John Rabie is the entrepreneur who transformed the way South Africans build houses. With humble beginnings, he is now known as the man who took 1.25 million square meters of marshy wasteland on the outskirts of Cape Town and turned it into the $1.95-billion Century City.
It’s hard to believe that this co-founder of the Rabie Property Group is the same humble man who was painting buildings in Sea Point 40 years ago, along with his longtime business partner, Leon Cohen.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2016/02/01/inside-house-future/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Inside The House Of The Future</a>
&#8220;I started as painter with Leon. We formed a painting business. We said to ourselves, ‘hang on a second, let&#8217;s start building’. In those days, there was plenty of land in the southern suburbs in Constantia,” says Rabie.
From his office in Cape Town’s foreshore, filled with memorabilia of his property developments and school photographs, you can see why Rabie has stood at the test of time.
“It took me 40 years. There is no instant gratification to wealth. Property development is not a one-day game, it’s a five-day game,” says Rabie, using cricket analogy. “It’s taking a view for the future. Because we build buildings not for five years but because we want to live in them for 10 or 20 years.”
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Along with Century City, Rabie has been involved in other developments around Cape Town, including Marconi Beam, Westlake Estate, Royal Ascot and Big Bay.
Rabie is also responsible for cluster house developments. This started when Rabie didn&#8217;t have the capital to build the houses from scratch. Instead he came up with the idea of plot and plan, which allowed house hunters to pay a deposit on a plot of land for cheap and wait for Rabie to build it.
&#8220;In those days people bought their own little plots and then they built their houses. So we said ‘ok, we can build these houses on your plot for cheaper’. Then we said ‘hang on a minute, let’s take it to the next level’. We acquired five plots on Constantia, I think we paid R10,000 ($850) for a stand at the time – can you believe that, in Constantia of all places? We said ‘let&#8217;s build a house, finish it and furnish it and landscape it’.&#8221;
The idea took off in the 1980s and Rabie&#8217;s team was building five houses a month.  Soon it was building villages, over vast areas of Cape Town&#8217;s southern suburbs. It then moved on to show houses, giving buyers an idea of what the house would look like, right down to the kitchen sink.
&#8220;You know, what people struggle with is the design. How the house is going to look when the building is done, the vision. We had a beautiful brochure with eight or 10 designs, because the individual owned the plot we could sign a building contract and build that house that they chose.&#8221;
Back in his office, Rabie admits to being a hoarder. He has dozens of books with newspaper clippings and advertisements. It is a personal archive of 40 years of developing property. His proudest moment came in 2004, when he bought into a project that wanted to turn a marshy wasteland of 1.25 million square meters into a mini city.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2013/12/01/property-industry-shows-green-shoots/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Property industry shows some green shoots</a>
&#8220;The biggest boom to hit this country was in 2001 to 2007 – the world exploded. That was the biggest property boom we&#8217;d ever seen,&#8221; he says.
&#8220;It changed Rabie Property Group, because we now had a city.&#8221;
Fourteen years and an investment of more than $1.95 billion later, Century City has taken shape. These days it is a city-within-a-city; a place where one can work, live, shop and relax. The precinct hosts more than 500 businesses, 4,000 residential homes and is known for its clean and safe environment.
<div id="attachment_35845" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35845" class="wp-image-35845 size-large" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Century-City-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="683" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Century-City-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Century-City-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Century-City-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Century-City-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Century-City.jpg 1154w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />The Apex forms the focal point of the new Century City Square in Cape Town. Photo supplied</div>
&#8220;The great thing about Century City is it&#8217;s like a jigsaw puzzle, as the markets change you can change it to have a bit more commercial, a bit more residential areas. When I go inside the conference center or along the canals, I have to pinch myself,&#8221; says Rabie.
One of the latest developments in Century City has been the introduction of a Marriott hotel, the signature brand of the world’s largest hotel group, Marriott International. This brand was ushered in through the recent conversion of the African Pride Crystal Towers Hotel to the Cape Town Marriott Hotel Crystal Towers.
“It’s extremely positive for Century City to showcase a global giant like Marriott. The credibility of the brand internationally adds gravitas to our tenant directory, and we will no doubt see many more visitors from around the world coming to Century City because of the presence of a hotel under this brand,” says Cohen.
By 2010, Rabie had thought he had done all he could do in property. He was traveling abroad when he noticed a trend of inner-city revival. He saw major cities, like Sydney, were rejuvenating derelict buildings in city centers and repurposing them for residential living.
He immediately thought Cape Town could do the same. So, he embarked on co-founding Signatura, the private label property company, to do just that.
&#8220;No one was thinking of inner-city revival at that time. It was going to be very important for Cape Town to have hospitality linked to residential – in other words, intertwined. Our first project was the Radisson. We converted the office into the hotel and put 175 apartments on top, but the apartments have the use of the hotel facilities, the gym etc. That was hugely successful,&#8221; says Rabie.
<div id="attachment_35846" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35846" class="size-medium wp-image-35846" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Radisson-Final-300x212.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="212" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Radisson-Final-300x212.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Radisson-Final-600x424.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Radisson-Final-768x543.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Radisson-Final-1024x724.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Radisson-Final.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Rabies ambitious Radisson development in Cape Town. Photo supplied.</div>
Signatura recently completed the upscaling of central city landmark, the Safmarine building. It was transformed into an ambitious $100-million residential and hotel development known as The Radisson Blu Hotel and Residence.
It caters to South Africa&#8217;s growing upper middle class who are eager for luxury living close to the city and the ocean. What stands out for Rabie is the way in which social media has changed the way people buy property.
&#8220;We used to have to put flags up on Sunday at 10 o&#8217;clock. We&#8217;d get dressed up in our work clothes. That’s how we did it. If you didn’t get people into show houses on a Sunday, you didn’t sell. With social media, it changed dramatically. You hardly see us advertising in the press anymore because social media is so incredibly strong. We get 10 to 15 leads every day from people on the internet wanting to know about our developments.&#8221;
In five years, Signatura has rejuvenated more than 20 buildings in and around Cape Town – achieving over $500 million in sales.
It seems Rabie made the right decision to give up painting houses to build them instead.

John-Rabie-online

From Painting Houses To Building A $1.95-Billion Development

The New Wave Of Disruptors

It was a career defining moment that will live with lawyer Derek Light for the rest of his life: listening as Judge Gerald Bloem in the Grahamstown High Court, in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province, ruled that fracking in the Karoo region was unlawful. It was the punch Light had been waiting years to throw and it sent a battered and bruised government back to the drawing board.
&#8220;[The feeling] was overwhelming. You are viewed as a bunch of country people just making a noise. So when you go in a court, on an aspect that is nationally important and it&#8217;s got complex legal issues, and the court finds for you, you&#8217;re vindicated,&#8221; says Light.
This January marked the ninth anniversary when this quiet, unassuming, small-town lawyer and a handful of farmers challenged multi-million-dollar oil corporations and the South African government to stop hydraulic fracturing in their backyards.
&#8220;I always say to people I&#8217;m not a banner-waving green extremist, I&#8217;m a lawyer. What we want is a lawful process and our rights not to be unlawfully hinged… [we] are not just a bunch of country idiots behaving in an unreasonable fashion,&#8221; says Light.
<div id="attachment_35438" style="width: 510px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35438" class=" wp-image-35438" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Derek-Light_JC-300x200.jpg" alt="Derek Light Fracking" width="500" height="333" />Derek Light (Photo by Jay Caboz)</div>
For Light, it has meant years slogging through snail-paced proceedings and stockpiling mountains of paperwork from his offices in Graaff-Reinet, situated in the heart of the Karoo.
&#8220;When they change a law in parliament in line with what you called for, then you start getting ticks on the box and saying the last eight years have been worth it,&#8221; he says.
This was all because of three areas of concern the farmers had with the fracking regulations.
&#8220;The obvious issue farmers had was with the potential impact of the environment that shale gas development, that hydraulic fracturing, might have. The second was that the legislation was inadequate to cater for such a development, so we were concerned there was a lack of legislation and regulation. Then thirdly, and this is interconnected, we were concerned that there was a lack of knowledge on the process, a lack of knowledge on the receiving environment and therefore an inability to determine the potential impact,&#8221; says Light.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2016/07/01/fracking-future-fades/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: The Fracking Future Fades</a>
Light and the 400 Karoo landowners won their court case on October 17 because government failed to follow its own law. The Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) went beyond their authority and published fracking regulations relating to environmental and water usage matters, when it did not have the power to do so, the court found.
&#8220;It will mean the ministers of mineral resources, environmental affairs and water affairs will have to go back and do their job properly,&#8221; says Light.
It also means another vital lifeline for anti-fracking farmer Doug Stern, who has been farming sheep near Graaff-Reinet for the past 45 years, and was the first to lay the case against government.
&#8220;Derek doesn&#8217;t get the accolades he deserves. That man has virtually singlehandedly handled this anti-fracking campaign in my view. He&#8217;s been backed by strong businessmen, but he&#8217;s been able to gather a very strong team to supply him with information that he can use very effectively. Thanks to him largely we&#8217;ve been able to keep these cowboys at bay and protect the environment,&#8221; says Stern.
&#8220;We found so many loopholes in the regulations that government put forward that we felt we had to fight it. It was a significant victory that sends government back to the drawing board and forces them to relook at their regulations. In that time we are buying time and hoping that research into renewable energy will advance at a rapid rate.&#8221;
<div id="attachment_35439" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35439" class=" wp-image-35439" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Doug-Stern-200x300.jpg" alt="Doug Stern farmer fracking" width="300" height="450" />Doug Stern (Photo by Jay Caboz)</div>
Stern, who is also the president of Agri Eastern Cape, a private association representing more than 3,000 farm owners in the province, was one of the initial farmers to stand up against fracking in 2009.
&#8220;Who knows what damage would be done if we had allowed them to do exploratory drilling? If you look at the statistics, at the animal stock numbers of South Africa, a third of those are found in this province. We are an agriculture province through and through. If we start allowing industries like mining to impact on our environment we stand to lose a lot of our animal producing country, which will then impact again on our food security.&#8221;
Stern is one of the few farmers in the area to have seen the impact of fracking firsthand. He went to Pennsylvania, United States, as a guest of anti-fracking groups.
&#8220;My experiences in America were horrifying and I knew we couldn&#8217;t allow this to happen in this country. We had to make sure that they weren&#8217;t granted any exploratory lisenses.&#8221;
This is not the first time Light has stepped into the ring. In 2011, he and the farmers raised concerns and convinced government to place a moratorium on fracking in the Karoo. This led to government setting up a multi-disciplinary task team to investigate the potential impacts and benefits of hydraulic fracturing.
The report identified significant gaps in research before regulations of exploration of shale gas could proceed. Light and the farmers then called for a full Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) before any further exploration could begin. Farmers claimed there were too many unknowns around the impact of fracking on Karoo&#8217;s highly sensitive aquifer system from which boreholes are part of their primary water resource.
Nevertheless, government, in August 2012, chose to lift the moratorium and allow exploration of shale gas, but that they would not allow hydraulic fracturing to take place unless it was properly regulated.
&#8220;Government was concerned that if it did not allow the process to proceed, it could be a lost opportunity,&#8221; says Light.
&#8220;The sad part of the policy decision was that they took a decision notwithstanding the fact that they were uninformed, which we joined issue with. We welcomed the fact that they wanted to revisit the legislation, but we joined issue with the decision that they continued to proceed under circumstances under where they couldn&#8217;t take an informed decision.&#8221;
It would take government another three years, until June 2015, to submit the next round of regulations. By this time, an important amendment was made to South African law in June 2013, under the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act No. 28 of 2002 (MPRDA) and in line with the National Environmental Management Act of 2008. This amendment allowed Light and the farmers to win their case with the DMR, which they say overstepped its authority.
&#8220;Unfortunately it was an attempt by the minister to publish regulations that were all encompassing, it dealt with exploration and production and all other potential impacts to do with fracking,&#8221; says Light.
To make matters worse, when the DMR published its regulations, it did so without an SEA from the Department of Environmental Affairs. This joint operation produced a 165-page document detailing the uncertainties of fracking and took two years to complete.
&#8220;A team of 200 specialists authored work, peer reviewed by 19 international specialists… In each chapter, the scientists made a list of scientific unknowns which the science militated against proper decision making,&#8221; says Light.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2014/10/01/want-fracking-future/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: I Want A Fracking Future</a>
Light says one of the recommendations of this report was that at least 52% of the areas in question could not be fracked because of their sensitivity and more importantly that no water was be used in the Karoo because it was a limited resource.
&#8220;Also, what was said to be a massive economic benefit bringing 400,000 jobs to the country, the report said otherwise. It said fewer than 3,000 jobs would be created and of that only 900 locally,&#8221; says Light.
In the meantime, the government, through the Department of Science and Technology, also commissioned a report to determine South Africa&#8217;s technical readiness to support a shale gas industry. This was published in 2016 in partnership with the Academy of Science of South Africa and concluded, “much needs to be done to put in place a clear legislative environment and a rigorous regulatory and monitoring structure which will ensure that operators, in using their exploration and production lisences, apply best-practice technologies that are fully compliant with the rules and regulations governing the industry.”
&#8220;The good news is that there is research being done. It is clear that the initial reserves, which were stated by the oil companies and their advisors, and therefore government, have been overstated. Therefore the cost of producing shale gas, particularly in the context of the Karoo geology, is not viable,&#8221; says Light.
<div id="attachment_35441" style="width: 510px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35441" class=" wp-image-35441" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Karoo_JC-20-e1519808833674-300x200.jpg" alt="Karoo fracking" width="500" height="333" />The Karoo (Photo by Jay Caboz)</div>
While the fight for the Karoo is well underway, the fight for national regulation is just about to begin. It is ironic that while research, millions of dollars and time have been spent to protect the Karoo from fracking, it may proceed in any case on a national level.
This is because while there is a moratorium over the Karoo, this does not apply to the rest of the country. Beyond these borders, farmers now face similar cases where applications have been lodged by oil and gas companies for petroleum and gas exploration in the KwaZulu-Natal, Free State, Gauteng and North West provinces.
Although the applications do not specify fracking, Light is concerned with the rising number of applications.
&#8220;Which is what we predicted would happen. If there was shale gas in this country, and if they did allow shale gas development on well-field situations on large reserves, it would cover probably 60% of this land’s surface,&#8221; says Light.
Sungu Sungu Gas, in 2015, placed bids to explore in KwaZulu-Natal and Free State in an area 565,000ha and was halted in 2016 in the Pietermaritzburg High Court on the grounds it did not consult land owners adequately. In July 2017, it withdrew its exploration application completely.
In May 2017, the Pietermaritzburg High Court ordered Rhino Oil and Gas Exploration South Africa to stop all exploration in an 8,000km2 area after it was found that the Petroleum Agency of South Africa (PASA) had flouted the procedure process. This is just a small part of their applications, which stretch across five provinces and 78,876km2.
&#8220;What the general public and government must realize is that agriculture is the cornerstone of their food security program and we can&#8217;t jeopardize that in any way whatsoever… Even the politicians have to eat. Everybody has to eat,&#8221; says Stern.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/cover-story/2015/09/01/power-people-people/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Power For The People By The People</a>
Meanwhile, back in the Karoo, Mosebenzi Zwane, the former minister of DMR, told Reuters they are studying the court order.
&#8220;We remain committed [to shale gas exploration]. We will study the outcome of the court and decide where we go,&#8221; says Zwane. &#8220;We are talking about first fracking licenses being granted in 2019 if all goes well.&#8221;
The rematch could begin later this year, as the DMR was granted leave to appeal at the Supreme Court of Appeal and have filed notice to appeal.
If unsuccessful, the government could face the arduous task of drafting new regulations in line with the High Court ruling, again.
&#8220;What we have fought for since 2009 is to achieve a better legislative framework with better regulation. That process is not complete and we will continue to ensure that if shale gas development ever occurs, then it occurs lawfully and it occurs with proper regulation in force,&#8221; says Light.
&#8220;You need stamina. It&#8217;s a long process,&#8221; he says with a smile.
One thing that living in the Karoo has taught Light is how to box smart and wait for the right moment to deliver a stunning right hook.
<div id="attachment_35440" style="width: 510px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35440" class=" wp-image-35440" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Karoo_JC-4-e1519808674871-300x200.jpg" alt="Karoo fracking" width="500" height="333" />The Karoo (Photo by Jay Caboz)</div>
<h1 style="text-align: center;">A Fracking Fight Since 2009</h1>
It started in 2009, when Econometrix, South Africa’s largest independent macroeconomic consulting firm, believed there was 485 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The government and energy companies took this as gospel to support their case to open up the Karoo for fracking.
They pegged the Karoo as the $100-billion answer to Africa&#8217;s energy crisis, saying there would be enough gas to make it the world&#8217;s fifth largest resource – enough to fuel the country’s economy for up to 30 years and create thousands of jobs.
No one really knows how much shale gas there actually is. Researchers have only begun to explore its potential and exploration can take up to five years to conclude.

