SA needs a visionary engineer-businessman hybrid to forge a black industrialist class, writes Phakamisa Ndzamela DOES SA need a renowned physicist, engineer and industrialist to lead the way in creating SA’s big black industrialists?This has been on my mind since the Black Industrialists Indaba in Midrand last week.In the 1920s, as part of plans to industrialise SA, then prime minister Jan Smuts appointed renowned industrialist and University of Leipzig graduate Hendrik van der Bijl as technical adviser to the government. The idea was to set SA on a path of industrialisation. Van der Bijl had been among the people who drove research on technological development in the US. When he returned to SA after an approach by Smuts, we are told Dr Van der Bijl studied SA’s economic conditions and identified what industrial path it needed to pursue.Among other things he saw a need for the country to produce cheap energy and, as a result, he charted the way for establishing the Electricity Suppl...
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