From a humble upbringing on a farm in White River in Mpumalanga via an Ivy League education to influential newsrooms and boardrooms, Corporate Newsman: A Life of Integrity chronicles the extraordinary journey of Dr Kaizer Nyatsumba. As South Africa’s first black editor of a mainstream newspaper, Nyatsumba rose above poverty, brushes with death, personal losses and political turmoil to leave his mark as a journalist and business executive.

In this book, Nyatsumba shares his story of rising from junior reporter to editor, rubbing shoulders with the political elite during South Africa’s transition, and on to the boardrooms of Anglo American, Coca-Cola, Sasol and PetroSA.

An inspiring personal story that traverses politics, business and personal triumphs, Corporate Newsman reveals the complex layers of a man who dared to dream. 

Now two years into office, President Mandela was still popular. However, something strange happened around this period: Mandela appeared to be more popular among white South Africans than he was among black South Africans. This had much to do with his philosophy of reconciliation, which he preached at every opportunity. Though many applauded his visit to apartheid architect Dr Hendrik Verwoerd’s widow Betsie, in the “whites-only” Orania settlement in the Northern Cape, some in the black community were critical of it. Such grand gestures meant little or nothing to me. I was not concerned or emotionally exercised about them. What concerned me, instead, was what I perceived to be a worrisome trend: Mandela was becoming ultra-sensitive to criticism, especially when it came from black journalists. I continued to write independently and fearlessly, praising and criticising the government as I deemed it appropriate, but that criticism did not sit well with the president.

In his travels around the country, Madiba started having a go at me, Jon Qwelane and Khulu Sibiya because of criticism that we had directed at him or his government. Without mentioning us by name, repeatedly he railed at “three senior black journalists” who were allegedly doing their masters’ bidding. I had a syndicated weekly column in The Star and its sister publications, Jon wrote a syndicated column for Saturday Star and its sister titles, while Khulu had responsibility for the editorial opinions of his newspaper, City Press.

Though Madiba did not name us, it was obvious to many who followed news and political developments that he was referring to us. He had been particularly stung by my criticism of him in a column that began: “The truth, at last, is out: the emperor has no clothes on”. It was a column devoted to an analysis of the president’s sensitivity to criticism from black writers. It triggered angry responses from people in government, including from some of Mandela’s cabinet ministers.

I was comfortable then and am comfortable now that the criticism was justified. However, President Mandela did not see it that way. He embarked on a campaign to hit back at Qwelane, Sibiya and me. As a rule, I did not mind criticism. I believed that it was only fair that journalists and political commentators who liberally criticised others in the course of duty were also fair game for criticism when they got things wrong or went overboard with their criticism.

However, the president’s criticism of us was getting more frequent and its tone angrier. That worried me greatly. I feared not only that it had the potential to damage relations between us and the presidency, but that, without being intended to accomplish that goal, it might incite some of the ANC’s ardent supporters to cause us physical harm. I felt strongly that the situation had to be brought under control before things got out of hand. Something had to be done.

I called Mpumalanga premier Mathews Phosa and asked him to arrange a meeting for me with the president. I also spoke to my friend, Phakamile “Parks” Mankahlana, who was the spokesman for the presidency, and made a similar request. Both men shared my concern and undertook to speak to Madiba as a matter of urgency. Phosa came back to me on the same day to say that the president had agreed to my request for a meeting. However, to avoid the impression of a meeting between himself and the three of us (Qwelane, Sibiya and me), the president also wanted other senior black journalists and editors to be invited. Phosa said that the ANC head office would contact me about the details.

I was grateful to him for his assistance, and just as thankful to Parks. In the run-up to the meeting, Parks’s boss, Joel Netshitenzhe, who was the person with overall responsibility for government communications, made an appointment to see me at home. A member of the ANC’s National Executive Committee, Netshitenzhe wanted to establish my approach to the meeting. He was as concerned about the potential for it to get out of hand as I was. I assured him, as I had done Phosa, that I wanted to put an end to the spat with the presidency. I wanted an opportunity for us to talk calmly about the fact that there would be occasions when we in the media saw things differently from the presidency and to ensure that there would be an acceptance of our right to differ. Netshitenzhe appreciated my approach and confirmed that it was aligned to his.

He, too, wanted the meeting to have a successful outcome.

The meeting with President Mandela took place two days later in a boardroom at Shell House, the ANC’s head office on Plein Street. With Mandela were his Minister of Communications Pallo Jordan, one of the most level-headed men around, and Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) General Secretary Sam Mbhazima Shilowa, among others. As he entered the boardroom, Shilowa told me that he had no quarrel with journalists; instead, his labour federation had concerns of its own with the governing party, with which COSATU was in alliance.

President Mandela was his usual charismatic self. He greeted all of us in his typical friendly manner, shaking hands and flashing a smile as he moved around. During the meeting itself, he did not say much.

Instead, that was left to members of his delegation. Since most of the senior black journalists and editors who were there — True Love editor Khanyi Dhlomo-Mkhize was among them — were not involved in the conflict with the president and were not familiar with the issues, they sat quietly throughout the meeting. Instead, Qwelane, Sibiya and I defended our right to hold and express different views, without fearing that we would be seen or described as enemies of the government.

That argument won the day. For their part, the government and the ANC insisted on the need for criticism to be fair and informed and on their right to respond to it, and the three of us conceded that point. At the end of the meeting, we shook hands, with both sides undertaking to respect the spirit and content of the accord. That evening, Minister Jordan and I featured in the SABC’s discussion programme, during which we confirmed the essence of our agreement.

I was pleased to have put that dispute behind us. To this day, I am happy that it was the only fight — if “fight” is the right word — that I ever had with President Mandela. In the weeks, months and years to come, our relationship improved considerably.

In the early months of 1997, I received a call from somebody close to Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. The message was simple: the “Mother of the Nation” wanted to see me at the home of her daughter, Zindzi Mandela-Hlongwane, in Belgravia, a suburb lodged between Bellevue and Hillbrow. I was given the address and directions to the house. It was a Saturday afternoon, so I took Gugu along.

The house had a big, electronically operated steel entrance gate and a large garden. Sitting on chairs outside were Madikizela-Mandela and Zindzi. There were also some young people present, but they were asked to leave as soon as Gugu and I arrived. We were offered juice to drink.

It was then that I was told, by both mother and daughter, about President Mandela’s alleged indiscretion. Did I know, they asked conspiratorially, that the president and Mrs Graça Machel were more than just friends? I was told that Mrs Machel spent a lot of time at the Mandela residence in Houghton, a mere kilometre or two away from the Hlongwane residence, and that she and Mandela were in a romantic relationship. The news was shared with me in the hope that I would write a story about it or get one of the political reporters to do so.

I thanked Winnie and Zindzi for the information. As we were getting ready to leave, I was encouraged to phone any time if there was anything else that I wanted to confirm regarding the story.

I did not write the story about President Mandela and Mrs Graça Machel, nor did I get a reporter to do so. In fact, I did not tell a soul about it. I thought that if what they had told me was true, then President Mandela was entitled to his privacy. The matter had nothing to do with his position as the president of the Republic of South Africa.

Corporate Newsman is published by Tafelberg, an imprint of NB Publishers.