How Do We Recognise What History Has Not Yet Confirmed?

Inspired by a leadership reflection by Vusi Thembekwayo

By Francis E. Madojemu

In a short but provocative video on leadership, South African entrepreneur and speaker Vusi Thembekwayo makes a striking statement:

“There is no such thing as a bad leader; only a leader bad for their time.”

He argues that leadership is contextual.

We often judge yesterday’s leaders by today’s standards, forgetting that future generations may also judge us by standards that do not yet exist.

More importantly, Vusi says that we frequently confuse leadership with likeability.

If we like what a leader does, we describe the person as a good leader. If we dislike the decisions, personality or consequences, we call the person a bad leader.

But if leadership includes seeing possibilities that do not yet exist, the leader is inevitably attempting to live in a future that other people have not yet accepted.

That leader is not merely describing a new reality. The leader is trying to pull people into it.

And people frequently resist being pulled into a future they cannot yet see.

Vusi’s observation is powerful. Many of the leaders we now celebrate were most fiercely opposed during the period of their greatest influence.

But his statement also raises a difficult question:

If visionary leaders are frequently misunderstood in their own time, how can we distinguish a misunderstood leader from a genuinely bad one?

How do we recognise good leadership before history gives us the answer?

How do we know whom to listen to, whom to support, whom to follow—and whom to resist?

That is the leadership problem before posterity.

History Often Apologises Too Late

Africa is filled with leaders who were rejected, removed or killed, only to be celebrated decades later.

Kwame Nkrumah saw African independence as incomplete without African unity, industrial capacity and economic self-determination. His Pan-African vision extended far beyond the immediate politics of Ghana. Many of the dangers he warned about—fragmented African markets, economic dependence, foreign interference and the weakness of small postcolonial states—remain with us.

Yet Nkrumah’s record was not uncomplicated.

Alongside his enormous vision, his government became increasingly authoritarian. Political opposition was restricted, state control expanded and Ghana eventually became a one-party state. His government was overthrown in 1966 amid economic difficulty, political repression and Cold War intrigue. Historical assessments therefore contain both his bold Pan-African vision and serious concerns about authoritarian rule.

Was Nkrumah a visionary leader or an authoritarian one?

The honest answer may be: both.

He could have been ahead of his time concerning Africa’s future and dangerously wrong about how political power should be exercised.

That is one of the first rules of mature leadership discernment:

A leader can be right about the destination and wrong about the means.

Patrice Lumumba presents another painful example.

Lumumba, the first prime minister of an independent Congo, became a symbol of African self-determination. He was removed, imprisoned and assassinated in 1961.

It would be too simple to say that he was merely killed “by his own people.” Congolese political rivals were involved, but Belgium and other international actors played significant roles in the circumstances leading to his death. Belgium subsequently acknowledged moral responsibility. In March 2026, a Brussels court ordered a former Belgian diplomat to stand trial over alleged involvement in Lumumba’s unlawful detention and transfer before his assassination. The legal and historical reckoning continues more than six decades later.

Lumumba did not live long enough to see what history would say about him.

This is one of leadership’s cruellest possibilities:

Some leaders plant in a season that will never permit them to harvest.

The people who resist them may eventually become the beneficiaries of the future they were trying to create.

But by then, the leader is gone.

“We Love Our Leaders Dead”

There is something human beings repeatedly do to their leaders.

While they are alive, we experience their weaknesses at close range. We hear the harsh words, encounter the difficult personality, suffer the consequences of their errors and become irritated by their demands.

After they die, distance edits the story.

The irritating details fade. Contradictions are removed. Their lives are compressed into a few memorable quotations, photographs and victories.

The difficult human being becomes a monument.

Bill Johnson makes this point while writing about the British healing evangelist Smith Wigglesworth. Johnson explains that his grandparents sat under Wigglesworth’s ministry and that his aunt was baptised in the Holy Spirit in one of his meetings.

His grandfather also reminded him that not everyone loved Wigglesworth.

Today, Wigglesworth is widely celebrated as an extraordinary man of faith. Books preserve his most powerful statements and testimonies. But those who encountered him personally also experienced a forceful, aggressive and sometimes unsettling personality.

Johnson’s point is not that Wigglesworth always acted correctly. It is that the faith we admire from a safe historical distance was not always comfortable to encounter in real time.

Dead prophets are often easier to honour than living ones.

A dead prophet cannot correct us, inconvenience us, change our plans or challenge our comfortable interpretation of reality.

