When we write, we never fully know where the words will travel or whose hands will hold them. Seeing Mfanelo Sphelele Calvin Ndlela standing in Washington with a copy of Betting on a Darkie moved me more than I expected. In front of those grand buildings, he carried a book that tells the story of lifting one’s game - in the boardroom, in leadership, and in life. That image captures something powerful: the moment a story leaves the page and becomes part of someone else’s journey. We write hoping our words will shift people into action and offer them hope when they need it most. We rarely get to see that hope take shape. Mfanelo’s post showed me that it does. It reminded me why the work of writing matters, and it gave me fresh energy to keep going. Thank you, Mfanelo, for carrying the book so far and for sharing the moment. It inspired me to make more time to write. #BettingOnADarkie #Leadership #Inspiration #BooksThatInspire #SouthAfrica

Two weeks ago I sat down with Mike Siluma of the Sunday Times to discuss everything under the sun 🤣.

I read these pages with a tightness in my chest that I know well.  The boy behind the counter in Mthatha, the only black engineer told “don’t mess up,” the son who watched his parents stretch every rand and still insist that education was the one thing no one could take away - that boy recognises the ache in this story. The long nights of not belonging. The quiet, unfinished grief of parents gone too soon. The weight of scarcity and silence that follows you into rooms you were never meant to enter. The loneliness of standing in places that feel borrowed, while the life you left behind still calls your name. It is a sad book. It does not pretend otherwise. It sits with the cost of leaving home, the cost of starting over, and the cost of carrying both the old world and the new one at the same time. But it is also a book about the stubborn decision to keep walking. About gathering what little you have, loading the children into a car, and driving toward a life that has not yet been proven possible. About entering rooms that were never designed for you and choosing - again and again - to stay, to learn, to build anyway. About discovering that belonging is not a gift handed over at the door. It is something you recognise in yourself after years of being told, in a thousand small ways, that you do not fit. I have always believed that if you want to take the system down, you must first provide a better alternative. At heart I am an engineer. I want people to fix things, not to raise false hopes. This memoir does not offer easy comfort. It offers something harder and more useful: the proof that a person can carry sorrow and still choose to construct a future. That the right path, whatever “right” may mean to you, is often only a step away - even when the heart is still heavy. To those born into difficult circumstances, dealt a bad hand, or treated as outsiders: in the end, what makes you are your choices. This book is one of those choices, made with courage and without self-pity. I am grateful I was asked to read it.

South Africa’s economic underperformance is not an accident of history - it is largely the result of the choices we continue to make. We talk endlessly about creating an enabling environment for business and investment, both local and international. Yet too often the actions do not match the rhetoric. Red tape, inconsistent policy, and slow decision-making continue to choke investment across almost every sector of the economy. Investors - and our own entrepreneurs - do not wait forever. Capital is mobile. Talent is mobile. Opportunity is mobile. If we are serious about growth, jobs and shared prosperity, our leaders across government, business and civil society must become more self-critical. We cannot keep blaming external factors while avoiding the hard internal work: simplifying regulation, speeding up approvals, creating policy certainty, and treating business as a genuine partner rather than a problem to be managed. The solutions are known. Many countries have done the hard work of cutting bureaucracy and prioritising execution. We can too - but only if we are honest enough to confront where we are falling short and disciplined enough to change. What are we prepared to do differently, starting now? #SouthAfrica #EconomicGrowth #Leadership #Investment #RedTape #Accountability

If you do not know where you are going, any road will take you there. That is South Africa today. Voters gave us the GNU - a real chance to grow. Instead, ministers and parties are driving separate agendas. A wasted opportunity. South Africa should become the African home for the world’s companies. The place global firms put their African Headquarters, regional treasury, talent and growth capital - because it is easier and more predictable here than anywhere else on the continent. That single destination gives every minister one test: does this make it easier or harder for a serious company to base itself here? Permits in days. Licences in months. Ports and rail that move. Energy that stays on. Visas on time. Courts that settle while the opportunity still exists. We have the assets. We lack the discipline to make them usable. Countries that win headquarters remove friction faster than everyone else. The GNU can still do this. But only if the parties stop driving their own agendas and start driving toward one place. #ProudlySA

