Barloworld executive Isaac Shongwe is more than just another township boy made good. He not only wants to make a difference – he does. He is doing so through the African Leadership Initiative, which seeks to develop the next generation of community-based, value-based, ethical leaders by providing individuals with tools to be better leaders.

How would you describe your life just before you die? If you were Isaac Shongwe, that is – the executive director of strategy, innovation, solutions development and sustainability at Barloworld.

Affluent, successful, intelligent, big-business player and well-networked come to mind. And yes, he could say all those things at the pearly gates, but that would only be half of it, for the man who welcomes me into his spacious Sandton office, just a stone’s throw from the township where he grew up, is not about money and influence.
He has always wanted to make an impact on society, even a small one would do.

Shongwe is phenomenally inspiring – a visionary who is much more than just another township boy made good.

“I don’t want to look back at my life and be that person who came and consumed in the sea of all this poverty on this continent. I have much bigger plans than that for myself, my country and even the continent,” he says. He could just as well have said the world as well.

For how much is enough? A holiday house at the coast or a yacht or maybe some fine costly wine and food with friends in a trendy restaurant?

“If you are doing it all alone in a corrupt society where you can’t trust anyone, it really is pointless,” he says.

No doubt Shongwe appreciates the finer things in life, judging by his attire and the art on the walls of his office. “It’s all just things,” he says, “and yes, it makes life a lot easier, but this is not my legacy and not what I want to be remembered for.”

Simply put, Shongwe wants to change South Africa – and Africa, for that matter – by creating a new movement of capitalists who not only want to make a difference, but do.
“Mine was not a quick walk across the highway,” he points out, gesturing towards Alexandra. “Alexandra is not a place for sissies. My only saving grace was education.”

Oxford educated, it is hard to picture Shongwe as a poor, scantily clad township boy running around a slum looking for food. But that is exactly what he was, and today he heads up a world-renowned company. However, making money and forgetting about his past – bar the odd cheque to a non-profit organisation to feed the poor – is not on his agenda. He is determined to give back.

“For a long time I did not know how I was going to do it, until I was invited by Peter Reiling, executive vice president of the Aspen Institute, to take part in the organisation’s Henry Crown Fellowship community leadership project in Aspen in the US.”

This programme, established in 1997, seeks to develop the next generation of leaders by providing them with tools to be better leaders in their communities. The result of Shongwe’s participation in this programme in the early 2000s was the African Leadership Initiative (ALI).

“ALI is goosebump stuff,” says Shongwe. “When I was a child, no one cared if I was dead or alive. The world should not be like that. My goal was always to work as hard as I could to be able to afford social change of some kind. ALI is geared to creating leaders that care if a child is dead or alive, and who take action to ensure the society they live in cares.”

In ALI he found the means he was looking for to give back; to change the world he lives in. But, he is realistic enough to realise that real change needs real money.

“This is not a soup kitchen or a project that goes out and physically changes the environment that people live in. No, ALI changes the leaders in our society and they then activate change within their communities, but that costs money. Real change in this country has to come from its leaders, regardless if it is government or business or civil society,” he says. “We, as leaders, live in our northern suburbs homes with high walls and hi-tech security from where we monitor the world outside. It is a bankrupt culture that we are embracing, because we tolerate dishonesty, we tolerate bad politics, we tolerate mediocrity, we tolerate corruption. We need aspiring leaders, brave leaders, men and women with morals and values, if we want to take this continent forward.”

Based on the Henry Crown Fellowship, ALI identifies leaders in government, civil society and business and invites them to attend four seminars. Through the seminars, readings and deep discussion, the perspectives of the fellows change and thought leads to action.

“The entire concept is based on these specific individuals that we choose – who are all successful in their own right before becoming a fellow – being put into action in their societies. They facilitate the change through their own actions, once they have taken part in the four seminars.”

Ferial Haffajee, City Press editor, admits to being sceptical when first approached by Shongwe to become an ALI fellow.

“It meant four weeks out of the office to attend the seminars and that can be a difficult feat for an editor, but he persisted, and today I am deeply grateful that he did,” she says.
ALI changed her life. “It altered my ideology and forced me to take a deep look at myself, not only as a leader but also on how I impact on society.”

Haffajee has since become one of the moderators at the seminars, facilitating the discussions between fellows. Through her involvement with ALI, she has undergone enormous growth and learning as an individual. This has resulted in her becoming a better leader, she says, because she has been exposed to the quality of people that she and her fellow fellows aspire to be like.

According to Reiling, at some point many social entrepreneurs start to think about their role in society at large and how they can affect change, but often they have a certain naiveté – the perception that social issues are easy to fix.

Through ALI, this is changed, because the seminars equip the participants to overcome their fears and doubts and to have a greater impact, due to their action orientation and skill.
For Haffajee, there is no doubt that South Africa needs a range of such leaders to bring about change for the country. And ensuring those leaders are properly equipped for the task is essential for success. ALI ensures that.

It is especially through the readings that ALI fellows change, says Shongwe. “It is not a feel-good seminar where everyone comes and sits down and listens and leaves feeling all happy but nothing ever happens after that. No, you are expected to (and you do) look at and rethink your own role and responsibility by reading about people like Mahatma Gandhi, Jean Monnet and Nelson Mandela. You have to build a vision of the society you want to be part of by relating to thinkers ranging from Plato to Julius Nyerere, and then you have to commit to making that vision a reality and affecting change. This is all a very intense, very internal process that you do with like-minded people.”

According to Malik Fal, managing director of Endeavour SA, it is very difficult to describe how ALI impacts, but it does.

“Before your first seminar, you receive this thick binder with reading material, and while I was going through this, my imagination was captured,” he recalls. “I realised very soon that something very special was happening in my life, but it was only during the first seminar that I fully came to understand the scope and the depth of what ALI entails.”

According to Fal, the programme changed his perspective. “As an individual, it shook a lot of my dormant values into action, as it really forced me to take a long and hard look at my own demons and baggage. It unlocked the potential within me and brought a transformation I never expected.”

But what does this mean, I ask Shongwe? “It means that people in privileged positions have a responsibility to contribute to a better society, and business is one of the big drivers of that.”
Fellows are encouraged to design and carry out high-impact leadership projects of their own after the four seminars. In this way, ALI has led to an HIV/Aids prevention project, a conference on government challenges, a project that addresses the needs of orphans in the country, a mentorship for high school children and a news columnist service to help influence world opinion about Africa, to name but a few.

ALI engages with its fellows, making them aware of the society they operate in, while providing them with an amazing structured platform where they can reflect and make choices around where their leadership is heading, says Fal.

“Practically put, it is about being a Mandela or a Malema – you make the choice,” he says.

Shongwe says ALI encourages its fellows to do something significant, to live up to the values that underlie the programme – the same values they were exposed to during the seminars; those values that made Mandela, Mandela or Gandhi, Gandhi.

“It is within all of us to be great leaders,” he says. “But it is firstly a choice and, secondly, it requires action. As businessmen, we know how to make money for ourselves. This programme requires us to use those very skills to change the world by ensuring the knowledge our leaders need is in their hands. We need community-based, value-based, ethical leaders. Through ALI we go to society and choose people who are already showing these capabilities, and we just enhance them.”