Fr. Vic Missiaen
CHAPLAIN - CPT
J & P Commission - TEC

LEADERSHIP IN CRISIS - A LENTEN MEDITATION

1. TANZANIA IS FACING A SERIOUS LEADERSHIP CRISIS.

The seriousness of the situation goes much beyond the changes in politics which we witnessed lately.
The crisis goes wider and deeper.
Too many people in positions of authority have been abusing their function for personal gain because of greed and selfishness. It has affected the opinions people hold of their leaders and there is a loss of credibility in leadership.
In the Bible we read that God gets angry when he sees those in power being greedy and exploiting or neglecting those in poverty and those who struggle to survive.

Is. 58; 5 - 7: "Is fasting merely bowing down one's head, and making
use of sackdoth and ashes?
Would you call that fasting, a day acceptable to Yahweh?
See the fast that pleases me: to break the fetters of
Injustice and unfasten the thongs of the yoke, to set
the oppressed free and break every yoke.
Fast by sharing your food with the hungry, bring to your
house the unsheltered needy, clothe the man you see
naked and do not turn away from your own kin."

I think that God has many reasons to be angry about our situation in Tanzania.
The class differentiation is growing: a few rich and many poor. Many people are poorly fed, cannot afford to buy medicines and pay schooling beyond primary education, lack clean water.
But what is worse is that some of those who are privileged and occupy a function have been amassing privileges, and some are using resources that belong to the nation for their personal enrichment. It concerns large amount of money. Like God, people too become angry.
But the problem is not just with those people.
The greedy and selfish trend can also be seen in many other ways: a husband using the income for his own personal enjoyments without ever consulting the wife or family; the schoolteacher using children to cultivate his/her own field, a clark or nurse demanding pay for a service a person is entitled to, a clergy man using the community's money for personal projects.
These are lower level leaders, but such behaviours have become so common that people hardly believe any more that a clean leader still exists.

The credibility in leadership is low.
And that is an extremely serious matter, when a nation has no longer any trust in the leadership. We need a big national effort to form people in the ethics of leadership.
We need a social conversion from all this selfish behaviour we see around us, and which is practiced by many persons and by many groups.
But a social conversion requires more than lifting one's hands to God and say "Lord have mercy on us, sinners."

Such a social conversion requires social changes, structural changes, a strong push in developing many more checks and balances in structures, both at the political and at the social and family level.
The basic culture is one of patriarchy, where the one in authority or leadership behaves in a non-participatory manner in as far as exercising authority and decision making is concerned. Is this a Christian way of exercising leadership?

2. LEADERSHIP NEEDS EVANGELIZING

a) Biblical teaching
The Bible offers us a rich history of how the Israelites came to understand leadership and authority. How they understood God's inspiration in the matter took time.
The Israelites became a people in the desert. Moses was their leader - how he become the leader was itself a special happening, clearly presented as a calling that came from God. It took years (40) to mould this nomadic group into a people. When they settled into the land of Palestine they understood that it was God who had taken them there and promised them the land of Israel and that God was their king and leader.
Later, as they grew bigger, they needed and wanted more organization and structures and decided to have an earthly king to lead. He would remain under the authority of God. The role of the prophets became different now, they were to become the voice of God's inspiration and a voice of the conscience of God's people.
In the New Testament we see that Jesus places himself in the role of the prophets - the Voice of God, the one sent by God.

It is striking that this mild-mannered Jesus became at times very harsh towards the leaders of Israel, both the secular leaders and the religious leaders. Talking of the Pharisees he said: "Pay no attention to them. They are blind leading the blind" Mt. 15, 14
"Do not let yourselves be called master, because you have only one master, and all of you are brothers. Neither should you call anyone on earth Father, because you have only one Father, he who is in heaven. Nor should you be called Teacher, because Christ is the only Teacher for you. Let the greatest among you be the servant of all. For whoever makes himself great, shall be humbled, and whoever humbles himself shall be made great" Mt. 23, 8 - 12.
Jesus' authority does not come from an official position in society, or from a ruling class or group - his authority comes from God, he is the voice from God. The local political and religious authority did not finally accept him and they put him to death, a shameful death on a cross.

In summarizing the qualities of authority and leadership according to Jesus' views and teaching we can enumerate them as follows:

- all authority and leadership comes from God and is exercised under the light of God's inspiration.
- It is given as a means to build up the people of God, the community of God, having one spirit and many different members.
- It is a service to the community, to enrich the life of the group, maintain peace and reconcile people when they experience tension and wounds and create justice for all.
- In society there are different roles of leadership and all are important for the building of the human family. All of these leadership roles require constant formation, evaluation, purification and affirmation in the light of the gospel teaching and values.
- We must therefore be aware of the wrong use of authority and act against it. The submission to authority must remain in line with the will of God. When authority exercises its authority in a sinful way or against God's will, then it loses its legitimacy and cannot demand submission and obedience. E.g. Acts - 5; 29: "we must obey God rather than men."

