Leadership is Bananas
Friday, June 23rd 2017
Mr. Chairman, Esteemed members of the Board of Trustees and Global Advisory Council, Honoured Family and Guests, Treasured Colleagues, Alumni present and in virtual Absentia, Students,
Allow me to begin this afternoon as we closed this past Monday. With gratitude.
There is a treasure in this tent.
A treasure that none of us alone can ever own but that is itself woven from our shared presence, commitment, conviction and celebration. I invite you to give earnest thanks in whichever way you best give thanks for the confluence of fortune and force that has granted us this blessed gathering of all the love, the light, the strength and the excitement of Africa.
Thank you.
Aspiring alumni, it gives me such pleasure to address you this final time. I will endeavour, in keeping with Mr. Joel Baraka’s depiction of my statures, to keep my remarks short, but memorable. Speeches of this nature are a delicate balance between time and ego — I hope to save one and diminish the other. You can decide how well I manage.
Today, I want to talk to you about Bananas.
In the interest of integrity, let me first cite my 2 sources of inspiration: The first is a fascinating article on this delicious yellow topic recently published in WIRED magazine. The second source, on this second-to-last day of Ramadan, is of course, plain hunger. In advance, EID MUBARAK.
But still, why Bananas?
I think bananas carry several important lessons for this, our community of leadership.
Bananas, as you might expect, are one of the world’s largest export crops. In 2016 alone, banana exports amounted to more than 12 billion dollars worldwide. Each year, 17 million tonnes of bananas are grown for export.
As an interesting aside, of the top 15 banana export countries (responsible together for 90% of traded volume) only 1, Ivory Coast, is on the African continent — surely there is an entrepreneurial opportunity in this.
In any case, if we think of bananas collectively as an organism, a family, they are a very successful one. They are all over the place. And this is strange, because Bananas it turns out are rather prudish. They don’t like to copulate. Growing bananas, in the traditional sense, is rather difficult because they are not keen to reproduce. This frustrated banana growers for some time until they discovered that it was in fact easier to clone bananas. By a process of producing what are called ‘suckers’ each new banana tree is in fact a clone of the previous tree — born as a direct offshoot. This method requires no copulation at all. Even more excitingly, for the big banana farmers, it also produces identical bananas. Each and every banana is identical in size, texture, taste and colour. Perfectly, predictably, profitable. You see if bananas were mating naturally, each family of offspring would express different traits. Some would be sweeter, some less sweet. With this method, each banana you buy is just about identical to the previous one by any meaningful measure.
Strange to imagine isn’t it?
It gets stranger still. It turns out that today, virtually all bananas grown for export are identical clones of a single banana tree. If you purchased or consumed a banana in the past 60 years, unless it was grown locally, it was almost certainly a Cavendish banana. That is, an identical clone from a tree that lives in, of all places, England. The Cavendish banana, alone, accounts for the vast majority of all bananas in all supermarkets and all stores and all fruit-sellers and all factories around the world.
Another interesting aside. The Cavendish banana itself was brought to England from the same first home as our sister institution, Mauritius. The long tendril of colonialism never fails to reemerge.
So. While all bananas are doing well, the Cavendish banana, as a single organism, is crushing it. According to BBC reporting, a full fourth of all banana’s consumed in India (which consumes a lot of bananas) are Cavendish bananas. Almost any banana grown in China, whether for consumption, export, cooking or throwing at people, is a Cavendish banana. You could almost say at this point that the Cavendish banana has in fact colonized humans. Manipulated us into carrying it around the world, planting it, feeding it, growing it and duplicating it. Total servitude.
The first lesson here is about poor strategy. When humans find something that works, we rush to scale it. Think of concepts like capitalism, or the nation-state or even the rise of the sharing economy. There is a risk, as we’ll see, in this methodology.
The Cavendish banana is in trouble.
60 years ago — the Cavendish was a distant second to another banana, the Gros Michel (or, Fat Michael). A larger, more delicious and pervasive clone. Then came something called Panama disease, fusarium wilt. This fungal disease, in a few short years, attacked and wiped out almost every single Gros Michel farm on the planet. The Gros Michel, in all its standard, perfect, predictable glory, had no immunity to this disease. And since all bananas were clones, they were all equally susceptible. Utter devastation ensued. Entire economies were crippled.
