Why We Tolerate Bad Leaders

I saw a documentary about the war in Liberia and the role played by women in achieving change. After 12 years of civil war, one woman shared a dream with the members of her church about women saying no to the ongoing war. A Muslim woman in the congregation, stood up and pledged the support of other Muslim women. Daily they positioned themselves at a strategic place where President Charles Taylor would pass, singing, praying and holding up placards. And they began to pressurize their bishops, pastors and imams to lobby the government. In the countryside, rebels under various warlords were on the rampage, killing and looting and advancing on the capital Monrovia. Eventually the women were invited to present a position paper to the Parliament. They demanded that Charles Taylor and the rebels attend the peace talks in Ghana, which he had until that point refused to attend.

To sustain the pressure, they raised funds and sent some of their leaders to Ghana. While in Ghana, Taylor was indicted for crimes against humanity and fled back to Liberia, where full scale war had broken out in the capital. In the meantime the peace talks continued for six weeks with no end in sight, because the war lords could not agree on how to share power. When the women realized that things were getting worse back home, they commandeered the corridors and refused to let the delegates out until a peace agreement could be signed. That peace agreement is what ushered in a UN peace keeping force, the transitional government and the exile of Taylor to Nigeria. Once home, the women saw to it that the terms of the agreement were followed through, including the disarmament of the combatants and the rehabilitation of child soldiers back into society.

Reflecting on the situation in Kenya, I got to thinking about why we tolerate bad leaders. Jean Lipman-Blumen of Claremont Graduate University offers the following five reasons:

1. It is too difficult and it takes too much effort to unseat them.
2. We don’t have enough support from others to challenge them and we can’t do this alone.
3. Overthrowing them is too risky
4. More important issues and even crises need to be addressed.
5. They are not so bad after all and at least we know what their faults are.

Our leaders are difficult to unseat because they have become adept at using religious symbols like prayer to buttress their positions. This waters down the possibility of using faith to mobilize opposition. In addition, our nation seems unable to unite around the goal of unseating them. We are also caught up in everyday concerns to survive: rent, food, school fees, jobs, and so on. And we are afraid of the alternative whatever that may be, because we don’t know it.

To avoid the situation that Justice Kriegler described, in which 2008 will look like a Christmas party, the church and women in particular must prepare to lobby for change for as long as it takes. Imagine what would happen if women united along the lines of tribe, race and religion? Imagine if we refused to sell our future by being passive? What would happen if we refused to allow the urgency of short term concerns to divert our focus from the big picture? And to accept the status quo simply because we cannot imagine alternative leadership?