User:Johntungay

--Johntungay (talk) 08:58, 15 March 2014 (UTC) John Tungay CURRICULUM VITAE AND OPERATIONAL DATA

John Ronald Tungay

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At the age of 23 John Tungay was appointed Editor of the Regional News Service of the SABC at Head Office and a year later he was promoted as Senior News Editor of the SABC in Cape Town responsible for broadcasting “Today in Parliament.” During 1960 he was instructed by the Board of the SABC and the government to research and prepare the initial memorandum for the introduction of television in South Africa.

After the Apartheid government took control of the SABC John resigned after accepting an invitation by the Directors of Lever Brothers (SA) Pty Ltd to become the company’s National Public Relations Manager. During this 5-year period he was a founder of the Natal Branch of the Public Relations Institute of South Africa and regularly lectured to students on this developing young profession during evening sessions at the Natal College for Advanced Technical Education.

In 1966 John resigned from Lever Brothers to create, finance and build his Drakensberg Boys Choir School. Ten years later he received the Marketing Award of the Year from the S.A. Institute of Marketing Management for promoting South Africa’s music to the world in co-operation with Gideon Roos of SAMRO, the country’s newly formed music rights organisation. Gideon Roos was John’s former Director General at the SABC.

John is currently Director General (Africa) of the International Biographical Centre (IBC) in Cambridge, England, with powers to recommend and confer honours upon distinguished persons in the fields of the Arts, Sciences and Communications. In 2010 the IBC conferred on John Tungay its Order of Distinction, which citation reads:

“Creator of schools, children’s homes and choirs including the internationally famous Drakensberg Boys Choir; Initiator of political dialogue that prevented bloodshed at the foundation of a new, democratic South Africa; A leader in changing the hearts of men and women away from fear and hatred to understanding and goodwill;

Developer of broad-based skills training projects in agriculture and engineering to boost farming efficiency and job creation.” 

CAREER BACKGROUND: John’s interest in the arts, science and journalism became apparent early in his career. At the age of 10 John played the organ for Sunday School services at St. James Church and he was appointed Organist and Choirmaster of St. Columba’s Church, Greenwood Park at the age of 12. He bought his first yacht from his organist’s earnings and years later this led to his appointment (part-time) as Yachting Editor of both the Daily News and the Sunday Tribune and presenting Durban’s first Easter Aquashow which raised vast sums of money for charity.

His love of singing saw John become head choirboy at St. James’s Church, Durban, where King George VI, Queen Elizabeth and the two Princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret, attended a special service during the Royal Visit of 1947.

At Glenwood High School, John played the trombone in the military band. Then, while still a pupil, he took over as conductor/trainer after two musicians from the Durban Symphony Orchestra ceased teaching his fellow bandsmen how to play their various brass and woodwind instruments. While at school John rebuilt a two-manual and pedal pipe organ in a room of the Tungay family home and this instrument was featured on the SABC.

John was a founder member of the International Arts League of Youth, which annually brought together hundreds of young people from every part of Southern Africa and overseas every July to celebrate Durban’s “Festival of Youth.” John regularly played the Durban City Hall organ with the International Arts League’s Youth’s Orchestra.

John played rugby and cricket for Glenwood, one of Durban’s top high schools, and his interest in bat and ball led to his receiving honours as an umpire and becoming a regular SABC sports broadcaster of cricket and rugby on “Sports Gazette” while he was still at school.

In the field of journalism, as a fourteen year-old, John brought honour to Glenwood High School by winning the Natal Mercury newspaper’s annual essay competition with his “Plan for a United Africa – calling for improved communications from Cape to Cairo” – a vision which is only now beginning to become a reality.

John went up to the University of Natal to read for a Chemical Technology degree, but later turned to radio journalism where his writing and photographic talents were in constant demand.

He joined the Durban Publicity Association where he introduced a unique media-based publicity campaign, in conjunction with the city’s hotels, which dramatically doubled the number of holidaymakers visiting Durban. The city changed overnight from a winter sunshine Mecca to a year-round tourism resort with vast improvement of the local economy.

John’s career in broadcasting led to his appointment as head of the SABC’s Regional News Service in Johannesburg and, at the age of 24, as Senior Editor of the Parliamentary News Team, He resigned from the SABC in 1960 in protest when the Verwoerd Government seized control of the broadcasting corporation and ordered John’s reporter staff to slant news in support of Apartheid policy.

Lever Brothers invited John to become National Public Relations Officer at its head office based in Durban. John’s parliamentary background enabled him to spearhead numerous successful national projects, between 1960 and 1966, including a campaign to persuade the farmer-dominated Apartheid government to eventually relent and allow the production of yellow margarine as a substitute for butter which the poor could not afford. Up to that time the country’s Dairy Industry Control Board had insisted that margarine be sold as an insipid-looking white product.

Whilst working for Lever Brothers John co-founded the Public Relations Institute in Natal and to this day he remains one of South Africa’s most experienced PR practitioners and a Chartered member of the Public Relations Institute of Southern Africa.

John’s love for the Drakensberg Mountains led him to plan, build and direct the world famous Drakensberg Boys Choir School, which project he founded on 1 May 1966. To achieve this he sold his Durban North residence and his Rosetta farm to fund his dream of an international boys choir school. He trained local unemployed Africans to erect the three-storey building designed for him, as a donation, by Professor Leslie Croft and students of the Department of Architecture at the University of Natal. John also provided the finance for his younger brother, Russell, to fly to the USA to read for a Master’s degree in Business Administration so John could appoint him Bursar of the choir school.

