LITMIR.BIZ

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training was that of a mechanical engineer. I learned that success lay in being myself and in retaining my status as an outsider. Try too hard to blend in and you may well disappear. At Afrox I was the only black engineer. When I arrived to take up a position with IBM in Paris in the early 2000s, there was no one like me. Colleagues were unsure of how to treat me – my differences made me stand out. I decided to use what set me apart to my advantage and to take on every challenge that came my way as if it were an engineering project. Later I began seeking out those challenges and relishing them, while also developing an awareness of my responsibility as a pathfinder. It was important to open opportunities, not only for myself, but for others too. Sometimes this rested heavily on my shoulders.

      Although I am a product of my circumstances, I believe we carry knowledge within us from elsewhere, enabling us to make better choices in this life. If we get the right parents, as I did, these choices come easier. Inner knowing helped me choose the right mentors in the form of brave managers who took the risk of betting on a darkie in times when people like me weren’t considered for thinking roles in business. Neil Greenfield, Mpho Letlape, Mark Harris, Ali Faramawy and Jean-Philippe Courtois showed leadership in their ability to place prejudice aside and to embrace diversity. Their gamble gave me the confidence to succeed and created an environment in which I gained courage to do things I wasn’t sure I could. There are many others who have been part of my journey and, in line with my value of ‘openness’, I invited some of them to share their perspectives and insights. I believe their contributions greatly enrich the narrative of this book.

      MTETO NYATI – Johannesburg, 2019

      Chapter 1

      The Shopkeeper’s Son

      Our character is not so much the product of race and heredity as of those circumstances by which nature forms our habits, by which we are nurtured and live. – Cicero

      My father wanted me to be a doctor: of that he made no secret. He planted the idea in my head, and anyone else’s who would listen, from when I was very young. He’d wanted to study medicine, but in his day medical training for blacks was inferior and he felt sure he’d end up as a glorified nurse, so he studied to be a teacher instead.

      Even long after I’d decided I wanted to study engineering, Bhuti, as I called him because I’d grown up hearing my aunts calling him that, didn’t stop trying to change my mind. When, in 1982, he drove me to Durban from Mthatha to start my first year in the engineering faculty at Natal University (now the University of KwaZulu-Natal), he pestered me all the way.

      ‘Bhele, why don’t you just do medicine?’ was the intermittent refrain for over 400 km.

      What made him more adamant was that residences were racially segregated and the only one that would accept black students was the Alan Taylor Residence in Wentworth, which housed medical students. In addition, the government of the then ‘independent’ Transkei gave bursaries to students who chose medicine. Instead, he and my mother had to pay for my engineering studies and I had to find digs off campus. It just didn’t make sense to him.

      ‘Everything, Bhele, is pointing to medicine!’

      In his mind, engineering was a bit like being a car mechanic: good for a hobby, but not for a career. However, my mother had watched me, as a curious child, dismantling her radio to see how it worked, fiddling with car engines and puzzling over why a paraffin fridge was cold if it had a flame. And she supported me.

      ‘You do what you want, Dlambulo.’

      When we got to Durban, my father drove straight to the medical school at King Edward VIII Hospital, hoping against hope that I would change my mind when I saw the place. There he met up with an old friend, a nursing sister, who agreed to provide me with accommodation in Umlazi. We dropped off my belongings at her home, but I didn’t feel entirely comfortable with the arrangement.

      While registering, I bumped into a school friend, Loyiso ‘Blackie’ Magqaza, who told me about prefab accommodation for black Howard College students living at Alan Taylor Residence (used by black medical students). I jumped at the chance of being spared the long commute to and from Umlazi.

      I shared a dormitory with the likes of Thembani Bukula, Mce Booi, and Manderese Panyana. Many years later, when Thembani was energy regulator at NERSA, he and his team had to withstand unrelenting political pressure, either not to put up Eskom tariffs because it was election year, or to put them up in order to afford the nuclear deal. I felt proud of my former dorm mate, who always did what he believed was right.

      Thankfully, for my father’s sake, my brother Fundile, three years my junior, became a doctor. My sister Pelokazi studied physiotherapy and the last born, Langa, became an engineer like me.

      Both my parents were teachers, trained under the Cape Education Department before Bantu education was introduced. They came from a long line of teachers – even my great-grandfather was in the profession. Bhuti taught Latin, English and History. He was a great raconteur and loved connecting history and religion to real life, be it sitting around with his friends drinking whisky, in the pulpit as a sub-deacon, as headmaster in front of his school, or as master of ceremonies at a community function. He particularly loved telling stories when he had a captive audience stuck in the car with him on a trip somewhere. One of his favourites was recounting how our ancestors had fled from the warriors of Sigidi kaSenzangakhona – King Shaka – in the Mfecane wars of the nineteenth century. When they reached the Eastern Cape, the Xhosas didn’t accept them either. Various tribes, dispersed by the Zulu armies and shunned by the Xhosa, came together, forming the Fingo nation, a name referring to their status as wanderers, or displaced people. After years of oppression by the amaGcaleka in the Transkei, the Fingo established themselves in the south-western corner of what is now the Eastern Cape. In the 1830s they forged an alliance with English missionaries – considered one of the worst things black people could do at the time, as it meant declaring loyalty to the British and their god. But it was also a commitment to education.

      And that shaped us.

      My mother taught grades 1 and 2 at Ntlaza Junior Primary School in the Ngqeleni district where, because rules weren’t always rules, I was allowed to attend classes from the age of four, instead of six. My brothers and sister did the same.

      My mom also dabbled in raising poultry and pigs. My daily chore was to fetch leftover food from St Barnabas Hospital, about 2 km away, to feed the pigs. I was about eight years old and I’d set off at the crack of dawn, pushing a wheelbarrow. The driver of a bread delivery truck got so used to seeing me that he would hoot twice to greet me. I began looking forward to this sound as it was eerily quiet at 5 am and the road ahead seemed interminable. I had two older half-brothers and didn’t understand why I was the only one doing hard labour. I even started believing I had been adopted and that my parents were making me do this because I was the outsider who needed to pay for his keep. But those solitary walks sculpted me; today I often prefer my own company and thoughts.

      When I was in standard 2 (grade 4) Theophilus Mvelase Mbambisa, an education inspector, asked my father to start a secondary school at Tabase, about 60 km away from where we lived. For some reason my father hero-worshipped Mr Mbambisa, calling him mkhuluwa – big brother. I suspect it was because his eldest son, Zwelidumile, was a medical doctor. Bhuti always had a soft spot for doctors.

      The Transkei government had built a new junior school in Tabase. So we traded our comfortable brick home at Ntlaza, which had carpets on the floor and a tank for water, to live in the old mud school with cow-dung floors. We had to fetch water from a nearby river, so my sisters had to carry buckets of water on their heads, which they weren’t used to. Instead of our old Dover wood stove, we had to use a primus, both for cooking and to boil water for bathing in a metal tub. Because there was no infrastructure in the area and the nearest store was 10 km away, my mother converted one of the old classrooms into a general dealer store by putting in double doors, burglar bars, and an L-shaped counter made of glass so that customers could see what was on offer. Later, she introduced clothing, bought wholesale from Sparg’s in Mthatha. She cashed in her Bantu Education pension, bought a cream Toyota Hilux single cab, which had a bench seat, and loaded it with stock in Mthatha. The need was great and the business

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