LETTER: Remembering Dr Ben Ngubane, a warm, complex man

I was sad to learn that former KwaZulu-Natal premier and national cabinet minister Ben Ngubane has passed on, another victim of Covid-19. A warm man, a complex man, who lived in these most complex of times.

I worked on and off with him in my role as consultant-adviser to his first director-general, during his on-and-off relationship with the then-fledgling department of arts, culture, science & technology. He was a good listener — considerate, insightful and caring. Whatever happened pre-1994, and later once he joined the diplomatic corps and thereafter, is for others to tell. 

Often, when I look across at Robben Island, I recall March 1996, when Ngubane chaired a special ministerial committee of MECs for education, arts & culture, on the island. The order of business was to approve the draft White Paper on Arts and Culture. The minister brooked no opposition to its passage, from within his coalition or other quarters.

When one MEC raised the question of minority interests, he cut her short. Ngubane’s goal was to use the instrument for nation building. Once approved we walked through the corridor leading to Madiba’s former cell — Ngubane and me, two African males, hand in hand. At the cell door he stopped, looked at me misty eyed, and remarked “this place changed us both”. Yes, indeed.

The next day, the arts critics, from the Left to the Right, gave the draft white paper their full endorsement. Ngubane glowed; director-general Roger Jardine glowed; I, the clandestine author of the document, glowed. Ngubane and Jardine had entrusted its writing to a sometime physicist, photographer, Medu Arts Ensemble activist and now policy adviser.

The reason for the gamble was that after a year of infighting the two drafts produced by the arts and culture advisory group had been rejected. A month later the director-general received two new drafts — a bureaucratic version, and one brimming with passion. The second became the official document.

In parallel, two projects essential for the governance of science and technology were under way. The first, the White Paper on Science & Technology, was published in June 1996, and served to reshape the science and technology institutional landscape. The process that generated the white paper was open and participatory, with generous inputs from international experts. The product was a visionary collaboration across sectors that tried to balance the competing demands on the system.

The white paper spoke to the need for flagship science, and this is evident in today’s MeerKAT telescope, which gestated during the tenure of director-general Rob Adam. The white paper also sought to address quality of life issues; these have political ramifications, and are more difficult to realise.

The second was the Research & Technology Foresight Study, whose design began in 1995 with this writer as project lead. The project team included Phil Mjwara, who is the present director-general. Mjwara took the project to its launch under the patronage of President Thabo Mbeki, with Ngubane grinning alongside in modest pride at the late 1999 gala launch on the Unisa campus.

On Ngubane’s watch both white papers and the foresight study were spared political interference. Most presciently, two of the foresight scenarios sketched dystopian futures eerily close to what we now experience. One was “Our way is the way”, the other “Frozen revolution”. The first echoes the dangers of something like Virodene and other home brews; the second, the outcomes of populism. In their own way these scenarios are somewhat sharper than the predecessor Mont Fleur scenarios.

It was as a man of medicine that Ngubane was perhaps at his best. The Melomed Group obituary speaks well to this. Then there is Minister Ngubane, who has misplaced the offering of the speech writer (me) and addresses his audience ad libitum, by drawing on his deep medical system insights. His speech is well to the Left of then ANC thinking. Someone congratulates me for the speech! “Look at what is poking out of his jacket pocket,” is my response. “That is my piece. The man is in his natural element.”

For me it was Dr Ngubane, walking alongside me on my return from a wintry trip abroad with a bit of a chest, and I cough. “Stop please. Cough again,” he instructs. This I do, with him listening carefully. In his office the good doctor writes me a prescription. “You need this.” I don’t bother but next day, after palpations, X-rays and all, am diagnosed by my family doctor with double pneumonia. He gives me the same prescription. Once recovered Ngubane calls me to his office. “So, did you fill the prescription?” It was an embarrassed adviser who admitted to his lack of judgment. “You knew? How?” The reply: “I am a country doctor, we use our ears, no stethoscope needed.”

Thank you for the fine lessons of a man of science, Dr Ben Ngubane. You did a really fine job in those heady days. Hamba kahle.

Michael Kahn

Via email

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