This, the only choir school for boys in the Southern Hemisphere, opened its doors in January 1968 with 20 choristers. Under John’s baton these youngsters were soon performing concerts countrywide, and by the end of the first year the number of pupils had risen to 36. The total soon swelled to 120, making it the largest boys choir boarding school in the world.

Invitations to perform were received from several overseas countries, but the first concert tour of Portugal, France and England was a near disaster. At their first concert in London’s Wigmore Hall there were more boys on the stage than in the audience. Then the conductor Louis van der Westhuizen was hospitalised with a heart attack and a 12-year-old Drakensberg chorister, Jannie Adendorff, took over the baton and conducted the choir, receiving a thunderous ovation from audiences... John was unable to accompany the first international tour because his son Robb lay at death’s door with nephrosis.

When a hurricane flattened the mud-and-iron buildings of the nearest African school, Mjwayeli, at Loskop, that school’s governing body requested John to help them rebuild their school. There was no money to undertake this task so John challenged organists worldwide to a “winner-take-all” organ-playing marathon. Daniel Doris, a New York Negro, was the last challenger to succumb (after four days), but John played on, day and night, in Johannesburg’s Carlton Centre for seven days and three hours to set a new record for the Guinness Book of Records. R25 000 was raised and the Anglo American Mining Company doubled John’s money to provide a total of R75 000 for John to design and build the new Mjwayeli school.

John established a Zulu Children’s Choir at Loskop’s Mjwayeli School and invited these children to travel to Johannesburg together with pupils of his Drakensberg Boys Choir School to make a first-ever cross-cultural record titled “The Children’s Song of Hope.” For the first time there was a coming together of children of different cultures, who recorded for Gallo’s in joyful harmony. From that time on private schools began accepting more black pupils as some of the foundations of Apartheid began to crack.

The Apartheid government was angered at John’s joint singing venture, uniting black and white children, which had received glowing publicity in the Sunday Times. John was called to the Pietermaritzburg headquarters of the South African Police where he was physically attacked by a Colonel Willem van der Merwe, sent from the SA Police Headquarters, Pretoria. Soon after the knockout blow he sustained to his temple, John found himself slowly going blind.

In 1986 John moved to England where three eye-operations failed, then a Norwich surgeon, Richard Burton, whose miracle operation had given a blind Indian man sight, offered to undertake a unique procedure to repair internal damage to John’s eyesight and to implant new lenses in his eyes. His sight was miraculously restored.

While living in Norfolk, John and his wife Paula ran a successful pre-press printing company, Advanced Design & Marketing. This company also imported and distributed South African wines. Together they designed, printed and distributed key publications including the monthly S.A Business Report for the South African Embassy, in London, and “The Conservative Way Forward” flagship publication of the ruling Conservative Party. Soon the Tungays found themselves in control of the complete British distribution lists of every valuable contact of both the South African Embassy and the Conservative Party.

At this stage, bombs were exploding in South African cities accompanied by ever-increasing violence. Senior members of the Commonwealth were calling upon Britain to halt its support of the Apartheid government – or face the possibility of the Britain being excluded from the very body of which the Queen was its head.

In 1989 John was called upon by UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the Bow Group of the Conservative Party to visit South Africa to advise upon ways to resolve the Apartheid debacle. He flew to his homeland and called on all shades of political opinion including the banned ANC and PAC. On returning to England John suggested dialogue as the only way to prevent a bloodbath and restore peace to South Africa. John provisionally booked the legendary Leeds Castle, in Kent, surrounded by a moat, and titled the proposed conference “DIALOGUE ‘89,” for which Prime Minister Thatcher produced a list of influential members of her cabinet to address the joint South African delegation.

John’s efforts led to ongoing dialogue on South African soil and the release of Nelson Mandela. Later it was John Tungay and Prince Velakhaye Shange of the Zulu Royal House, (he lives in England), who wrote and persuaded the Zulu government at Ulundi to let their people vote in South Africa’s first free elections – after they had steadfastly refused to do so. This successful election led to the establishment of a fully democratic country.

Soon after the new democracy began to operate the internationally famous Drakensberg Boys Choir gave a remarkable tribute to the country’s first black President, Nelson Mandela, with the South African Air Force presenting a unique 75th Anniversary Concert in his honour - high among the peaks of the Drakensberg Mountains. The conductor was Christian Ashley-Botha. The concert was only possible thanks to helicopter squadrons of the SAAF which had, for years, operated from an airbase close to the Drakensberg Boys Choir School.

John was the first President of the Howick and Midlands Chamber of Commerce & Industry which he founded in 2011 and is Honorary Life President of the former Umgeni Chamber. He is also Chairman of the Friends of Umgeni Psychiatric Hospital, with its 400 patients, and has been elected three times President of Rotary clubs, in England and South Africa. He has raised the highest ever annual charitable income at every club Rotary where he was President.

Shortly after addressing the 2011 World Forum in San Francisco on the subject of the future of Aids Orphans in Southern Africa, John and his Drakesnberg Boys Choirs were jointly awarded the Order of International Ambassadors by the American Biographical Institute for his work over a period of more than 45 years in developing the Drakensberg Boys Choirs who sing on world stages from the Americas in the West to China and Japan in the East.

This year John was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters by the International Biographical Centre of Cambridge, England, for his lifelong efforts in introducing, and developing musical talent and positive holistic education among the young people of South Africa.

John’s 2014 “Pride of KZN” calendar project is now going on sale to raise funds through Rotary for Dr. Ian Player’s campaign to halt the killing of the remaining rhinos in our country through his Magqubu Ntombela Foundation before these ancient animals become extinct.

In 1983 John married Paula Velzeboer and he has 2 sons, 2 daughters and 7 grand-children.