About This Project

Post-1994 South Africa faces a profound leadership trust crisis: despite a Christian demographic and multiple governance safeguards, corruption, dysfunction, and moral erosion persist. This dissertation employs a narratological methodology, rather than empirical data analysis, to determine whether Christological epiphanies (Theophanies) recalibrate the moral compass of leadership for a sustainable culture of human flourishing in the church, commerce, and governance.

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What is the context of this research?

Post-1994 South Africa faces a profound low trust in leaders crisis. Despite an 85.3% Christian demographic, the presence of multiple anti-corruption agencies, a regulated bureaucracy, an independent judiciary, and a free press, the nation continues to reel under persistent public/private/people corruption, dysfunctional state-owned enterprises, social deprivation, and moral decay. South Africans collectively manifest a dismal inability to discern authentic leadership, raising the urgent question of how leaders are to be identified, formed, and sustained. Conventional evaluative tools such as audits, popularity polls, and efficiency metrics measure compliance but overlook the deeper moral, relational, and spiritual dimensions that sustain authentic authority. This study aims to cultivate an internally motivated, enduring leadership framework that fosters long-term human flourishing in both individuals and communities.

What is the significance of this project?

While leadership studies have traditionally emphasised personal virtues such as integrity, vision, resilience, and emotional intelligence, this thesis narrows its focus to the transformative role of epiphanies. Unlike incremental learning, epiphanies represent sudden cognitive–affective breakthroughs that recalibrate moral orientation and reframe one’s relation to truth and values. They are ontological ruptures in which the transcendent breaks into the immanent, provoking a deep reorientation of identity, purpose, and moral agency. Historically, spiritual epiphanies and divine encounters have acted as profound catalysts, enabling individuals to endure extraordinary hardship, opposition, financial loss, and even public disgrace with unwavering conviction and reformist courage. This study argues that Christological epiphanies are distinctive in leadership formation because they exist to build a culture of sustainable human flourishing in every ecosystem they lead.

What are the goals of the project?

This study operationalises and tests the Christological Discernment Framework (CDF) to distinguish authentic from counterfeit epiphanies and correlate them with leadership outcomes. While primarily a conceptual and theological study, it employs a threefold methodology: theological-conceptual, narratological, and qualitative. Singh & Makar’s spirituality questionnaire is applied to assess spiritual formation and daily practices. Historical leaders sociological analyses and 20–30 diverse contemporary leaders of proven institutional success and public standing are interviewed, focused on whether epiphanies shaped their leadership and how Christological criteria guided them towards institutional harmony and flourishing. Authenticity markers are correlated with existing audit outcomes, including Bruno Roche’s fourfold capital indicators—financial, human, social, and environmental—providing an integrated assessment of flourishing.