Desperately seeking sensitive (proactive!) leaders
I am happy I cried
A man needs tears
Without tears, he is incomplete
~ From When a man cries, Siphiwo Mahala
Ezra Chitando, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Zimbabwe, is looking for Zimbabewan male leaders who can cry. He was speaking at a discussion on leadership and masculinities in Shimmer Chinodya’s Strife, published by Weaver Press. Chitando made a plea for leaders who can look at the desperation facing Zimbabweans today – the poverty, the queues, the hunger and collapsed health care system – and feel compassion.
Where the male characters of Strife fall short, argued Chitando, so might one observe other male leaders in society falling short. “Zimbabwe’s collective failure of leadership is perhaps an outworking of exhausted patriarchy,” he said. “Men have not been effective leaders – of families, extended families or of nations.”
Read and listen to more of the discussion with Chitando and lawyer Nokuthula Moyo here