Drawing on the context of global history and re-interpreting the known and agreed historical facts, author Colin Bower mounts an irrefutable challenge to the grand narrative of colonialism and racism as the quintessential South African story.

In the course of his polemic he makes the following points:

• The historical conflict between light skinned and dark skinned South Africans need not be seen in racial terms at all, but as a conflict between land ownership by right of historical occupation, and ownership by right of title deed. This is a battle always and universally won by rights of ownership by title deed, and this is to the benefit of all South Africans today.
• If a defining characteristic of colonialism is the extraction of wealth from the colony by the coloniser, then we have reason to question the use of the word in a South African context, for neither the VOC nor the British made a net financial gain from South Africa.
• Had Britain exercised colonial dominion over the whole of an integrated four province South Africa at the conclusion of the Anglo Boer War, South Africa would have had a colour-blind national franchise as early as 1902, no Land Act of 1913, and no post-1948 apartheid.
• Although the consequences of apartheid were widespread suffering and injustice on a racially exclusive basis, apartheid can be better understood as an exercise in domination to achieve competitive advantage than as an emanation of racial hatred.

Bower suggests that obsession with historical injustice represents an escape from the responsibility of building happy, free and prosperous societies in the present, and recommends we replace it with an obsessive devotion to the protection of constitutionalism and the rule of law.

We are living in a post-leadership age. We don't need leaders, not in politics, not in business, not in our professions, not in our personal lives, and not in our homes. Leadership exists as a mask for the power hungry, and it is always manipulative and always anti-democratic. Going further, author Colin Bower contends that the business leadership industry is comparable with pyramid schemes. He argues that the strategy of leadership - to influence people at a subliminal and therefore at an undetectable level - is fatal to individual autonomy. The so-called virtue of leadership is an inheritance from militaristic closed societies. It has no role to play in peace-loving, democratic open societies. Bower recommends that we tell those who set themselves up as our leaders to get lost. If we do so, he says, we take the first step toward becoming more authentic people ourselves, and toward building better and happier societies. Don't Follow Leaders recognises no political ideology, and brings a wholly new topic to the global debate about the new kind of world in which we should want to live. This is what Prince Mashele, Executive Director off the Centre for Politics and Research had to say about Bower's book: 'At a time when South Africa is facing the worst leadership crisis since 1994, Bower opens our eyes to see politicians as human beings, not as messiahs.' Stephanie Vermeulen, author of EQ: Emotional Intelligence for Everyone & Stitched-up: Who fashions women's lives? was similarly impressed by Bower's thesis and wrote, 'Women striving for equality clamour for hierarchical positions but intelligence will only triumph when shrewd men and women initiate a systems overhaul that consigns leadership to the scrapheap of ideology.'