So, what did farmers do? They went in search of another Banana, one resistant to that strain of fungal disease. They found the Cavendish. Sure, it didn’t taste the same, but it was close enough. And it could grow in the very same soil that had just killed their glorious crops. So, humans switched bananas, trade went on, and today, the Cavendish is king.
The second lesson here is that humans, at scale, are bad at addressing root causes. We repeat mistakes in a rush to protect recoup the bottom line.
But now, the wilt is back. A new strain of Panama disease has emerged, one that the Cavendish is not resistant to. The Cavendish is dying, and we don’t yet have another strain to replace it. Once again, entire farms, communities, economies built on this single clone, a mono-culture, are being wiped out by a single threat.
Once again, all the clones are being killed by the same threat. The same thing that makes the Cavendish monoculture strong, its perfect repeatability — is now its final undoing.
But Hatim, what does all this have to do with me? — I am sure you are by now wondering in famished curiosity. Firstly, yes, you can call me Hatim now, but further:
Imagine that this tent is in fact a greenhouse, and you my friends, in your leadership, are bananas. An immaculate variety of bananas
You see, what we need, what Africa needs is not one perfect breed of leaders. One mono-culture that can be perfected here, or anywhere, cloned and transplanted to the farms and greenhouses of social betterment, political progress, economic growth and genuine equality. One perfect, transformational banana.
What we need, what Africa needs, is instead a vibrant community of strange, resilient, beautiful bananas. Each of them with different strengths, susceptibilities, weaknesses and immunities.
Sweet bananas, sour bananas, tall bananas, short bananas.
Quiet leaders, loud ones, slow leaders and fast.
The challenges of Africa are myriad and the solutions will be too.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, that most prolific modern philosopher, describes a useful concept that he calls antifragility. Strong systems, he explains, systems that survive, need shocks.
Consider the example of a porcelain bowl. A bowl may take one or two blows in stride, but finally, a single shock will break it forever. It is fragile. Human bone on the other hand (like Mr. Bradfords wrist) each time it is broken, heals stronger than before. It is anti-fragile. Shocks, challenges, risks, make the system stronger instead of weaker.
The Cavendish banana is fragile. Your leadership must be antifragile.
Like bananas, you must find your own fields. Like bananas, each field will have new threats, new fungi, new temptations. Like bananas, some you will be immune, some will not.
Unlike bananas however, you are a collective, but still diverse organism. You are able to share your immunities. When one of you falls sick, the others can heal him.
If we are honest, portraits of leadership are almost always two faced. Muammar Ghaddafi in one breath is called a murderous maniac and on the inhale is recalled as an important architect of prosperity. Gandhi is both peaceful liberator and racist misogynist. It would be simple hubris for us to imagine that any one of you, alone, could someday become or remain the perfect leader. The perfect banana.
We are all, as Mr. Toohill so aptly reminded us, broken. Broken leaders. Broken bananas.
However, if you receive your leadership as collective, understand and engage yourselves as a single (but diverse) organism, you have a chance to correct for that brokenness. To share your immunities.
So that when Ghali, as finance minister, is corrupted by some financial fungus, and begins to say 1+1 is no longer 3 but in fact closer to 1 this year or maybe 0.5 next year, all the while his pockets jingling with grafted coins, Smangaliso must pick up the phone to call and say hey, this is the public protector, you are letting us down, I am your innoculation. When Hope, or fidelity or constitution, however she comes to be known, decides actually, this housing upgrade is too much work, what we really need is another highway for my gated community, I pray that Lutho will send her a strongly worded letter that says sister cease, desist, come back to the party. When Brima forgets the tinkering of the makey-make and turns hungrily towards the Takey-Take, I dream that Tawonga will go to see him, point her finger in his face and say hey, we have big problems to solve, it is our turn to serve, let me cure you.
Also, your immunity must not just be negative.
I hope that when Malaika finally drops that liberating album, which I am sure will be fire, that you will all buy copies for your friends. When Salma, Amina and Marubini rise to run the actual AU. I hope Sku, David and Kukhanya will simultaneously have learned to model an African manhood that is unafraid of following strong women — remember gentlemen, as Mr. Morake reminded us yesterday, we lead through our friends just as much as through ourselves.
