When the Bramble Says Yes

Last weekend, thousands of delegates filed into a stadium to choose the people who will lead them for the next four years. Ballots were cast, numbers were read out, hands were raised, and the congratulatory flyers began their journey across our WhatsApp groups and numerous social media platforms. Somewhere between the cheering and the swearing-in, I found myself thinking about an old fable.

Long ago, the trees, so the story goes, once decided they needed a king. They went first to the olive tree. ``Reign over us,’’ they said. The olive declined and said, Why should I give up my rich oil, valued by everyone, to sway over the other trees? So, they went to the fig tree. The fig also declined. Why abandon my sweetness and good fruit for the trouble of a crown? Then they asked the vine. The vine, too, said no. Why would I leave behind the wine that makes people glad? Finally, the trees went to the bramble. And the bramble said yes, eagerly. ``Come and take refuge in my shade,’’ it said. ``And if you won't, let fire come out of the bramble and burn down the cedars.’’

I have always found that last line chilling. A bramble has no shade. It is low, thorny and fruitless. Yet it offered shelter and threatened fire in the same breath. Protection and menace, side by side. That is the bramble's entire manifesto.

What strikes me the most about the fable, though, is not the bramble. It is everyone else. The olive is the person of principle and conscience. The fig is the professional: the doctor, the engineer, the lecturer, the accountant, busy and productive, with no time for the mud of politics. The vine is the one pursuing a comfortable life, happiness and a quiet weekend. None of them is wicked. Each has a perfectly reasonable excuse. But their reasonable excuses leave the crown lying on the ground, and something always picks it up.

On 20th July 2020, during one of my personal studies, I wrote in my notebook that the people who make it to the top are not the best, but the people who have the guts. I still believe it. Guts is not a qualification. It is simply a willingness to step forward when others step back. Courage without character is just appetite.

Here is the uncomfortable part. Many of us are growing in numbers but not in influence. We are more educated than any generation before us. We have more professionals, more graduates and more thoughtful people than ever. Yet we are absent from the rooms where decisions are made. We analyse the results on social media the morning after, while others were in the room the night before.

There is another old story about a strongman who brought down an entire building simply by taking hold of its two central pillars. I think about that image often. Every society stands on pillars: knowledge, money and power. Whoever has a grip on those pillars decides what the rest of us see, what we can afford and what is possible. When the right hands are not on the pillars, the wrong hands will be, and the building does not care whose hands they are.

An ancient writer once complained of an evil he had seen under the sun: folly placed in high positions, while the capable sat low. He had seen servants riding on horseback while princes walked on foot. Thousands of years later, the observation has not aged a day. Many of those who walk the corridors of power were never fit to enter them. They walked through doors that the fit refused to open.

Let me be fair, because fairness matters. People change. A person's past need not be a life sentence, and I would be the last to deny anyone the possibility of growth. Some of the finest leaders in history had rough beginnings. But a crown is not a rehabilitation programme. When an institution hands its highest offices to those once better known for muscle at its margins than for wisdom at its centre, the question is not only about them. It is about what the institution now rewards. It is about the delegates who chose. And it is about the rest of us, who chose not to be in the room at all.

We are told that the grassroots are the frontline soldiers, and that is true. Soldiers win battles. But someone must decide what the battle is for, and that requires a different kind of person at the top.

Power will always be contested wherever two or three people gather. That is the nature of human beings. The question is never whether someone will lead. The question is who. So, to the olives, the figs and the vines: your oil, your fruit and your wine are good things. But if you keep turning down the crown, please do not complain about the thorns.