Chippy Olver-Consultant, activist and author

My guest this week is Chippy Olver. Chippy is a medical doctor who has devoted his adult life to the liberation struggle starting with the End Conscription Campaign back in the 1980's.

He has worked as a doctor, an activist and served in government as the Director General of Environmental Affairs and Tourism from 1999-20005.

In 2016 he was appointed to an ANC Regional Task Team aimed at rooting out corruption in the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality. This was part of an effort to ensure the ANC did not lose the city in the 2016 municipal elections, an effort that ultimately failed.  But led to Chippy writing a book about his experiences called How To Steal A City.

He is currently reading for  a PhD in politics at the University of the Witwatersrand on the topic of corruption in local government. Since leaving government he has worked as a consultant in both  the environmental and local government spaces.

We chatted about his early activism and radicalization, working for a government in transition, the rise of Jacob Zuma, the scourge of corruption and what the ANC needs to do in order to revitalise itself.