The establishment of institutions is more about creating embodiments of societal leadership than having them for their own sake. The ability of a human being to travel from one end of the globe to the other with no need to ask for directions is a stark reminder that systems and processes can provide leadership without the need for any explanation. The interaction between man and the environment whereby man responds to cues and prompts to advance his/her objects is a sure sign that indeed the make up of an institution can provide leadership. 

Humanity has for its entire history been about regulation of how to co-exist without infringing on the personal liberties of the other. This has in essence been about creating mechanisms to regulate how interests of the other are allowed to flourish without impacting on those of others. As a rule humanity will endeavour to wall itself off from those whose interests it perceive to be in conflict with it.  It is generally at this juncture where the significance of institutions to humanity finds expression. As some amongst us will create systems and institutions to regulate our co-existence, it will be the institutions they created that will ultimately provide leadership beyond generations that build them.

The innate capacity of human development to create opportunities for diversity and broader perspectives of experiences necessitate the need to have institutions within which what is of generational value could be curated. As agreement on what is important to be curated is reached, so is disagreement generated on the why, how and for what purpose of the curation. It is only when the curated aspects of human existence are curated in a non-rival way that their accessibility and use assumes a leadership role beyond origination.

Institutions of leadership are by their nature standards based, non-rival in how they present themselves, vulnerable only to higher benchmarks and innovation within the standards, normatively non-intrusive, and inter generationally agile. These institutions are measured by their capacity to ‘filter popular desires’ and be deliberate on maintaining what is ‘public good’. At their zenith institutions of leadership should be the substrate of a well-functioning society that is dependent on relationships of trust and reciprocity, in which people see their fellow citizens as potential allies, willing to help and deserving of help when help is needed.

The building of these institutions requires scaffolding through which build-ups can occur from the mundane institutionalised signs through to interpretative and yet standardised codes and rules. The putting up of sign boards and posts to illicit particular human behaviours, is an innovation through which a sign aggregates into the sub-conscious a conflict of interest by imposing a generally accepted behaviour under the circumstances. For instance, at an intersection all would want to proceed, and yet only one can pass. The stop sign, only by being there, communicates that all should stop, and the one that was first will go first, and so on. The sign is an institution that regulates without a need for enforcement or accommodation of any other view except one that instructed design and standardisation.

The build-up of signs into regulations, codes and many other chronicles of and about rules have generations as scaffolds upon which we build and institutionalise to regulate. The more we succeed in reducing the human element once there is agreement on standards, the better we become at being deliberate in the arrangements we would have agreed upon on how to govern each other, otherwise also called democracy. As we build up we create a firmament out of which cascades of behaviour could flow in an institutionalised way. These cascades “are often hard or even impossible to predict, but they are all around us, and they organize our culture and even our lives”, and therein lies the centrality of institutions of leadership as core substrates to build a stable and well functioning society. 

Leadership, the human dependent one, is or should as far as possible be managed to stay ‘general interest intermediaries’ that marshal our diversity into a common ground out of which we could curate and institutionalise into standards. They should be given those positions in society where they cultivate trust and reciprocity in society as the currency with which the national social capital could be freely traded. Whilst it might be difficult to create ‘artificial social intelligence’ it surely must be possible to alter the capacity of citizens to, and through institutions of leadership, govern themselves.

The breadth of opportunity and access provided by information and communication technology, the growing prowess of algorithms and virtual interaction of man and the environment is an exponent in how institutions could start leading where ‘intermediaries of general interests’ may have it are failing. As citizens are becoming more and more consumers of public goods without the need to interact with the public service, the benefits off the public service as citizen is shrinking in a way that creates a conflation of needs as customers and obligations as citizens; this might be the single most towering risk of anchoring around institutions of leadership. Institutions of leadership will create ‘new freedoms’ from ‘intermediaries of general interest’ and in the process generate a disappearance of opportunities for those that might be disadvantaged to access the benefits of being institutionally led.


As we quarry our paths to stability as a South African society. We should do so knowing that institutions build and carry visions and missions of nations beyond ‘intermediaries of general interests’ otherwise also known as leaders and particularly politicians. As a society we have thus far succeeded in establishing a constitutional democracy. It is in tact. We need to institutionalise its promises, more particularly it social justice promise. !!!

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