Ubuntu Leadership: An African Panacea for Improving School Performance

Abstract

Ubuntu-inspired leadership is substantial for responding, in an African way, to the needs of schools seeking to improve their performance. Evoking practices, such as letsema and social cohesion, underpins an African panacea in executing work for desired outcomes. With little extant research on the concept of ubuntu leadership, this article reports on a pioneering study that examined the extent to which infusing the value of ubuntu influences the practices of schools seeking to improve their performance. The objective was to explore measures that ubuntu leadership could take to instil values that would bring about the desired performance. Adopting an ethnographic approach, enquiring conversations were held with principals (individually), focus groups involving parents, other managers and teachers. This resulted in the triangulation of observations (formal and informal) and document analysis. The findings revealed three aspects epitomising ubuntu leadership, namely: holistic ubuntu deportment in leadership practice; cohesive oneness embodied by ubuntu and values within; and voluntarism as an enterprising exercise of letsema. The article concludes by chronicling a leadership charter towards harvesting the cliché simunye or esprit-de-corps.