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Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng has reiterated his comments about ethical leadership, and has called on South Africans to stand together and fight for what is right.
“We are a resilient people. We are a people who know how to fight
for what is good, for what is right, when we have to. And this is an opportunity
for all South Africans, for all leaders, to just cast their minds back to what
we have done and what we can still do,” he told Marius Oosthuizen from the
Gordon Institute for Business Science in an exclusive interview yesterday.
The interview followed his widely reported comments made at the
Serious Social Investing Conference held at the institute yesterday.
At the conference, Mogoeng said: “[It] really isn’t an option but a
national imperative because when you are a leader you have the authority to
influence those that you lead, and it is what you do that largely determines
what those who follow you are likely to do.”
Mogoeng said it was important for leaders, both in the public and
the private sector, to espouse the characteristics of ethical leadership to
ensure that the country moved forward in a direction which sought to undo the
wrongs of the past.
He reiterated those comments, particularly when it came to South
Africa’s credit rating, which is on the verge of a downgrade.
“Well thank God that we are not at junk status yet. [But] what is
it that we need to say to business, as government? What is it that we need to
say to government, as business? What is it that we need to do and say to
facilitate self-correction where it is required, so that we give hope, not only
to the people of South Africa but also to the rating agency?”
Mogoeng highlighted the need for South Africans to work together to
focus on the positives.
“If our economy is going to be downgraded it is going to hit very
hard at the private sector and the poor in this country. So it is in our
interests as a collective, as a nation, to spend less energy on criticism [and
spend] more energy on doing and saying things that will project us better to the
outside world without misrepresenting us.”
At the conference, Mogoeng warned against the influence of business
in the political realm, saying elected leaders needed to be honest and act for
the common good rather than for those who were funding their campaigns. This was
the kind of leadership the country needed, he said.
“Ethical leadership leaves no room for corruption, and the
manipulation of politicians by the corporate world.”
