Metaphysical challenges of ethical leadership in Africa

Introduction

In this paper, I shall attempt to delve beneath socio-economic and political factors to situate the challenges of ethical leadership within the province of metaphysics. I shall argue that the constraints of ethical leadership in Africa are fundamentally metaphysical. The historical clash between the clan and the modern state has always created metaphysical conflicts in the minds of both leaders and followers. Apart from this, the failure of the modern state to provide emotional and spiritual security to its citizens heightens these conflicts. Many African leaders in the modern state are still unusually attached to primordial kinship, extended family, ethnic, religious, and some cultic relationships, even when their positions as national leaders demand some level of detachment in public office. I argue that this is so because most leaders carry into public office metaphysical images of a fragmented and an insecure universe – images arising from an environment long affected by the continued prevalence of the clan, its politics and values – over and above the interests of the modern state.

The clan, a product of biological pedigree and spiritual solidarity, finds itself encased in the modern state, a product of historical expediency. Within the pluralist environment of the modern African nation, the clan ends up becoming a platform of intrigues and an encumbrance to the development of healthy national and global values. More often than not, African leaders have to grapple with competing definitions of reality, competing notions of sovereignty, confusing notions of personal identity, conflicting beliefs in the Supreme Being, conflicts between public and private space, and battles between cultic and global mores. I shall argue that these conflicts not only heighten fear and insecurity, they also cause what I refer to as ‘schizophrenia’ in leadership, leading to a compromise in healthy ethical behavior.

There are at least three sources of metaphysical conflicts in Africa – the clan, the cults, and religion. Although we must acknowledge that there are wide historical and cultural differences among African nations, it is interesting to note that in spite of these, such metaphysical conflicts exist all over Africa in one form or another, and in various degrees, affecting morality in leadership. In one place, conflicts may arise from clan loyalties, in another they may be sectarian, in other places they may arise from cultic influences. In this paper, however, I shall cite instances from Nigeria and elsewhere to explain these negative influences on ethical leadership.

I suggest a concept of ‘transcendence’ as the solution to Africa's leadership crises. I argue that the way out of this unhealthy ethical climate is a conscious effort on the part of leaders to recreate the state and inculcate a new metaphysical worldview that transcends the cultic metaphysics of the clan and its values. To achieve this, I suggest a holistic and global focus in leadership training, emphasis on social security, mass education, democratic governance, and adherence to the rule of law.

Metaphysics, ethics, and the foundations of moral leadership

What is the linkage between metaphysics and morality? What, in principle, is expected when we demand moral leadership? What is it for anything to constitute a metaphysical challenge? From the very early days of Greek philosophy, metaphysics was known as the quest to understand the ultimate nature of reality (Solomon, 1989: 56). To Aristotle, metaphysics is the science of being (2002: VI, 1026 a, 31). Philosophers of antiquity began by posing two ontological questions: First, what exists? Second, what is the nature of that which exists? The science of metaphysics developed as an attempt to answer these questions. It developed as an inquiry into the nature of existence – an attempt to draw a general picture of the cosmos – what it is and the way it is arranged. This is the technical usage of the word metaphysics.

The quest into the nature of reality is, however, not the exclusive preoccupation of philosophers. In fact, it is an inevitable concern of humanity. In all ages and places, people have been curious about their world. They had mental pictures of their world and expressed their worldview in song and in dance, in rock paintings inside caves, and even in the languages they spoke. Without the shared metaphysical picture of reality, without a shared worldview, it would have been impossible for men to communicate with one another and form societies. Belief systems, cultures, worldviews, etc., are all expressions of our pictures of ultimate reality. They constitute our metaphysics and lie at the foundations of our behavior. This usage of metaphysics simply means ‘worldview.’

There is, however, a third usage of the word ‘metaphysics.’ It is the sense in which metaphysics is a commitment to spiritual and cosmic forces. Omoregbe explains that within the African context ‘there are mystical or supernatural forces which defy any scientific analysis or explanation’ (Omoregbe, 1990: 26–27). This sense includes what Innocent Asouzu refers to as ‘mythological African metaphysics’ (Asouzu, 1998).

In all the senses of metaphysics employed here, metaphysics has always had a linkage with ethics. Ethics in a general sense refers to principles of morality and the standards of human moral conduct. It is the sense of right and wrong and the ‘striving for what is good over what is bad and what is right over what is wrong’ (Thiroux, 1998: 28). Throughout the history of philosophy, the metaphysical question preceded the moral question.