No Fracking Way

If eSports seems as misplaced in business as CS:GO (Counter-Strike: Global Offensive) and DOTA (Defense of the Ancients) do on 24-hour sport channel SuperSport, then you&#8217;ve been missing the big picture – this is one of the fastest growing sports in Africa that experts say could be worth a whopping $874 million by 2021.
Just ask Barry Louzada, a computer nerd who turned his childhood hobby into profit. Now this 37 year old is riding the wave of success as the man, and idea, behind Mettlestate, an eSports events hosting company shaking up the industry from Johannesburg, South Africa.
&#8220;When I started out, it was a case of people driving around going to each other&#8217;s houses [barbequing] and LANing (network gaming). The internet wasn&#8217;t workable in this country for us to actually do any sort of online competing or playing. Now you have got thousands of people coming to conventions,&#8221; says Louzada.
eSports has now become a lucrative $1.48 million market in South Africa alone. By 2021, PwC&#8217;s Global Entertainment and Media Outlook: 2017–2021 reports it will be worth $4.15 million.
&#8220;eSports is a pretty exciting field at the moment. There is a significant scope for growth. I remember in high school when people started LANing over the weekend. There would be cables and computers everywhere. Everyone would have their boxes stuffed into their mother’s car. I was one of those people,&#8221; says Chantal Marx, Head of Research at FNB Securities.
<div id="attachment_35389" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35389" class="size-medium wp-image-35389" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Chantal-Marx_JC-1-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />Chantal Marx (Photo by Jay Caboz)</div>
The concept that you can play games professionally has caught the attention of more than just gamers. Marx says manufacturers of motherboards, consoles and even cell phones all stand to benefit from the rigorous demand of games.
&#8220;The games require significant memory and the reaction speed of your computer needs to be very quick. It&#8217;s also the internet providers. Data and broadband companies are interested because the amount of data that these games are using these days are massive,&#8221; says Marx.
Newzoo&#8217;s Global Games Market report says games have now become the number one favorite pastime; in just five years the industry has grown 56%, illustrating how gaming companies have not only pioneered new ways of engaging and entertaining consumers, but have also led the way in innovating business models to suit the digital age.
Mettlestate is just one of the many new companies that have shown green shoots. In 2017, Louzada says he gave R1.5 million ($111,000) in cash and prizes. Before 2016, a R1-million ($74,000) prize pool was unheard of in South Africa.
Louzada is often called the South African godfather of eSports, having slogged it out for 10 years as a competitive gamer around the world. As a player he was exposed to the international eSports industry firsthand and wanted to bring it to African shores.
&#8220;Before I even started playing competitively I felt this unquenchable thirst to make this thing that I love so much bigger and more readily available to people. Where we used to have competitions once a year or every six months, we now have competitions almost every month,&#8221; says Louzada.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/technology/2014/11/01/the-nerd-herd/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: The Nerd Herd</a>
&#8220;The real spark happened when I went overseas for the first time in 2006. I went to Taipei and competed in the Asia Pacific finals for Battlefield 2142. It was like being in a dream where we were picked up in these private limousines and had our own hotel floor. We were being treated like rock stars. The question came to me, ‘why wasn&#8217;t this happening to our own eSports stars, maybe not on this same level but microscopically, why wasn&#8217;t this happening?’&#8221;
<div id="attachment_35394" style="width: 561px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35394" class=" wp-image-35394" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/eSports-Rush_JC-3-e1519379283754-300x200.jpg" alt="Rush eSports" width="551" height="367" />Fans demo games on PS4 consoles at Rush in the Sandton Convention Centre (Photo by Jay Caboz)</div>
For Louzada, the ‘E’ in eSports means entertainment – which is key to what he puts on the table. He wants the players to feel like the rock stars on the international scene. Raising the profiles of local players is one of the biggest challenges facing the local industry which is often seen to be a few years behind the international arena.
&#8220;It&#8217;s the guys on stage, the guys training for nine months of the year, working tirelessly. We need to make it professional, to have a place where [players] can sit and wait to play their games, so they don&#8217;t have to loiter and sit on the floor with the spectators.&#8221;
<div id="attachment_35390" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35390" class="size-medium wp-image-35390" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Barry-Louzada2_Supplied-200x300.jpg" alt="Barry Louzada Mettlestate" width="200" height="300" />Barry Louzada (Photo supplied)</div>
Not only does Louzada want to make rock stars out of the top players, he is also looking to grow the industry by helping to bring prizes to those who compete in the lower leagues, where the majority of fans come from. His plan includes hosting shoutcasting competitions and tournaments specifically for amateurs to come and play on the center court to get a feel for what it can be like as a pro.
&#8220;We need to grow the smaller guys who are at the bottom. They are just as important as the guys at the top. We need to give them exposure to step out onto a bigger arena,&#8221; says Louzada.
Louzada is also an advocate for gender equality. He hosted the Valkyrie Challenge, partnered with Evetech, an all-girl gamer Counter Strike event, where the winners took home $3,700.
There’s a reason for this. In a space where few women-based teams compete, the past five years have seen a significant increase in the number of female casual gamers; 41% of gamers are now women, according to the Entertainment Software Association&#8217;s 2016 Essential Facts About the Computer and Video Game Industry.
Globally, PwC reports eSports could reach $874 million by 2021. As interest rises worldwide, tournaments and leagues have become more sophisticated.
&#8220;If you want to run a successful tournament you are looking at a ball park figure or R3 million ($222,000) to R5 million ($371,000) before you&#8217;ve even put your prize money down… as a tournament organizer in South Africa I&#8217;m buying my own chairs, we don&#8217;t get those huge sponsors.&#8221;
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2017/08/31/female-gamers-new-sport-stars/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Female Gamers: The New Sport Stars</a>
South Africa has shown signs of its ability to become a hub for eSports. One need only look at the success of the Really Awesome Games Expo (rAge), in Johannesburg. Now in its 15th year, it attracts thousands of fans to watch Africa&#8217;s rising eSports stars live.
The success of local live events is representative of something much larger. The real revenue comes from online viewership. While international viewership reached a staggering 292 million in 2016, South African tournaments are lucky to reach 400 viewers.
<div id="attachment_35395" style="width: 561px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35395" class=" wp-image-35395" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/eSports-Rush_JC-4-e1519379510378-300x200.jpg" alt="eSports Rush" width="551" height="367" />Jean Louis Potgieter of Pulse Gaming celebrates after a round of Counter Strike at Rush (Photo by Jay Caboz)</div>
This is one of the reasons why Gareth Woods, a comedian and eSports commentator, and Ryan McFadyen, a marketer, started their own business, Good Game Well Played. They believe large prize pools in South Africa’s eSports industry have become a poisoned chalice.
&#8220;eSports is all about viewership. You don&#8217;t want brands throwing their money into a tournament and you only have 400 viewers – that&#8217;s charity not business,&#8221; says Woods.
<div id="attachment_35391" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35391" class="size-medium wp-image-35391" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Gareth-Woods_JC-1-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />Gareth Woods (Photo by Jay Caboz)</div>
&#8220;Gamers get gaming but don&#8217;t get marketing. Marketing doesn&#8217;t get the gaming market. Which is why we essentially got together,&#8221; says McFadyen.
Together they want to bridge the gap between corporate and eSports.
&#8220;A lot of brands want to get into eSports, but they don&#8217;t know why they want to get into eSports. They think it&#8217;s the next buzzword… While all this money is being thrown into these massive cash prizes, where is the money in terms of content, in terms of raising player profile, in terms of digital amplification of any tournament or money in terms of the event infrastructure?&#8221; says Woods.
The pair believe this means companies should look at growing the ecosystem around it. In South Africa, the popular sport rugby took years to foster its following.
&#8220;In eSports what is happening is we are saying let&#8217;s host a Super [Rugby tournament], without any of the infrastructure and ecosystems in place,&#8221; says Woods.
Woods and McFadyen have found that companies that engage with the community from an authentic level are wholeheartedly accepted. eSports fans want long-term commitment to grow the sport, not flashy once-off prize pools.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2016/10/01/cant-get-kids-off-computer/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: You Can&#8217;t Get The Kids Off The Computer</a>
One industry that has tapped into this is sports franchises, like football teams Manchester City and West Ham United, and basketball teams the Philadelphia 76ers and Miami Heat. Rather than sponsoring tournaments, they bought their own eSports teams. South African football clubs Kaiser Chiefs and Orlando Pirates have sought to mimic this worldwide trend but it&#8217;s too early to tell whether the investment pays off.
<div id="attachment_35392" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35392" class="size-medium wp-image-35392" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Ryan-McFadyen_JC-1-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />Ryan McFadyen (Photo by Jay Caboz)</div>
Whether you spend money on buying your own team or sponsoring players, the ticket to influencing this market is upping the view counts.
&#8220;We are talking about bespoke activation. The way brands should view eSports is by piggybacking off someone else&#8217;s event. You should provide an experience of an event through the brand. Once you have done that you&#8217;ve got your toes into the eSports market without having to spend R20 million ($1.5 million) to do the same thing everybody else has done,&#8221; says McFadyen.
Even the success of the most lucrative eSports tournament in the world is down to the fans. The International 2017: DOTA 2 Championships ran with a prize pool of $24.7 million this year. Since 2013, crowdfunding has allowed it to reach year-on-year jaw dropping record breaking figures and turn players into millionaires overnight.
&#8220;We&#8217;ve tried to inherit too much of the European market, which is mainly PC driven. If I was to start an eSports team I would go after mobile and console, because that&#8217;s what people play in this country,&#8221; says Woods.
Good Game Well Played are also concerned that African eSports is too obsessed with trying to legitimize itself as a sport. Being broadcast for the first time on SuperSport has helped expose it to mainstream South Africa, but it&#8217;s a short-term talking point. The ultimate goal is fostering entertainment.
&#8220;If rugby was to lose its legitimacy as a sport, do you think it would lose any viewership? It will still hold the entertainment viewership. Let&#8217;s be honest, we&#8217;re not here to watch these players because they are the embodiment of human athleticism, we&#8217;re watching because it’s entertaining. It&#8217;s the politics and drama off the field, the injuries and the player rivalry off the field that we want to watch,&#8221; says McFadyen.
Alongside poor local viewership, where brands fall short is assuming traditional forms of marketing will work in eSports. It caters toward the emerging millennial market and brands need to create content differently.
&#8220;There is a huge entertainment value [in eSports], especially amongst the millennial market which is not consuming TV, radio or print, but are engaging in social media and other forms of content,&#8221; says McFadyen.
&#8220;Millennials consume more than 10 hours of content per day. I often think to myself ‘how is this even possible?’ But, it&#8217;s because they are consuming it on two of three different screens at once. Watching it on their iPads and phones,&#8221; says Woods.
<div id="attachment_35396" style="width: 560px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35396" class=" wp-image-35396" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/eSports-Rush_JC-12-e1519379786628-300x200.jpg" alt="eSports Rush" width="550" height="366" />Events, like Rush, host a number of games on various platforms (Photo by Jay Caboz)</div>
For some, the transition to online is easy. Marx, who is a millennial, grew up with a computer in her home from the age of seven; had access to the internet from nine years old and had built her own website before she was 12.
&#8220;It’s intuitive for us [millennials] to be able to play these sorts of games, and even more so for the people even younger than I am. Gaming becomes an extension of yourself, that you are doing in your free time. So instead of meditating when lying on the beach, you are playing on your phone addicted to Candy Crush,&#8221; she says.
The bottom line is brands need to step-up their game or miss the eSports train.

