People's National Party President and Opposition Leader Portia Lucretia Simpson Miller may well be right when she says she wants to pass on the baton of leadership to someone from the younger generation. But exactly what is the legacy that such a person will receive? Indeed, what are those of us who are 50 and over offering the younger generation of Jamaicans?

Lloyd B Smith

The sad truth is that we have individually and collectively failed to fashion a Jamaican dream that our youngsters can comfortably and willingly buy into. Politicians, private sector moguls, icons of academia, dons of the dancehall, media personalities, spiritual leaders et al, have, whether wittingly or unwittingly, churned out a Jamaica that the average young man or woman in this country would prefer to leave behind. Unquestionably, if a survey were to be done now in which the question asked was what do you as a young Jamaican desire most at this time, the most frequent answer would be a United States green card! A most telling indictment of those of us who have dared to refer to those whom we have spawned as a 'generation of vipers'.

In the latest issue of the world-renowned Time magazine is an article featuring Nelson Mandela as he celebrates his 90th birthday, the title of which is The Secrets of Leadership. In that special section, the South African liberator extraordinaire is described as "the world's greatest moral leader". Here is a quote from that landmark piece: "Mandela's rules are calibrated to cause the kind of trouble that forces us to ask how we can make the world a better place."

The author, Richard Stengel, has Mandela reflect on a lifetime of service - and what the rest of us can learn from it. I unhesitatingly recommend this article to all those who are in leadership positions in this country, or who are aspiring towards such a goal. After all, we do need to make Jamaica a better place, not just for us but for generations to come.

Mandela, based on his personal experiences, has put together eight lessons of leadership.

(1) Courage is not the absence of fear - it's inspiring others to move beyond it. Too many of our leaders openly display panic in their demeanour and utterances whenever there is a national crisis. Instead of seeking to inspire, they instil an even greater amount of trepidation, while pointing fingers and blaming everything and everyone excepting them. That is no way to inspire people.

(2) Lead from the front - but don't leave your base behind. Too often, our politicians allow themselves to be led by pandering to the lowest common multiple. Dr Peter Phillips is on target when he points to the disconnect between the PNP hierarchy and the base of the party. The foot soldiers are only used to win the battle, then they are left unguided and misguided. The alienation between the leadership and followership after an election race has ended is one of the most deleterious consequences of our two-party system which does not encourage sufficient accountability to the base.

(3) Lead from the back - and let others believe they are in front. "The trick of leadership is allowing yourself to be led too," says Mandela. "It is wise to persuade people to do things and make them think it was their own idea."

Wish some of our politicians, especially ministers of government, would follow this path.

Enough said!

(4) Know your enemy - and learn about his favourite sport. In essence, we here in Jamaica tend to isolate our enemies and so we end up knowing very little about them. We hurriedly condemn the "gunman" in our midst or the politician on the other side without taking time out to know who they really are or what makes them who they are. One of the reasons why the criminal is ahead of the rest of us in this country is that he knows his enemy and he knows all our favourite sports!

(5) Keep your friends close - and your rivals even closer. This rule is ever so relevant to the current leadership in the PNP and may well become applicable to the JLP as pressure mounts on the Bruce Golding-led administration.

(6) Appearances matter - and remember to smile. Need I say more? One of the bitter-sweet ironies of the Jamaican socio-cultural landscape is that citizens are often urged to smile for the tourist while for the most part we frown ("screw face") at each other.

(7) Nothing is black or white. The great deal of intolerance and bigotry in this country can be placed at the feet of how religion and politics are practised here. According to Stengel, Mandela's calculus was always, "What is the end that I seek and what is the most practical way to get there?'

Many times when

we listen to debates in Parliament and dis-cussions among private sector leaders, the Tower of Babel syndrome comes to the fore. The bottom line is that we speak in too many different tongues, all because of us putting individual, partisan and sectoral interests above the national interest.

(8) Quitting is leading too. In the Jamaican context, this is hitting the nail on the head. Our leaders never seem to know when to quit and what is even worse, they rarely ever put a succession train in place, oftentimes adopting the DeGaullean position of "after me, the deluge". Stengel affirms in his thought-provoking piece that in many ways, Mandela's greatest legacy as president of South Africa is the way he chose to leave it.

For me, the only Jamaican leader so far that left office with some serious focus on the future (a fixity of purpose) was Norman Washington Manley who in his swan song speech to the PNP in 1968 said that the mission of his generation was the attainment of political indepen-dence. Our mission was to achieve economic independence. Have we?

We all stand condemned by history even as we continue to contemplate the crisis of leadership that plagues this, our beloved island home. May Mandela's words of advice and his exemplary lifetime of service inspire us all to act decisively, "to build whilst time is burning, forward before it is too late".

lbsmith4@gmail.com

The fear factor

Feeding the multitude

DANGEROUS PETS