To answer questions on what exists (metaphysics), we find ourselves asking questions about our knowledge of what exists (epistemology); in order to answer questions about our knowledge of what exists, we also find ourselves asking questions about our relationship with what exists; and therefore, answering questions concerning our relationship with what exists takes us into ethics, values, influence, and goals, all of which are crucial bricks within the pillars of leadership.

Plato, for instance, provided a metaphysical framework of two worlds – the world of Forms and the sensible world. Unlike the sensible world, which is subject to change, temporary, and imperfect, the world of Forms is changeless, permanent, and perfect. Having provided this metaphysical grid, the rest followed. Truth and knowledge cannot be sought for in the world of senses; they exist in the world of Forms. In the same manner the Good, the highest of moral virtues cannot be found anywhere else but in the world of Forms. In the same manner, for us to understand Aristotle's ethics, Kantian ethics right up to the ethical positions of the logical positivists, the Marxists, and even the post–modernists, all we need to do is to check their metaphysical viewpoints.

The point here is that ethics and ethical issues rest on metaphysical foundations. The picture of reality we have, our belief in deity, our conceptions of the universe – whether it is one or many – our definitions of reality in terms of matter or mind, etc., all come to bear on our lifestyles and moral behavior. It follows therefore that our moral challenges may be manifestations of hidden metaphysical challenges.

What is it for anything to become a metaphysical challenge on morality? A metaphysical challenge, as I shall conceive of it, is any incongruity that exists within the layer of deeply held beliefs (about the nature of the world and our relationship with it), which affects our decisions and actions in real life. Whenever there are contradictions within the bedrock of our belief system, some decisions become very hard to take. Take the example of a well-educated African couple that planned to have only two children but ended up with four or more, for the reason that they wanted at least one male child. This is a case of competing beliefs affecting decisions and actions. In this case, three sets of competing beliefs are at work: the belief in the small family acquired from pragmatic economic considerations and western influence; the belief that abortion (even family planning) is a sin before God derived from a strict Catholic upbringing; and the belief in the metaphysical importance attached to male children in the African culture. On the surface, we may dismiss this couple as irresponsible, incontinent, or uneducated, just like most African leaders are dismissed as irresponsible or greedy. Beneath the surface, however, lie the real metaphysical conflicts that are usually ignored and never addressed. It is the thesis of this paper that most of the challenges faced by leaders in Africa are actually perplexities arising out of the incongruent pictures of the universe provided by the clan on the one hand and the modern state on the other hand.

Leadership and morality are inseparable. The concept of leadership itself presupposes a direct engagement with morality. How? Without going into the well–worn path of leadership definitions, one could analyze our traditional and contemporary concepts of leadership and identify at least four basic ingredients:

A leader

Very interestingly, some of these may not be voiced out but are implicit in everybody's conception of leadership. The real challenge, however, comes when we ask the following important questions:

Agreed that leadership involves a leader and followers, how should leaders emerge? Should they be imposed on the followers or should they emerge through some agreed legal or moral procedures?

I think that these issues touch the foundations of moral leadership. In many parts of Africa, leaders have emerged through election rigging or military coups; in most parts the leader/follower relationship is based on fear and not on trust, in most places the leaders get the nation to pursue their personal goals, and in most cases the leader is intolerant of minority voices or the opposition. Why is this so? Are we setting too high moral standards for our leaders? What do we expect from ethical leaders? To answer these questions, we need to first look at the foundations of morality.

The essence of morality lies in two fundamental metaphysical propositions:

Man is an individual

I believe that within these two propositions lie the foundations of morality. The individuality of man is a fact that cannot be taken lightly. Every man is born alone and faces life essentially alone. No two people are the same and no two people experience the same pleasure and pain. In the end, everybody faces death alone. Since individuality is a fact of life and every individual has the gift of the Self right from birth, it will be morally wrong for us to destroy the individual. It is therefore a moral duty to preserve the uniqueness of every individual.

On the other hand, just as man is an individual, it is also a fact that man is a social being, born from the first day into a family, dependent on parents to survive as an infant, dependent on family in the early years, dependent on the church, the mosque, and the school for values, dependent on the state for citizenship, etc. Therefore, just as it is a moral duty to protect the individuality of man, it is also a moral duty to protect the sociality of man. No society has the right to destroy individuality or individual differences. In the same manner, no individual has the right to destroy the society. It is on the basis of this and the need to maintain a balance between the two that it becomes possible for man to be moral.