The Geeky Hobby Blooming Into A Lucrative Industry

It&#8217;s just another day at the office for Fleur van Eeden as she stands in the hallway of a tall steel warehouse in Atlantic Studios, in Montague Gardens, Cape Town. Under the dim light she is surrounded by piles of timber and fake polystyrene rocks. Here, Van Eeden has found herself jumping from crypts made of foam and fighting villains in gigantic gilded tombs that glow golden and black.
It is a brief behind-the-scenes glimpse into the daily life of an unusual career. Van Eeden is one of the top stuntwomen in South Africa and currently acting as a stunt double for the role of Lara Croft in the up-and-coming Tomb Raider movie starring Alicia Vikander; one the latest action blockbusters to have been filmed in the Mother City.
&#8220;If you told me 10 years ago that I was going to be Lara Croft&#8217;s stunt double, I would have never believed it. If my career was to end now, I ticked the biggest box,&#8221; says Van Eeden.
&#8220;When they phoned me for the job I thought it was a joke… You don&#8217;t take anything too seriously until you are on the job because anything can happen. The film could disappear out of your country.&#8221;
What makes this career choice even more interesting is that Van Eeden came to it by chance. While studying public relations, a friend suggested she try out as an extra on the 2005 series The Triangle.
Van Eeden&#8217;s first day on the job saw her left stranded on a rubber duck in the Atlantic Ocean near Robben Island. The second, she was tossed out of a plane like a Caesar Salad.
&#8220;They attached a cable to me, said were going to call three, two, one, action and then were going to yank you up in the air. You&#8217;re going to free fall… I was as high as a kite; I loved it,&#8221; recalls Van Eeden.
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More action was to come. Van Eeden was drawn to the thrill, including becoming the first South African female to do a full body burn – in other words, she volunteered to light herself on fire.
&#8220;It&#8217;s funny, a lot of people would think being set alight would freak me out. It genuinely doesn&#8217;t. Things like that don&#8217;t scare me. What scares me is if you&#8217;ve seen someone else do a stunt, and you know in your heart that you can do it, and then your stunt director asks you to do it… I can&#8217;t sleep the night before,&#8221; says Van Eeden.
There was little else for Van Eeden but the outdoors. She grew up in the small town Swellendam, a 218-kilometer drive from Cape Town. From the age of two, Van Eeden was climbing trees. In her teens she took up white-water rafting and horse riding and, as a young adult, she became a South African tug-of-war puller.
Even her 99-year-old grandmother approved of her career choice.
&#8220;She was my biggest fan. Can you imagine me saying to me my granny &#8216;I&#8217;ve just lit myself on fire&#8217; and her saying back ‘oh, my word, if I was younger I would have loved to have done that&#8217;.&#8221;
Behind the stunt industry&#8217;s facade of mortal danger comes many, many hours of choreography. Van Eeden spent two and a half months, prior to shooting, building her body for the Tomb Raider role.
&#8220;It&#8217;s like a dance… If somebody tells you to do a stunt, and you are only willing to do it once, you should not do it. I was 20 and had nothing to lose. What most people don&#8217;t realize is in most cases stunts are done more than once… unless it&#8217;s a car roll.&#8221;
<div id="attachment_35313" style="width: 510px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35313" class=" wp-image-35313" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Fleur-van-Eeden_JC-4-copy-e1518767450680-300x200.jpg" alt="Fleur van Eeden" width="500" height="333" />Fleur van Eeden (Photo by Jay Caboz)</div>
Van Eeden has played roles in all shapes and sizes. Along with working on the set of Mad Max: Fury Road, where she trained with Charlize Theron, Van Eeden spent four years on the set of Black Sails, the historical adventure television series, where she played the role of pirates, boys and the red-haired character Anne Bonny&#8217;s double.
&#8220;On Black Sails, I was dressed as a boy riding a horse and jumping onto a carriage doing a fight scene and been kicked off the carriage. I wasn&#8217;t supposed to be doing the stunt. The guy who was supposed to do the stunt, got kicked off the carriage and hurt his neck, he couldn&#8217;t do it. The whole shot was at a standstill,&#8221; says Van Eeden.
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The number of top female stunt actors are few, says Van Eeden. You can count a handful of South Africans who are making it. But it is growing, thanks to more movies choosing to shoot in Cape Town – a string of film crews have been using its picturesque landmarks as their port of call, like The Maze Runner, the TV series Troy: Fall of a City, and Tomb Raider.
&#8220;You can put five guys next to each other and you will always have one who is better than another. But the women are standing next to the guys, it&#8217;s not like there is a women&#8217;s side and a men&#8217;s,” she says.
By the time Tomb Raider comes out, Van Eeden will be long onto the next set. It will be nearly a year before she can watch herself from the comfort of a chair in the cinema.
A far cry from the dim warehouse where she flung her body in the face of danger.