The living leader can.

Mandela Was Not a Statue

Nelson Mandela is now remembered as a global symbol of courage, reconciliation and moral authority.

But the Mandela we celebrate today has also been edited by public memory.

The real Mandela was not a marble statue. He was a political organiser, a revolutionary, a prisoner, a husband and father, a strategist and an imperfect human being. His long imprisonment carried enormous personal and family costs.

What distinguished Mandela was not the absence of human weakness. It was the capacity to grow through suffering without allowing suffering to determine the final shape of his leadership.

He emerged from prison with enough moral imagination to see that the liberation of black South Africans could not be secured through the permanent humiliation of white South Africans.

He also demonstrated something many African leaders have struggled to do: he relinquished presidential power after one term. The Nelson Mandela Foundation records that he stepped down in 1999, strengthening the democratic principle that a nation must become larger than its leader.

Mandela’s greatness did not come from perfection.

It came partly from his capacity to subordinate personal pain to a larger national purpose.

Martin Luther King Jr.: The Danger of Weaponised Imperfection

Martin Luther King Jr. was condemned, monitored and harassed during the height of his influence.

Today, his words are quoted by presidents, corporations and institutions that might have found his actual leadership profoundly disruptive.

His message is now widely celebrated, but the living King was considered dangerous.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted an extensive surveillance campaign against him. The Stanford King Institute describes how COINTELPRO surveillance produced alleged evidence of extramarital relationships but found no evidence that King was under Communist influence. The FBI nevertheless attempted to intimidate and discredit him. The surveillance material must therefore be understood within the context of an openly hostile campaign.

This does not mean we should declare that King had no private moral failures. It means we must be careful about repeating allegations collected and distributed by an institution determined to destroy his credibility.

Even if every allegation were eventually substantiated, another important principle would remain:

A leader’s personal failure does not automatically make the truth they proclaimed false.

Segregation would not become righteous because King was imperfect.

The dignity of black people would not become debatable because the messenger had private struggles.

Yet we must also resist the opposite error. A righteous cause does not make the private life of its leader irrelevant.

This is where leadership discernment becomes difficult.

We must learn to evaluate the truth of the message, the fruit of the mission and the character of the messenger without pretending they are exactly the same question.

Martin Luther: Liberating Truth and Destructive Error

The distinction becomes even more painful when we consider Martin Luther, the sixteenth-century reformer—not Martin Luther King Jr.

Luther helped recover truths that transformed Christianity. His challenge to religious corruption and his proclamation of justification by faith helped set millions of people free from systems of spiritual fear and manipulation.

Yet Luther also wrote viciously against Jewish people.

His 1543 publication On the Jews and Their Lies promoted ideas that cannot be dismissed as harmless products of a difficult personality. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum documents Luther’s contribution to longstanding Christian anti-Jewish prejudice, including his acceptance of false accusations against Jews. These centuries of antisemitism later provided cultural material that the Nazis exploited. USHMM’s historical account places Luther’s writings within that tragic development.

When I encountered this connection at the genocide memorial in Rwanda, it deeply disturbed me.

How could a man whose message brought such freedom also leave behind words that could be weaponised in the service of hatred?

But perhaps Scripture had already prepared us for this difficult truth.

Human beings are rarely completely light or completely darkness.

A person can carry revelation in one area and remain terribly blind in another.

Therefore, we do not have to choose between saying:

“Martin Luther was a great reformer”

and

“Martin Luther wrote profoundly evil things about Jewish people.”

Both statements can be true.

His antisemitism does not make justification by faith false.

But the truth of justification by faith does not make his antisemitism acceptable.

That is mature historical judgment.

It is neither canonisation nor cancellation.

Why Does the Bible Expose Its Leaders?

The Bible is remarkably honest about its leaders.

Noah survived the flood and later became drunk.

Abraham believed God, yet acted out of fear and compromised Sarah’s safety.

Moses encountered God and led Israel out of bondage, yet struggled with anger and failed at a decisive moment.

David was a worshipper, warrior and king after God’s heart. Yet he committed adultery, abused royal power and arranged the death of Uriah.

Peter received revelation about Jesus and later denied Him. Even after Pentecost, Paul had to confront him publicly over behaviour that compromised the truth of the gospel.

Why does Scripture preserve these stories?

Why not remove the embarrassing details and give us perfect heroes?

Because God does not want us to build our faith upon human perfection.

But Scripture is not making sin irrelevant either.

Moses’ anger had consequences.

