SA’s King V Code on Corporate Governance, released in draft form earlier this year, marks a pivotal moment in our governance journey. Building on three decades of work, it reframes governance as holistic, outcomes-driven and purpose-orientated. It calls on boards not just for diligence, but for direction.
Yet something is missing. King V outlines what good governance looks like but offers little on how purposeful leadership — or purpose-driven organisations — are cultivated. It treats purpose as a strategic goal rather than a living process — a moral and relational journey of becoming.
In an era of institutional distrust, ecological collapse and moral fatigue, we need leadership that generates moral energy. Governance that not only monitors but motivates. And we need to see organisations not as fixed machines but as dynamic social organisms — shaped by relationships, time and shared intent.
Towards King VI — governance as living process
The next evolution — King VI — must go further. Leadership and organisation are not static states but emergent practices. Governance must be understood as the ongoing production of purpose. This requires drawing on moral philosophy — thinkers such as Aristotle, Philip Selznick, John Dewey and Reuel Khoza — who viewed leadership as unfolding in time and relationship.
Former president Nelson Mandela exemplified this. His leadership was not a competency list. It was a moral arc of becoming — of reflection, forgiveness and clarity of intent. “When I stepped out of prison ... the Spirit of Jesus said ... now that you are free, don’t become a prisoner.” This was not managerial — it was existential. Mandela showed how inner transformation drives outward coherence.
Purpose, he reminds us, is not declared. It is cultivated — through adversity, dialogue and return to what matters most. King V hints at this, but does not enable it. In doing so, it risks underestimating the most powerful lever of long-term value: moral clarity sustained over time.
What King V gets right
King V is not without significant contributions:
- Holistic governance. It defines governance as ethical and effective leadership for performance, conformance, legitimacy and culture. This is a welcome evolution beyond fiduciary compliance.
- Integrated thinking. The code recognises that organisations operate within interdependent systems. When linked with temporal leadership, integrated thinking becomes a moral discipline, holding tensions between profit and purpose across time.
- Virtue-based ethics. It champions six foundational virtues: integrity, competence, responsibility, accountability, fairness and transparency.
- Narrative disclosure. By encouraging boards to “apply and explain” the code invites reflection over rigidity, fostering adaptive governance.
- Future awareness. It identifies frontiers such as AI, cybersecurity and data governance as emerging imperatives.
And yet, for all its strengths King V remains incomplete. It treats governance as architecture rather than ecology. It misses the truth that institutions are living systems, continuously shaped through interaction and intention.
Purpose as process
Leadership, as Selznick reminded us, is the institutional embodiment of purpose. But purpose isn’t merely set and cascaded — it is discovered, tested and renewed. It emerges through practice: in meetings, in decisions, in crises.
Mandela’s insight — “No axe is sharp enough to cut the soul of a sinner who keeps on trying” — is a reminder that moral authority is earned. Purpose, likewise, must be forged, not fabricated. Aristotle also taught that virtue is practical; it is exercised in context. So too must boards be invited into purpose as a process — not as performance.
Honouring organisational time
A blind spot in King V is its atemporal stance. Governance is treated as if it applies uniformly across time, but leadership never unfolds that way.
Temporal leadership helps us see that organisations, like people, are always becoming. Identity is not declared — it is formed and reformed through trials, transitions and turning points.
To support this, governance must cultivate embodied awareness of values in action; enable relational entanglement in real complexity; and sustain narrative clarity over time.
Mandela understood that leadership is not what happens in moments of triumph but in cycles of failure, reflection and renewal. “Judge me,” he said, “by how many times I fell and got back up again.” That ethos must shape how we think about institutional maturity.
From structure to soul — five shifts
To meet the demands of our time, King VI should enact five main shifts:
- Reframe leadership as purpose production. Leadership is not a technical act, it is a moral craft. Boards must create space for the inner and relational work of clarifying purpose.
- Support normative learning. Drawing from thinkers such as Baruch Spinoza and traditions such as ubuntu, governance must offer grounding norms (how we see the world), clarifying norms (what we must do), and organising norms (how we act together).
- Institutionalise reflective practice. Leadership requires reflection, not just reporting. Time for storytelling, retreat and shared inquiry is essential. Mandela taught: “A good leader engages in debate ... so that both sides may come closer.”
- Embed temporality in leadership development. Boards must see their work across seasons — formation, crisis, growth, renewal — and govern accordingly.
- Foster cultures of care. Governance that enables care is not sentimental. It is robust. Mandela’s strength lay in how he carried others with moral clarity and emotional intelligence. Such governance demands courage and heart.
Reweaving the moral fabric
These ideas apply far beyond the private sector. In a 2024 Business Day oped one of the authors of the article, Kosheek Sewchurran, argued that the real crisis in public service is not one of capacity but of care (“What do we really need from a professional public service?”, March 18). Reweaving our civic and institutional fabric begins with how we govern.
This is not about abandoning structure — it’s about enlivening it. We must go beyond compliance and coherence towards commitment and moral coherence. We cannot engineer institutions into greatness. We must cultivate them — inside out.
From rules to relationships
King V is a leap forward. It moves governance from risk aversion to adaptive stewardship. But King VI must take us further still — from stewardship to moral animation, from structure to soul.
Governance is not merely a set of controls. It is the living art of aligning people, purpose and power. Institutions are not static — they are always becoming. As we navigate a future shaped by systemic risk and profound change our institutions need more than scaffolding. They need spirit.
Let us not stop at better rules. Let us build institutions that serve life.
• Sewchurran is professor of leadership & strategy practice at the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business, focusing on leadership development, moral imagination and institutional renewal in complex systems. Naidoo is an executive at Kagiso Development Trust and a specialist in community-led development with a focus on systemic change, public value and shared prosperity.
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