RAWTALK BY ROTTOK
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n the span of a few months I have felt very privileged. It is not often one gets to sit a few inches from world famous icons of leadership and art. On a morning in November I sat in the front row at a company conference in Cape Town armed with my camera to listen to Nobel Prize winner F.W. De Klerk speak. This is a man who is in a significant way responsible for the new South Africa having liberated Mandela in 1990 and paved the way for free and fair elections in 1994. Ample knowledge to deliver the speech he had titled “The management of change: lessons drawn from the transformation of South Africa”. “Change today is not what it used to be,” the former President noted, “it is accelerating, it is fundamental and perhaps most importantly, it is unpredictable”
perestroika reforms to the ongoing system whilst insisting that there was nothing wrong with communism. Thirdly, managing change requires a vision of a better future. Next, change management requires special communication skills to bring all stakeholders on board. He went on to say that timing is crucial when it comes to change. “A leader must watch the tides and currents and must position himself accordingly. I was often criticised
whose outcome would have far reaching consequences such as the referendum he conducted amongst whites to prove that a majority supported the process of change. “Finally,” he concluded, “we should learn that the process of change never ends. There is no point at which you can say that you have ‘solved’ any problem in a rapidly changing environment. As soon as you have achieved your objectives, you must begin to address the next challenges that change will inevitably throw down. We have achieved most of the objectives we set in 1990 but we dare not rest on our laurels as there are new challenges such as the need to nurture relationships between our different communities that are now beginning to show some signs of strain.”
“A leader must watch the tides and currents and must position himself accordingly.”
De Klerk then proceeded to share eight lessons he had gathered over the years with regards to change. He said the first step is to accept the need for change. “Whites and minorities feared change given the communist influence in the ANC and the failure of other African countries to build prosperous societies.” He views the second challenge as the temptation of pretending to change. He found that very often people “think of brilliant new ways of doing the wrong thing better” and gave the example of his friend Mikhail Gorbachev who launched
before I became President for not racing out ahead of the pack in the pursuit of reform. Had I done so I would have alienated key players and important constituencies. I would not have become leader of my Party in 1989; I would not have been able to do the things that I did when I was President; and I certainly wouldn’t have been invited to speak to you today,” he said to some laughter. He said that the sixth element was the need for strong leadership that is ready to ride the wave of history when it breaks recalling that his hand was greatly strengthened by events occurring in Eastern Europe at the time. His next tip also revolved around leadership, the need to take calculated risks
This challenge of strain between communities was also the topic for outstanding trumpeter Hugh Masekela a couple of months earlier when I listened to him at an African Diaspora Forum indaba held in Yeoville. Masekela was born in 1939, just three years after F.W. De Klerk. Other than being a virtual age mate of De Klerk, Masekela can also stake a claim to shaping the history of SA given his participation in activism as an exiled expatriate for close to 30 years, the most memorable product of that stint being co-writing the movie Sarafina. On that afternoon, the packed hall fell silent when the legend rose to speak. I was slightly disappointed that he wasn’t holding a trumpet ready to blast a tune or two.
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