An interview With Dinga Fatman

NOVELTY FICTION – Your recently published book “Memoir from a Visit to Pretoria” describes your experiences as a young economist at the early stages of his career. What type of economist are you, and what work have you done as such? What are your core beliefs as an economist?

DINGA FATMAN – I would say I am a Development Economist leaning more to the Microeconomics research side.

For my Masters thesis, I worked on the impact of labour regulations on labour performance. My professional work has comprised involvement in two not-for-profit organisations in Pretoria, where I did much work on surveys. Sometimes using primary surveys, where I and some colleagues would be tasked with drawing up the surveys, and other times using secondary surveys – that is, work that had already been done. Mainly to study how various economic factors influence others. I worked on projects from differing sectors such as the automobile industry and agriculture. These projects were mainly funded by national government departments such as the Department of Trade and Industry (dti) or the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC).

My belief as an economist is that the government should be very open about the path it aims to take, given the tax-funded government spending that is available to a nation over a specific period of time. That is, so that the government and the private sector might be able to achieve the desired goals of the state, putting it on the correct path.

NOVELTY FICTION – What motivated or prompted you to write the memoir? Was it difficult, considering how honest and transparent you apparently chose to be about your accomplishments, setbacks and failures?

DINGA FATMAN – It was a book I had been collecting as a diary since I began breaking down in Pretoria from work-related stress. So, I always wanted to get such a diary published to assist other young professionals going through a similar experience. Although experiences will always be different depending on the situation at hand.

No, it wasn’t difficult writing the book with the setbacks, given that I had been collecting material for a very long time.

NOVELTY FICTION – Does the memoir contain anything of value for other young professionals, academics and economists in particular? If so, please explain what they are.

DINGA FATMAN – Absolutely. Firstly, it teaches them that no matter how smart they were in school, the labor market – in South Africa, especially – has a different set of rules, which unfortunately are still unfair to the young professionals, as they get very little say in the direction taken by the institutions they work for. Hence, such professionals will often experience unpleasant future careers as a result of being blinded by the high salaries they earn immediately after finishing university.

Secondly, especially in times such as 2024 where the growth rate is close to recession levels, those young economists who missed out on COVID recession periods should learn to be patient about how quickly or slowly things tend to move at such times.

NOVELTY FICTION – Personal wealth generation is a prominent feature of the book. Is it fair to say that this concept is something fairly unique created by you? Have your views on how to generate personal wealth evolved further since the book was published?

DINGA FATMAN – Certainly not. Wealth generation has been there for a long time. I grew up being educated by my parents on how important it was to create wealth through buying property so that my children wouldn’t be dependent on a job for a source of income. I learnt about investing in the stock market whilst I was still earning a salary; and the exceptional benefits that came along with it go beyond the compound interest offered by banks.

I guess my views have changed by being in that space in my life where I am seeing my parents become older, and learning about better ways to save money for death and funeral purposes.

NOVELTY FICTION – Would it be fair to say that you have a distinct sense of humor? If so, please describe what you see as funny that the average person may overlook. Do you sometimes experience that your jokes are misunderstood and mistaken for something else?

DINGA FATMAN – I don’t know if you would call it a ‘distinct’ sense of humour. More academic than anything. Yes, I think that people who don’t really understand or appreciate the subject I am talking about are misled by my jokes because they are so deeply involved in the subject matter that they tend to interpret them according to their own understanding; for academic purposes.

NOVELTY FICTION – With your recent short story manuscript submitted to our editor, you included a photo of a grossly overweight white, middle-aged woman sitting on the steps of a tiny house that appeared to be in shambles. Were you trying to convey the message of “white trash”? If not, why did you include it? Do you consider yourself racist or racially opinionated?

DINGA FATMAN – I certainly wouldn’t consider myself to be racist. The picture was just to portray how white people have come to live in shacks as well in South Africa. A land that used to favour them more because of the economic advantages it used to give them under the Apartheid system.

© 2024 by Novelty Fiction.