Contents Chapter 1 Leadership in Postcolonial Africa: An Introduction 1

B A B A   G .   J A L L O W

20

grandiose titles such as “Supreme Guide of the Revolution,” 

“The Terror of International Imperialism, Colonialism and 

Neo-Colonialism,” “The Doctor of Revolutionary Sciences,” 

and “The Great Son of Africa” and proved to be one of the most 

brutal rulers in postcolonial African history (Jallow 2011). 

 In  chapter 4 , Maavi Norman examines the impetus behind 

these two leaders’ reform efforts. Citing a number of contingent 

factors in each country, Liberia and Ghana, Norman concludes 

that Tolbert was a “Reformer by Choice,” while Rawlings was 

a “Reformer by Expediency.” He highlights the advantages 

and potential dangers of reform in postcolonial Africa and 

concludes that domestic political protests, international politi-

cal conditionality, and other structural factors often drive the 

reform efforts of African leaders. Threat perception and a sense 

of security each in their own ways are motivations for reform or 

the lack of it by African leaders.  

  Leadership in Postcolonial Africa: The Bright Side 

 But as is demonstrated by six of the remaining chapters in 

this book, it is not all doom and gloom in the field of African 

leadership studies or the theater of postcolonial African leader-

ship. There have been good leaders in Africa, some political, 

most civic, whose examples are worthy of emulation by future 

African leaders. It is noteworthy that, increasingly, in Africa as 

in many other parts of the world, dictatorship is a dying breed. 

Dictatorship of the kind represented by Nkrumah’s PDA, 

Mobutu’s  

authenticité , or Bokassa’s self-coronation is hardly 

imaginable in today’s Africa, thanks partly to the increasing 

integration and mutual visibility of the global socioeconomic 

and political community. 

 In  chapter 5 , Jay Carney shows how in the former Belgian 

Congo (then Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo) 

state failure created a leadership vacuum that was ably filled by 

the Catholic Church and one Catholic priest who became so 

influential as to effectively replace state authority in his home 

province. Through his case study of Bishop Nicholas Djomo, 

Carney highlights the leadership roles of Congolese church 

leaders as local pastors, sources of popular inspiration, political 

Copyrighted material – 9781137478115

Copyrighted material – 9781137478115

---

L E A D E R S H I P   I N   P O S T C O L O N I A L   A F R I C A

21

brokers, agents of social reconstruction, embodiments of the 

teachings of Vatican II, and often martyrs of resistance to an 

oppressive political regime. 

 In  chapter 6 , Faith Ngunjiri tells the inspiring story of the 

first African woman to win the Nobel Prize for peace. Ngunjiri 

argues that Wangari Maathai’s “pioneering” and “radical” lead-

ership style—demonstrated in her work as an academic at the 

University of Nairobi, as founder of the Greenbelt Movement, 

and with the National Council of Women of Kenya—holds use-

ful lessons “that would resonate with established and emerging 

leaders irrespective of their social locations.” She argues that 

the life and works of Professor Maathai need to be widely stud-

ied and her leadership style emulated both inside and outside 

of Africa. 

 In  chapter 7 , Daniel Lieberfeld uses a “personality traits” 

approach to examine “why Mandela prioritized and pursued 

political reconciliation—defined here as ‘bridging social-political 

cleavages from long-standing, violent conflict’—to the degree 

he did and the extent to which Mandela’s reconciliation orienta-

tion reflected his personality traits or stemmed from incentives 

and pressures in the political environment.” Lieberfeld shows 

how upon release from prison and ascension to power in South 

Africa, Mandela actively sought to allay Afrikaner fears by very 

consciously and publicly assuming and owning the Afrikaner 

identity, in order to impress upon the public mind that Afrikaner 

and African identities were not at all incompatible. He saluted 

“Afrikaner fighters of the Anglo-Boer war, claiming them as an 

inspiration for his own post-Sharpeville guerrilla initiative.” He 

also embraced his former personal Afrikaner enemies, “Among 

the former adversaries whom Mandela invited to dine with him 

were Betsie Verwoerd, widow of the most fervent champion of 

the White-supremacist system known as  apartheid , and Percy 

Yutar, the state prosecutor who sought the death penalty against 

Mandela at the Rivonia Trial. He even sought to invite to a law-

school class reunion the White student who had objected to sit-

ting next to Mandela because he was Black,” and he “famously 

donned the jersey of the Springboks, a formerly Whites-only 

team and a touchstone of Afrikaner nationalism, at the 1995 

World Rugby Cup” (Lieberfeld, this volume). 

Copyrighted material – 9781137478115

Copyrighted material – 9781137478115

---

B A B A   G .   J A L L O W

22

 Lieberfeld’s chapter reveals in illuminating detail how for 

Mandela, unlike most other postcolonial African leaders, inde-

pendence or black majority rule did not mark the end of the 

liberation struggle. South Africans themselves now needed to 

be liberated, from petty animosities, from fear, from political 

ignorance, from exclusion, and from an obsessive preoccupation 

with skin color and its various prejudices and hostilities. The 

effort was institutionalized and registered remarkable success 

in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and a long list of 

personal reconciliatory efforts Mandela engaged in. He did a 

lot to reconcile Afrikaner to African and African to African, the 

latter well illustrated by his visit to Natal where he asked African 

National  Congress  (ANC)  followers  to  eschew  violence  and 

embrace reconciliation with the chief of rival Inkhata Freedom 

Party of Chief Mangosothu Buthelezi. During the last days of 

Apartheid, the Afrikaner state actively sowed discord between 

the ANC and Inkhata, leading to a series of bloody clashes in 

which many on both sides were killed. Mandela sought to trans-

form this culture of violence into a culture of peace and reconcil-

iation. And he succeeded to a very large extent. Mandela (2010, 

326) writes, “It is a grave error for any leader to be oversensitive 

in the face of criticism [or] to conduct discussions as if he or she 

is a schoolmaster talking to less informed and inexperienced 

learners” (quoted in Lieberfeld, this volume). His leadership 

offers lessons many African leaders would do well to learn. 

 In  chapter 8 , Robtel Pailey gives a fascinating study of the 

leadership styles and legacy of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s 

first female president. Johnson Sirleaf emerges from Pailey’s 

chapter as a giant among her male predecessors as leader of 

the state of Liberia. Pailey shows how Johnson Sirleaf dramati-

cally reduced the “power distance” (Hofstede) between ruler 

and ruled in Liberia, how she empowered the market and some 

other women, and how she created a number of micro-level 

organizations (Schein 2010), which enables ordinary citizens 

to participate in the governance of their own local affairs. At 

the same time, argues Pailey, Johnson Sirleaf has reinforced 

patriarchal values in Liberian society by, among other things, 

preferring men to equally qualified women for positions of 

political authority; Johnson Sirleaf stands accused of nepotism 

Copyrighted material – 9781137478115

Copyrighted material – 9781137478115

---