A Dance With Danger

When Dr Christiaan Barnard stared down at the open chest of Louis Washkansky waiting for an electric shock to bring him back to life with a new heart, there was no going back. It was a Sunday morning, 6AM, on December 3, 1967. This was the moment Barnard, and his team of 30 surgeons, were waiting for; the day two lives became one.
The remarkable story is told by Christine Heydenrych, at the Heart of Cape Town museum, in the city’s Groote Schuur Hospital. It was here, half a century ago, in the hospital’s green-tiled theaters, the first successful human-to-human heart transplant was performed.
The history of this hospital is as much a part of Heydenrych herself. She began working as a pathology technician in the hospital, days after the heart transplant, when they were considered to be state-of-the-art.
&#8220;I used to see Dr Barnard walking these very halls, but I was just a lowly lab technician and would never talk to him,&#8221; she says.
Visiting the museum is worth the effort. The details of the day are made real thanks to a mass of silicon models. Lifelike dioramas depict surgeons, lab technicians and nurses, all dressed in their surgery gowns, crowded around the body of Washkansky.
It’s like being transported back to 1967.
This was the year of the Summer of Love. LP record players rocked to The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper&#8217;s Lonely Hearts Club Band and The Monkees&#8217; Daydream Believer.  The likes of Bonnie and Clyde and the Disney&#8217;s The Jungle Book premiered in the movies and things like ATMs, the hand-held calculator, and the patent for the first computer mouse were technological breakthroughs.
Listening to Heydenrych are dozens of children from the Sea Point Primary School, who sit in the same viewing stands that medical students watched the surgery from.
The children say the operating theater isn&#8217;t like what they see on TV. This is because the museum has spent the past 10 years sourcing equipment Barnard and his surgeons would have used that day.
Everything in the theater is laid out to create an authentic representation of the pioneering operation.
<div id="attachment_35096" style="width: 260px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35096" class=" wp-image-35096" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Heart-Museum_JC-12-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="375" />The surgery dominated newspaper headlines across the world. (Photo of the heart museum exhibit by Jay Caboz)</div>
The events preceding the surgery were tragic. It was a fresh summer Saturday in Cape Town, the kind of day locals spent outdoors at markets with thoughts of Christmas just around the corner.
Donor Denise Darvall, with her parents and younger brother, were on their way to buy a cream cake for their afternoon tea. As they were crossing Main Road, a kilometer from the hospital, a drunk driver knocked them over.
The accident claimed two of their lives, Darvall and her mother. The 25-year-old Darvall was taken to Groote Schuur and admitted to casualty where it was declared she had suffered severe trauma to her head.
At this time, a flurry of phone calls and decisions followed. Barnard and his team were notified that Darvall was to be a donor. The patient was 53-year-old World War II veteran Washkansky, who had been placed on the list for a new heart, having suffered from an incurable heart disease and diabetes.
Darvall was declared braindead and brought to the hospital’s Theatre B, the donor theater, shortly after midnight. She was prepared for surgery, by Dr Marius Barnard,  Christiaan&#8217;s brother. By 3AM, Darvall&#8217;s heart was harvested for transplantation into the recipient Washkansky who lay waiting in the adjoining Theatre A. Her kidneys were also harvested and sent to the city’s Karl Bremer Hospital.
<div id="attachment_35095" style="width: 314px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35095" class=" wp-image-35095" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Heart-Museum_JC-e1516954611679-300x229.jpg" alt="" width="304" height="232" />Louis Washkansky, 36 hours after the surgery. (Photo of the heart museum exhibit by Jay Caboz)</div>
In Theatre A, Barnard sewed the donor heart into place in Washkansky’s chest. At 06:13AM, Washkansky’s new heart beat. Barnard looked at his team and said in Afrikaans “Dit gaan werk!” – “It’s going to work!&#8221;.
In total, the operation lasted four hours and 45 minutes.
Back in the same theater 50 years later, the bright young faces in the viewing deck are in wonder, and for some in shock, that such ‘old school’ equipment could have lead to the miracle which was the gift of a human heart.
<h3>New Kids On The Ward</h3>
These days it&#8217;s hard enough for doctors, let alone children, to imagine the pioneering days of Barnard.
“A lot has changed, from the procedure itself to reducing the need for transplant by trying to manage the cause of heart failure and the introduction of device therapies. Cardiology has become so advanced that most procedures are done by interventional cardiologists. This decreases the number of patients subjected to open heart surgery,” says Dr Viwe Mtwesi.
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From the more modern hallways of Soweto’s Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital, Mtwesi made history when she graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand to become South Africa’s youngest black female cardiologist.
Much like Mtwesi, Barnard was also a prodigy. Born in 1922 in Beaufort West, a small town in South Africa’s arid Karoo, Barnard is described as driven, commanding respect as well as dislike.
He studied medicine at the University of Cape Town and went to Minnesota University. After obtaining an MSc and a PhD, which he took two years to complete instead of the average six, he returned to Cape Town in 1958.
“Barnard is an icon of cardiothoracic and cardiology fields. He made his mark and made us realize as we grow that there is talent in Africa, and that we can also be pioneers in our own spaces. I treasure his work, boldness and pioneering spirit,” says the lively 32-year-old Mtwesi.
<div id="attachment_35094" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35094" class="size-medium wp-image-35094" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Viwe-Mtwesi-e1516954161379-300x192.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="192" />Dr Viwe Mtwesi (Photo supplied)</div>
The year following the first heart transplant, 100 more were performed by doctors around the world. The survival rate was low – two out of three didn’t make it past three months. Washkansky only survived 18 days.
Thanks to doctors like Barnard, Mtwesi works in a very different world of medicine. Half a century later and 3,500 heart transplants are performed yearly, with survival periods averaging 15 years.
According to the Guinness World Records, the longest surviving heart transplant patient is Ted Nowakowski from the United States, who has lived for 34 years since his transplant on April 25, 1983.
These days the CAT scan, MRI and ultrasound are common tools for the modern doctor. Medicine has taken giant steps thanks to computers.
“[I’ve seen a heart] many times, I work with the heart and, through imaging and in the operation room when I watch procedures by surgeons.”
Called Cardiac Imagining, doctors these days are able to scan and create a 3D real-time video of patients&#8217; beating hearts. This allows doctors to detect heart conditions without the need for costly and invasive procedures.
“[I’ve seen a heart] many times, I work with the heart and, through imaging and in the operation room when I watch procedures by surgeons,” says Mtwesi.
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The demand for organs is higher than ever, with waiting times that can be longer than four years in some countries. In South Africa, the Organ Donor Foundation of South Africa says there are approximately 4,300 patients awaiting life-saving transplants, but only 512 transplants were performed in 2016, 25 of them being heart transplants.
What makes Mtwesi’s journey into health even more remarkable is that she didn’t intend to be a doctor. She ended up doing medicine after she was rejected from engineering.
“Knowing that I’m there to help and seeing patients get well is motivation enough, in spite of the working conditions. Sometimes you feel like leaving but when you think about poor people who have no money or medical aid you just stay. I love being a doctor, I would not ask for any other job.”
She does however feel the profession has some challenges. She believes she can make a difference in overcoming gender inequality so that other women can also be doctors.
“The industry is male-dominated, with less than 15 female cardiologists in the country. So training was not easy due to a lack of female mentors. The specialty requires hard work, determination, sacrifice and boldness.”
“Very often you have to work extra hard to prove yourself, [prove] that you are capable as a female. I’m passionate about breaking this norm, females need to join male-dominated fields, they need to understand that they are capable, and there is no line of work that is just meant for males. These stereotypes need to be broken and females need to take themselves seriously before other people do.”
“I am a living testimony of the fact that females in the health sector can do anything. I’ve taken it upon myself to try and help young girls in medicine. We need more and more girls to join and even do better than I’ve done, achieve more and be pioneers of discoveries in cardiology.”
The future for Mtwesi is very bright. In 2018, she intends to go overseas to do electrophysiology, a specialized sub-specialty of cardiology.
&#8220;Cardiology is a super specialty already, meaning that only specialists are accepted or allowed to super-specialize in cardiology.&#8221;
Much like Barnard, Mtwesi can only dream what medicine will look like another half a century on.

The Gift Of A Human Heart 50 Years On

If you thought computer games were all play and no pay – think again. Although, it takes a lot of sacrifice, just ask Evan and Shaz Greenwood, founders of Free Lives, who lived on instant noodles and steaks fried on a sandwich toaster as they built their digital gaming company. They made a game called Broforce and launched it in 2015. These days it&#8217;s worth more than $3.7 million – a gaming goldmine, they say.
&#8220;Broforce just keeps going. There is a lasting appeal. I think there is a community that&#8217;s driving it. Some of the people that play Broforce play it so much they keep evangelizing it to new people. It&#8217;s just at the top of their lists and they keep recommending it,&#8221; says Evan, founder and creative director of Free Lives.
It meant saying goodbye to penniless days sleeping on a couch under flickering florescent lights in a warehouse apartment in Muizenberg, near Cape Town. It has also meant hello to mansions on the winelands of Constantia; three-month workshops in Mauritius; and a full-time chef instead of noodles and burned steak.
&#8220;If left to my own devices I would never finish a game. It can always have more work done on it. It can always be better,&#8221; says Evan.
Behind closed doors and over the internet this little-known games industry has taken shape. If the names Broforce, Genital Jousting or Gorn don&#8217;t mean anything, they should if you like games. These quirky games have made Free Lives more money than most could make in several lifetimes behind a desk doing the bidding of others.
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This is part of Africa&#8217;s $310-million gaming market, that is expected reach $642 million by 2021, according to the PwC report, Entertainment and media outlook: 2017-2021.
This dramatic acceleration in the South African video games market is a result of the emergence of cheaper and plentiful games. The challenge is for companies, like Free Lives, to come up with new ones.
Back in 2008, before Broforce was even an idea, Evan quit his job as a commercial graphic designer to pursue his childhood dream designing games.
&#8220;It wasn&#8217;t ‘til about 2011, that I&#8217;d made a game that really made a significant profit at all,&#8221; says Evan.
In April 2012, Broforce came about. While entering into Ludum Dare, an online &#8216;game jam&#8217; competition where developers from around the world sit down and spend a weekend creating games based on a theme suggested by the community.
They feared their game based on action-hero characters from the 1980s, such as Rambo, BA Baracus and Chuck Norris, wouldn&#8217;t be cool. Turned out it was.
&#8220;Out of thousands of entries, it was voted number one in fun and third overall,&#8221; says Shaz, Evan&#8217;s right hand and the company&#8217;s producer.
&#8220;This was a project that had the right sense of humor, we had the right interests, we were passionate about it. It just got better and better the longer we worked on it,&#8221; says Evan.
The ticket to Broforce&#8217;s success was timing.
&#8220;Games in the 80s had been single person teams. In the 90s teams started getting bigger and bigger and budgets started creeping up and up. By the time I started wanting to build my own games, there were 50 to 100 person teams,&#8221; says Evan.
&#8220;What happened in 2007/08 was that process, the 100 person team process, could only make certain kinds of games. It had to make conservative decisions because budgets were enormous. They were making the equivalent of blockbusters. This meant there was an opening for making more niche games, more weirder experiences, more novel smaller experiences.&#8221;
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At the time, technology was so far advanced that anyone who could get onto the internet could make their own game. It was also a time when digital distribution was kicking off, giving rise to online platforms like Steam, owned by Valve Corporation&#8217;s founder Gabe Newell whose net worth is $5.5 billion according to FORBES. Steam sells games around the world online, especially on PC and mobile, which means didn&#8217;t have to compete for shelf space with the &#8216;big guns&#8217;.
<div id="attachment_34919" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-34919" class=" wp-image-34919" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Free-Lives-Working_JC-200x300.jpg" alt="Free Lives game developer" width="300" height="450" />A game developer working in the Free Lives office. (Photo by Jay Caboz)</div>
It&#8217;s a good position to be in if you are Free Lives. Millions across the continent are just waking up to what the PwC report calls &#8216;a seismic shift&#8217; in the gaming market (primarily in the form of smart phone-based mobile games) which eclipses revenue from traditional PC and games console video gaming formats.
Among those to benefit are the online PC games. The report says casual gaming revenue more than quadrupled between 2012 and 2016 and will overtake traditional gaming revenue in 2017.
It was the bulging biceps of the 1980s and 1990s action movies and nostalgic games that made Free Live&#8217;s Broforce a success. They were able to stay afloat by selling it early on Steam, opening it up to gaming reviewers and beta testers, while still completing the game.
&#8220;Such a community rallied around it telling us they wanted more of it. We&#8217;re big on open development, constantly getting feedback from people who are really enjoying it,&#8221; says Shaz.
&#8220;A lot of games start off well but you don&#8217;t know how to follow it up… We were letting people play the early versions of games and using that as data that you can make better decisions on,&#8221; says Evan.
Not only could they pay themselves for the first time, but it also meant more comfortable accommodation – renting a double-storey house in Kenilworth, Cape Town, with one guy sleeping in the lounge and three others upstairs. They began to work in earnest.
&#8220;We&#8217;d originally moved into the house so that the guys wouldn&#8217;t drive home late at night at crazy hours. What happened was nobody went to sleep,&#8221; says Shaz.
Free Lives was far from being a success. Evan and Shaz were $70,500 in debt. They also didn&#8217;t want to take lousy publishing offers which would have cut into their profit margins – one company offered to help them in return for a 20% stake in the business. Instead, Evan loaned the money from his parents until they could get the game up and running.
&#8220;It wasn&#8217;t like they were rich, they used their retirement money. I don&#8217;t want to create that myth that if you just work hard, it will just work out. Without their support we wouldn&#8217;t have got far,&#8221; says Evan.
Just months before their launch, there was another snag when their lease in Kenilworth ran out. Whereas other people who are kicked out of their flat would have moved back into their parent’s garage, luckily the money was turning over. The team instead moved into a mansion on the hills of Constantia – it earned the company a legendary status among the gaming community.
&#8220;We walked into the place and were like ‘this is too cool, we have to do this,’&#8221; says Evan.
&#8220;It had an indoor Jacuzzi, an outdoor Jacuzzi, a sauna, a steam room and three waterfalls. It was the perfect environment for the guys in this final awful phase of game development,&#8221; says Shaz.
By the time they launched in October 2015, the gamble paid off. Since then, Broforce has brought in a whopping $3.7 million. In 2017 alone, Broforce sold over a million units on Steam.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2017/04/01/glory-days-geeks/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Glory Days For Geeks</a>
So what does a dynamic duo, who forged a mini-gaming empire in less than four years on nothing but snackwich suppers, do with bucket loads of money?
First, they rewarded their team with a three-month vacation in Mauritius and invited some of the world&#8217;s creatives to come along and make more games.
&#8220;It&#8217;s another thing that happens in our industry – you release a game and very often small studios implode, because there is a depression you enter. You kind of go ‘who am I after this thing?’. There was also a fair chance of burnout. Taking everybody to this tropical island, taking their worries and saying ‘let&#8217;s just jam for three months’ was an incredible way of keeping this team together… and it worked,&#8221; says Shaz.
<div id="attachment_34920" style="width: 510px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-34920" class=" wp-image-34920" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Free-Lives-Working_JC-2-e1515398853100-300x200.jpg" alt="Free Lives game developers" width="500" height="333" />Game developers work on the latest offering from Free Lives. (Photo by Jay Caboz)</div>
They also bought a six-bedroom bed-and-breakfast cottage, more modest accommodation than the mansion and lower down in the valley of Constantia, and turned it into their own gaming hub; complete with sound booth, VR testing station and a large kitchen with a full-time chef.
Evan and Shaz believe Cape Town is the African hub for game development because of its affordable lifestyle.
&#8220;The cost of living in New York is six times the cost here… Making it radical working here is a very good business case. We need staff retention. I think people focus on how to save money as being the most important business thing, whereas for us it’s more about our team,&#8221; says Evan.
From this house, Shaz and Evan hope to build their next hit. One could be the risqué Genital Jousting, an adult party game that leaves little to the imagination and has clocked more than 300,000 downloads since January.
Another winner, GORN, has 30,000 downloads since its release in July. Described as the most brutal and violent VR game yet, GORN is a gladiator conquest game set in the arenas of ancient Rome.
&#8220;I&#8217;m very sure that VR is the future of gaming. GORN is like Broforce in the VR world. The fanbase is rabid. It’s currently sitting at seventh on the list for VR games in 2017. I know it&#8217;s a small market right now, but if we can get to the top of the list, it&#8217;s going to stay relevant for the next five years,&#8221; says Shaz.
<div id="attachment_34921" style="width: 507px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-34921" class=" wp-image-34921" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Free-Lives-Gorn_BurntFaceMan-e1515399070676-300x170.jpg" alt="Free Lives GORN" width="497" height="282" />Free Lives&#8217; game, GORN. (Photo supplied)</div>
The increasing interest in gaming is also helping to fuel the rapid growth in the related segments of VR and eSports in South Africa. Combined, the gaming segments will add $225 million in consumer spend over the forecast period.
&#8220;I don&#8217;t know whether [VR] is the future or whether it&#8217;s the future in five years. Most of the skills you are going to learn are going to apply to VR and PC game development,&#8221; says Evan.
It&#8217;s a tough market to be in.
&#8220;There is an enormous difference between the games that have this kind of devotion and love and the games that are just a little less popular. They are not on the tip of people’s tongues, they don&#8217;t get recommended. When they start dipping off, they are much closer to disappearing,&#8221; says Evan.
&#8220;On mobile, there are 300 games a day being added and on Steam there are seven a day. It’s thousands of games a year per platform. Mobile is completely flooded. There is well over a million games on mobiles.&#8221;
The team at Free Lives is a big part of that and they aren&#8217;t working for free anymore.

