At this point I think we need to consider leadership. In SA, hell, I think across the world given the past four years in the US, I think we need to start thinking and worrying more about self-leadership than being led.
Leadership is overacted, or at least that’s how the leaders of today leave us thinking. They make laws that they flout. They adopt regulations they can’t abide by. Then they get away with a mere apology.
The rest of us, ordinary people, we get fines. We even get sent to prison. We lose our jobs. Our lives change if we are caught on the wrong side of the law. That’s if of course we are brave enough to bribe the officer and he or she is "hungry" enough to take it and turn a blind eye.
At the weekend, as we watched another leader, former minister Jackson Mthembu, laid to rest having succumbed to the coronavirus, we all fear like death itself, another leader, Mpumalanga premier Refilwe Mtsweni-Tsipane, was walking around mask-less.
What a way to represent the government at a time when millions were mourning the grave consequence of this pandemic, a life unnecessarily lost. This is after her own boss, party leader President Cyril Ramaphosa, has shed tears on television pleading with all of us to adhere to the preventative measures to help curb this pandemic which is wiping people out.
But no. The premier saw nothing wrong and felt no shame strutting her stuff, taking photos, giving the middle finger to a nation of mourning people, not statistics.
Fine, she admitted guilt and paid a fine. The reason her office forwarded for her baring her face in public can’t help but be the cause of much hilarity. One report has it that she was "oblivious" that her mask had fallen off. Her office said she believed her mask was intact.
That must have been one special mask for her not to feel the difference between breathing through fabric and breathing straight through her nose. She could do so well to help the manufacturer of such an amazing product by trying her hand at being an influencer. Most of us can’t help but feel claustrophobic and half-breathless after minutes with those mats in front of our mouths and noses.
She herself must have heard and judged the fable her aides told to the media not to be sufficient to fool even the most gullible among us. Frankly, I don’t know why they even bothered. We have become so negligible as citizens and voters that these ANC cadres can’t put in some effort to come up with lies that are close enough to pass the test of believability.
We need to take a moment and consider that our lives are our responsibility. We cannot look to leaders for leadership. Leadership needs to start with us. If we value our lives, we should stop listening to politicians and start trusting the science. If the politician doesn’t care about science, if the politician is ill-advised, it is no excuse for us to be ignorant.
There is something that the citizen and the leader have in common. They both have minds to think and make decisions.
Let us not hear people walking around telling us that Refilwe Mstweni-Tshipane doesn’t wear her mask to justify their recklessness and risky behaviour. Death is painful and we are exhausted. Every day we send condolences to people who’ve lost loved ones.
What’s the best way to end an almost eight-year run writing for a newspaper that is an institution, a part of our history, a part of our present and which shall stand formidable into the future.
I can see no better way than to leave you with this message: We don’t need to be told by a leader how to stay safe. We don’t need a leader to show by example how to stay alive. It is time we lead ourselves.
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