21st CENTURY LEADERSHIP

I read Chaim Even Zohar’s very interesting leader article in Idex entitled ‘Much Pain and Little Promise in Johannesburg’ (Thursday, 12 June) with a feeling of unease about the future of the industry there. Let me try and explain why.

Thank God, the world has moved on a lot since I was a young man in terms of racism. Now there is a very real and exciting possibility that the next President of the United States will be a charismatic leader of African-American descent promising a new vision of America’s destiny. This reminded me of another visionary speaker of African-American descent who stirred the conscience of the world and whose determination paved the way for Barak Omaba’s hopeful progress to the White House. I was a 15 year old youth when I saw Dr Martin Luther King speak at the Methodist Central Hall, Westminster in October 1961 and subsequently became a member of the Anti-Apartheid Movement. If you believed in civil rights in the United States, then you couldn’t possibly support apartheid in South Africa, was the point of view held by many young English men and women of my age.

However, as a young trainee diamond broker I kept very quiet about my membership of the Anti-Apartheid Movement because I knew it could place me under suspicion as at worst either a dangerous radical (communist fellow traveller?) or at best someone of politically dubious and immature views and unreliable in a conservative industry.

Although, like so many, I detested everything apartheid stood for I was never a political activist or tried to disrupt sporting events, as Mr Peter Hain did to the extent that the South African security apparatus played dirty tricks on him. I don’t think I was ever in any great danger if I visited South Africa for that reason, however, they probably had lists of paid-up members and I might have been singled out for attention, but the main reason was that, like so many others, I felt it totally unacceptable and repugnant to be told who I could talk to or be defined on the basis of my racial origin.

However, like many of my contemporaries, I also distrust profoundly state intervention and over-regulation in economic matters which so often fail to deliver on their political objectives however worthy they may be in relation to historical injustices.

Following the implosion of the Zimbabwe economy, as a result of the ruling Mugabe cliques self-serving economic mismanagement the evil regime’s intimidation and terrorism of its own people has become even more desperate and vicious, to the extent that the tragic situation in Zimbabwe is now South Africa’s biggest challenge since the dark days of apartheid and which is why it is natural for so much attention to be focussed on South Africa’s role as the region’s dominant economic and military power.

Nelson Mandela is so revered because he rose above the politics of bitterness, recrimination and race. Barak Obama too appears determined not to be a prisoner of race and history. This is what sets these men apart and gives us hope for the future.