LITMIR.BIZ

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other things, I said:

      [As the ANC] we have attracted into and continue to retain opportunists and careerists within our ranks … [These] join … with the sole aim of furthering their personal careers and using the access to state power we have as a ruling party, to enrich themselves … We cannot afford to have a membership driven by a value system, a morality, centred on the promotion of the interests of these members at the expense of the fundamental and urgent interests of the millions who have twice, in 1994 and 1999, expressed the fullest confidence in the ANC…

      I went on to say:

      I am talking about the need for us to develop new cadres to meet the demands imposed on us by the victories we have scored as we have pursued the objectives of the democratic revolution. I am talking here of the need for us to implement a programme focused, among other things, on the development of 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 … [We] have to discuss the critically important question of our interaction with and impact on the student youth, the intelligentsia and the professionals in our country. We need to ensure that these strata in our society, that either have or will have the specialised skills our country needs, at the same time have the levels of national consciousness and patriotism that will enable our people to count on them as an asset for the development and modernisation of our country, for the benefit of the masses of our people.

      The reason I am pleased Betting on a Darkie has been written and is being published is that it covers the very same matter I addressed in 2000 in the narrow context of a meeting of a political organisation, the ANC.

      In the book, Nyati discusses the possibility of developing the kind of educated, qualified cadre South Africa needs to ensure its reconstruction and development – individuals who honour our diversity while building an inclusive society; citizens who are committed to pursuing the objectives stated in the Preamble to our Constitution.

      It is a matter of common cause among all our people that the radical growth and development of an inclusive South African economy is one of the urgent and strategic challenges our country faces.

      Nyati argues that this objective can and must be achieved.

      The eminent Irish poet, W.B. Yeats, wrote: words are lightly spoken. However, what gives weight to Nyati’s words is that they are spoken by a fellow citizen who has repeatedly and practically proved his capacity as an effective economic and business change agent over a number of decades, having successfully served as an economic and business leader in a number of major domestic and international businesses.

      At this point, perhaps I should say something about the contents of Betting on a Darkie. The book tells a very interesting story about how Nyati grew up in the Transkei in the Eastern Cape during the apartheid years, qualified as an engineer in the then Natal Province, worked at various levels in a number of companies as a developing business manager, and ended up in the position of Chief Executive Officer (CEO), to date, in major companies.

      Of particular importance is that the young Nyati had to work in circumstances where, effectively, he had to serve as a pathfinder because the companies in which he worked had never had an African/black professional in their ranks above the position of ordinary labourer.

      Naturally, he therefore had to overcome entrenched racial prejudice as he climbed up the managerial ranks, even as he finally reached the position of CEO in a number of companies.

      Defined by the colonial and apartheid systems as the excluded and sub-human, naturally he involved himself in the liberation struggle, operating as an ANC activist. I believe all of us, as South Africans, must make an effort to understand what this book says about the impact young people had as liberation fighters and ANC activists during the post-1976 Soweto Student Uprising years.

      Fortunately and quite correctly, Nyati also reflects on the important matter of his family life, which includes his parents and siblings, as well as his own wife and children.

      The book is what I would call ‘a semi-autobiography’, which provides invaluable education about various matters, including suggestions about what our country must do to effect the fundamental economic transformation of which many speak.

      Ultimately, Betting on a Darkie tells an inspiring story about the emergence of a role model in the context of the imperative for change agents to drive the fundamental reconstruction and development of our country so that we can deliver on the objectives detailed in the Preamble to our Constitution.

      Mteto Nyati is such a model.

      The story told in this book is about a humble South African who is devoted to education, and therefore the expansion of the frontiers of knowledge, who is keenly interested in using that knowledge to improve the human condition, and who understands that being educated imposes an obligation on him to stretch out a helping hand to those who are more disadvantaged than him.

      This is a story about a fellow South African who is dedicated to the achievement of excellence, which drives him to hate all shoddy work. This tells all of us that this is a person whose working day will not be governed by the hours he is contracted to work, but by the quality of the product he will have produced by the end of that working day.

      It is a story about a fellow national who is devoted to the values of honesty, truthfulness, objectivity and candour in the construction of good and durable human relations. This is a person devoted to principle and who therefore strives to approach his own contribution to the development of our country in a principled manner, fundamentally informed by the lessons of ubuntu and humaneness which he learnt at a very young age from his parents, especially his mother.

      What I said in 2000 about the corruption of the ANC by the entry into its ranks of people who ‘join … with the sole aim of furthering their personal careers and using the access to state power we have as a ruling party, to enrich themselves’, was raised by Nelson Mandela at the 1997 National Conference of the ANC. It has been highlighted at all subsequent Conference Political and Organisational Reports of the ANC.

      This means that for 25 years our country’s governing party, the ANC, has continuously admitted and retained in its ranks exactly the kind of person who is absolutely contemptuous of the value system – selflessly to serve the people of South Africa – which has informed the ANC since its foundation 107 years ago.

      Given this history, it was inevitable that a new normal would become established within the ANC. That new normal would be that the governing party actually allows its members to abuse state power to enrich themselves – against the interests of the ordinary people of our country.

      The need to establish the Judicial Commissions, headed by Judges Nugent, Zondo, Mpati and Mokgoro, which have and continue to sit in our country, has arisen in reality as a direct outcome of the emergence and entrenchment in the ANC of that new normal.

      The state capture, corruption, lawlessness, betrayal of the public trust and other ills in our society which these Commissions have exposed are a direct consequence of our failure as the governing party to ensure that we do not allow the new normal to emerge and take root.

      It is vitally important that all our people, and the ANC first and foremost, must understand that the state capture, corruption and the other negatives I have mentioned would never have become entrenched determinants of the future of our country if the ANC had done the right thing – concretely, in action, to refuse to allow its ranks to be filled by people who do not share its fundamental values.

      The recent, 2019, elections have confirmed the ANC as our country’s governing party at the national level and in eight of our Provinces.

      Given what I have said, it is obvious that unless what continues to be our governing party, the ANC, rids itself of those who join or remain in the organisation to abuse state power in their selfish interest, the conditions will remain for the continued perpetration of the crimes of state capture, corruption, and so on.

      In this context, we must take very serious note of the allegations that have been made that many of the negative interventions made by the ANC or ANC members, owe

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