When we are looking for moral leaders therefore, we want people who will meet these minimum requirements. We expect moral leadership to protect the individual from the authoritarianism of the society and also preserve the society from the excesses of the individual. On these rest the demand for moral leadership.

Moral leadership can only be sustained if:

It is in the interest of the people, not ‘self’

Perspectives on the challenges of ethical leadership in Africa

More than a few scholars have traced Africa's social, economic, and political challenges to bad leadership. Robert Rothberg, for instance, asserts that ‘During the past three decades roughly 90 percent of sub–Saharan Africa's leaders have behaved despotically, governed poorly, eliminated their people's human and civil rights, initiated or exacerbated existing civil conflicts, decelerated per capita economic growth, and proved corrupt’ (Rothberg, 2003: 28). Bonnie Ayodele and Lanre Olu–Adeyemi (2006) also lament that the continent has been busy struggling to develop strategies for social, economic, and political development without first cross-checking its leadership dilemma. Julius Ihonvbere, while acknowledging that it is the combination of leadership and followership that often determines the future of a nation, places the greater burden on the leaders (Ihonvbere, 2009). To Musa Dlamini, ‘that the majority of African countries are confronted with a leadership and development crisis of gigantic magnitude is beyond doubt’ (Dlamini, 2007: 1). There is therefore a loud chorus of agreement that there is a leadership crisis in Africa (Osei-Mensah, 1990: vi) in almost every area – political, business, educational, religious, and familial contexts (Iornem, 2004: 1–4; 2005: 1–10; Van der Walt, 1994: 505–06). The question is why this is so. As Harvey Sindima puts it, ‘The explanation often given about Africa's problems is that there is a leadership crisis. It may well be, but how did it begin?’ (Sindima, 1998: 13).

Rothberg laments:

Why should sub-Saharan Africa show such an extensive disparity between the many nation states that have been and are poorly led and those few that consistently have been led well? Are the distinctions particularly African? Are they a product of colonial misrule? Do they reflect a common problem of transition from dependency to independence? Do they emanate from deep-rooted poverty and a lack of economic growth? Is sub-Saharan Africa’s lamentable leadership record, in other words, attributable to exogenous variables beyond its control, or does Africa respond less favorably to a leadership challenge of the same order as every other region’s? (2003: 32)

Very often, bad leadership in Africa is traced to corruption, greed, poverty, ethnicity, or colonialism. Whenever we attempt to interrogate these perspectives we find ourselves sailing through a labyrinth. In the end, we are led into a vicious circle where we know not whether these factors are causes, or, are in themselves effects of unethical leadership in Africa. Do we have bad leadership because of corruption in the system? If that is the case, what is the cause of corruption? Many will say that corruption is caused by greed. If so, what is the cause of greed? Perhaps, greed is caused by poverty; if so, what is the cause of poverty? At this point, we may reply that the cause of poverty is bad leadership, but that would mean running full circle from bad leadership through multiple social and economic factors back to bad leadership. Let us take a closer look at some of these perspectives.

The problem of corruption is always top of the list. A lot of research has been done on corruption (Couch et al., 1992; Kimenyi, 1987; Mbaku, 1991). Africa is considered the most corrupt part of the world, and according to Transparency International, of the ten most corrupt countries in the world six are in Africa alone (VOA, 2010). Corruption is considered a major reason behind Africa's social and economic problems. No matter how rich a nation or an institution may be, if the conduct of its affairs is dishonest, if there is large-scale fraud, if there is misappropriation of public funds, no accountability, and continued falsification of documents, that society or institution is bound to fail.

Corruption creates an environment where leaders with high ethical standards cannot operate. Even good leaders with vision, the few islands of integrity, easily get contaminated, compromised, and corrupted. According to David Bayley, corruption covers the general abuse of office and misuse of authority (1966: 720). In Africa, it is a concept that covers bribery, nepotism, diverting public funds, misuse of state property, etc. (Harsch, 1993: 33) and even vote rigging (Goodman, 1990). According to Herbert Werlin (1973: 73), political corruption is the ‘diversion of public resources to nonpublic purposes.’ When individuals damage public interest and abuse public trust for the sake of personal reward or gain, they are engaged in corruption (Friedrich, 1990: 15).

What is the cause of corruption? Iheriohanma and Oguoma (2010) suggest that corruption comes from greed. Greed here could mean insatiable desire for power, money, or possessions. Most African political leaders, apart from the likes of Nelson Mandela (South Africa), Seretse Khama (Botswana) and Navin Ramgoolam (Mauritius), have shown signs of insatiability in their demand for adulation and gain. Such leaders ‘travel in pompous motorcades, put their faces on the local currencies, and expect to see photographs of themselves in every shop and office’ (Rothberg, 2003: 32).

