Tokenism is not leadership – Daily Nation

Tokenism is defined as the practice of doing something to prevent criticism or seek popularity.

This is by giving the appearance that people are being treated fairly when they are not.

Good leaders should not confuse tokenistic stunts like paying bills for their constituents as an indication of great leadership.

This is an insincere way of leading that is completely unsustainable and grants the leader immense control over the people.

That said, there is nothing wrong with acts of occasional generosity where a leader can do something for someone. But there are many wrong things when acts of generosity are the only way a leader operates.

Tokenistic acts are temporary solutions to permanent problems as they do not deal with underlying causes, meaning the issues will always recur.

It’s the analogy of teaching people how to fish versus giving people fish as the cause of all dependency that cripples people into submission even when the “generous” leader becomes oppressive.

It’s a common tactic used by individuals, institutions or regimes who do not seek to change the actual order of things — by creating a dependency environment where a majority of the people are not self-sufficient.

You will often find that the tokenistic leader secretly maintains existing unequal systems by deepening the dependency of vulnerable people.

There are numerous examples of tokenistic leadership stunts like paying school fees for a poor intelligent student or granting employment to a qualified person languishing in poverty whose plight has been made public.

From the surface, these are without a doubt generous acts of kindness but underneath are pertinent questions, including the role of failed leadership in extensive broken systems.

The primary role of leadership is to ensure that people do not have to be living destitute and undignified lives before they can be seen and granted access to integral services.

A qualified graduate should not have to stand on the highway with a placard written “employ me” for action to be taken.

Leadership should fix systems to absorb graduates and overall grant affordable quality services so that poor people do not have to go bankrupt to access basic needs.

Good leadership is ensuring that basic services are available to people without them having to be desperate, as is the case in Kenya currently, before being assisted.

Then there is the plunder of public institutions followed by private solutions — a capitalist gimmick that only makes services inaccessible and expensive leading to the continued dependency cycle.

We cannot continue having leaders responsible for ensuring that systems work destroying these very systems, aborting their responsibilities then using people’s taxes to position themselves as saviours. You cannot save people with what is already theirs.