Critical conscious leadership for decolonisation: a Black consciousness perspective of authentically transforming leadership

• Date: 09 May 2024
• Pages: 71-87
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-01-2023-0033
• Published date: 09 May 2024
• Author: Sadi Seyama-Mokhaneli

Critical conscious leadership

for decolonisation: a Black

consciousness perspective

of authentically

transforming leadership

Sadi Seyama-Mokhaneli

Department of Education Leadership and Management, University of Johannesburg,

Johannesburg, South Africa

Abstract

Purpose –This paper draws on African anti-colonial thought and Black consciousness to propose critical

conscious leadership (CCL) as a decolonising leadership approach appropriate for pursuing emancipation,

social justice and innovation in a new African university.

Design/methodology/approach –I utilised the method of critical discourse analysis to study Ihron

Rensburg’s language as he reflected on his leadership at the University of Johannesburg (UJ). The study

engagedwith Rensburg’s writingsand texts on his account of leading the merger and transformation of UJ. The

primary text draws from his book “Serving Higher Purposes”(2020).

Findings –Through theconstruction of CCL, the paperproposes alternative tenetsfor leading transformation

towardsa new African university.CCL grounds a decolonisedand pluriversal new Africanuniversity’scharacter

premised on a consciouslyrevitalised alternativethinking that will carry the communitarianspirit of Africa in

knowledge production, disseminationand consumption in humanisingall and serving the greatergood. And it

operateswithin the dialecticaltensions of the social and economicpurpose of higher education(HE), African and

global relevance,African and Western paradigms,excellent performance andattainment of social justice.

Originality/value –The proposed CCL offers an alternative leadership approach that responds to the call to

“Dethrone the Empire”by centring Blackness in HE leadership, which is crucial for authentic transformation

and decolonisation.

Keywords Anti-colonial thought, Black consciousness, Critical conscious leadership, Transformation,

Transformational leadership, Whiteness

Paper type Research paper

Introduction

White males have historically been portrayedas the embodiment of great leadership(Nkomo,

2011;Liu andBaker, 2016). It is their stories of effectiveleadership that have dominatedtheory

and practice.The “Great Man”is alive and wellin the Global South, shaping thewhat, how and

why of the organisational leadership of private and public organisations, including higher

educationinstitutions(HEIs), which ought to fosterpublic intellectualismin their accountability

towardsthe public or citizenry. Despite thecall for the transformation of highereducation (HE)

in South Africa after the end of apartheid, leaders have been largely complicit in the

reproduction of colonial oppression and reification of Western supremacy as enabled by

unconsciouswhiteness-ridden leadership thinking and practice. April(2021) and Sihela (2022)

affirm the enduringviolence of racism in SouthernAfrican organisationsagainst black people,

CCL and Black

consciousness

perspective

71

© Sadi Seyama-Mokhaneli. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under

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The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/2040-7149.htm

Received 27 January 2023

Revised 9 September 2023

18 March 2024

24 March 2024

Accepted 28 March 2024

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion:

An International Journal

Vol. 43 No. 9, 2024

pp. 71-87

Emerald Publishing Limited

2040-7149

DOI 10.1108/EDI-01-2023-0033

reproducing their historical socioeconomic marginalisation, inferiorisation, exploitation and

implicit denial of access to senior positions. Similarly, in HEIs, black academics and students

still struggle against anti-blackness biases, Western-centred workplace practices, colonial

curriculum and teaching and learning practices that undermine their equitable progression

(Badat, 2020; Department of Higher Education and Training [DHET], 2019;Mbembe, 2016).

Therefore, historical colonial power is still wielded through leadership power. The “decolonial

turn”(Maldonado-Torres, 2007, p. 262) is yet to be fully palpable to ground organisational

leadership’s conscientisation, acknowledgement and decolonial activist praxis to disrupt colonial

and epistemic power that constructs the notions of race and racism in organisations, which

hinders black people’s economic, social and political human flourishing. The commitments to the

repudiation of universalised superiority of whiteness and embracement of the world’s

pluriversalised ontologies and epistemologies are elusive (De Sousa Santos et al., 2022). The

paper concurs with management and organisation studies (MOS) scholars that contemporary

organisations and universities are still racist, particularly the business schools (Dar et al., 2021),

which are popular and f^

eted as breeding grounds for current and future HE leaders.

In this context, this paper draws on African anti-colonial theories and Black consciousness to

problematise HE leadership’s transformational approach and proposes critical conscious

leadership (CCL). CCL is a reflexive approach that enables a shift of paradigms, renewed thinking

and practices that disconnect organisations’leadership from the remnants of coloniality. To

argue for the relevance of CCL, the paper problematises universities’leadership that draws on

popular contemporary Eurocentric-Western leadership theories and practices. One of the new

dispensation mandates was transformation, which meant redressing the oppression of Black

people and serving their political, racial, economic, epistemic and social justice. However, the

Western conceptualisation of transformation took hold rather than the intended decolonisation at

the fundamental level of universities as organisations and knowledge producers (Mbembe, 2016).

Endorsed as objective and colourblind but grounded on the archetypal great white man (Liuand

Baker, 2016), transformational leadership gained hold as a popular leadership theory to radically

redress the South African education system’s inequalities and injustices.

However, the assumptions underpinning TLT reveal its questionable philosophical

foundations and expose its strong bias towards the Euro-Western leadership paradigm,

which centralises whiteness in leadership episte mology (Ladkin and Patrick, 2022).

Whiteness, in this understanding, is a claim of the superiority of the white race as centred

on Euro-Western identities, knowledges, cultures and values, inferiorising and marginalising

all African, Black, indigenous and other people of colour (BIPOC) and black representations

(Dar et al., 2021). Grounded on whiteness, TLT’s assumptions are misplaced. They cannot

capacitate leaders for authentic transformation and the creation of a new African university,

thus necessitating a Blackness lens in rethinking and reconceptualising leadership. This

proposed CCL responds to the call to “Dethrone the Emperor”(Nkomo, 2021). Blackness in

rethinking leadership encapsulates an African anti-colonial affirmation of the African and

black people’s identities, knowledges and cultures. This affirmation “symbolises beauty,

purity, happiness, anger and resistance; a subversion of racist Euro-constructions of

Blackness as deviancy, criminality, and dis-normal”(Dei, 2017, p. 3). To carve a place for

Blackness to underpin the construction of leadership, the paper draws on African anti-

colonial thought and Steve Biko’s Black consciousness philosophy to conceptualise CCL for

the authentic transformation of HE. These analytical lenses highlight the broader colonial

blind spots in leadership undermining decolonising efforts.

The proposedCCL emerges from interrogatingthe leadership of ProfessorIhron Rensburg,

the former andfirst Vice Chancellor of the newlymerged University of Johannesburg(UJ). His

leadership serves as an exemplary case of authentically transforming leadership. To build a

case for the proposed CCL,the paper first addresses the risks related to drawing on the self-

reflectionand reflexivity of a single “unpopular”universityleader, while other popularleaders

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