Education for Transformative Leadership in Southern Africa

This article argues that education for transformative leadership in a southern African context needs to nurture an understanding of the relationship between spirituality and charisma. This argument is based on a review of some literature pertaining to transformative learning, transformative leadership, and African value systems. The article explores the relationship between transformative leadership and transformative learning and education theories, and relates them to a specific southern African context. It proposes three arguments. First, transformative education may facilitate the transformative leadership development process. Second, transformative education and transformative leadership, although offering features that are sympathetic to African indigenous values, must also take account of particular African contexts. The article does not claim to be reporting from empirical research on this issue but, to support its position, draws on recent literature from an ongoing southern Africa leadership development project and some early empirical data from a small, related study in one southern African country. Third, the article suggests that a key difference between transformative learning and transformative leadership perspectives is the transformative leadership focus on charismatic qualities that inspire motivation to change. However, a defining conceptual thread of spirituality runs through the transformative learning and leadership literature that resonates with southern African core value systems. It is this thread that provides the overall conceptual link between the different strands of thought.