Rothberg provides an example from Zimbabwe:

Mugabe astutely gained more and more personal power. He used official terror to remove challengers, and state supplied patronage to keep senior supporters in line … His second wife was known, too, to be avaricious, and by 1998 corruption at the highest levels of Zimbabwe had grown in scale and audacity … Then, in 1998, Mugabe unilaterally decided to send 13 000 soldiers to the Congo, ostensibly to assist Laurent Kabila, the rebel successor to Mobutu, to defend against a Rwandan-organized invasion. Mugabe also wanted to grab the diamonds, cobalt, cadmium, and gold of the Congo for himself. With Zimbabwean troops in the Congo until 2003, and corruptly acquired funds fleeing to safe havens offshore, Mugabe and his cronies bled Zimbabwe until, by 2000, the foreign exchange coffers were largely empty and food and fuel shortages began to recur regularly (Rothberg, 2003: 31).

Greed may lead to corruption, but is it not in itself the effect of some other far more remote factors? Can we really explain Africa's leadership crisis in terms of greed? What is the cause of greed? Some have explained greed in terms of poverty. Pervasive and chronic poverty, the extremely high levels of material deprivation, and severe inequalities in the distribution of resources, are all advanced as major determinants of corruption in African countries (Leys, 1965). Even if we granted that greed comes from poverty we still need to explain the reason behind poverty.

Nuhu Ribadu, Nigeria's anti–corruption chief, thinks that the best way to attack poverty is to attack corruption (Hamm, 2009), thus implying that corruption is the cause of poverty. This takes us into a circle. Does poverty cause corruption, or corruption cause poverty? Rothberg does not help our perplexity when he avers that poverty within the context of resource abundance, as in oil-rich Nigeria from 1975 to 1999, indicates inadequate leadership (Rothberg, 2003: 31). Again, is it the inadequate leadership that caused poverty or the poverty that created inadequate leadership? Trying to grapple with these issues is usually frustrating as there are equally good arguments and credible examples on both sides of the coin. The reason may be that all of these – corruption, greed, poverty, inadequate leadership, and so forth – emerge from the same womb and are signs of some fundamental underlying malady that needs to be addressed.

A perspective that came out of Tony Blair's Africa Commission concerns the absence of an effective state in Africa. Here is one problem they identified:

… the weakness of governance and the absence of an effective state. By governance we mean the inability of government and the public services to create the right economic, social and legal framework, which will encourage economic growth and allow poor people to participate in it. All the evidence shows that reductions in poverty do not come without economic growth. But as any gardener will testify, growth will not occur unless the right conditions are in place (Commission for Africa, 2005: 28).

What do the eminent members of this commission mean when they talk about ‘the right conditions’? Obviously, they are referring to the ‘economic, social, and legal framework.’ The entire document seems to relegate cultural issues. Here again, the principal underlying malady – the cultural conflicts with the accompanied metaphysical perplexities – is yet to be addressed.

Other perspectives on the challenges of leadership in Africa include the debt burden, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, harsh environmental conditions, and high population growth (O'Connor, 1991:167). Despite numerous leadership paradigms in Africa (Avery, 2004: 1–294; Northouse, 2004: 1–329) the challenges still persist. This is because leaders ignore the metaphysical origins of these challenges.

There is a line linking ethical principles and metaphysical worldviews. Writing in the first half of this century, EA Burtt stated, ‘In the last analysis it is the ultimate picture which an age forms of the nature of its world that is its most fundamental possession. It is the final controlling factor in all thinking whatever’ (Burtt, 1925: 17).

It is this point that Van der Walt (1994: 39) makes when he argues that ideas give birth to deeds. If the world were arranged differently, if our reality were different, would we behave in the same manner? The metaphysical environment is therefore crucial in understanding our morality.

The problem, however, with metaphysical issues is that they are intangible, imprecise and hence unattractive as explanatory models. Frank J. Leavitt makes this point in his recent paper ‘Let's keep metaphysics out of medical ethics: A critique of Poplawski and Gillett’ (1992). Following his arguments closely, one notices that he is not just committed to defending the limited view that a particular metaphysical concept – longitudinal form – fails to help in the abortion debate; he is even committed to the view that metaphysical arguments are useless to ethical issues. This is a mistake. We cannot understand moral principles without understanding their metaphysical foundations.