b) Our Tanzanian situation:
In the light of this biblical and especially gospel teaching what points need to be purified in the way we look upon authority and leadership. What areas need evangelizing?
- at family level: customary behaviour gives too much importance to the patriarchical way of exercising leadership. The man is in charge and imposes his will and often orders others to do the work. The man - woman relationship is in many respects an unequal one and it finds its way in many aspects of family life.
- In the neighbourhood people with wealth are considered more dignified and worthy of more esteem and consideration. This is not what Jesus tells us, all of us are equally God's children. In public behaviour and in terms of social needs this has many negative repercussions.
- In society the same applies - we tend to elect those who speak well, who are smart, who have a lot of wealth and a good position. As a result it is not the quality of the human person and the dignity of the human attitudes that makes a person esteemed by society.
Ukubwa wa Utu is not so important, but ukubwa wa mali na uwezo. These are in fact the people who are considered worthy of praise.
- In political life this has many repercussions. It leads to a materialistic view on leadership and not on a virtuous leader who works for others, without looking after his/her own interests. Such a person is considered a rather weak character by many.
People expect only material things from their leaders, to have their interests served not the common interests or common good. It encourages selfishness and self-centeredness
- In the church and religious communities too we see that people seek positions in the community to give them honour and sifa.
The Gospel values lived in a community are not so important as the structural and hierarchical dimensions. The soul of the Gospel as the main inspiration of our church life is not understood enough. That the life of the Church depends on its quality of faith and of its love for one another, and not so much on the external elements of its institution is not yet sufficiently understood.
Externals like feasts, celebrations around the church events like jubilees receive all the attention and effort we can muster. The inner quality of our life as community in the service of one another's needs, in the service of the needs of the vulnerable members of our community, is not the major pre-occupation of our community and as a result the leadership in the church community stresses more the externals than the quality of the internal life of our community.

3. SOME PROPOSALS:

We started by saying that we face a serious leadership crisis, not in the narrow political sense only, but also on a larger society level.
We mentioned the need for far more checks and balances in the use of authority at all levels.
Let us enumerate some of then:

a) Family level:
- Form Married couples to carry family responsibilities together: the burden of budgeting for house expenditure, health expenditure, educational expenditures to be done together and putting together income to pay for it. The traditional division of responsibilities in the family cannot stand up any more to the modern situation. To stress too much division of responsibilities is encouraging trends towards divorce or single mothers situation.
- The children have the right to be protected by their parents and to receive the chance to go to school and receive health care. In the light of modern needs children, arriving at a certain age, have a duty to contribute to the family needs. Too many young people live off their parents for too long. It also leads to easy cohabitation of boys and girls without taking a serious commitment to take responsibility for one another. This kind of irresponsibility and easy going is a direct cause of maintaining poverty.

b) Community level:
Public formation in creating mutual trust and mutual support for neighbourhood issues. Self-help at community level has been weakened greatly and it requires a public educational programme. Such community schemes like SACCOs, Bima, Educational funds, care for orphans and the handicapped are areas where the public - community partnership should flourish and supported by public policies and local government. Monitoring is part of this partnership, involving people in local government. This is a challenge to the people themselves. To build the mentality of: "it is our responsibility" and not refer it to the others.

c) Church level
- The social potential of the religious communities, of our church, is not yet very developed.
We are good at organizing charity and help to people in need. We are not good at the social/political approach to solve social and economic and political problems.
We notice that the Social Teaching of the Church is not yet understood and not yet received by our church members.

- The patriarchal mentality is still strong and makes of the institutional model of the Church the only model we work with. As a result the clergy hold all formal authority and the laity do not have enough place in the administration of the community. As a result the laity are too subservient to the clergy. Every baptized person has received the spirit of God and therefore must be given the opportunity to participate in the discernment of what God's will is over our church community.

- Via the S.C.C. we need to put the Gospel into practice and take care together of the needs of the poor and vulnerable and this should be done in an organized form and supported and animated by the parish leadership and diocesan leadership (via schemes like SACCOs, Bima etc.)

d) State and Government
Much needs to be done in terms of checks and balances in the State and Government structures, if we are to come to a leadership that is more in conformity with the Gospel teaching on authority.
The events around the public money that was wrongly used, contracts made with dubious procedures, ufisadi and corruption - much is due to the lack of checks and balances in the system.

Religious and civil leaders need to press for:
- constitutional revision of certain laws.
- Multiparty democracy to be made to work properly, to break the legislations that guarantee CCM monopoly to continue (e.g. proportional representation, subsidies according to the number of popular votes cast for a party.
- Review of the capitalistic policies of budgetary allocations, wage policy, social services (e.g. subsidized medicines, loans policy for students), infrastructural provisions in rural areas and poor urban areas.
- Encourage and subsidise investigative reporting, investigative research into government policies and performance, made available to the public.
- Decrease the Secrecy in Civil Service, allow decision making processes to be available and transparent especially to Parliament before the issues are finalized, make information on government matters easily available.
- Give a clear signal to the people that critical analysis and reflection is welcome and not suspect. Encourage the people to use the new police policy of community - based policing in the fight against disorderly behavior.

4. CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP

To live up to Christ's vision of leadership and put it into practice is a difficult challenge. It requires a deep spiritual conviction.
Not many leaders in Tanzania, and elsewhere for that matter, succeed to practice to the full the Vision Jesus has.
Many leaders do in fact what the pagans do:
Jesus said "They prepare heavy burdens that are very difficult to carry, and lay them on the shoulders of the people. But they do not even raise a finger to move them.
They do everything in order to be seen by people, so they wear very wide bands of the Law around their necks, and robes with large tassels. They like to occupy the first places at feasts and reserved seats in the synagogues; they also enjoy being greeted in the market place and being called Master by the people." Mt. 23, 4 - 7.
This passage is full of references to our actual Tanzanian situation: leaders have make policies about wages, educational costs, medical costs, transport costs which are burdens impossible to bear for low income people. Leaders like to show themselves at feasts, jubilees, occupy the front seat, be the guest of honour, to be greeted at mass rallies, show their status with their expensive cars. At community level people like to be elected chairman but do nothing afterward, see it only as an honour and not a responsibility.
At family level the husband finds it important to give rounds of beer, contribute to michango for sherehes of any kind, instead of planning for the expenditure of his family, now and in the future. Relatives living on the back of their family members who have an income.

To understand Christ's teaching on leadership and authority we need spiritual insight. To know the mind of Jesus, to see and especially to accept his priorities and his convictions.
We need to convert ourselves to accept his vision and commit ourselves to live according to it.
This conversion is never a once and for all affair. We will be tempted often, as Jesus was tempted also by Satan as we read in Luke, 4, 1 - 13. Jesus was hungry after his fast in the desert, Satan tempted him to use his power to serve himself, turning stone into bread. He tempted Jesus to use his power to serve the evil forces and get their support. But Jesus replied you shall only serve God. Then Satan told Jesus to rely on the angels and be reckless and trust in providence. But Jesus replied that he could never provoke God and force his hand (to act) in his favour.

Any leader is tempted in the same way as Jesus was and is invited to respond in the same way. A person who holds a place, position, function of authority is tempted to use it for his/her own benefit; tempted to team up with evil forces and gain ground and prestige; tempted to rely on God and providence without doing any work of effort. In the recent public events we have witnessed concrete examples of those things happening.
We are glad that these things are being dealt with and an effort is beginning to be made to clean up the mess.
But it would be a very big mistake to think that a few changes at the top will solve the crises of leadership. The crisis goes much deeper.
As a people and a nation we must go down to basics. We must go down to the ethical attitudes, the moral culture, the formation we provide for moral behaviour.
There are no cheap and easy solutions to such a serious issue.
There is no other way than to go down to our spiritual insight, our spiritual and ascetical behaviour. Convert and make a commitment to behave in a certain way, following those convinctions.
This not only at the personal level, but also at the social and community level.
These convictions are not some kind of general feeling, or some general good will. They must become very concrete and lived out in everyday life and every day actions. We must recognize that there is a general laisser - faire, an easy - going attitude to what we call duty and diligence in life, at all levels.
It is maybe a painful and humbling truth to accept, but it is the only possible way to heal the Leadership crises we are in. To recognize the truth about oneself may be painful but it is the only way to become wise and truly grow and improve.
We hear so many cover- ups and empty excuses which fool no-one and which make people only angrier. Again this is not only at the level of politics, it is also true at the level of the family, of the local community, the religious communities.

CONCLUSION:

The call of Lent: Repent and Turn your heart to God comes as a special one during this period.
We should concentrate at this moment on the social dimension of this call. To repent as a society, as a people. Social Repentance and Social Conversion. It means that we learn to recognize our sins and shortcomings as a society, as a community.
To see where we fail the others, the poor, the needy. Where we fail to protect the common good and look only at the good of some individuals or groups.
Where we fail to show solidarity with others and pay attention also to their needs and not only fight to get our own needs fulfilled.
Where we fail to respect the dignity of every person, ignore his/her basic human rights.
Where we fail to create opportunities for one another and collaborate with one another and trust one another and become worthy of that trust. Learn to count on one another, make lower levels of authorities able to exercise their responsibilities and make them accountable to their own members.

Such an examination of the national conscience will lay the foundation for a moral revival that can lead us to the feast of the Paschal liberation from the social and structural sins we live and practice. Then we can build up the social values and social virtues that will make our nation into a morally healthy people:
- to live in truth
- to live in the full freedom of choosing what is good
- to practice justice towards everyone
- to love one another and want the good for everyone.

May this Lent of 2008 be a time of grace. This is my prayer.

Fr. Vic Missiaen
CHAPLAIN - CPT
J & P Commission - TEC