Ubuntu Leadership – An explication of an Afrocentric leadership style

Abstract

The development of leadership theories has mostly followed a Western perspective, with non-Western leadership theories often excluded from recorded chronologies of leadership. Ubuntu leadership, a leadership style promoted following South Africa’s first democratic election, is one such leadership theory. While Ubuntu has been an ethnographic philosophy and a long-established part of African cultures, the philosophy gained prominence following eminent South African leaders’ call to bring Ubuntu principles into the national reconstruction and development plan of post-apartheid South Africa. While Ubuntu leadership has since been extensively studied, this leadership theory is still relatively unknown beyond Africa. This paper explains Ubuntu leadership by analysing the post-match speech of the captain of the South African National Rugby team following their victory at the World Cup Rugby Tournament in Japan in November 2019. Siya Kolisi’s speech has been heralded as remarkable worldwide, and upon closer investigation reveals many elements of Ubuntu leadership. In this paper the transcript of Siya Kolisi’s speech is analysed to provide insights into the constituent elements of Ubuntu leadership to explicate this leadership style to unapprised audiences. This paper also asks why this leadership style have not found acclaim beyond Africa and calls for further research to develop a taxonomy of Ubuntu leadership.