From Late Night Snacking To Snapping Millions

It was a gamble that paid off, 8,500 kilometers away from their comfort zone.
Two 21-year-old fashion students, Inés Mille and Marc Collines, left the hallowed hallways of fashion in Barcelona and with just $9,000 in their pockets, traveled all the way to East Africa to set up shop in little-known Kigali in Rwanda, which at the time was building itself – a fully-fledged fashion industry was not yet on its radar.
&#8220;Rwanda. It’s where our heart is. It’s where the soul of this company is. It’s where we were born and where everything happened,&#8221; says Mille.
Eight years on, Mille Collines, the brand she built with Collines from Kigali, is a million-dollar fashion line that can spotted on the runways of Lagos and Cape Town. Now 32, Mille looks back at the memory with a smile.
&#8220;The obliviousness, the ignorance. We were mad and we were so young and we were so crazy. So we said we can do this.&#8221;
Mille sits in her home in Tamboerskloof, Cape Town, among inspiring pictures of fashion models on runways, African sculptures from her travels and intricate bookshelves. Naturally, it is the epitome of one conscious of subtle African style – much like her work.
Her story goes back to a time when she was young and fresh in fashion school in Barcelona. It was 2005 and Mille was traveling in Rwanda with her mother&#8217;s NGO looking for outreach programs to sponsor. Here, she met a seamstress named Antoinette, who trained women and kids to sew.
&#8220;She said ‘you are a fashion designer. You have no idea of the handcraft skills we have here, if only you can put your brain in design and their handcraft skills together, it would be incredible’,&#8221; says Mille.
The idea hit home. A year later, and in her final year of design, Mille thought it would make the perfect thesis. She decided to travel to Kigali and pursue Antoinette&#8217;s suggestion. Along with her came Collines, who at the time was at another school and also looking for a project.
&#8220;The funny story is when I went [to Kigali], there was huge resistance from my tutors and the board of teachers at my college. They said ‘there was absolutely no ways you are going to Africa to do a collection where there is no infrastructure. How are you going to make garments in Africa, they don&#8217;t even dress in clothes’&#8230; I was at a progressive design school in Barcelona. They were afraid that just because I went there and worked with poor people, I would come back with a sh***y collection. That was the spark,&#8221; says Mille.
A 50% mark prompted Mille to move to the heart of Africa. They took with them $9,000 in savings and set up shop in Kigali where they developed their first collection, in partnership with Antoinette. At the time, Mille recalls there was no infrastructure for fashion in Rwanda whatsoever. They had to start from the ground up looking for people to work with.
&#8220;Many people thought, &#8216;where are they going? Are they going to be able to do anything in Kigali? Is there even fashion there?'&#8221;
<div id="attachment_34613" style="width: 273px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-34613" class="size-medium wp-image-34613" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Mille-Collines_JC-5-263x300.jpg" alt="" width="263" height="300" />Mille&#8217;s first designer diary. (Photo by Jay Caboz)</div>
One of her prized possessions from this time lies on the stone table in front of her – their first designer diary. Kigali springs to life and Mille&#8217;s eyes light up as she fingers the pages recalling drawing African masks and collecting slivers of material from the markets.
&#8220;There were informal collectives of women around the country, which were amazing and very well organized, they&#8217;d been doing handcraftsmanship for a long time&#8230; Initially, we tried to think everything is going to be coming from Rwanda. If it was textiles, it was found in the markets with a few wholesalers here and there. Obviously, it was challenging.
&#8220;I remember some women were doing baskets and I said ‘do just flat disks’. They said what for? I said we&#8217;re going to do necklaces. They went crazy over the idea. They then started doing their own earrings and selling them in the market. They were everywhere from corporate to home. It was the thing to have in Rwanda,&#8221; says Mille.
Their ticket to success was blending the creativity, strength and culture of the African spirit with ever-evolving global trends.
&#8220;There was a lot of intrigue. Nobody was doing this in Rwanda. No other brand existed that had taken handcrafted skills, redone it and made a contemporary product. We were some of the first ones to do it. It sparked a number of other brands to follow,&#8221; says Mille.
The team moved in to Kenya, casting their net in Nairobi. The demand was high and four more stores followed. It wasn&#8217;t always easy – a store on the coast of Kenya and a store in South Africa failed because they didn&#8217;t catch the right market.
&#8220;We were opening the door to the African clothing market&#8230; We thought if we sell abroad with all our challenges we already have, in terms of logistics, in terms of quality, we needed to align our market. We are producing in Africa; it makes sense to sell in Africa and make this product African.&#8221;
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2017/10/06/fashion-operation-theater/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Fashion in The Operation Theater?</a>
Along with the birth of Mille Collines grew the fully-fledged fashion atelier, which is owned and operated by the Kigali team that helped build Mille Collines.
&#8220;It was the hardest moment in the company. We needed to hand over the workshop to the team in Rwanda. They were prepared. We needed to transfer it and move away from production and focus on distribution and design. Otherwise we couldn&#8217;t grow further. It took one-and-a-half years. We sold it to the Kigali team for $1. The employees all have a stake. Rwanda is not in our core business, it&#8217;s became an actual supplier.&#8221;
<div id="attachment_34612" style="width: 510px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-34612" class=" wp-image-34612" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Mille-Collines_KatGrudko_Shot01-433-e1512375288376-300x200.jpg" alt="Mille Collines" width="500" height="333" />Mille Collines on the catwalk. (Photo by KatGrudko)</div>
Now their journey has taken them to Cape Town and the house we sit in. Their team is here to begin the next step of their journey.
Mille wants to see their clothes hang in major retail stores across the continent and hopefully take an even larger chunk of Africa’s dynamic fashion industry.
&#8220;I was the first one to land in Cape Town in 2015. We had to start from ground zero. We had participated in fashion weeks, so people kind of knew us. Our main market it still Kenya. But we&#8217;ve been building relationships with suppliers in Cape Town.&#8221;
As the company expands, Mille has shifted to purchasing textiles because it&#8217;s cheaper. They are also looking to the likes of Mauritius and Madagascar for textiles once their orders get larger.
&#8220;You need to find who is better for what. When we left Rwanda, that&#8217;s what happened, we became more pan-African. We only produce in Africa.&#8221;
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2017/09/14/from-pizzas-to-pizzaz/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: From Pizzas To Pizzaz</a>
The company has even expanded in ways they didn&#8217;t expect. Without owning a store or being on the shelves of retail outlets, Mille says South Africa is their second largest customer. This is because of online sales and a strong presence on Instagram.
&#8220;Instagram is the strongest source for us. We make sales on it. I think it’s because it’s a visual platform. Instagram is my baby. It&#8217;s difficult to delegate. How can I explain to someone that an image is not Mille Collines? It&#8217;s very tangible, either you feel it or you don&#8217;t. We go a lot with how people react when we put images up.&#8221;
The brand’s attention to detail and passion for telling beautiful stories continues.
Mille&#8217;s clothes have been worn, she says, by the likes of Queen Máxima of the Netherlands, Hollywood actress Lupita Nyong&#8217;o and journalist Mélanie Gouby.
<div id="attachment_34614" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-34614" class=" wp-image-34614" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Mille-Collines_JC-3-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="450" />Inés Mille in her Mille Collines studio in Cape Town, South Africa. (Photo by Jay Caboz)</div>
It&#8217;s a brand for the African woman.
&#8220;She is a mother, an entrepreneur, an individual. She is alive with bursts of color and print and grounded in muted tones of Africa&#8217;s landscape.
“In a world where differences are increasingly emphasized and where people are divided and separated, it seemed fitting to celebrate the rich beauty that comes from combining many different influences. We wanted to celebrate the fact that, despite parochial thinking in some quarters, the world is becoming more of a mélange every day,” says Mille.
&#8220;I never dreamed I&#8217;d open a business in Africa. Not a business in fashion, never. My father was a businessman and my mother was passionate about Africa. I said I was going to be a vet. I loved the fact that [fashion] is a business and art. It&#8217;s a space where it meets in the middle. It&#8217;s very commercial and it’s very challenging and very interesting.&#8221;
For Mille, Africa is the muse that keeps on giving.

