Since history of human civilization until today, the greatest political leaders that shaped events of the world were soldiers. In other words, soldiers that rose in the ranks of military or at least such leaders that had at some point received military training, even of guerrilla war and rose at least to commanding officer, have usually made great politicians.
The reason is that in the military, strategy is everything. As a result, when these men get politically active they are good at strategy because they are very cautious towards the need for strategy. To them no course of action can or must be taken unless the very best of alternative strategies has been put in place, as it is in war. And the strategy must be implemented with the deployment of taskforces comprising of the smartest and most competent guys alive who can follow the strategy through, to the last detail, without digressing.
Infact, this also explain why nations that are militarily very competent are also politically very good, whether geopolitically or globally.
In the military there is a strategy that is called Containment. This was the strategy that the USA and its capitalist allies used during the cold war against the threat of communism. In summary, the strategy of containment seeks to contain a threat within specific manageable parameters without head on confrontation. This strategy is as a good in the military as in politics.
In politics, this strategy demands that a political threat must not be confronted but contained. Confrontation means that resources are mobilized and the best of guys deployed to fight the threat and neutralize it before it destabilizes a political party or a regime.
On the other hand, containment simply pursues a compromise whereby the threat or those posing the threat would be brought to the table for dialogue and negotiations. Containment demands that this path of dialogue and negotiations must be pursued by the best negotiators alive and must at no cost be abandoned until a compromise has been reached upon which consensus and progress can be built.
Unfortunately, most political leaders and political parties in Africa choose confrontation over containment. But usually confrontation escalates and energizes the threat and creates more problems which lead to avoidable political instability and crises.
For example, when the ANC noticed that Julius Malema was becoming a threat to the establishment of the party, a confrontational approach required that he should be expelled. But what if he were contained by any means possible through compromises? After all, it was not through confrontation but through compromise that Nelson Mandela eventually brought the Apartheid government down to its knees. But by confronting Malema, the ANC created a beast out of him and a nightmare that keeps haunting them.
Examples are many. But to conclude with, I would like to suggest that every threat that emerges from within a party must be contained and not confronted. Political parties must at any cost contain those that have grievances or concerns than confront them head-on by isolation, expelling them or demonizing them through media, etc. sometimes a party is safer when someone causes trouble from within than to isolate or expel them and have them fight you from outside.
Contain and find compromises.