When Members of Parliament finally adopted Prime Minister Russell Mmiso Dlamini’s response on his much-debated “disruptive leadership” style on Monday, August 17, 2026, they closed one chapter of a debate that may ultimately prove far more important than the terminology that started it.
For weeks, the word “disruptive” had attracted questions, criticism and even suspicion.
Mbabane East MP Welcome Dlamini, seconded by Ngudzeni MP Charles Ndlovu, had moved a motion asking the Prime Minister to explain how this leadership approach fitted within the Tinkhundla System of Government, collective Cabinet responsibility and the constitutional structures governing the country. MPs also demanded evidence showing what the approach was actually delivering for emaSwati.
Those were legitimate questions.
In fact, challenging a new leadership philosophy should not necessarily be interpreted as resistance to progress. Parliament exists partly to interrogate Government, demand accountability and establish whether policies and approaches serve the national interest.
But after the robust debate and eventual adoption of the Prime Minister’s response, a bigger question now emerges:
Could disruptive leadership, properly understood and responsibly implemented, actually be what Eswatini needs at this stage of its development?
There is considerable international evidence suggesting that the answer could be yes.
DISRUPTION DOES NOT HAVE TO MEAN CHAOS
The greatest misunderstanding surrounding disruptive leadership may lie in the ordinary meaning of the word “disruptive”.
In everyday conversation, disruption sounds negative. It suggests disorder, interruption or instability.
In leadership and innovation, however, disruption can mean something very different. It can mean refusing to accept inefficient systems simply because “that is how things have always been done”. It can mean questioning outdated procedures, introducing new technology, removing unnecessary bureaucracy and demanding faster results.
That distinction is critical.
Prime Minister himself has argued that his interpretation of disruptive leadership is about challenging entrenched practices through innovation, calculated risk and decisive action rather than dismantling established institutions.
He linked it to His Majesty King Mswati III’s Nkwe philosophy of accelerated national development, telling Parliament that the King was not merely asking Government to move faster, but to “rise and run”.
That interpretation is surprisingly close to modern thinking on public-sector innovation.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development says governments increasingly need new approaches because they operate in rapidly changing environments and must find better solutions to increasingly complex challenges. Government innovation, according to the OECD, should ultimately improve efficiency and produce better policy outcomes.
Therefore, disruption should not be measured by how uncomfortable it makes an institution.
It should be measured by what it fixes.
1. IT CAN BREAK THE CULTURE OF ‘BUSINESS AS USUAL’
One of the greatest enemies of development in any government is institutional inertia.
An inefficient procedure may continue for years simply because nobody wants to challenge it. Applications can move through unnecessary layers of approval. Projects can spend years between conception and implementation. Departments can become accustomed to missed deadlines.
Eventually, inefficiency becomes normal.
Disruptive leadership challenges that normalisation.
It asks difficult but necessary questions: Why should this approval take six months? Why are citizens standing in queues for services that could be accessed digitally? Why should different ministries duplicate the same work? Why should a development project remain unfinished year after year?
The World Bank, after examining public-sector reforms across several countries, concluded that political leadership is often an essential catalyst for reform because leaders must overcome the forces that naturally resist change. It found that successful public-sector transformation generally combines strong leadership with institutional capacity, appropriate incentives, transparency and technology.
That is precisely where disruptive leadership can become powerful.
A leader willing to challenge the status quo can give public servants permission to rethink processes that previously appeared untouchable.
2. IT CAN MAKE GOVERNMENT MOVE FASTER
For ordinary citizens, Government performance is rarely judged by theories of public administration.
It is judged by experience.
Can a young entrepreneur register a business without endless delays? Can a patient find medication at a clinic? Can communities get clean water? Can roads be repaired? Can investors receive decisions quickly enough to put their money into the economy?
Speed therefore matters.
This does not mean abandoning procedures or laws. It means recognising that procedures exist to facilitate development, not unnecessarily frustrate it.