Congratulations to Justice Navi Pillay on being awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize. She is the fifth South African to receive this honour, joining Albert Luthuli, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk. Among developing countries, this is exceptional. Only a handful of nations anywhere have produced more Peace Prize laureates, and none in the developing world have matched South Africa’s record. What ties these five together is deeper than geography. They represent the full arc of one of the most difficult human challenges of the last century: confronting a system of institutionalised racial oppression, choosing negotiation and reconciliation over continued conflict, and then exporting the hard-won lessons of accountability into the world. Luthuli and Tutu led non-violent resistance. Mandela and de Klerk, from opposite sides of the divide, chose to dismantle the system peacefully. Justice Navi Pillay defended those who stood against apartheid and later helped build the international legal frameworks that prosecute genocide and war crimes. The common thread is not just resistance. It is the deliberate choice to build something better from the ruins of injustice. This is South Africa’s distinct contribution to the world. Few places have demonstrated, at this scale, that people from radically different backgrounds and histories can choose justice over revenge, inclusion over exclusion, and shared progress over perpetual division. We have shown the world that diversity, when held together by integrity and a commitment to the rule of law, can produce extraordinary outcomes. The uncomfortable truth is that we have been better at exporting this idea than living it fully at home. Our country still struggles with the very principles our laureates modelled: embracing difference, insisting on justice for all, and refusing to let past wounds dictate the future. We have the talent, the resilience and the moral capital. What we have not yet done consistently is apply the same discipline to ourselves that we have offered the world. South Africa has the potential to be one of the great success stories of this century. Realising it requires us to stop treating excellence, inclusion and accountability as aspirations and start treating them as non-negotiable standards of how we work, lead and live together. As I wrote in Betting on a Darkie: “When people transcend their differences and work together to achieve a common goal, greatness is possible.” The world has already bet on South Africa’s capacity to show a better way. The question is whether we will bet on ourselves. #LiveWhatYouExport #BetOnSouthAfrica #TranscendTheDifferences

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. From the back to third. Everything left out there. The opportunity never announced itself. It just looked like work.

Eskom, as sole shareholder, is inviting applications for Independent Non-Executive Directors of the National Transmission Company South Africa (NTCSA). NTCSA will be a stand-alone, asset-owning transmission system operator. Its mandate includes expanding and operating the national grid, with a programme to build about 14,000 km of new transmission lines, and enabling a more open, competitive electricity market as South Africa liberalises the sector. We are looking for directors with deep experience in transmission and energy infrastructure, infrastructure finance, governance, engineering, risk, strategy, or related fields, and the independence and judgement to oversee a complex public institution through a critical transition. Applications close 19 October 2026. Send your résumé, quoting “NTCSA Independent Non-Executive Directors,” to [email protected]. Full requirements are in the attached notice.

MaXhosa Africa did not arrive in Paris by accident. Yesterday the brand became the first South African house to stage a full official runway show on the Paris Fashion Week calendar. Many will call it overnight success. That reading misses the point. This is the result of years of disciplined work. A clear identity. An intentional geographic expansion strategy. Repeated applications. Presentations before the runway. Factories in Johannesburg and East London. Craft that is unapologetically African and designed, from the start, to travel. That is what some strategists call glocal. Stay rooted in what your geography uniquely offers, then take it to the world with excellence. The collection title, Izihlwele Zivumile - the ancestors have approved - is a reminder that breakthroughs rest on more than one generation’s effort. They rest on inheritance, persistence, and the decision to keep doing the work when no one is watching. MaXhosa Africa challenges the rest of us. Move from protest and complaint to finding what we uniquely have, and then taking the right actions to make those ideas real. That is how ownership patterns in the economy change. We have to make things happen ourselves. Stick to your knitting. Do it at a standard the world cannot ignore. Congratulations to Laduma Ngxokolo, Lihle Ngxokolo Nqini, and the entire MaXhosa Africa team. Africa is not asking for a seat. It is taking one.

dailymaverick.co.za/opinioni… I do not usually comment on commentary about me. Today I am making an exception. Redi Tlhabi has written a piece that goes beyond personalities. It asks a more important question: when an institution starts to recover, who is allowed to own the work - and who is still treated as a problem to be managed.

