A Failure of Leadership

1 July 2011

editorial

CRITICISM is difficult to accept and in the tradition of the ‘collective decision-making’ of the ruling party, critique is even more difficult to deliver outside the closed doors of party and government business.

So when Prime Minister Nahas Angula publicly dishes out criticism towards his comrades and Cabinet colleagues, he ought to be taken seriously.

Angula delivered an undisguised wide-ranging attack on the failure of Namibia’s education system at the national conference ending in the Namibian capital this week. Angula in essence asked the Ministry of Education under the leadership of Abraham Iyambo as to whether it was worth spending the more than N$5 million to host the conference.

Prefacing his attack with the statement that the timing of the conference was “both appropriate and opportune”, Angula criticised Iyambo and his team for failing to provide conference delegates with an assessment of similar policy and curriculum review exercises such as a Presidential Commission on Education, Culture and Training in 1999 and the Education and Training Sector Improvement Programme (ETSIP) in 2006, which was to cost over N$2.5 billion. Spot on, Prime Minister! It is worth knowing whether to reinvent the entire wheel or merely to repair the punctures.

The statistics are grim. The reality playing itself out in the Namibian villages and townships is even more dispiriting.

According to Iyambo, the Minister of Education:

– The highest dropouts from Namibian schools are in grades five (5), eight (8) and 10. That’s more than 4 000 a year in grade five; another 4 000-plus every year in grade eight and on average 15 000 a year in grade 10 for the past 10 years.

– The grade 10 failures last year mirrored the national unemployment figure of 51,2 per cent.

– Only about 3 000 out of 18 000 to 20 000 sitting for the examinations qualify for higher education.

– More than 90 per cent of the budget still goes to salaries for management staff and teachers as well as on administration.

The grimness of the statistics Iyambo gave suggest that from what researchers enumerate, non-researchers can easily tell where the problem lies – leadership (or lack of leadership for which the failure in education is but a microcosm).

And Angula said it plainly during his speech at the education conference: a failure to lead, to inspire and to exercise control, which he said was the diagnosis in 1999. Angula concludes that “the culture of work” in the education sector and “perhaps in the public sector as a whole” has not improved since.

Angula proposes a system-wide policy on incentives and penalties; that reward and promotion should not only be based on paper qualifications but also on performance; non-performers must be weeded out (a euphemism for firing perhaps, instead of shifting sideways or upwards as seems to be the practice now?)

To brush aside Angula’s analyses because of party and government’s culture would be to turn a blind eye to the genuine malaise facing the country, let alone the education sector.

Angula should put his remedies into action, starting with himself! We cannot agree more with him that the biggest failure in Namibia’s education system has been poor leadership and management. As the Prime Minister, he is the CEO (chief executive officer) of Namibia. Having been in that position more than six years (as well as 15 in education) Angula must shoulder much of the blame for failure to implement many government policies.

His criticism of what really does seem like grandstanding at Iyambo’s pow-wow, is opportunistic and an exercise in self-validation. Angula must have sat in countless Cabinet meetings and perhaps other preparation fora to point out the shortcomings of the education conference without crucial assessments of work on the ground. The Prime Minister, as the CEO of government business, with the President as executive chair, must coordinate the programmes and work of all ministries.

Failure to do that points to his own failure of leadership and management: a failure in the Prime Minister, as he himself reminded conference delegates, “to lead, to inspire, to exercise control, to take difficult decisions and to confront failures and lack of performance”.

If nothing else, throw in the towel and make room for others who are capable and willing to do the work.

AllAfrica – All the Time