OECD research notes that governments are under pressure to provide services better, faster and more efficiently, while still demonstrating value for money. Modern public administration therefore increasingly embraces process improvement, digitalisation, experimentation and other methods designed to improve performance.
This makes the Prime Minister’s emphasis on urgency highly relevant.
If disruptive leadership succeeds in shortening decision-making times without compromising accountability, Eswatini stands to become more competitive, particularly in attracting investment.
Investors generally do not only compare tax rates and labour costs. They also care about how quickly licences are issued, permits processed, land made available and Government decisions implemented.
A faster State can therefore become an economic advantage.
3. IT PUTS RESULTS AHEAD OF ROUTINE
Perhaps the strongest advantage of disruptive leadership is its obsession with outcomes.
Government departments can easily become consumed by activity.
Meetings are held. Reports are written. Workshops are conducted. Committees are appointed. Budgets are spent.
But activity and achievement are not necessarily the same thing.
The more important question is: What changed in the life of the citizen?
That is why the original parliamentary motion was particularly useful. MPs specifically demanded examples, timelines and measurable indicators allowing Parliament to determine whether disruptive leadership was actually improving governance and service delivery.
The Prime Minister subsequently responded with numbers.
His report cited more than 16 000 jobs created since the Administration assumed office, more than E30 billion in investments, improved availability of medicines in public health facilities, infrastructure development, water projects, support to vulnerable households, expansion of digital connectivity and other interventions.
Whether every Government target has been achieved is a separate question, and Government itself acknowledges that substantial challenges remain.
But placing numbers before Parliament establishes an important principle:
Leadership must be measurable.
That is healthy for public administration.
4. IT CAN ENCOURAGE INNOVATION INSIDE GOVERNMENT
Disruptive leadership should not mean that only the Prime Minister becomes disruptive.
Its greatest success would be creating thousands of problem-solvers throughout the Public Service.
A nurse should feel empowered to identify a better way of managing patients.
An engineer should be encouraged to propose cheaper methods of delivering infrastructure.
A young information technology officer should be able to recommend replacing paperwork with a digital system.
A regional administrator should be able to identify an unnecessary bureaucratic bottleneck and propose its removal.
OECD research shows that public-sector innovation becomes stronger when governments create a culture in which employees at different levels are given the resources, training and institutional support necessary to develop new approaches. It warns that innovation concentrated only among senior officials can limit the ideas available to government.
This provides an important lesson for Eswatini.
Disruptive leadership should eventually become a culture rather than a personality.
If everything depends on one powerful leader pushing institutions from above, the transformation may disappear when that leader leaves office.
But if public servants themselves become more innovative, responsive and results-oriented, the change becomes institutional.
5. IT CAN HELP GOVERNMENT BREAK DOWN SILOS
Some of Eswatini’s biggest development challenges do not belong to one ministry.
Youth unemployment involves education, labour, commerce, agriculture, ICT, finance and economic planning.
Food security involves agriculture, water, land, infrastructure and trade.
Tourism requires roads, immigration services, policing, culture, communications and private-sector investment.
Government cannot solve such challenges when ministries operate like separate islands.
The World Bank has found that successful public-sector reforms often depend on improved coordination between institutions, transparency, information-sharing and strong political leadership.
Disruptive leadership can therefore challenge another longstanding bureaucratic habit, the tendency for departments to protect their territories instead of collaborating around national outcomes.
If the national target is job creation, for example, ministries should not merely report what each department individually accomplished. Government should ask whether their combined interventions actually produced jobs.
That shifts the mindset from departmental performance to national performance.
6. IT CREATES ROOM FOR CALCULATED RISK
Traditional bureaucracies are naturally cautious.
That caution serves an important purpose because governments manage taxpayers’ money and must operate within the law.
But extreme fear of failure can itself become costly.
Officials may avoid trying anything new because doing nothing appears safer than attempting something that could fail.
Yet almost every significant innovation carries some element of uncertainty.
