The universe has a sense of humour, I am fond of saying. Some 60 years ago, my mother Devagie Govender mentored a young man named Clement Sigamoney.
Through a strange quirk of fate, I almost five decades later ended up mentoring this young man named Mervyn Sigamoney who is one of the two reasons we are gathered here today.
So today I speak to you not as a family member or an uncle although I am honoured to play that role in Mervyn’s life. Instead I want to tell you about Mervyn the youngster I took under my wing 11 years ago and worked with him almost every day for almost 10 of those years.
In 2007, I suddenly found myself with the responsibility of running YFM, probably the most iconic youth brand in the country and a source of inspiration and aspiration to more than a million youngsters in the greater Gauteng area. I had been brought on board because YFM was in trouble; it was losing audience and losing money and needed rescuing. And one of the earliest positions I needed to fill was that of an audio engineer.
Mervyn was at that time training youngsters at (I think) Damelin’s Allenby Campus. But he wanted to work at Y. So he was asked to produce some samples of the type of work we wanted.
The samples were terrible.
Now let me tell you why they were terrible: if Mervyn were to produce the same work that he did ten years ago again today, it would fit in perfectly with the sound of the station. The problem was Mervyn’s ideas were ahead of his time, and it was simply the wrong time to take him on board in that role. So I didn’t hire him.
But the following year when Mike Penny, our technical manager was looking for a broadcast engineer, I told him to give Mervyn a call. Mike pointed out, politely, that Mervyn had no experience as a broadcast engineer. I said something like: “Don’t worry, put him on a three month contract. If he doesn’t work out, let him go. But there’s something about this youngster. I think he will surprise us.”
And so, in 2008, Mervyn joined us as a broadcast engineer.
Mervyn’s picked up all he needed to know about the job of broadcast engineer within a couple of weeks, and then began coming up with ideas as to how we could do many things more efficiently.
There’s something I have been fond of telling parents over the years: If your kid is struggling at school, what do you do? Send her for extra lessons. If she is doing brilliantly, what do you do? Send her for extra lessons. Mervyn clearly needed extra lessons.
So I gave him more work: following the untimely passing of our Music Manager, Monde Mabaso, Mervyn took on the additional role of Music Executive, managing a team of youngsters and training them in our music strategy.
The following year, In addition to his responsibility for managing the music department, I appointed him to set up a new Digital department handling our online presence and our podcasts and our social media.
And then in 2013, I gave him the task of producing a reality TV show based on our training programme the Y Academy. Mervyn had never worked in television before, but he and his team sweated bullets and produced the series which we sold to etv for a million rand.
The reason why I am telling you this is not to talk about Mervyn’s career. What I’ve learned about Mervyn is that he is a bit like a diamond: the more pressure you put on him, the more he shines.
He is, without doubt, the employee who gave me the most trouble. He is a mischief maker of note, and my standard question to him was “what have you done now?”
But his was the department with the happiest employees; they loved their boss and would jump through hoops for him precisely because he took the trouble to support and mentor them.
To the Motjale family who now take Mervyn as their son as we take Tumi to be our daughter, you will find him to be mischievous, but also loyal, trustworthy, and loving. You should also know that since Tumi has come into his life, he has been a better man. I have never seen him happier.
I thank you.
