Good Leaders Face Tough Choices

Imagine you are a leader of a nation. You have one region of a country that is facing famine due to lack of rain which the people depend on to grow their food. People have already started dying because of lack of food. Meanwhile, you have borrowed money to buy medication that is supposed to help reduce the birth defections that are being experienced around the country. Mothers are having children with birth defections such as weak limbs which reduce their chances of ever walking or using their arms. Some are having permanent brain damages. The whole country has been worried about this and the prospects of having a healthy workforce in the future. What do you do? Remember, the money is only adequate to either buy food for this region or buy the medicine and as a leader your role is ensure the decision you make will be ameliorating the living standards of your people.

How do leaders then make such decisions? What barometer do they use to arrive at the decisions that they make? How have our Zambian leaders handled such situations when making decisions? Good decision-making does not automatically come by virtue of one assuming a leadership position but must be learned through education, experience, or observation. When making these tough decisions, ethical and moral considerations must unquestionably play an important role. Without ethics and morals, it is questionable that a leader can make sound decisions.

I am often left to wonder how ethics and morality play with our Zambian leaders when they make decisions. Do they look at the short-term versus the long-term benefits or do they look at political expediency over service delivery? Sadly, personal ambition and greed often cloud the ability to make good decision for our leaders. I still remember very well how livid I was in the office of a Zambian Cabinet Minister. In that office, I was joined by a councilor who hailed from the constituency of the minister. The councilor was making a follow-up on the promise that the minister had made during the elections. The minister then told the councilor that he was faced with a difficult decision since, although he promised him the motorcycle, the new developments that took place in his constituency required him to reconsider his offer. So, the minister asked him if he should buy the motorcycle for him or reroof the maternity ward which came down through an inferno at the local clinic. How do you imagine the councilor chose?

Without any hesitation, the councilor voted on the former. He went on to further state that the area in question had not even voted for them in the just ended election. To my bewilderment, the minister agreed and went on to say that this must have been God’s judgment on that community. The minister then called the Zambian ambassador in Japan to arrange for the motorcycle. Instead of helping coalesce the community, the minister and his councilor decided to divide it. Decisions like these have continued to create the social and economic disequilibrium in our country.

To many of us, the above does not create a moral quandary. It seems very obvious on the decision we would make. However, to other people this is a very difficult position because their values may be different or misplaced altogether. This is why values equally play a central role in our decision-making process—because values define us and determine the direction of our moral compass. It is no wonder values must be of utmost importance to us such that we cannot consider electing leaders with moral ineptness. Our leaders show such great panache during campaigns but once they are elected that fervor eventually ebb. Leaders must have a moral standing, exercise good judgement and act in the interest of those they serve.

Let’s take a look again at the dilemma being faced by the leader at the beginning of this article.
Suppose the people facing famine were only a few villages or there was no guarantee that the medicine in question would work. Would this make the decision easier for the leader? With this specific information, chances are that it would. However, more information does not necessarily make decision-making any easier. Let’s take for instance, that the people feel so defeated by the famine and cannot take it any longer, and they start eating one another. Clearly, even with more information available, the leader is still faced with more questions than answers.

Although these may be hypothetical situations, there are many closer-to-home dilemmas that our Zambian leaders face daily. Unfortunately, the average Zambian is not immune to these moral dilemmas. In my book, where I have profiled dozens of women who work the streets of Lusaka, there is similarity among most of the women interviewed. Many of them are faced with the choice to either starving to death alongside their children or sell their bodies in order to feed their children.

Many would say feeding children is a noble cause that must be supported. But is it still a noble cause if that money came from prostitution, corruption or theft? Does the end then justify the means? Could this be the reason why our society sees nothing wrong with stealing, cheating or lying? The moral code does not only end with our leaders but actually starts with each one of us. Imagine a Zambia where each person is raised up to exercise high ethical morals—a country whose people are trained to make tough decisions and resolve the ethical dilemmas.

In sum, learning how to make tough decisions can be a long and painful process. The process itself is an important as the final decision we make. Zambia is definitely in dire need of leaders who shall drive us through the treacherous valley and mountainous roads of morality. We have, for too long, entertained an amorphous executive and a leaderless legislature. It is about time we said bye bye to those obstreperous self anointed individuals but looked at leaders who have consistently exercised good moral judgment. Tunasakilili.

By Wesley Ngwenya