Morality is a whole complex of beliefs, judgments, actions, practices, institutions, and much more, which we begin to imbibe from an early age, and which becomes, for much of the time, 'second nature' (as we say about those facets of our lives – often practical things like driving a car – which we carry out fairly routinely) (Parkin, 110).

This is why we cannot understand the challenges of ethical leadership in Africa, without understanding the metaphysical environment under which these leaders work.

Metaphysical origins of Africa's leadership challenges

The story of Africa's leadership crisis could be traced to the birth of the modern nation state in Africa and the clash that ensued between the state and the clan. In the aftermath of the Berlin conference, a new map of Africa was drawn, which in some cases divided people of the same ethnic group into different nations and in other cases brought together peoples of different ethnic groups under one nation. Thus an alien concept of nationhood was imposed on Africa. Before now, Africans had understood nationality to be a biological and natural phenomenon with a spiritual essence. What they were now confronted with was the prospect of belonging to a nation that was not only arbitrarily created, but one that had no recognizable shared spiritual or cultural symbols and did not evoke any nationalistic pride.

To the European of the 17th and 18th centuries, the birth of the nation meant liberty and equality, but to the African of the 20th century it meant: ‘a forced gathering of people for subjugation’ (Sindima, 1998: 18). In Europe, ‘The new social order had metaphysical roots: the equality of all people, the belief in universal order, and the sense of history as the unfolding of a progressive purpose’ (Sindima, 1998: 17). In Africa, the emergence of the nation state meant a fragmented metaphysics – a universe culturally divided whose units’ survival would depend on the advantages they gained over other units. Therefore, as soon as they gained independence, the new leaders entered into a new struggle for ethnic dominance.

According to Michael Crowder (1987: 11–12), ‘the colonial state was conceived in violence rather than by negotiation.’ The colonialists left behind very unfair power sharing formulas that allowed politically dominant groups to continue to maintain monopoly on power. The institutions brought to the African colonies by the Europeans were primarily ‘structures of exploitation, despotism, and degradation’ (Fatton, 1990: 457).

The definition of the nation in Africa shifted from the nation state to the ethnic unit. This ethnic enclave became a metaphysical entity providing emotional and spiritual significance. For all ethnic groups, the internal picture of the nation they carried was a picture of the nation at war with other nations. Political, economic, and even religious leadership was aimed at achieving victories for the ethnic group. The new nation stood beleaguered. Its resources were not meant to be preserved and used for the national good. Instead, they were seen as a national cake to be sought after, assaulted, and ravaged by the ethnic groups; a cake to be sliced, dissected, stolen by competing ethnic groups. Morality was not morality for the nation; it was what could be gained from the nation, by any means possible, even if it meant mortal injury to the nation. One reason for this was insecurity and suspicion. Apart from the fact that the creation of the nation state had a bitter history and necessarily diminished the powers of individual ethnic groups, the new nation state did not offer emotional and social security. It lacked real metaphysical significance. Another reason is that the emerging leaders were selfish and greedy for advantage, overwhelmed by the enormity of largesse that followed the transfer of power at independence (Eke, 1983; Nwabueze, 1999).

The clan continues to remind its people that they are all part of a broken universe, engaged in a battle against others. People are happy and celebrate when a member of the clan attains a position of leadership. This is not because of expectations of excellent performance in office, or any sense of moral rectitude. A leadership position is simply considered an opportunity for the clan to ‘eat.’ In Nigeria's new democratic dispensation, political platforms became convenient devices forged to capture the state in order to amass wealth for a few (Agbese, 1992: 229–30).

As the African leader is elevated in public office, he is made to be even more conscious of his responsibilities to his God and to his clan. Of course, he is in office to fulfill his national duties as a Ghanaian, Kenyan or a Nigerian, but his worldview is Kikuyu, Akan, or Igbo. Many African leaders today owe allegiance to metaphysical entities whose wishes override the provisions of the constitution.

Right from independence, the African leader found it difficult to embrace a global vision. In the end they always fell back to the security of the clan. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Nigeria's first president, considered himself a nationalist, but soon found himself a leader of his Igbo ethnic group in the rivalry with Obafemi Awolowo, the Yoruba leader. Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected prime minister of the Republic of the Congo found himself in a bitter struggle with Joseph Kasavubu; Jomo Kenyatta, the founding father of Kenya became pitted against Oginga Odinga, and Kenneth Kaunda, the first president of Zambia, against Simon Kapwepwe. These were not ideological battles; they were bitter ethnic rivalries. There is pressure for the elite to elevate the ethnic group or find rationale for disproportional distribution of services and goods to one region. (Sindima, 1998: 21) One would have expected that this unfortunate scenario would have long since played itself out after independence, but it has not. The Nigerian civil war, and crises in Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Rwanda, the Eritrea, Sudan, Congo, and innumerable others are ethnic.

