Chapter 7: An African Conception of Leadership and Personhood

In this paper, I will examine the thought of two important South African philosophers, Motsamai Molefe and Thaddeus Metz, especially, regarding Molefe’s (2017, 2019) analysis of personhood and its connection to Metz’s (2018) articulation of an African theory of leadership. Molefe’s work offers a normative conception of the idea of a person, in the context of Afro-communitarian thought, and provides a way of understanding Metz’s depiction of a form of leadership centered on communion.

This chapter lies at the intersection of leadership studies and philosophy, specifically, ethical theory. It therefore is, in part, a response to Nussbaum et al.’s (2010) recognition that African values in leadership have been underappreciated in the English-speaking literature, and in part an attempt to expand a basically Kantian approach to ethics beyond the limitations inherent in that approach. Importantly, Metz’s theory is grounded in a prescriptive approach, just as Molefe’s analysis unearths a normative conception of personhood. This ethical dimension to their perspective invites a reflective discussion about the values embedded in Western conceptions of what it means to be a person and what it means to be a leader.