Why I will keep arguing with Roy

By Carel Nolte

I met Roy Ockers a few years ago through my friend, the artist Frans Smit.

Frans, as many of you will know, painted the portrait of me that is still my WhatsApp profile picture. A daily reminder that friendship, art and identity are often more connected than we realise.

I met Roy Ockers a few years ago through my friend, the artist Frans Smit.

Through Frans I met Roy. Since then I have visited Roy in Italy, in the beautiful Tuscan village of Montefollonico. Roy has also visited and stayed with me in Joburg a few times. We have shared meals, wine, coffee, travel stories and many robust debates about life, business, faith, family, love, control, fear and what it means to be properly human.

And when I say robust debates, I mean robust.

Roy is not a passive thinker. Nor am I. We both enjoy an argument. We both like pushing an idea until it either holds or breaks. We don’t always agree, which is one of the reasons I value him. Good friendships are not echo chambers. They are places where you can test your thinking, sharpen your language and still know that the relationship matters more than being right.

I have long respected Roy’s exceptional entrepreneurship. Through Banditto Art and the residency work he has supported, he has created space for artists, makers and thinkers to do serious work in a beautiful place. That takes imagination. It also takes guts, money, execution and stubbornness.

Now Roy is writing under the pseudonym John Ferdinand. And what he is producing is brave, searching and deeply worth reading.

I have recently spent time with four of his books: The Father You Thought You Were, The Gap, Don’t Be Afraid and his modern rendering of The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. They are different books, but they are clearly in conversation with each other.

A few themes kept coming back to me.

The first is the gap before the story.

Roy is interested in that tiny space before we explain ourselves. Before we decide what something means. Before we become defensive. Before we tell ourselves that we are right, wrong, rejected, loved, useful, ignored or misunderstood.

In The Gap he writes about the brief moment before experience becomes explanation. Before there is a position to take. Before there is even a self confidently taking the position.

That fascinates me.

So much of life happens after the story has already formed. Someone doesn’t reply to a message. Someone speaks in a tone we don’t like. Someone challenges us in a meeting. A child asks the same question for the fourth time. A partner says something sharp. A boardroom goes quiet.

And almost instantly, we explain it.

They are disrespecting me.

I am failing.

They don’t understand.

I need to defend myself.

I am the kind of person who would never do that.

Roy’s work asks us to pause before we settle too quickly into the explanation. Not to become passive. Not to stop thinking. Not to deny reality. But to notice that our first story is not always the whole truth. Sometimes it is simply the fastest one. In my recent dealings with the SABC and ASA, I could have done with more realisation around this.

The second theme is fear.

In Don’t Be Afraid, Roy is not writing about fear as panic or anxiety. He is writing about something earlier. The movement that happens when something is still open and we cannot bear the openness. So we close it. We make it mean something. We give ourselves ground to stand on.

That made for uncomfortable reading because it is true in many ways.

I see this in leadership. I see it in politics. I see it in myself.

How often do we pretend we are being clear when we are actually being fearful? How often do we call something principle when it is really protection? How often do we need to be right because the alternative is standing for a moment in uncertainty?

Servant leadership asks more of us than performing certainty. It asks us to stay open long enough to serve the person, the institution or the moment, rather than merely defending the version of ourselves we want others to see.

That is hard.

It is also necessary and something I will reflect on more.

The third theme is identity.

The Father You Thought You Were is not a parenting manual. Thank goodness. The world does not need more neat advice from people pretending that life is tidy.

It is a book about the difference between who we think we are and what ordinary life reveals.

Roy writes about fatherhood, but the idea applies much more widely. We all carry identities.

I am patient.

I am generous.

I am a good leader.

I am a present friend.

I am brave.

I am fair.

I am the person who shows up.

Some of these may be true. But even true stories can become hiding places. The danger is not that we have an identity. We need some continuity. The danger is when we defend the identity more fiercely than we live the value.

That landed with me.

I write and speak often about showing up, servant leadership, contribution and taking ownership. I believe those things deeply. But Roy’s writing is a useful challenge. Am I living those values in the next small moment, or am I defending the idea that I am the kind of person who lives those values?

There is a difference.

The fourth theme, from The Meditations, is effort and surrender.

Roy’s rendering of Marcus Aurelius is not another macho Stoic handbook about becoming unbreakable. It is much more interesting than that. He sees Marcus as a man talking himself into the day. A man who has to keep reminding himself because he has not mastered the thing. A man practising.

That feels honest.

We love stories of mastery. We love the strong leader, the calm parent, the wise elder, the composed friend. But most of us are, most days, practising. Getting up. Trying again. Talking ourselves into the day. Doing the work of a human being.

And then, sometimes, the effort falls away. Not forever. Not dramatically. Just for a moment. We see the olive about to fall from the tree at KleinBlouKlip. The child in front of us. The friend across the table. The work that needs doing. The person who needs kindness rather than our cleverness.

That, for me, is where Roy’s books connect most strongly with my own thinking.

Life is not about becoming less human. It is about becoming more honest about being human.

More honest about fear.

More honest about our stories.

More honest about the identities we defend.

More honest about the small gap where love, grace, God, presence, wisdom or whatever language you prefer may already be waiting before we rush to explain it away.

Roy and I will continue to debate. I suspect we will continue to disagree on many things. Good. I would be bored otherwise.

But I am proud of him. Proud of the entrepreneur who makes things happen. Proud of the friend who thinks deeply. Proud of the writer who is putting careful, difficult and honest work into the world.

These are not books to rush. They are not airport thrillers or neat self-help manuals. Read them slowly. Sit with them. Argue with them. Let them irritate you a little (or as they did with me at times, a lot!) Let them open something.

And then perhaps notice, just for a heartbeat longer than usual, what happens before your next explanation arrives.

You can find Roy’s books, published under the name John Ferdinand, on Amazon.