The Forgotten P¯hu^ k¯hay

The author has chosen to celebrate his 60th birthday with a personally themed maiden book publication. What a powerful way to honour a lifetime of learning, discovery and wisdom! His is a unique style that has transformed a milestone into a legacy event. The various stories that he tells in the book are a collection of achievements, tributes, and glowing memories, both personal and communal. Alongside those are some notable challenges, struggles, and trials that he experienced and witnessed during his life's journey. He blends his brilliant diamond jubilee birthday idea with the 222nd anniversary tribute to his home town. He does that in a way that invokes emotional warmth and a sense of longing. He writes beautifully and possessively about his place of birth, eQhagqiwa, or the Garden Town. The latter is the nickname for the then Uitenhage, now Kariega, in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. The place earned the affectionate greenbelt name because of its exotic peri-urban wilderness and its exceptional biodiversity. Kariega is home to the Sunshine Coast's Groendal Nature Reserve, eNgqalo, the third largest wilderness conservation area in South Africa. The town "is gorgeously positioned in the foothills of the Cockscomb Mountain (Iintaba zika Vuba, kwelentonga yeMduluswa ephezulu), which is part of the Groot Winterhoek mountain range, where the town's official flower, the Strelitzia (or iKhamanga), blooms just about everywhere". He employs the book as a share point of some of the most significant events in his life-long journey of learning – whether at educational institutions, in the workplace, at extramural establishments, or in wherever else he may have taken his time. Some of the events have been excitingly positive, while others disappointingly lacked excitement. Each chapter of the book is a short story on its own, but together they add up to an overall picture of all of the events that contributed to his knowledge, skills, and growth. The book is about both his formal and informal self-discovery in all areas of life. His social outlook, and as a result, his way of liberally revealing the book's meaning, is a report writing style that is clearly influenced by the school education that he received in Lesotho as well as the management practices and corporate principles that he learnt in Germany. The author is a driven and bold leader of a group of workers' successful bid for the Heavy Commercial Vehicles (trucks and buses) Production business of Volkswagen South Africa, who ultimately beat 9 other local and international competitors. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a failed start-up deal. The latter inspired the title story that may seem like a forgettable old saga from a decades-long past, but to Vusi, that is anything but. His emotive account is compelling, if not direct communication at its best. He's calling it what it is. The leading theme of the book is extensively explored in the final and headline chapter, supported by useful statistics. It is found wrapped up in an explosive commercial controversy in the 200-page-plus long book.