What I am saying in all this is that it will be insufficient for you to live your leadership individually — necessary but not sufficient. You cannot and will not carry this continent on your backs. You must hold one another upright as well. Your bananas will get sick. You must save one another. That act of holding one another up, sharing our antidotes, our immunities, that is what makes us a community: that is culture.
In his reflections on the Biafran conflict, a dark chapter in Nigerian and African history, Nigeria’s most luminous export until Mr. Morake’s girl Chimamanda, Chinua Achebe has this to say about culture:
…I am aware that there are people, many friends of mine, who feel that there are too many cultures around. In fact, I heard someone say that they think some of those cultures should be put down, that there are just too many. We did not make the world, so there is no reason we should be quarreling with the number of cultures there are. If any group decides on its own that its culture is not worth talking about, it can stop talking about it. But I don’t think anybody can suggest to another person, Please, drop your culture; let’s use mine. That’s the height of arrogance and the boast of imperialism. I think cultures know how to fight their battles; cultures know how to struggle. It is up to the owners of any particular culture to ensure it survives, or if they don’t want it to survive, they should act accordingly, but I am not going to recommend that.
My position, therefore, is that we must hear all the stories. That would be the first thing. And by hearing all the stories, we will find points of contact and communication, and the world story, the Great Story, will have a chance to develop.
What Mr. Achebe described, I think, is precisely this same problem of the fragile mono-culture. A single story that cannot hold our shared truth of survival and success. A single banana that cannot prevail.
Your work, your service is to hear all the stories. The stories you write together and the stories you discover together. And to pull from that rich tapestry the threads that will write the next chapter for Africa in the great book of the universe.
More importantly perhaps, you must not believe yourselves anointed denizens of ebony towers. You and I and all of us under this tent are swaddled in deafening privilege. If I add up just the snacks consumed in the past two years that surely surpasses many lifetimes what some African households will harvest. That cannot be right.
The Cavendish is dying precisely because it is planted in soils the threats of which it does not understand. Local bananas are faring fine.
Just as the bananas that will survive this plague and the one after it are those bananas with deep, natural, organic roots in their home communities. Our best cultures can only be arrived at in earnest partnership with those who permit our luxury. We can only discover tomorrow’s Africanness in honest partnership with every other African, not in separation from them.
There is not a community in the world better equipped to serve this mission. The work of discovering and multiplying all the beautiful bananas of our souls.
So take now then your final assignment. It is very importantly YOUR work to discover what the cultures of African Leadership can, should and will be. You must become a new breed of banana farmers. There will not be any more African Studies classes, no more faculty farmers to guide your cultivation. You’ve left the farm and must grow now your own tastes and colours. You must now go out into the great greenhouse of adversity.
But, take with you some tools:
Take with you the perspicacious focus of Mr. Faith, and the unparalleled jubilance of Dean Uzo.
Take with you the towering commitment of Mr. Jake, and the calm counsel of Mr. Tait.
Take with you the poet soul of Mr. Dash, and the creative compassion of Ms. Camden.
Take with you the careful wisdom of Mr. Gyampo and the deep loyal love of Mama K.
Take with you the frenetic passion of Ms. Lisa and the majestic magic of Mr. Gavin.
Take with you Mr. Joe — just the whole thing, take him, and Ms. Melissa too. And coach B.
Take with you the abiding honesty of Ms. Siphiwe and the humor of Mr. Demeke.
Most importantly, however, take with you this moment of communion, this community, this authorship of a culture-being-born. These bonds that hold you together will hold your promise together and bind us all in honest service of this mission.
I hope that you find fertile, challenging, welcoming soils.
I hope that your community will incubate the many sensitive, excellent, beautiful cultures that this continent desperately needs.
Finally, I hope that your children, and their children after them, will grow up in a world with many different delicious bananas.
Good luck.
This commencement address was delivered to members of ALA’s class of 2015* at their graduation ceremonies on June 22nd 2017.
*ALA classes are identified by their year of entry, not graduation.
