Tributes are pouring in for South African IT pioneer Adriaan Joubert, who was murdered in the garden of his Roodepoort, Johannesburg, home last week. Joubert, 59, was shot dead by a gang of robbers who leapt over a 3m high wall.
Johnny Billson, managing executive at Cornastone Infrastructure Services, says he knew Joubert for more than 30 years. "He was my mentor and boss for more than 14 years," Billson says.
"This happened at various companies, firstly when I was an engineer-in-training at Iscor, Vanderbijlpark, and Adriaan was the automation superintendent. Secondly, my whole career of 10 years at Teklogic where Adriaan ended up as the MD and, finally when I was MD at Isis Information Systems, he was the Altech executive responsible for Isis," he says. "Adriaan created a very relaxed and enjoyable culture at the businesses where he was involved. It was his passion to develop people's skills and this he achieved excellently."
Mondial IT Solutions director Louis Laurie says Teklogic, under Joubert, was a company where learning came naturally and by example from the top. "With a particular passion for the development of his people, Adriaan invested considerable time and effort in coaching and teaching. His project management philosophy, for example, became an industry standard that is still widely practised."
Theo Scribante, a telecommunications strategist, says Joubert "was the engineer's engineer. His engineering was not of technology but of the people, disciplines, processes and systems found in everyday life."
MTN Congo Brazzaville's specialist consultant, Dion Krige, says the lasting impression that remains of Joubert is that "of a man of absolute integrity, of fairness to his staff, of leniency when one made a mistake and a man capable of exceptional quantity and quality of output. His ready chuckle always left me with a feeling that everything was OK. Adriaan was a big man in all respects."
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