01 November 2012 The writers of our songs are the true national leaders "Let me write the songs of a nation: I don't care who writes the laws" - Andrew Fletcher, Scottish politician WHEN HE FIRST TOOK OFFICE I used to hear news about Governor Powes Parkop's vision to clean the city and the people's mindsets by the year 2012. With that year coming to an end now, how have we fared? Have we changed? Parkop posed the question to a workshop of certain middle level bureaucrats, "How do we get people to change their mindsets and attitudes?" Indeed: "How?" Mindsets and attitudes cannot be legislated or regulated into being. They exist free of the external things we set up to control society. Conscience is the freest component of a human person. Inserted and guaranteed by God Himself. I could even say that the freedom of conscience is a freedom more precious than liberty itself. Throughout history and even today people have sacrificed their physical freedom and even their lives to keep their consciences free. And the most powerful of people have been those who have been able to permeate people's conscience. Leadership, I heard from Myles Munroe, is the ability to influence human behaviour. Human behaviour is a product of the human conscience. Leadership is therefore the ability to influence the human conscience to such an extent as it affects human behaviour. All these matters considered, I have concluded who the real leaders of this nation are. They are