From Mille To A Million

Bank On This Man

The buzzing of a single mosquito is enough to break a good night’s sleep.
So imagine when that same sound is multiplied a hundred times – it can at best be described as eerie.
Especially when these mosquitoes are in a white mesh cage, in a vacuum-sealed laboratory, and it’s around feeding time.
It is at this opportune moment that Lizette Koekemoer, dressed in a red jersey and white lab coat, sticks her hand into the cage.
While most would squirm at the thought of dozens of mosquitoes making a blood meal of your arm, Koekemoer hardly seems to notice. For her, feeding mosquitoes is as normal as breathing; she has done it so many times she no longer gets itchy from the bites.
&#8220;When you are working on them, you learn to appreciate them as a living organism. When you put a mosquito under a microscope, they are actually beautiful. I think people laugh when I tell them I work on mosquitoes and I get paid for it,&#8221; says Koekemoer.
For 23 years, Koekemoer has been at the forefront researching these insects across Africa. She is part of the Malaria Entomology Research Unit on the 10th floor of the Faculty of Health Sciences building at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.
Koekemoer&#8217;s passion goes beyond the laboratory to barbeques where she gets excited to tell you what species you&#8217;ve just squashed on your leg, having been bitten more times than most she would know.
The reason we are here today, in this sealed laboratory with Koekemoer&#8217;s arm in a cage and mosquitoes sucking her dry, is to talk about a mosquito called Anopheles vaneedeni, discovered by her team on the Makhathini Flats, in northern KwaZulu-Natal (KZN).
&#8220;Anopheles vaneedeni has been known about since 1977, it has never – before now – been identified as a malaria-carrying vector in nature,&#8221; says Koekemoer.
Up until now it was thought two other mosquitoes, called anopheles arabiensis and anopheles funestus, were the main vectors of malaria transmission. Vectors are living organisms that can transmit infectious diseases between humans or from animals to humans.
<div id="attachment_34517" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-34517" class=" wp-image-34517" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Lizette-Koekemoer_JC-6-copy-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="450" />Lizette Koekemoer sticks her arm in a mosquito-infested mesh cage in her laboratory. (Photo by Jay Caboz)</div>
It is not just a new carrier species that has Koekemoer worried. On the rise are mosquitoes with an increased resistance to insecticides.
According to the scientist, conventional insecticide-based mosquito control methods, such as bed nets and repellents are now becoming redundant.
&#8220;A mosquito&#8217;s whole body is designed to keep it alive. If you have one female that has formed a resistance, when she lays eggs, you then have gene resistance going all over the place. You need to monitor this and then move on to a new insecticide to kill those ones.&#8221;
While these methods may have proven to be effective tackling funestus, which prefers to feed on humans indoors, it means arabiensis and now vaneedeni can never be completely eradicated. This is because both arabiensis and vaneedeni snack on people outdoors.
&#8220;All malaria species are active from dusk to dawn. That&#8217;s their peak period. As soon as the sun goes down, they start feeding. People socialize at night, when it’s warm. They don&#8217;t go to bed. Bed nets only protect you when you are sleeping. They don&#8217;t protect you when you are outside cooking and socializing,&#8221; says Koekemoer.
Sterilized males to combat malaria
Back in the lab, it is Koekemoer&#8217;s job to come up with ways of controlling malaria vectors. One of the team&#8217;s more radical solutions is sterilizing males with radiation.
&#8220;We&#8217;ve got a gamma radiator. So it&#8217;s fast and quick – 60 seconds. We put the pupae in a radiation chamber, put them on a jig and then one minute later, they are sterilized.&#8221;
Called the Sterile Insect Technique (SIT), Koekemoer wants to build a rearing facility that will pump out 50,000 sterilized males per week. Once nuked, these sterile males are reared and released into the wild to mate with wild females.
&#8220;At a small scale, it works really well. The key to this research is female mosquitoes mate only once in their lifetime and if the male is sterile, she will not produce viable eggs. It&#8217;s like birth control&#8230; In the lab we have up to 96% reduction in progeny,&#8221; says Koekemoer.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2017/05/01/rat-race-silent-killer/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: The Rat Race Against The Silent Killer</a>
It has taken seven years of research to get to this point. Once built, Koekemoer estimates they would need R1.5 million ($113,000) to R2 million ($150,000) per year for SIT to run successfully.
&#8220;The thing to remember is a lot of research is done in colonized mosquitoes, in a controlled environment in a lab set-up. It&#8217;s difficult when you take this into the field, when your situation is a lot more complex and there is more than one species of mosquito,&#8221; says Koekemoer.
SIT was first used to control screwworm fly in America in the 1950s.
&#8220;It hasn’t been done with malaria, because malaria is complicated. Countries that are affected by malaria are also often not politically stable and financial resources are limited,&#8221; says Koekemoer.
The threat of new species? 
Although vaneedeni&#8217;s emergence is worrying, it&#8217;s not yet time to panic.
&#8220;To put it into perspective, we collected a large number of species. So percentage wise, it&#8217;s not high. Out of the 3,000 we have collected, we had one KZN sample that was infected,&#8221; says Koekemoer.
Vaneedeni is also considered a minor vector because the mosquito prefers to feed on livestock rather than humans.
The question the team are trying to answer is why now? One theory they have is because of the changing environment in KZN. At the time the team found the mosquito, the area was drought-stricken.
&#8220;We need to look at the bigger picture of the environmental impact. Was it a once-off because it was so dry? That&#8217;s what we need to determine. Your environmental factors influence everything. Because there was drought, the impact on the number of cattle available, or the availability of water might have diminished, which is their preferred host and sites. If you are the only blood source, then the mosquito has no choice but to come to you and you could get affected,&#8221; says Koekemoer.
The field site is naturally isolated, between a mountain range and the ocean, in the Mamfene district 60kms from Sodwana and close to the town of Ndumu. A team member collects mosquitoes twice a week throughout the year. The mosquitoes fly into clay pot traps and are then catalogued by species.
&#8220;The fact that we now know about vaneedeni means we can target our research towards knowing more about this vector’s behavior,&#8221; says Koekemoer.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2016/09/01/deadly-75-billion-business/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Counterfeit Drugs &#8211; A Deadly $75-Billion Business</a>
Until effective controls for outdoor mosquitoes are developed, eliminating local malaria transmission in southern Africa will be extremely difficult.
&#8220;Thanks to other malaria control measures, the number of cases is down to around 9,000 per year from over 60,000 in 2000, but it has proven hard to bring the insect population – and infection rates – down any further using the traditional method of indoor residual spraying,&#8221; says Koekemoer.
&#8220;There are countries that have resistance to all the classes of insecticides. There are only four classes approved by the World Health Organization for mosquitoes. In some countries, there is resistance to all four classes. It highlights the need to invest and start looking into alternative control methods.&#8221;
Coming up with new methods is a race to diffuse a ticking time bomb.
&#8220;These genes will eventually move into our borders whether it is the mosquito or the parasite, it’s only a matter of time, it will come into South Africa. You need to be one step ahead. If something happens, what&#8217;s Plan B? &#8221;
Thanks to a buzzing mosquito in a pot and a little radiation therapy, scientists are a step closer to solving the malaria malaise. Until then, it’s sleepless nights for them.
<div id="attachment_34518" style="width: 510px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-34518" class="wp-image-34518" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Lizette-Koekemoer_JC-2-e1511509351996-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="333" />Mosquitoes suck blood from Lizette Koekemoer&#8217;s arm. (Photo by Jay Caboz)</div>
<h2>Facts About Malaria</h2>
Malaria is a life-threatening disease caused by parasites transmitted to people through the bites of infected female Anopheles mosquitoes.
According to the latest WHO estimates, released in December 2016, there were 212 million cases of malaria in 2015 and 429,000 deaths.
The WHO African Region carries a disproportionately high share of the global malaria burden. In 2015, the region was home to 90% of malaria cases and 92% of malaria deaths.
In 2015, 91 countries and areas had ongoing malaria transmission.
Between 2010 and 2015, malaria incidence among populations at risk (the rate of new cases) fell by 21% globally. In that same period, malaria mortality rates among populations at risk fell by 29% globally among all age groups, and by 35% among children under 5.
Vector-borne diseases account for more than 17% of all infectious diseases, causing more than one million deaths annually.
[Source: WHO]

Birth Control For Mosquitoes – Is This The Malaria Cure?

If you have got hard currency, you can afford to come to Africa to look good or feel better for less. Fourteen million people, spending between $3,800 and $6,000 per visit, are travelling the world looking for medical treatment with a beach holiday.
It&#8217;s a market estimated to be worth between $45 billion and $72 billion, and South Africa is sitting at the top table, according to Patients Beyond Borders (PBB), a US-based firm that has given medical tourism advice for a decade. The country has the advantage of good hospitals, English speaking doctors and breathtaking landscapes.
They call it medical tourism and it&#8217;s growing among the wealthy and not-so-wealthy. Even those who don&#8217;t have so much money are heading to hospitals in countries like South Africa where their hard currency makes it cheaper and also helps them escape hospital waiting lists in their own land.
Even in these hard times, PBB expects this multi-billion-dollar industry to increase by up to 25% per year over the next 10 years.
One entrepreneur who is banking on this is Cape Town-based Faith Cartwright, who founded Medical Tourism SA three-and-a-half years ago. Cartwright, a hospitality and guesthouse owner, noticed many of her guests were in South Africa for medical procedures.
&#8220;Who wouldn&#8217;t pay if they knew that they had to go through two years of pain waiting for a knee operation? Imagine you have decided you want children and you are told you can&#8217;t go through fertility treatment because you are 39 and cannot get an appointment,&#8221; says Cartwright.
&#8220;I thought ‘what if medical tourists like these could be given access to private medical care, have their accommodation and travel needs taken care of, and plan safaris and other tourist excursions, all through the same service provider?’&#8221;
Sitting by the harbor at the V&amp;A Waterfront, a popular tourist destination in Cape Town, it is easy to see why many decide to find a hospital bed here. Above us are the stunning peaks of Table Mountain and just down the road you can book a tour to see a great white shark, helicopter rides or pirate cruises. All this to the sound of seals, seagulls and many languages, as wealthy tourists from around the world stroll by with their bulging shopping bags.
<div id="attachment_33732" style="width: 510px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-33732" class=" wp-image-33732" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/FaithCartwright-Medical-Tourism-e1506930410225-300x165.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="275" />Faith Cartwright, the founder of Medical Tourism SA. (Photo by Jay Caboz)</div>
Cartwright has as many customers as there are tourists on this street on this morning.
&#8220;It&#8217;s the reason why I&#8217;m so busy. Just this morning I was facilitating 65 women from Botswana to meet a doctor in Johannesburg at a fertility clinic. Sometimes you do get a good feeling about the work. But it can also be hard work and frustrating. It is rewarding when you know you are helping someone who has been struggling for years to get pregnant,&#8221; says Cartwright.
&#8220;Fertility is a big thing here. We get a lot of it from all over the world, but in Africa, there is a particular stigma that if you can&#8217;t get pregnant, you can be kicked out of your community. I also see a lot of requests for bone marrow transplants and women looking to slim themselves with gastric bypass surgery.&#8221;
It&#8217;s the start of the high tourist season in Cape Town and Cartwright is on call 24/7. For this 48-year-old mother, her time needs to be managed down to the minute.
&#8220;Thanks to the weakness of the rand, hundreds of medical procedures are available at a comparatively low cost, with most surgeries coming in at roughly a third of the price for an equivalent procedure in the UK. Affordable breast augmentation, for example, costs around $8,000 in the UK, but only about $3,600 in South Africa. More minor treatments, such as botox injections, can be even cheaper – $310 in the UK versus $70 in South Africa,&#8221; says Cartwright.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/cover-story/2017/10/02/suffering-waiting-wrong-side-divide/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Suffering And Waiting On the Wrong Side Of The Divide</a>
It is not just the rich and famous that makes these journeys either. Cartwright has seen hundreds of clients from all walks of life.
&#8220;Our clients range from the ones who can afford to be pampered to those who can barely afford it. We&#8217;ve had people staying in Cape Town eating [maize meal] for 21 days straight, because that is all they could afford over their IVF (in vitro fertilization) treatment; they were so desperate to have a child,&#8221; she says.
&#8220;I had a woman come from Australia who failed 17 rounds of IVF and South Africa was her last option. She now has a daughter and came back to South Africa to try for a second.&#8221;
Using US prices as a reference, across a variety of specialties, PBB estimates South Africa to be 25% to 40% cheaper.
“Most nations in Africa continue to struggle to build out their healthcare infrastructure and are thus not yet suitable for the contemporary international medical traveler. South Africa (particularly Cape Town and Johannesburg), are exceptions, offering an array of medical care for regional and long-haul travelers, including cosmetic surgery, cardiology, dental care, joint and spine work, and ophthalmology,” says Josef Woodman, CEO of PBB.
It is not all rainbows and butterflies. Business isn’t helped by the lack of efficiency when crossing borders.
Cartwright tells of a US couple, a husband (the sperm donor) and wife, looking to come to South Africa for IVF treatment. It meant both needed to apply for South African visas. There was an error in the husband&#8217;s application, and, because of new visa regulations that required applications in person at a South African embassy, it meant he had to fly to the South Africa embassy twice. By the time they entered their application correctly he missed their window. The wife had to come to South Africa alone, and they had to find another sperm donor.
&#8220;As she was walking off the plane I asked her where her husband was. It was only then that she told me their story. Not only was it a huge waste of money for two flights to the South African embassy, but they lost out on their flight tickets and reservations in South Africa, which need to be paid for in advance before applying for your visa,&#8221; says Cartwright.
&#8220;This is where the medical tourism industry can help, resolving issues when you hit a brick wall. I would have been able to help them both get here. The process of IVF is incredibly stressful without worrying about the technicalities of international travel,&#8221; says Cartwright.
Another challenge is putting Africa on the map. Many patients know little about the country they are visiting and often make the mistake of booking doctors in Johannesburg with their accommodation in Cape Town, 1,500 kilometers away.
&#8220;Abroad, people still think we&#8217;ve got lions and elephants in our backyards. It&#8217;s very seldom I hear a good story about South Africa. Most of the things people know are about our crime, our president and that we have no water in Cape Town.&#8221;
&#8220;We need to tell the good story. South Africa is an amazing place. It&#8217;s got first-class treatment. What really stands out is that we are English speaking. It&#8217;s a calling point and a huge thing. Imagine when you go to a country like Thailand and you can&#8217;t read the road signs. Now imagine trying to be a patient there who needs medical treatment.&#8221;
While the costs for those traveling into Africa may seem affordable, it is a different story for those living in it. In South Africa&#8217;s case, the recently tabled White Paper on National Health Insurance (NHI) wants to give medical aid to all South Africans to make healthcare accessible to the poor. Its implementation has been hotly contested.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/cover-story/2017/10/02/healthcare-got-available-everybody/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: &#8216;Healthcare Has Got To Be Available To Everybody&#8217; </a>
Many fear this will be the tipping point that brings the country&#8217;s health system to its knees and results in qualified doctors emigrating. The uncertainty surrounding the impact of the NHI on the private sector, and other compounding issues like an overburdened public healthcare system, could be why medical tourists choose not to come to South Africa.
&#8220;There are a huge amount of doctors in South Africa. The NHI only affects South Africans and not my clientele. In fact, I think it will encourage more doctors to work in the [medical tourism] industry.&#8221;
&#8220;The healthcare industry needs to look at more innovative ways of looking after its patients. I get calls from lots of South Africans trying to get help [with surgeries]; most don&#8217;t even know where to find a good doctor. Most South Africans can&#8217;t afford to go overseas and pay for a surgery. My uncle died of a brain tumor while he was waiting for a date to operate,&#8221; says Cartwright.
Ultimately, the success of medical tourism will depend on exchange rates, prices, quality of medical care and hospitality services on offer to tourists. Even Cartwright is keeping an eye out for opportunities elsewhere.
&#8220;I&#8217;ve been thinking seriously of emigrating to the United Kingdom and setting up base there. My plan would be to fly down to South Africa once a month and check up on the base here. Working from South Africa is too far away. Moving to the UK is quite a good move for the business. It’s central, with access to clients from Europe and America. It&#8217;s an hour&#8217;s flight to many of the medical conventions and conferences, which are great places to network. It&#8217;s also a good idea because there has been a rise in wellness travel, doing yoga retreats and all that. It’s taking off in the UK and Europe and I&#8217;d like to get in on this wave. South Africa would be an awesome destination for wellness tourism.&#8221;
Cartwright remains optimistic. She believes that medical tourism can offer a window of opportunity for doctors who still want to work in the private sector.
&#8220;I&#8217;ve found the Tanzanians to be the most sincere and humble. I&#8217;ve found that Nigerians, if you look after them, they will become part of your family for life. The people come and go. I try not to remember their names because I am so afraid of breaking their confidentially. But when they leave, we become a huge part of their lives.&#8221;
For Cartwright there is no time to stop, relax and watch the waves. She leaves the Waterfront with a phone to her ear, as usual, talking to her next medical tourist with money to spend.
<h3>Golden Oldies</h3>
A 2014 study by VISA  found the United States to be the largest hub for medical tourism. Thailand, Singapore, Germany, Korea, and Spain are quickly catching up.
Their data showed by 2025, travelers over the age of 65 will more than double their international travel to 180 million trips, accounting for one in eight international trips globally. Older travelers can afford bigger trips and are more focused on comfort and health than saving money.
The ageing traveler will transform travel and one area that is already growing in response is the medical tourism industry as more travelers opt to combine medical treatments with vacation.
&#8220;We believe that medical tourism is primed for accelerated growth as more of these older travelers seek new treatments, as well as lower-cost or higher-quality care not available in their home country,&#8221; the report concludes. &#8211; SOURCE: Mapping the Future of Global Travel and Tourism (2014) VISA

