There is lament about how and why the ANC have so quickly become preoccupied with material enrichment. Former exile, business leader and political commentator, Oyama Mabandla, excavates the values that created a steady flow of pioneering South Africans under impossible circumstances, bolstered a liberation ethic and championed a leadership that made individual nobility and excellence aspirational. These values, in retreat since 94, can still recapture the nation's best trajectory.