David’s actions brought judgment and suffering into his household.

Saul’s anointing did not excuse his disobedience.

The Bible therefore rejects two dangerous ideas.

The first is:

A leader must be perfect before God can use them.

If that were true, God could use almost nobody.

The second is:

Because God uses flawed people, a leader’s character and conduct do not matter.

That is equally false.

God’s use of a person is not God’s endorsement of everything in that person.

The question is not simply, “Is this leader flawed?”

Every leader is flawed.

We must ask:

There is a considerable difference between human limitation, moral failure, criminal conduct, ideological blindness and deliberate cruelty.

To place them all under the harmless word imperfection is itself dangerous.

Vision Is Not the Same as Character

One of our greatest mistakes is compressing every aspect of leadership into the labels “good leader” or “bad leader.”

Leadership has several dimensions.

A person may possess extraordinary vision but poor character.

Another may be personally decent but administratively incompetent.

Someone may understand the future but lack the ability to build the systems required to reach it.

Another may build efficient systems in pursuit of an unjust objective.

We should therefore stop asking only:

Is this a good leader?

We should also ask:

Good at what?
Good for whom?
By what methods?
Over what period?
At what human cost?

At least five dimensions must be examined:

  1. Vision: What future does the leader see?
  2. Truth: Is the diagnosis of the present rooted in reality?
  3. Character: What moral boundaries govern the leader?
  4. Competence: Can the leader translate vision into execution?
  5. Stewardship: Do the systems built strengthen people and institutions beyond the leader’s lifetime?

A leader may perform strongly in one dimension and fail catastrophically in another.

The Four Leadership Fallacies

Four fallacies make it difficult to recognise leadership in real time.

1. The Likeability Fallacy

We assume a leader is good because the leader makes us feel good.

But leadership sometimes requires decisions people will not initially appreciate.

A leader who always protects personal popularity may avoid the very decisions the future requires.

2. The Resistance Fallacy

We assume opposition proves that a leader is prophetic.

But being opposed does not make a person correct.

Prophets are resisted. Reformers are resisted. But dictators, incompetent leaders and dishonest people are also resisted.

Resistance proves only that a conflict exists. It does not tell us who is right.

3. The Perfection Fallacy

We reject every contribution once we discover that the contributor was flawed.

If consistently applied, this principle would leave us with almost no history, theology, science, politics, ministry or literature from which to learn.

4. The Posterity Fallacy

We assume history will eventually give us a perfectly objective judgment.

But posterity can also be selective. History is affected by surviving documents, political interests, national myths, later disappointments and the tendency to compare past leaders with weaker successors.

Posterity may see some things more clearly because it knows the consequences.

But posterity can also forget the immediate human cost.

The Adegbola Question: What If We Already Had the Answer?

This question became more troubling for me while examining the thinking of the late Bishop Adeolu Adegbola, father of Dr Tunde Adegbola.

Bishop Adegbola’s work connected faith, education and the church’s responsibility for society. He served as the founding principal of the Methodist Lay Training Institute and later directed the Institute of Church and Society in Ibadan.

When government assumed control of many schools, he did not believe the church’s only response should be to fight over institutional possession. He helped initiate work on religious education curricula and textbooks for use within the changing educational system. His concern was not merely that the church should own schools, but that the church should continue shaping education and society. His biographical record shows a leader thinking structurally about the relationship between church, education and national development.

Reading ideas developed around fifty years ago and discovering how relevant they remain today is both inspiring and frightening.

It suggests that some of our problems have not continued because nobody saw the answer.

They continued because we failed to recognise, believe, organise around and implement what had already been seen.

Sometimes a nation’s crisis is not the absence of revelation.

It is the inability to recognise revelation while the person carrying it is still alive.

We celebrate pioneers after death because death removes the inconvenience of having to obey what they saw.

Why Obasanjo Looks Different in Retrospect

The changing assessment of President Olusegun Obasanjo illustrates another feature of historical judgment.

Many Nigerians who lived through his civilian administration did not necessarily regard it as an extraordinary golden age. The government had significant limitations and controversies.

But later comparison has caused some of its achievements to appear more substantial.

The administration helped liberalise Nigeria’s telecommunications sector, laying foundations for the mobile and digital economy. It also pursued the Paris Club debt agreement, under which approximately $18 billion was cancelled in exchange for substantial repayment. Nigeria’s Debt Management Office describes debt relief as an explicit priority of the administration and documents the institutions and negotiations used to pursue it. Nigeria’s Debt Management Office

It is possible that Obasanjo improved in our estimation partly because we can now see the longer-term consequences of certain decisions.

