Mike de Klerk

Mike de Klerk is more than usually preoccupied. He has just been appointed Chief Operating Officer of the HSRC. For him this is a huge career shift, from a lifetime of research and dedication to rural economic development to taking charge of operational functions at the HSRC.

What is foremost on his mind is the responsibility of leadership and the challenges of management style. In an interview in Mike de Klerk’s office in Pretoria, from where he has established and managed the Integrated Rural and Regional Development (IRRD) Research Programme over the last four years, he ruminates on inclusivity and equality. A softspoken, humble man, his convictions stem from a deep Christian belief that God’s grace covers all of humanity.

‘If God in his wisdom sees fit to treat us all equally, and love us all equally, and we have the temerity to say, ‘Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done’, that is what you’ve got to do! That is why I found apartheid difficult to live under. How could you possibly justify inequality if you believe in this God?’

De Klerk is the quintessential ‘servant-leader’, as described by Robert Greenleaf, who coined the phrase. De Klerk listens empathetically to his troops, carefully considers all views, and relies on his persuasive powers and the ability to conceptualise beyond daily realities to make decisions. Greenleaf calls this the ‘ethical use of power and empowerment’. The servant-leader recognises both the top-down and bottom-up views of authority, and that leadership and following are interdependent.

In the words of Max Depree: ‘The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant’.

Not that De Klerk would ever describe himself in such terms, and he has never read Greenleaf or Depree. He laughs and says, ‘A great deal of management is about empowering colleagues to make up for one’s own deficiencies’.

He grew up in Cape Town. His father came from upper-crust Afrikaner stock, and his Jewish mother – from the Sephardic, not the Ashkenazi branch, he points out – was a pianist.

De Klerk’s philosophy on leadership and management style grew over a career of 37 years. As an economist, fresh from UCT, he met head-on with the realities of a harsh business world. After a spell at Rand Mines, followed by a few years as manager of five shops in the Edgars group, he chose to walk away from it all, literally.

‘I reached a watershed in that particular job. The economy was in a recession at that time. I found myself having to fire sales staff who could not make their targets – good people. After one particularly difficult day, I walked into the human resources manager’s office and handed in my resignation.

‘There and then I decided there is no way I’m going back into business if this is what the business world is all about. I went to Europe, not knowing what I wanted to do or where to go from here.’

Back in South Africa, he met Dr Anthony Barker and his wife Dr Maggie, who worked as missionary doctors at the Charles Johnson Memorial Hospital at Nqutu in KwaZulu-Natal. They had established a rare, non-racial community and invited De Klerk to work with them. He did carpentry and taught English and mathematics at the nurses’ school.

‘Anthony showed me an extraordinary set of figures the hospital had kept over a hundred years. It showed the long decline in weights and heights in that area. It was evident what was causing it: the general decline in the viability of the rural economy.

‘That was the point at which I said: This is something I would really like to get to the bottom of.’

And that was when he found his career: research and teaching in rural development, employment, land issues and agriculture.

From the Charles Johnson Memorial Hospital, he went into teaching: first at Wits, later at UCT and in 1998 he joined the Land Bank as General Manager: Research and Development.

In between, he did his Masters dissertation on what mechanisation in the maize industry did to employment, entitled Technological Change and Employment in South African Agriculture: The Case of Maize Harvesting in the Western Transvaal, 1968-1981.

On farmers: ‘I also recognised that much of what is said about farmers is not true. There are bad employers, but many are extremely caring. They are, although paternalistically, often more concerned about the welfare of their workers than most industrial employers.’

Since the inception of the IRRD Research Programme in 2001, research activities have been organised into four broad subprogrammes under the overarching theme of poverty reduction, De Klerk relates. Over time, the research focus and corresponding skills have evolved to reflect the changes in users’ needs driven by shifts in the national and international political, social and economic landscape.

Currently, the four sub-programmes are land and agrarian reform; rural infrastructure and service delivery; regional migration and investment and trade; and poverty and inequality.

These sub-programmes are designed to respond to national priorities addressed by the government’s social, economic and international relations clusters, designed to push back the frontiers of poverty; to bring the benefits of growth to the ‘second economy’; to improve service delivery; to mitigate the effects of HIV/AIDS; and to mobilise Africa to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

Soon IRRD will undergo another change. Under a new executive director, it will integrate urban development studies and add new research areas, such as environment and tourism, and food security.

From a small programme with seven projects in 2001, IRRD researchers completed a sizeable 30 projects in the 2004/05 financial year.

What would De Klerk regard as his main achievements over the last four years? He stresses that this was a team effort: ‘It was really we. My function is to get the right people, give them the necessary support in terms of raising funds and seeding ideas, and then to support them in going for it. This has really worked extremely well. Last year our gross external earning (excluding the Parliamentary grant) was R25 million, the third most in the HSRC.’

IRRD’s greatest achievement was that it has established credibility in the market. In addition, they have rapidly moved from doing mainly small projects into the ‘big end of the market’ – doing large projects, stretching over a few years and including a range of partners, skills and funders.

‘For me, the greatest excitement was seeing the HSRC starting to win for the research community as a whole’.

Somewhat apprehensive about his new position as Chief Operations Officer of the HSRC, Mike de Klerk is also well-aware of the fact that his many different experiences – business manager, academic, economist, researcher, leader of a successful research programme – and his beliefs and values, have equipped him well to tackle any challenge awaiting him in future.