Surgery Safaris – The Facelift Africa Needs

At the Khayelitsha Youth Clinic Site C the reality of South Africa&#8217;s overburdened healthcare system hits home. Many have got out of bed before sunrise, some have traveled 600 kilometers to be here, for the long wait for the hope of seeing a doctor. This clinic tells the story of a land where eight out of 10 people can&#8217;t afford to see a doctor. At least here it’s free. But the shortage of doctors means a snaking queue that stretches down the street every day.
&#8220;When a patient from the Eastern Cape (600 kilometers away) comes to our clinic with a broken neck to be seen by a doctor here, you need to say that is unacceptable,&#8221; says Dr. Zahid Badroodien, who works in this clinic every day, 30 kilometers south east of one of South Africa&#8217;s richest cities, Cape Town.
&#8220;This facility sees 200 people a day and we turn people away. We have three or four doctors here depending on the day. We need more people to come into the system.&#8221;
This clinic is just a small cog connected to a large lumbering wheel that tries to treat 40 million people in South Africa. Government says that over 80% of South Africa&#8217;s population can&#8217;t afford medical aid and 30% of the country&#8217;s doctors try to treat them. The majority of the country’s doctors work for paying customers who can afford medical aid.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/cover-story/2017/10/02/batten-down-the-hatches/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Batten Down The Hatches</a>
This is why the South African government is fighting for three letters. They call it the National Health Insurance (NHI) and it should mean more hospitals and more care leading to free health. In other words, it&#8217;s another medical aid scheme; but the government promises it will cover you regardless of your social status or wealth.
&#8220;Our country believes that access to healthcare is a human right. This means every single one of us is entitled to receive healthcare. It should not depend on how rich we are or where we happen to live. The right to obtain healthcare is written into our Constitution,&#8221; says Aaron Motsoaledi, the Minister of Health who sees this as his legacy.
In order for NHI to be a success, it will cost R256 billion ($19.5 billion) by 2025, according to government estimates. They plan to find the money for this through tax.
&#8220;The amount spent on the healthcare for each person with a medical aid scheme is five times the amount that is spent on each person who relies entirely on public health facilities,&#8221; says Motsoaledi.
&#8220;Even for South Africans who earn a good income, healthcare has become a burden because private medical costs have skyrocketed in recent years. Working people are spending a large chunk of their salaries on medical aid and this often causes financial constraints in their household income,&#8221; he says.
Motsoaledi has been the driving force behind the NHI. He is considered to be one who practices what he preaches. In 2013 and in 2015  he chose to be admitted in public hospitals rather than going to private facilities. Motsoaledi is also a qualified doctor who worked in rural KwaZulu-Natal. He has seen the state of public hospitals firsthand. Motsoaledi is a champion of the fight against TB and HIV/Aids treatment that has saved the lives of millions of South Africans. But, finding the money for NHI and keeping medical aids in line could be one of his greatest battles.
There is controversy long before NHI happens. Government plans to withdraw tax incentives from medical aid schemes, worth R20 billion ($1.5 billion), which will go into the NHI fund. People will be free to pay for private health insurance, but they will also be forced to make contributions to the NHI fund.
&#8220;Private care at present is often needlessly expensive,&#8221; says Motsoaledi.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/cover-story/2017/10/02/healthcare-got-available-everybody/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: &#8216;Healthcare Has Got To Be Available To Everybody</a><a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/cover-story/2017/10/02/healthcare-got-available-everybody/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&#8216;</a>
According to Precious Matsoso, Director General at the Department of Health (DOH), the NHI will not kill off the private healthcare system, but says it needs to learn to adapt. One concern government has with medical aid is when medical cover is exhausted and funds run dry; it means people remain without cover for the rest of the year.
&#8220;Under the interim period, medical schemes will continue to function, however they will be reformed to be aligned to the NHI. This means that they will start to offer services consistent with the NHI. There will be fewer options and schemes. Prices will be reduced, making medical schemes more affordable. In doing so, there will be a cross-subsidization,&#8221; says Matsoso.
There will be some room for negotiation. Overall the NHI plans merely to pay for health for the masses and doesn&#8217;t intend to manage doctors and hospitals. Here, it is prepared to enter into contracts with private business.
Another question is whether government is even capable of managing what will become one of the largest state-owned enterprises in the country. South Africa&#8217;s track record is dubious, with the likes of Eskom and South African Airways under scrutiny for losing millions.
Government shares the concern that the quality of care in public hospitals is deteriorating in the areas of staff attitudes, waiting times, cleanliness, drug shortages, infection control and safety and security.
The South African Medical Journal (SAMJ) released a report in June stating that the most significant reason doctors gave for leaving the public sector was dissatisfaction with working conditions.
There is a substantial difference in the standard of working conditions between the public and private sectors. The survey, from 2,225 doctors, showed 60.73% of public sector doctors said availability of supplies was inadequate versus only 10.15% of private doctors. What’s more, 66.37% of public sector doctors indicated concern over lack of equipment and infrastructure, with 38.78% indicating hygiene and management was not of a good standard.
Both public and private sector participants reported that nursing and other support staff was inadequate. However, almost half of the doctors working in public service were dissatisfied with support staff versus 21.5% of private sector doctors.
The report, conducted by the Colleges of Medicine of South Africa (CMSA), and including members from the South African Medical Association (SAMA), found further reasons for doctors leaving were emigration, better opportunities in private practice, as well as being unable to apply for posts as they were frozen.
In KwaZulu-Natal, which has a population of 10.2 million, a serious blow came when a group of oncologists left over poor working conditions. With only two state cancer specialists remaining, both practicing from Grey’s Hospital in Pietermaritzburg, the province faces an unprecedented backlog with patients waiting for treatment from as far back as 2011.
This threat to the KwaZulu-Natal health department is just the tip of the iceberg. Other provinces, such as the North West and the Free State, are under strain, says Badroodien.
This is before the NHI has even been implemented.
&#8220;It&#8217;s not just the funding or the lack of doctors, it&#8217;s the other things tied to it: the lack of skills, the lack of resources, and all the external issues, like the NHI. The national health department now finds itself at a tenuous junction. The NHI is something we do need, but you need to look at the numbers. The DOH is trying to squeeze money from cracks,&#8221; says Badroodien.
All this while the queues of patients grow longer.
<h3>Examples of what the NHI package will exclude:</h3>
<ul>
<li>Cosmetic surgery that is not necessary or medically indicated but done as a matter of choice</li>
<li>Expensive dental procedures performed for aesthetic purposes and eye-care devices, such as fashionable spectacle frames</li>
<li>Medicines not included in the national essential drug list</li>
<li>Diagnostic procedures outside the approved guidelines and protocols as advised by experts groups</li>
</ul>

