciliation; and
• To encourage dialogue around leadership issues.

The twin organisation comprises, on the one hand, the African Leadership Development Trust which is a public benefit organisation that has since been granted tax and duty exemptions by the South African Revenue Services’ Tax Exemption Unit. The exemptions require both the Trustees and the management of the Trust to maintain strict autonomy and financial reporting vis-à-vis its working relationship with the Group and other external service providers. Given the poor governance track record of trusts and foundations (in South Africa), our legal and auditing experts advised us to form a separate but fully professional structure to serve as the implementation arms of the Trust.

The implementation structure is the African Leadership Group which, in turn, comprises several corporate entities that work on different aspects of leadership development e.g. organising and hosting of leadership dialogue conferences and seminars; provision of graduate and diploma training courses on leadership; planning and conducting leadership research; and provision of a leadership support and advisory services largely to public sector agencies and structures.

Our short- to medium-term business plan is to build capacity around each of these structures within both the Trust and the Group,” Mafuna says. Since the launch, the management team has applied itself to the task of building the structure that will bring about the evolution of the idea into practice, into day-to-day actions that will serve the five noble objectives of the African Leadership Group and that will palpably grow an effective and successful nation.

Our primary objective is to attract donors and sponsors who share a common commitment to help develop a new generation of African leaders who possess the capacity to help Africa and its people meet developmental needs that have seldom been address in full. Our donor marketing drive seeks to establish mutually beneficial partnerships with donor organisations, development agencies and philanthropists. Benefits for donors, sponsors and philanthropists will be determined by the category into which they wish to channel donations, sponsorships or bequests.

For instance, donors and sponsors who channel their donations through membership to one of the programmes of the organisation, namely, the African Leadership Dialogue Forum will receive a basket of benefits including:

• Naming rights
• Branding or co-branding opportunities on all promotional material and advertising
• Eligibility to serve on governance board(s)
• Speaker platforms at premium events
• Membership database
• Participation in awards processes at Awards ceremonies
• Opportunity to use “Membership Status’ for own endorsement purposes
• VIP access and seating at premium events

Following the endorsement and support that the Group has received from President Thabo Mbeki along with a host of other prominent African Leaders, donors and sponsors will get a chance to be mentioned in the annual ‘report card’ that will be presented to these leaders annually to mark the progress and milestones achieved but also showcase the commitment and collaborations gained from like minded institutions and individuals.

Kind regards
Eric Mafuna
Group Chairman & Project Leader