Leadership Is Failing Everywhere

There is no shortage of global crises that cry out for effective political leadership. But faced with hard decisions about hard problems, government officials in many countries are opting for easy rhetoric or actions that might make them popular in the short term but do little to help their citizens in the long run.

Look no further than South Africa, Bloomberg’s editors write, for government officials that are hurting the very people they’re claiming to help. There, the administration of President Cyril Ramaphosa is proposing a constitutional amendment that panders to populists by permitting some private land to be seized by the government without compensation. The editors say it’s the wrong prescription for the country’s serious problems of widespread unemployment, unequal distribution of agricultural land between whites and blacks, and political corruption.