Phenyo Nthase: The drink offering that was poured out
The great majority of us spend time, but there are some, that special breed, who seem to be working in tandem with the relentless chiming arrow of time. These outliers seem not to spend that crucial resource, instead with the prudence of a mogul, invest i
Phenyo Nthase was such a man. Last week, his earthly remains were interred in the valley of the departed amongst his people in Mookane. Phenyo never sought an opportunity to remind anyone that he was a quantity surveyor whose firm managed projects worth hundreds of millions pula and more.
In fact, many of his folks in Mookane and the common people who interacted with him had no clue that the affable man they shared banter with had a commanding voice in boardrooms and that in megabucks construction sites he was clothed with something akin to veto power. All they ever cared to know was that he was one of their own. Now they have lost him!
A man who laughed heartily, a fellow who loved dearly, an abiding husband, a son who bowed and deferred to seniority, a farm boy who gave sacrificially!
Those who went to school with him in Mookane Primary School run out of superlatives when talking about the unassuming hot brain who finished all the education his village could offer in an easy sprint.
Upon graduating ‘cum-laude’ in the Primary School Leaving Examinations, Phenyo joined a select few who trudged to a deeper well of education offered at the then premier secondary school in the Sub-District - Madiba Secondary School.
Long-term friends Kaone Mathuba and Kereng Mphoyakgosi sculpt a conscientious and diligent young boy whose poise for greatness was enmeshed in a tapestry of shyness, innocence and respect. He enjoyed a good laugh and moved around with a crew who were hopelessly given to mirth. At high school, he loved numbers but he was fascinated by the chemical reactions and the structure of substances.
Later on in his education, after completing his pre-entry science course at the University of Botswana, when the deep outside called on the deep inside the man, he went to the University of South Bank in London where he graduated with a Bsc in Quantity Survey and later he acquired a senior degree in project management.
Phenyo’s memorial and funeral were contemplative platforms mimicking his life story of vision and reflection. He was a man who seemed to defy all conventional wisdom that one cannot raise a modern farm where pedigree (studs) are reared in a regular cattlepost. His Letswere White Brahman Farm was extolled as a perfect specimen to debunk the myth that one needs a huge outlay including huge tracts of land and other extortionate expenses to venture into modern farming.
Phenyo and a colony of protégés he raised stand erect as a monument pointing people to a new way of farming. He was relentless in bringing quality in cattle farming, including buying exotic breeds and straws to grow quality locally. He helped stimulate a market for local cattle breeders; he invested heavily in farming technology and Mookane Farmers Day is one of the many disruptive innovations that he breathed into life.
His son, Atang when giving a eulogy about his father, said his father taught him values. Phenyo’s business partner at Pego Projects, Gontse Kgosiemang was effusive when talking about Phenyo’s ingratiated immersion in meaningful values.
The refrain description that colleagues, friends, family, farmers and contractors gave about Phenyo was that he was an honest man who abhorred corruption.
At a time when the construction industry is a by-word for a cesspool of corruption, kickbacks, bribes and shoddy jobs, this would seem at odds with reality. Quantity surveyors are ideally supposed to be the bulwark against the rot in the tendering process and in construction of mega projects particularly public infrastructure. However, the common cliché and proverb in the mouth of the helpless public is that some quantity surveyors like other gate-keeping officers abet and facilitate corruption. A story is told of how a corrupt contractor came to Phenyo’s offices, with a huge briefcase bursting at the seams with wads of fresh bank notes amounting to P2 million in tow.
The businessman was shown the door with his dirty money and an hour later Phenyo, who was an unrepentant disciple of integrity, was asking a friend for a few pulas to buy lunch.
When friends and family are grieving for the loss of one so dear, in the construction industry there seems to be agony that a torch bearer and a bastion of integrity and moral rectitude against unrelenting corruption has been taken away from the clearing house and evil could roam unmarked.
Phenyo championed causes, from agitating for the tarring of Dibete-Mookane, helping farmers including saving the indigenous Tswana breed to more altruistic community service. Slumber Walebowa even said he was a comrade in the trenches.
The 53-year-old, his niece revealed, succumbed to cancer like most of his other five siblings who departed before him.
She raised a petition, an elegy to a higher being to halt the cancer devastation procession in the family and in the nation. Nobody is able to attend their funeral but if only the curtain that divides the living and the dead could be drawn, just in time for Phenyo to see and hear how he has invested in time, he would possibly thump himself in the chest in satisfaction and mutter to himself under that signature chuckle of his like the man in the books would say, ‘I poured myself out like a drink
offering’.