Allegedly, these provocateurs are agents who were infiltrated by the apartheid intelligence services into the ANC and other organisations of the democratic movement during the struggle years. It is believed that they are still ANC members and continue to be controlled by their erstwhile apartheid handlers. Thus they have not abandoned their strategic task of defeating the ANC and the democratic revolution!
The proposal is therefore made that an examination of the misdemeanours attributed to the ANC must include an investigation of whether these might have originated from the agents provocateurs I have mentioned, and are therefore part of the more radical attempt to achieve counter-revolutionary objectives.
Perhaps you are wondering what this, and my reference to the Judicial Commissions, has to do with this interesting and educative book, Betting on a Darkie.
The nature and calibre of ANC members is of strategic importance to the future of our country. To date, none of the political parties, nor the major observers and analysts, has questioned the perspective that the ANC will remain the dominant political force, even after 2019.
What I have said makes the plain and obvious statement that unless the ANC cleans up its membership to ensure that, at all levels, it is made up of people who respect its value system, and join and remain in the organisation with the sole purpose of serving the people of South Africa, our country will fail to wipe out the negative phenomena of counter-revolution, state capture, corruption and the other negatives that have preoccupied our Judicial Commissions of Inquiry.
This harks back to my assertion in 2000: that for it to serve the people of South Africa properly, the ANC has to develop its own members as ‘cadres who are truly politically committed to the all-round success of the new democratic South Africa, and properly prepared with regard to the skills our country needs to achieve that success…’
Regrettably, our history since that statement was made has told the painful story that it is not easy to find such cadres in our country. Evidence presented at the Judicial Commissions of Inquiry to which I have referred, among others, speaks of people in the public and private sectors who have the requisite skills, but clearly are not committed to the all-round success of the new democratic South Africa.
These skilled cadres include politicians, public service, corporate and other managers, corporate owners and managers, accountants, lawyers, prosecutors, police officers, journalists, trade unionists, religious leaders, and others.
The urgent question is: where will South Africa find the development cadres it urgently requires?
I began my Foreword by saying I was pleased Nyati had decided to write this book and that Kwela Books had agreed to publish it. I wrote this after careful reading, from beginning to the end, of the manuscript.
This appropriately entitled book, Betting on a Darkie, tells the immensely empowering and energising real (rather than fictional) story that we do have in our country exactly the kind of cadres South Africa needs to extricate itself from its political, economic and social crisis.
This story shows us that, while we must listen with great attention to, and act on, the depressing stories told at the Judicial Commissions, we must not lose sight of so much else in our country that is positive and exciting!
As told in Betting on a Darkie, that ‘much else’ in our country is about the progression of a black boy, Mteto Nyati, who grew up during the apartheid years in the stultifying rural Bantustans that colonialism and apartheid had imposed on the national majority, but who develops to become one of the giants in the world of global business – essentially a pioneer in successful business management, and therefore global wealth creation.
More than this, because Nyati developed into a professional with a vision greater than a mere focus on profit for the companies he led, and a fat salary and share options for himself, he has come to stand out as more than the modern successful business manager.
Betting on a Darkie has come exactly at the right time in the context of the historical evolution of our country. This is because it tells us of what is, in fact, an historic accomplishment. It says that what I stated in 2000 as an aspiration has, at least in part, been achieved.
Through this detailed, empowering and inspiring story, we see that our country has Nyati as a living and active example of the kind of development cadre South Africa requires: one who has the skills modern society needs and who is committed to building our country as a viable democracy.
He combines practical commitment to the ubuntu value system, commitment to selflessly serving the people, principled opposition to corruption and disadvantaging the disadvantaged, and developing his skills so he can use them to improve the life conditions of the masses of our people.
The public hearings at the Judicial Commissions have communicated the very disturbing message that for many years, the middle strata in our country, the professionals, have effectively betrayed the democratic revolution.
Objectively, it was expected that this democratic revolution would benefit those in the middle strata, materially and otherwise (as it did). It was also expected to improve the life conditions of the poor and disadvantaged through changes brought about by input from the middle strata in both the public and private sectors.
The preponderant message coming through during the public hearings of the Judicial Commissions is that those middle strata, the professionals, failed to do what was expected of them, especially relative to their own selfless professional conduct and their willingness to serve the interests of the poor and marginalised.
This book says that despite this, we must draw inspiration from the fact that out of sight of general public knowledge, we do indeed have members of the middle strata who have honestly and systematically discharged their responsibilities as selfless agents of change for the success of democratic South Africa.
It is in this context that I have called Nyati a role model – a role model in the context of the urgent and strategic task of ensuring that our country has a critical mass of middle-strata cadres who must honestly and selflessly play their role, as Nyati has.
I am privileged to strongly commend Betting on a Darkie to the South African reading public, hoping that we, the reading public, will impress on our government that it should study Betting on a Darkie in order to empower itself to address the task of building cadres for development.
Let us use the example set by Nyati, with him involved, to educate our young people to aim to be our new Mteto Nyatis!
This book, Betting on a Darkie, must serve as one of our teaching instruments, an honest and informative tool to help us produce principled cadres modelled on Mteto Nyati. This will help our country to achieve the noble goal of a better life for all.
PRESIDENT THABO MBEKI – Johannesburg 2019
Preface
Dream your own dreams; achieve your own goals. Your journey is your own and unique.
Roy T Bennett – The Light in the Heart
When I look back, I know with certainty there are many things I should not have done. But they are part of me, part of who I have become, and they have a place in the context of my life. They are reminders that mistakes can be built on, that journeys are filled with learning and that the right path, whatever ‘right’ may mean for you, is often only a step away.
My formative years were by my mother’s side in a Transkei trading store, a business that supported her extended family and serviced a community. She shattered all stereotypes of a woman’s place in the patriarchal Eastern Cape of the 1970s and ’80s and taught her offspring that economic independence can liberate. The role my parents played in our lives is evident in the tributes from my brother and sister, included after the first chapter.
My career has been defined by challenges I approached with trepidation at first: from my first job in the ’80s, trying to cope in a stiff-upper-lip environment where I felt a bit like one of the characters in Hidden Figures, to being tasked with developing a computerised decision support system when I’d barely