A week ago I spoke at Stellenbosch University’s Faculty of Engineering because a third-year mechanical engineering student, Mogomotsi Moeletsi, reached out on LinkedIn and asked me to come. He chairs the SAIMechE student chapter. He was not a dean or a vice-chancellor. He simply had the courage to ask. The university opened the session. Students from Stellenbosch, UCT and CPUT filled the lecture theatre. I came to talk about a national utility. What I found was something larger than a lecture. Courage is a muscle. Build it early. Thank you, Mogomotsi. South Africa needs your skill and your nerve. su.ac.za/en/faculties/engine…

I want to thank Minister Dr Kgosi Ramokgopa, Cabinet and the President for the trust they have placed in me. To continue as Chairman of Eskom is not a formality. It is a responsibility I accept with humility. The turnaround was not achieved by a title. It was earned by Eskom’s executives, the Board and, above all, our employees - in plants, control rooms and night shifts that many had written off. They proved that “impossible” is not a fact. It is an opinion. The country now expects more: affordable energy, integrity, and an Eskom that serves the public. That is the work of Eskom 2.0 The work continues. And we are ready. #Eskom #KeepGoing

Over the past two months, the bodies of nine women have been found across Ekurhuleni in and around Kempton Park, and in places such as Rhodesfield, Olifantsfontein, Clayville, KwaThema and Dawn Park. They were young women, most of them in their twenties and thirties. Several have been identified. Others still wait to be named by their families. One of them, Elizabeth “Tsontso” Moselakgomo, left home for an afternoon run and did not return. Her eight year old daughter was the one who raised the alarm. That child’s life has been changed forever. That is not a statistic. That is a wound in a family, and in a nation. Police have said many of the women were found unclothed or only partly clothed, and that some showed signs of violence. They have not confirmed that these deaths are the work of one man, or of one group. A suspect was arrested in connection with the first case in July. That person remains in custody. The other cases are still being investigated, including whether they are linked. We must not outrun the evidence. We also must not hide behind it. What we already know is enough to confront ourselves. These were women. They died violently. And in this country, the people who inflict this kind of harm on women are overwhelmingly men. In African society, men are often granted respect simply for being men. We are told we are protectors. That title is not an inheritance. It is a duty. When we look at how too many of us actually live, the question becomes unavoidable: has that unearned respect been misplaced? We are too often the ones who disappear from our children’s lives, leaving boys and girls to grow up without fathers or male role models. We fill the prisons. We are too often the ones who turn homes into places of fear. We are too often the ones who violate other people’s dignity and safety. In moments of xenophobic violence, it is frequently our voices and our hands that lead. That is not the whole of us. The majority of men are decent. Many are God fearing. Many work, provide, love their families and want this country to stand. But a decent majority that stays silent is not innocent. Silence is a form of permission. We know this. In too many families, workplaces and circles of friends, we know men who harm women. There is a male code that treats speaking as betrayal. We once called the person who spoke impimpi. That word was born in a different struggle. We are in a different era now. Protecting women is not gossip. Taking information to the police is not selling out. It is patriotism. It is the defence of the next generation. It is the only way the silent majority stops being defined by a violent minority. If you know something, say something. If a friend jokes about hurting a woman, stop him. If a relative’s behaviour towards women is dark, do not look away. Raise your sons to believe that strength is restraint, presence and protection not domination. These women were not headlines. Their children and families are not collateral. The police must do their work, thoroughly and without fear. Men must do ours. Break the code. Make courage ordinary. Make silence the shame. That is how we earn the respect we have been given for free.

