"Undoubtedly, philosophers are in the right when they tell us that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison.” Jonathan Swift in Gulliver's Travels
One way and another we have all lived through the De Ruyter saga from the announcement of his unlikely appointment as CEO of Eskom to the clandestine publication of his blockbuster, 'Truth to Power', by Penguin Random House SA. It sold a record 16 444 copies in its first week on the bookshelves, and at least 50 000 within the first month or so of its appearance on the bookshelves mid-May. It's a safe bet that a sizeable proportion of PW readers will have bought or read a copy.
His account rings true to South Africans witness to the moral and intellectual decline of the ANC over the past quarter-century. The narrative is enlivened by a smorgasbord of memorable aphorisms, anecdotes and personal insights into the corporate world. With a bit of intellectual spadework, the book tells us a great deal about De Ruyter himself and the socio-cultural-economic terrain on which we are trying to build a better South Africa.
De Ruyter is a first-generation South African born of Dutch parents escaping post-WW2 Amsterdam to start a new life in South Africa. He was a product of a frugal upbringing and Dutch independence of thought, strictly raised in a Calvinist Protestant home with its emphasis on hard work, personal modesty, personal and social responsibility and education.
Almost 2 meters tall with an impressive physical persona, intelligence, an abundance of confidence and people skills, and an apparently unlimited capacity for hard work he was destined for leadership, first as a senior executive in Sasol followed by a rollercoaster stint as CEO of Nampak.