Our political leaders should be exemplary – especially during Covid-19

When we speak of exemplary leadership, we cannot speak about the people that govern South Africa.

There is an expectation that South Africans should be law-abiding citizens, yet we live in a country riddled with corruption, mostly committed by the powers that be.

It is the morally bankrupt few that tell South Africans to shy away from “paying for cooldrinks” and expect us to turn the other cheek. And it is no different during the Covid-19 pandemic that has held the global economy at ransom, seemingly with no end in sight.

We are told to stay home and stay safe. We are reminded to remain fully masked up and to avoid social gatherings. We are reminded that the coronavirus moves with us, and the only way we can contain it is by limiting all unnecessary movement and social interactions. Our lives have been changed radically and it might never return to the way it used to be.

We, the ordinary South Africans, are the ones most affected by this change, yet it is the people in power who decide the fate of the entire population. Their decisions are usually determined by their position of privilege. For them it is business as usual … up until the very same leadership contracts this virus.

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We see videos of them in other countries, being jovial as they dance the night away, unmasked, only to later attend a memorial service – and then test positive a week later. It is then that we are reminded we are in the middle of a life-threatening pandemic.

We, the ordinary men and women, work from home, we isolate and we get told what to do like we are children. But statesmen and their kin do it a little differently… some animals are clearly more equal than others.

This is not so much about a man being infected with Covid-19, but also about leaders not understanding that their behaviour determines how their people see them. It is about a need for them to ascend to power, and remain exemplary in their behaviour, both inside and outside of the borders of their country.

Their dedication to doing right, seen and unseen, determines how the people of their land conduct themselves. Why is it the elite think they can enrich themselves unlawfully and then shout for the restoration of law and order when the ordinary citizen does something similar? We are all aware of right and wrong. When a man commits a questionable action, it does not give the right to the next person to do likewise. But we would be naïve to think that it does plant the seed of dissent in the minds of those looking to deviate from acceptable behaviour.

When ministers are hosting birthday parties during the height of Covid-19, when ministers are enriching themselves at the expense of the taxpayer, when ministers are faking their qualifications; what expectation do we have of the men and women who are meant to look up to them?

I am exhausted by a leadership that refuses to act in accordance with their assumed responsibility. The nerve they have to hold their citizens to a higher standard than that which they themselves are willing to abide by. A standard that they knew existed before they assumed their roles yet want to blur the lines.

We are tired, and if our government officials, voted for or otherwise, do not understand this, then they cannot be trusted with the clean governance of South Africa – a country that has so much potential yet is decaying under the grip of our leaders’ suffocating power.

We wish the president well as he recovers from Covid-19, especially because we know the virus can be contracted anywhere, even at the local grocer. But, as the people of this land, we urge him to remember that even he remains under scrutiny.

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