But it is also possible that our judgment has changed because later administrations performed poorly in areas where his government appeared stronger.

This gives us another rule:

A leader’s historical reputation may rise not only because the leader’s record becomes clearer, but because the performance of successors changes the basis of comparison.

What, Then, Do We Do With President Tinubu?

The same difficulty confronts us when evaluating a sitting president such as Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

Nobody can yet give a final historical verdict on his presidency.

Some policies may have consequences that will only become clear over several years. Painful reforms can eventually produce stability. They can also become prolonged hardship without sufficient structural benefit.

The question cannot simply be:

The responsible questions are:

We may not possess history’s final verdict.

But we can still make morally responsible provisional judgments.

Eight Tests for Recognising Leadership Before Posterity

1. The Vision Test

Does the leader see a genuine future possibility, or merely offer magnificent promises?

A real vision begins with an accurate diagnosis of the present.

2. The Truth Test

Does the leader tell the truth, especially when the truth is inconvenient?

Being ahead of one’s time is not permission to become detached from evidence.

3. The Means Test

Are the methods consistent with the promised future?

A leader cannot credibly claim to be building freedom while destroying every institution capable of questioning them.

4. The Fruit Test

What is actually changing?

Jesus did not say leaders would be known merely by charisma, persecution, gifting or eloquence. He said they would be known by their fruit.

Who benefits?

Who bears the cost?

Are people becoming stronger or increasingly dependent upon the leader?

5. The Power Test

What does the leader do with authority?

Can competent people disagree without being humiliated or destroyed?

Does the leader obey the standards imposed upon others?

6. The Correction Test

What happens when the leader is proved wrong?

Perfection is impossible. Correctability is essential.

The inability to acknowledge error turns ordinary human weakness into institutional disaster.

7. The Institution Test

Is the leader building something capable of surviving them?

Great leadership develops stronger institutions, clearer systems, measurable standards and capable successors.

A personality cult may appear powerful during the leader’s lifetime and collapse immediately after departure.

8. The Shared-Sacrifice Test

When change becomes painful, does the leader carry part of the burden or impose it entirely upon others?

Necessary reform may involve temporary hardship. But trustworthy leadership explains why the pain is necessary, how long it should last, what milestones will demonstrate progress and what sacrifices the leadership itself is making.

“Posterity will vindicate me” must never become an excuse for unlimited present suffering.

Popularity and Leadership Quality Are Different Questions

A leader may be popular and sound.

A leader may be popular and destructive.

A leader may be unpopular and visionary.

A leader may be unpopular because the vision, methods and performance are genuinely poor.

Popularity is not proof.

Opposition is not proof.

Persecution is not proof.

Charisma is not proof.

Even visible results are not enough unless we ask how those results were achieved and who paid the price.

How Should We Respond to Imperfect Leaders?

We must learn to separate four ideas:

Listening is not believing everything.

Supporting is not surrendering conscience.

Honouring office is not idolising the officeholder.

Criticism is not necessarily contempt or rebellion.

We can receive a true idea from a flawed person.

We can support a sound policy without endorsing the leader’s entire life.

We can resist wrongdoing without erasing every genuine contribution.

We can honour legitimate authority while maintaining biblical and moral judgment.

This is not blind loyalty.

It is disciplined discernment.

The Leader We Are Looking For

We do not need perfect leaders.

Such leaders do not exist.

We need leaders whose vision is truthful, whose methods are just, whose fruit is measurable, whose power is accountable and whose weaknesses remain correctable.

Posterity may eventually clarify a leader’s legacy.

But citizenship, discipleship and stewardship cannot wait for posterity.

We need wisdom now.

Holiness keeps leadership from becoming self-worship.

Wisdom helps us recognise what is emerging.

Order restrains the weaknesses of imperfect people.

Truth prevents loyalty from becoming idolatry.

Fruit enables us to judge what speeches cannot prove.

And perhaps the sentence at the centre of the entire conversation is this:

A leader may be ahead of their time in vision and behind God’s standard in character. Our responsibility is to discern both.

The fact that a leader is flawed does not mean we should refuse to listen.

The fact that a leader is gifted does not mean we should stop examining.

The fact that a leader is resisted does not mean the leader is right.

And the fact that history may one day understand does not release us from the responsibility to seek wisdom today.

Francis E. Madojemu