182 REFLECTIONS ON CHARACTER AND LEADERSHIP
A Capricious Operating ModeNot only do despotic leaders create structures and use divisive tactics to
keep their populace in check, they also specialize in random terror.
Shaka made sure that the only predictable element in his leadership style
was cruelty: everyone knew that sometime, somehow, somewhere,
someone ’ s neck was going to be broken, or someone was going to
be impaled, or someone ’ s family was going to die. Nobody could feel
safe.
Deliberate, unpredictable violence has a devastating effect on those
who witness or hear of it. The horror plunges people into a psychological
abyss, breaking their will and enforcing total subjugation. A review of
totalitarian regimes — like that in North Korea — suggests that when a
certain degree of submission has been reached, the populace is prepared
to accept anything. They come to believe that their leader is entitled to
do whatever he wants. Once that submission point has been reached,
saying ‘ Bayete! ’ ( ‘ Hail to the king! ’ ) is the only option open to them.
Shaka made terror part of his daily routine. He kept a group of
executioners as part of his regular retinue, their sole purpose to kill at
his command. The victims were often nobodies, but important fi gures
were no safer. On many occasions Shaka selected two or three of the
counselors in attendance at a meeting and ordered them to be killed on
the spot.
At fi rst glance, this behavior seems highly irrational, but in the
context of absolute, totalitarian leadership it is rational in the extreme.
Shaka ’ s random executions — like those of Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong,
Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, and others — kept the people in
check. As king, Shaka had the right to kill and if he failed to exercise
that right routinely, he might give the impression that his power was
waning. People might disdain or even rise up against him. Thus the
whimsical killing had to go on.
That Shaka could so blithely inspire fear suggests that cruelty came
naturally to him. A true malevolent antisocial, he saw people as things,
devoid of emotional value. Like cattle, people were a lower form of
animal that could be disposed of at his pleasure. His words could kill
people or save them. Unfortunately, his subjects ’ reactions of awe and
terror, their perception of him as all - powerful, omniscient king, fed his
delusions of grandeur and he became more brutal still, his early impo-
tence transformed into omnipotence. But as Shaka came to understand,
the experience of absolute control over other human beings is a narcotic:
as time passes, larger and larger infusions of the drug are needed. He
pulled others into addiction with him. Those people who were asked to