Sources of metaphysical conflicts

There are at least three sources of metaphysical conflicts in Africa – the clan, the cult, and the religion.

Schizophrenia and transcendence

With the conflicts and challenges listed above, the leaders find themselves split apart by discordant metaphysical voices. In the depths of their conscience, leaders hear voices of the clan, the cults, and their religions. These voices challenge their loyalties and pull them from one direction to another. The result is a condition I call the schizophrenia of leadership. Placed in sensitive offices most African leaders are torn apart by the conflict between the demands of the clan and the demands of the nation – torn apart by the voices echoing in their consciousness. Very often, it is the voice of the church or mosque against the voice of the shrine, the voice of blood relatives against the voice of the constitution, the voice of the clan against the voice of conscience, and the voice of reason against the voice of emotions. All the cacophonies of voices are capable of tearing the leader apart. Essentially, the voices seek to split the leader between the moral side and the immoral side.

Let us imagine the case of a hardworking assistant manager who is elevated to the position of manager through the assistance of a powerful member of the clan. Let us also imagine that this benefactor later makes demands that will cause the moral manager to compromise the ethics of the company. Of course, the manager has the option of disobeying this powerful benefactor and risk losing the job, or obeying the benefactor and betraying the office. Imagine also a situation where the moral manager needs this job to pay hospital bills. Should this manager obey the clan and betray the company? Should the manager risk his/her health?

Many times, African leaders find themselves faced with dilemmas of this nature. Confronted with such multiple voices, they cannot act ethically unless they make personal sacrifices. For leaders to act ethically and be free from the state of schizophrenia, they must rise above the ethics of the clan. In other words, they must transcend the metaphysical viewpoint of the clan.

Transcendence, in this sense, means going beyond the limitations of the boundaries imposed by the clan to embrace a global vision. Whenever leadership can neither give up clan loyalties nor nationalist loyalties they become schizophrenic. Leadership schizophrenia happens when the leader is torn apart by the conflict of voices within – the voices of the clan and the voices of the modern state.

Ethical leadership therefore requires transcending the boundaries of the cult to take decisions that are global. What is transcendence? It is a rising above from within. It is going beyond the limitations of cultic boundaries. It is the power to break through the barriers to vision. The greatest challenges we have to moral leadership in Africa have to do with the inability of African leaders to transcend the narrow barriers of the clan and operate as true statesmen.

Recommendations

How can we create a new society in which leaders can transcend metaphysical barriers to act morally? I suggest the following:

Conclusion

I have tried to show why ethical leadership in Africa is greatly constrained by metaphysical commitments of the leaders to their clans, cults or religious groups. The state, as we noted earlier, was a product of colonial convenience. It needed to be developed to the point where its citizens would connect with it. The state needed to be a symbol of the hopes of all citizens. It needed to offer the citizens both emotional and spiritual comfort. Instead, the state was hijacked by cabals who preferred to use it for the interests of their cults, religious or ethnic groups, against the interests of the generality of the people.

To resolve the moral challenges emerging out of this metaphysical environment, we have suggested that our leaders need to transcend their limitations through a conscious effort to recreate the state and inculcate a new metaphysical worldview that transcends the cultic metaphysics of the clan and its values. This requires recreating the state to provide the security and assurances that the old clan had provided. To do this we must turn away from the cult to embrace global ethics and universal values. This is difficult for the individual to do given the huge personal costs involved, but it is possible for a society to consciously encourage this. Intellectuals must provide a holistic metaphysics to replace the fragmented cultic metaphysics; there should be civic education of the masses with critical content; there should be global focus in leadership training, there should also be social security, democratic governance, and commitment to the rule of law.

It should be noted that whenever our morality rises above the narrow demands of our clans, cults, and religions, whenever we embrace a holistic metaphysic with a global vision, our development index also begins to improve. This is not accidental. It is evident that there is a line connecting worldview with moral leadership and economic development. As the boundaries of the clan grow thinner, the possibilities of moral leadership grow wider. The call for moral leadership is in effect the call for a new Africa, whose leaders are imaginative and creative; it is the call for a forward-looking Africa, free of the snares of violent religion, ethnicity, and cultism.