By Alec Hogg
Psychologists pay great attention to our early years, the time when we’re hard-wired for life. So when interviewing selfless activists, I like asking where the motivation began. It always throws up interesting results.
Like yesterday’s chat with Terry Crawford-Browne, the former banking executive who has waged a two decade campaign to expose bribery in South Africa’s R70bn Arms deal. Born in Ireland but raised in Libya, as a boy he was exposed to the destructive consequences of revolutions. And in the 1980s when he saw South Africa heading the same way, he retired early to work closely with religious icons Desmond Tutu and Beyers Naude in assisting SA avoid the same fate.
From there, focusing on exposing corruption was his obvious next step. Hence Crawford-Browne’s determination to help SA find its moral compass lost in a transaction that put the nation onto a slippery slope. And a path where the political elite is happily trading the nation’s future for baubles by committing it to an unaffordable nuclear build programme.
All makes sense when seen in perspective, doesn’t it?
