After 37 years serving South Africa in the defence force – as an instructor, a commander and a staff officer – John now counts three other African countries as clients. For obvious reasons, though, he was not keen to talk about his clients, or even where he was due to fly to the day after we met.
He also chose not to name names when talking about the first company he invested his retirement savings with after withdrawing them from the Government Employees Pension Fund. “One of the big banks” was all he would say of the institution that charged him a high monthly fee (which he had not been told about) for membership of a fund that was performing poorly.