Opinion & Analysis
Excuses tarnish the image of a leader
City Hall, Nairobi: At a recent forum, the Town Clerk, Mr Philip Kisia, surprised listeners with his “you people” debate and left a large number of participants confused. Photo/FREDRICK ONYANGO
The campaign slogan run by Sprite a few years ago always holds true to me in life: “Image is nothing, thirst is everything, obey your thirst!”
In political and business leadership, however, the slogan should be paraphrased: “Image is everything, thirst for power even more so: obey your thirst.” Two things will always hold true, in political and business leadership image is everything and power is absolutely everything.
I was inspired to this line of thought as I read the spellbinding book titled A Thousand Hills by Stephen Kinzer, who writes about Rwanda’s rebirth and the man who dreamed it.
The book is a well balanced historical analysis of President Paul Kagame’s life before, during and after the genocide that shot his leadership prowess into the limelight based on the writer’s research and interviews with the leader and other notable actors in the drama that became notoriously known as 100 days of genocide from April to June 1994.
A key player was the Canadian military commander Romèo Dallaire who, in 1993, was appointed as the Commander of the UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda.
Dallaire’s boss was none other than Kofi Annan, who was the head of the department of peacekeeping operations at UN.
Kinzer writes of Dallaire: “Friends had warned him…. that Annan and his colleagues were ‘incompetent boobs who kept bankers’ hours and disappeared when situations in the field came to a head.’ Within the course of a year, Dallaire came to understand why Kofi Annan’s image was so tainted.
At the height of the genocide, 10 Belgian peacekeepers were killed and Dallaire immediately called Mr Annan with a view to request for a bigger and better armed contingent which had a tougher mandate to intervene and provide security to the victims of the bloodthirsty killers.
Annan’s response was simply, No. Dallaire was asked not to take sides and told further that it was up to the Rwandans to sort things out for themselves.
Image is really a two-way mirror. One the one side of the mirror is the Kenyan.
If you ask the average Kenyan who Kofi Annan is, she will tell you that he is the man who came to rescue Kenya from the brink of civil war after the December 2007 elections.
On the other side of the mirror is the Rwandan. Kofi Annan is the man who failed to let the UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda convert its mandate from a paper pushing bureaucracy to saving lives of victims of genocide.
It is arguable that the two sides of this Ghanaian coin are a reflection of lessons learnt, a commitment that never again would he watch while a country went to flames. Frankly, I look to politics to give me the answer.
The greatest objective for any leader, whether political or business, is to remain relevant.
Having retired from the highest UN position a black man had ever achieved, Mr Annan had to stay relevant. Brokering — or being seen to broker — peace talks in a country that has significant regional importance for the US and UK provided that relevance.
RSS