A self-confessed “ideas man” and explorer-at-heart, I began my career as a miner in the shafts beneath Kimberley, where I started out as a learner official right after finishing matric in 1987. Over the next couple of decades, I progressed from production and development miner to shift boss; overseer to mining engineer; superintendent to operations manager. and then to appointed senior general manager at Assmang’s manganese mining operation in Kuruman. I live by the credo: “An object in motion continues at the same speed unless it’s acted on by an unbalanced force,” - i.e. there’s a natural tendency for objects to keep doing what they’re doing. My interpretation is that one will keep living life (as normal) unless something unusual or unexpected acts upon one’s life.