Yesterday I presented the Eskom turnaround story at Stellenbosch University’s Faculty of Engineering, at the invitation of Mogomotsi Moeletsi, a third-year mechanical engineering student and chair of the SAIMechE student chapter. The university opened the session more widely and invited engineering students from other institutions, including UCT and CPUT. I had come to talk about a national utility. What I found was something larger than a lecture. I completed my BSc in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Natal, now the University of KwaZulu-Natal, from 1982 to 1985. In those years, black students needed ministerial permission to study at the historically white universities. Standing in that Stellenbosch lecture theatre, I could not help remembering the days of not belonging. The weight of scarcity and silence that follows you into rooms you were never meant to enter. The loneliness of standing in places that feel borrowed, while the life you left behind still calls you by your name. A great deal has changed since then. It was heartwarming to see a room that looked like South Africa. The questions were sharp and incisive. Our country has made progress, and it is beautiful to see. The students were fascinated by the role engineers from different disciplines played in diagnosing and fixing the crisis at Eskom. I could see how proud many of them were of the profession they have chosen. Engineering, at its best, is not only about machines. It is about restoring dignity to people’s lives. One of the last messages I shared with them came from Maya Angelou: courage is one of the most important of all the virtues, because without it none of the other virtues can be practised consistently. I said that because of Mogomotsi. He reached out directly. He asked. He convinced me to come. Anaïs Nin put it well: life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. I encouraged them to treat courage as a muscle. Build it early. It will make a huge difference in their lives. We were honoured to have the Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and the President of SAIMechE, with us. They were gracious hosts. To Mogomotsi and every student who showed up: thank you. Keep going. South Africa needs your skill, and it needs your courage. #Eskom #Stellenbosch #Engineering

Yesterday my daughter, who is studying in the United States, attended the Springboks versus All Blacks match in Baltimore. She spent five years of her life in that city before moving to Cleveland. At the stadium she bumped into an old school mate from Dainfern College who now lives in Florida. Two South Africans, far from home, finding each other in a crowd of more than 68,000. It was already an emotional moment. What neither of them expected was how deeply they would be moved by our national anthem. Standing there, thousands of kilometres from home, singing Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika. Pride in our roots. Pride in our diversity. Pride in excellence. And faith - watching the circle and the kneeling that followed the final whistle. That image stayed with me. There is a well known observation in India, popularised by Gurcharan Das, that “India grows at night while the government sleeps.” It captures a country whose people and enterprises often advance despite, rather than because of, the state. South Africa has that same untapped potential. We see it in the Springboks. World-class performance is not confined to the rugby field. It exists across our people, our businesses, our communities. We have what it takes. What we still need is simple, and it is hard: Create a genuinely business-friendly environment.
Confront crime with seriousness and consistency.
Appoint leaders in both the private and public sectors on merit. Those three interventions would allow this country to occupy the place it deserves among the winning nations of the world. We are a resilient people. Our character has been forged in difficulty. In a volatile world, that character is not a weakness. It is an advantage. The Springboks keep showing us what is possible when talent, discipline, purpose and belief come together. The rest of the country can do the same. We have the people. We have the potential. Now we must get our act together and grow during the day as well. #Springboks #RugbysGreatestRivalry #BetOnSouthAfrica #Leadership #Merit #SouthAfrica #ProudlySA

Yesterday I spoke at the Belt and Road Summit 2026 in Hong Kong, on a panel about unlocking new markets. The conversation was not about whether the Initiative has built roads, ports and power. It has. The real question is what those assets are for. For three decades the dominant pattern looked like this: China became the factory of the world. Countries with existing industrial capacity - South Africa has assembled vehicles since 1924 - sold commodities and imported finished goods. That equation produced extraordinary poverty reduction in one place and a structural squeeze in another. Growth on one side. Resentment on the other. It is not sustainable. The next chapter has to change the equation from “we sell you raw materials, you sell us cars” to “we both sell goods.” That is what shared prosperity actually means. South Africa’s practical offer is electric vehicles. Not just assembling kits. Local manufacturing of batteries and components, plus beneficiation of the critical minerals already in the ground. Energy security has been restored and surplus generation now exists. The constraint is no longer power. It is whether partners are prepared to locate capability, not just offtake. European and American multinationals crossed this line years ago: they produce in South Africa where they sell. As Chinese manufacturers take market share, host countries catch the cold unless industrial capability travels with the investment. Infrastructure without factories is a trade route. Factories, skills and supply chains together are a development route. Partnership is not charity. It is the disciplined work of building both. The work starts now. #BeltandRoadSummit #SharedProsperity #EVManufacturing #Localisation #IndustrialPartnership #CriticalMinerals