A society eventually loses respect for leaders whose greatness improves only their own lives.

When education produces arrogance, religion finances extravagance and traditional authority becomes a private business, people begin to question the institutions they once revered. They see titles multiplying while opportunities shrink. They hear wisdom preached while selfishness practises openly.

This is avaricious elitism: the belief that superior knowledge, wealth, ancestry or position entitles a person to take more from society while owing it less.

Its intellectual counterpart is equally corrosive. Intelligence becomes a sophisticated instrument for defending privilege. Brilliant people find elegant explanations for arrangements whose principal achievement is to keep themselves comfortable.

In politics, this betrayal is especially destructive.

The grassroots organise, contribute, endure insults and defend the party when doing so brings little reward. Once power arrives, some leaders disappear behind appointments, contracts, tinted windows and inaccessible offices. The people who carried them become an inconvenience.

Then, when defeat approaches, the same leaders rediscover humility, community and the importance of the ordinary voter.

People notice.

Their resentment is not necessarily hostility towards education or competence. Often, it is the accumulated disappointment of discovering that the educated and competent have used their advantages almost exclusively for themselves.

A party cannot keep asking its supporters to admire intellectual excellence that delivers no practical benefit to them. Qualifications must show up in better organisation, fairer opportunities, functioning services and leadership that listens.

Religious leadership faces the same moral test.

A congregation should not have to impoverish itself to prove that its leader is blessed. Where sacrifice flows persistently upwards and comfort rarely flows downwards, spiritual authority deserves scrutiny.

The preacher who demands accountability from politicians must accept it within the church. Members deserve clarity about how their contributions are used. Questions about money are legitimate questions of stewardship.

Faith should strengthen the vulnerable, not make them easier to exploit.

Traditional leadership, too, must justify authority through service.

A stool or skin carries obligations extending beyond ceremony, protocol and entitlement. Where authority concerns communal land, proceeds and development decisions should serve the community through transparent arrangements.

A traditional leader’s success should be visible in the condition of the people: their access to opportunity, the protection of their heritage, the resolution of disputes and the prospects of their children.

A magnificent palace surrounded by neglected lives is a monument to misplaced priorities.

These failures have consequences beyond individual disappointment. They weaken confidence in leadership itself.

When respectable people repeatedly behave selfishly, they make it easier for loud opportunists to claim that knowledge, experience and integrity are worthless. The charlatan gains ground because those better equipped to lead have made competence look socially useless.

But replacing selfish intellectuals with reckless populists merely changes the form of the betrayal.

The answer is to insist that ability carries responsibility.

Educated leaders should mentor, explain, build institutions and widen access. Political leaders should make public opportunity fairer. Religious leaders should practise the sacrifice they preach. Traditional leaders should protect communal interests with the seriousness they attach to their own dignity.

Followers also have a duty. We must stop excusing greed because it wears our party colours, speaks from our pulpit or occupies our ancestral stool. Loyalty that forbids scrutiny becomes protection for abuse.

Elitism earns legitimacy when its advantages spread. Intellectualism earns respect when knowledge becomes useful to others.

A leader’s greatness should be measured by how many people can stand taller because that leader rose.

Elitism must be infectious, not avaricious.