The OECD therefore encourages governments to develop environments that permit experimentation while maintaining appropriate accountability. Its work on public-sector innovation specifically highlights experimentation, stakeholder engagement, monitoring and evaluation as important tools for governments trying new approaches.
For Eswatini, this could mean testing new service-delivery systems in selected Tinkhundla before taking them nationwide, piloting digital platforms before massive investment, or trying new approaches to agriculture, healthcare and youth enterprise and rapidly scaling those that work.
That is intelligent disruption.
7. IT CAN STRENGTHEN ACCOUNTABILITY
There is an interesting contradiction at the heart of the disruptive leadership debate.
Some critics fear that a powerful, fast-moving leader could weaken accountability.
Yet results-based disruptive leadership can actually increase accountability, if targets are published and regularly measured.
Once Government says it will create a certain number of jobs, improve medicine availability, complete particular roads or connect a specified number of households to electricity, citizens and Parliament have something concrete against which to judge it.
The OECD recommends that public-sector innovation be linked to clear objectives, measurable outcomes, indicators and timelines. It also emphasises monitoring and evaluation so governments can determine whether innovative interventions are producing the intended outcomes.
That means Parliament’s oversight role and disruptive leadership do not have to be enemies.
They can reinforce each other.
Government pushes harder for results; Parliament pushes harder for evidence.
The winner should be the citizen.
THE CAUTION: DISRUPTION NEEDS GUARDRAILS
None of this means disruptive leadership should receive a blank cheque.
The concerns raised by MPs deserve to remain part of the national conversation.
Speed cannot replace legality.
Boldness cannot replace consultation.
Innovation cannot replace accountability.
And one individual cannot replace institutions.
Modern research on transformation repeatedly shows that change imposed without sufficient organisational alignment can fail. Harvard Business Review recently highlighted research suggesting many major organisational transformations fall short because leaders focus on designing the change while paying insufficient attention to whether employees understand, support and are equipped to implement it.
That may be the most important lesson for Eswatini.
The best disruptive leader is not simply one who runs faster than everybody else. It is one who gets the whole institution running in the same direction.
The Prime Minister therefore has an opportunity following Parliament’s adoption of his response.
The debate should now move beyond defending the phrase “disruptive leadership”.
Government should define what disruption means in practical terms across every ministry.
Every ministry could identify bureaucratic bottlenecks that must be eliminated, services that should be digitised, projects requiring acceleration and measurable outcomes citizens should expect within specified periods.
Then Parliament, the media and the public can judge the philosophy on its results.
ESWATINI MAY NEED CONSTRUCTIVE DISRUPTION
There are moments in the development of nations when incremental improvement is enough.
There are other moments when circumstances demand a greater sense of urgency.
Eswatini is pursuing industrialisation while confronting unemployment, poverty, fiscal pressures, climate change, healthcare demands and fierce international competition for investment.
The country cannot afford recklessness.
But neither can it afford complacency.
The choice therefore should not be between stability and disruption.
It should be between constructive disruption and institutional stagnation.
Monday’s debate demonstrated something important about Eswatini’s governance system. MPs were able to challenge the Prime Minister, force him to explain his philosophy, interrogate his evidence and eventually adopt his response following debate.
That process itself may provide the formula for making disruptive leadership work.
Bold Executive action. Robust parliamentary scrutiny. Strong institutions. Measurable targets. And ordinary emaSwati at the centre of every decision.
Under those conditions, disruptive leadership need not threaten the system.
It could strengthen it.
Because ultimately, emaSwati are unlikely to judge Russell Mmiso Dlamini’s leadership by what academics call it.
They will judge it by whether there are jobs for their children, medicines in hospitals, water in communities, functioning roads, growing businesses, faster public services and greater opportunities.
If disruption delivers those results while respecting institutions, accountability and the national governance framework, then perhaps the most dangerous leadership style for Eswatini would not be disruptive leadership at all.
It would be leadership that becomes comfortable with doing things the way they have always been done.