Suffering And Waiting On The Wrong Side Of The Divide

When the moneyed giants of the hockey world came to Africa they came with medical teams and salaries. When Africa&#8217;s number one team, South Africa, took to the pitch they had to answer emails, design apps, and study at the side of the pitch.
Another contrast, champions Belgium could afford to hand out shirts to supporters. The South African team – struggled to get time off to play.
One of these working South African players is Lonwabo Owen Mvimbi, a recruitment consultant for Mindcor group, a midfielder with 40 caps for his country. While the Belgian professionals were taking ice baths and putting their feet up in between matches, Mvimbi was sending emails, going to work and catching up on missed training in the dark of night.
&#8220;I was lucky that work was 10 minutes from the hotel, and five minutes from the field. I was doing that trip constantly, at least three times a week,&#8221; says midfielder Mvimbi.
&#8220;On the days I wasn&#8217;t playing a game, I would be at work the whole day. When people were doing video sessions [studying opponents] in the day, I would be doing it at night, when I was done with work for the day. On match days I would spend maybe an hour in the office, and then do work emails from the hotel. It wasn&#8217;t too bad, I could come and go to the office, everyone at work knew what I was doing and they were very supportive of it.&#8221;
<div id="attachment_33414" style="width: 660px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-33414" class=" wp-image-33414" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Lonwabo-Mvimbi_JC-3-e1504710615390-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="650" height="433" />Lonwabo Owen Mvimbi (Photo by Jay Caboz)</div>
Over 16 days, Mvimbi and the rest of the stressed South African squad fought it out with the elite of the world game on the astroturf at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in Johannesburg. Here 10 countries competed in the semifinals of the International Hockey Federation Hockey World League (HWL), one of the largest international hockey tournaments on the globe. Up for grabs was a coveted qualification spot for the 2018 World Cup and a ticket to the 2017 HWL finals in India.
For the South Africans, this was a rare chance for amateurs and semi-professionals – teachers, students, and real estate agents – to take on top players, who do this for a living, in their own backyard.
&#8220;Most of us are students or working. I&#8217;d say seven out of the squad are professional players,&#8221; says Mvimbi.
It was never going to be easy. South Africa (rank 15) needed to finish in fifth place; a single win against the likes of Belgium (5), Ireland (10), Germany (3) and their African rivals Egypt (19) would have put them in good stead.
&#8220;The difficulty in this is there is pressure from both sides; to perform at work and to perform on the field,&#8221; says Mvimbi.
The 29-year-old Mvimbi is playing hockey by chance. When he was 15 he broke his collarbone playing rugby at school and had to change sports.
&#8220;I&#8217;ve made a lot of financial sacrifices. Because of my hockey, my career grows slowly. I&#8217;m more focused on my sports career, even though my hockey career is going to end soon, maybe in the next five years, whereas my work is going to continue,&#8221; says Mvimbi.
South Africa was under-prepared. The team had a year to build a side to beat the best. Yet, team selections were held three weeks before the tournament and the squad got together three days before kick-off.
This is not new. In the last two years, South Africa has managed to hold a mere three training camps.
&#8220;With the pace of world hockey at the moment, if you miss a two-year cycle, then you fall off the pace quite a bit. Due to funding issues, it&#8217;s been hard to stay together as a squad. People are staying at other players’ houses to save [money],&#8221; says Austin Smith, a senior South African player who reached a milestone 150 caps during the tournament.
&#8220;For a whole year, our squad didn’t even see each other, we didn’t do anything together. Then you see the differences when you meet up again, the connections just aren’t there. You need to re-grow those connections from player to coach all over again,&#8221; says Smith.
<div id="attachment_33415" style="width: 660px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-33415" class=" wp-image-33415" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Austin-Smith_JC-3-e1504710813443-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="650" height="433" />Austin Smith (Photo by Jay Caboz)</div>
Smith is one of a handful of South African players to play overseas. With 12 years’ experience, the former captain Smith lives and works in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, where he is contracted to Dutch side HC Den Bosch and the Hockey India League&#8217;s Delhi Waveriders. The Dutch league is considered to be one of the strongest leagues in the world; here it is usual for clubs to run with hundreds of members and some clubs have as many as eight astroturf pitches. In Africa, you are lucky to have one.
&#8220;Our club side, at junior level, is going to train four times a week in addition to mental training and   conditioning work. The level of professionalism goes all the way down,&#8221; says Smith.
When Smith first sent his CV to Europe, clubs weren&#8217;t interested.
&#8220;Initially, when I went to Den Bosch, I was too arrogant. I had just become the national captain, I had 50 caps. I thought surely I will be able to get a contract in the Netherlands. I wrote to all the hockey clubs and they all said no.&#8221;
&#8220;A month later the Den Bosch coach wrote back and said we could maybe use you as a defender and you would basically be playing for free. So I had accommodation and a few Euros and that was it. I had to go and prove myself.&#8221;
Smith believes Africa needs to catch up.
&#8220;In South Africa we can be guilty of choosing players who can do flashy things at a young age. In my opinion, we should be identifying players who we think are going to be able to become professional.  If you look at the stats of players going from the under-16 national team to the men’s national team, it is actually small,&#8221; says Smith.
There is latent talent in South African school hockey which is growing thanks to more astroturf pitches. Most of the senior South African players, like Smith, grew up playing hockey on bumpy grass.
&#8220;If I look at the ability of the squad coming into the side, compared to when I was entering the squad in 2004, the guys now are far more skillful than I ever was. It’s hugely positive and it shows now that most schools have a strong influence. Schools, these days, have access to an astroturf. For half the hockey population, when I was growing up, that definitely wasn’t the case.&#8221;
Back on the astroturf at Wits, as many as 14,972 fans braved cold nights to watch the best of the best. For such a critical tournament, an unprepared side was the last thing South Africa wanted.
&#8220;Being forced to choose between work and life over playing what you love the most is hard. If it was paid, everyone would be here,&#8221; says Mark Sanders, a South Africa National Selector.
&#8220;It&#8217;s highly frustrating. I can understand [coach Fabian Gregory&#8217;s] frustration levels, when you can only have a team meeting at this time because some players who are Joburg based are working. Even the guys who aren&#8217;t working, you&#8217;ve got students who need to study. It&#8217;s not the easiest time being in a professional sport,&#8221; says Sanders.
On the field, the difference was brutal. Against the slick and salaried Belgium, who picked up a silver medal at the Rio 2016 Olympics, South Africa lost 9-1.
&#8220;It boils down to how long a camp scenario is. Our last camp was three days, whereas if you look at the Belgium camp it was 21 days,&#8221; says Sanders.
In other games versus Germany and Ireland, South Africa showed signs of promise. The team had many chances but couldn&#8217;t come home with a win. The team lacked the consistency and confidence needed to win.
&#8220;When you are in a high-pressure moment, you don’t have time to think, you need to move instinctually. You see a ball move in a direction and your body knows it’s got to run to a certain place, because you have done it 10,000 times before,&#8221; says Smith.
&#8220;When those things don’t come naturally, especially with how fast the international level has become, you don’t have time to react. That’s the biggest difference between the top teams and everybody else, they can play far quicker than the lower teams can.&#8221;
Money is a more difficult opponent. There is next to no budget for South African hockey and the men&#8217;s side has failed to secure a major sponsor for years. The players have to chip in for the millions needed to play overseas.
&#8220;I&#8217;ve spent R12,000 this year to play for my country,&#8221; says Jethro Eustice.
<div id="attachment_33417" style="width: 660px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-33417" class=" wp-image-33417" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Jethro-Eustice_JC-e1504711244931-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="650" height="433" />Jethro Eustice (Photo by Jay Caboz)</div>
Eustice, who has 80 caps for South Africa, was also working over the tournament. When he wasn&#8217;t on the field playing for his country, he was designing an app for generic drug company Aspen. In addition to completing a master’s degree in  IT commerce, Eustice also coaches the women&#8217;s team at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, in Pietermaritzburg.
&#8220;You would think I would be sitting around in front of a computer, rather than on the hockey field. If you want to be a professional hockey player, you can&#8217;t do it South Africa. I am coaching to keep my playing profession going,&#8221; says Eustice.
Eustice believes that televising university hockey has helped.
&#8220;That&#8217;s what&#8217;s nice for the under-18 guys. They are finishing matric and looking to go to university to play hockey and continue their studies. High performance programs have changed the university level. That&#8217;s why the standard has been raised. We are looking at athletes. When we were around, there were maybe 14 athletes and then the other four were just there to enjoy the party. Now it&#8217;s 18 athletes that have to be physically ready and technically ready to play. The sides that don&#8217;t have that tend to fall short by the end of the week.”
Overall most say hockey is struggling. In the high-pressure match against Egypt the lack of experience showed. Egypt, South Africa&#8217;s nearest rivals, should have been an easy win. Instead they lost 3-2.
&#8220;There needs to be a wake-up call and we need to be cognizant of it. It&#8217;s frustrating times,&#8221; says Sanders.
&#8220;Has hockey progressed in the last four years? To be honest, I&#8217;m not sure I&#8217;m a firm believer it has. We&#8217;ve had some good results at the summer series against the likes of Germany and Belgium, our result against Germany [lost 4-3] the other night was incredible. But it’s once every now and then, and I think that&#8217;s the frustrating part. If we cannot consistently beat a side like Egypt I think we’ve got to seriously have a look at ourselves, from selection to player performance, to management performance, the whole lot.&#8221;
<div id="attachment_33416" style="width: 661px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-33416" class=" wp-image-33416" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/SAhockey_JC-e1504711033792-300x199.jpg" alt="" width="651" height="432" />South Africa&#8217;s hockey team (Photo by Jay Caboz)</div>
There is also the task of finding a new national coach. Gregory resigned to take up the position of Head Coach at the Valley Hockey Club in Hong Kong.
&#8220;Playing overseas doesn&#8217;t help us. It may help on an individual basis, the players that go overseas go over and learn a lot and play to exceptionally high standards. But we don&#8217;t get to have them here for all the major competitions here. If we could manage our calendars, we could put our best players forward,&#8221; says Sanders.
The tournament could have been the wake-up call South African hockey needs.
&#8220;We&#8217;ve got a lot of competitions coming up. We&#8217;ve got the All–Africa Games, we&#8217;ve got the Commonwealth Games, we&#8217;ve got Olympics 2020 to look forward to. The decisions need to happen right now,&#8221; says Sanders.
It can be done. As a last thought Belgium did not participate in world class level hockey before 2008, the year they qualified for the Olympics for the first time in 32 years. Nine years on, thanks to salaries and better organization, they are a superpower at the top of the hockey heap. Maybe Africa should take note.

‘I’ll Email You Back Once I’ve Scored This Goal’

Just 10 years ago, Bitcoin was another office joke in Africa. The rare few who took it seriously have made millions.
&#8220;One year and seven months ago. November 2015. That was the month I started with R3,500 ($260) and now it&#8217;s worth R37,000 ($2,800). A Bitcoin was $260. Exactly one year later that Bitcoin was $900. It grew over 300%. Today it&#8217;s $2,800.&#8221;
This was the moneymaking turning point for communications and marketing employee Shireen Ramjoo who, at the age of 32, was so taken by Bitcoin she left her job in the bank to start her own consultancy, Liquid Crypto-Money.
From humble worldwide beginnings Bitcoin, a digital currency, otherwise known as cryptocurrency, was born from blockchain technology – a mass linking of computers. The midwives are an estimated 5.8 million users generating a market value of $27 billion, which represents a level of value creation on the order of Silicon Valley success stories like Airbnb, according to the 2017 Global Cryptocurrency Benchmarking Study by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance.
The impact of Bitcoin has been compared to the day paper money replaced gold and silver. It is so new that like there were no computer technicians before computers, there are few Bitcoin experts, more educated guessers.
Bitcoin is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to blockchain technology. Many financiers argue it will transform the world money system and maybe be the next dotcom-style boom in Africa. Up for grabs are billions more as peer-to-peer networks spark new business platforms and threaten to wash away established business practices that have been around for centuries.
&#8220;The first time I heard about Bitcoin, I had to write a press release for Standard Bank. It must have been early 2012. At the time I didn&#8217;t understand it, it just went over my head. I thought it was too technical. After I left the industry I wanted to be my own boss. I was looking for an opportunity and came across Bitcoin,&#8221; says Ramjoo.
She has made a business out of educating clients on Bitcoin, blockchain and cryptocurrency – topics that leave many baffled.
&#8220;We are in an evolution of money here. What people don&#8217;t realize is when the internet first started some governments were against it. As more countries started adopting it, more countries got involved. That&#8217;s the same phenomenon happening here,&#8221; says Ramjoo.
&#8220;We keep hearing of [blockchain] from a more technological point of view. Remember the topic of money is social&#8230; when you understand that this is actual money that you can use – I can go and buy bread and put petrol in my car – then you start wanting to find out more.&#8221;
Ramjoo&#8217;s venture is just one small example the business generated by the rise of this cryptocurrency. Since Bitcoin, more than 800 cryptocurrencies have blossomed in this unregulated market.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/homepage/2017/06/27/cash-falling-fashion-will-disappear-forever/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Cash is falling out of fashion &#8211; will it disappear forever?</a>
So what is blockchain and bitcoin? 
When you transfer cash your money goes through the bank to another person. The bank, who acts as a central mediator, charges you a service fee and makes a record of the transaction.
Until recently, the bank was the only keeper of these records, which in turn is proof of your transaction. This is called the ledger system.  The process of verifying the information takes days and also means banks are able to dictate the cost of these transactions.
Blockchain short-circuits the ledger system in the blink of an eye, by decentralizing it. In 2008, a paper published under the alias Satoshi Nakamoto suggested instead of your transaction being in one single computer server at the bank, you could store a transaction on thousands of computers around the world at the same time – rent-a-crowd worldwide.
&#8220;There are a whole lot of people logged onto this network and confirm all these transactions all day long. What do they get as a reward for it? The answer is Bitcoin. The reason why Bitcoin exists is to reward these people that make their computers available to store data and to become a world super computer that looks over transactions,&#8221; says Ran Neu-Ner, Johannesburg entrepreneur and Co-Founder of the Creative Counsel.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/cover-story/2017/09/04/emperors-new-coins/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Emperor&#8217;s New Coins</a>
Not only does this mean there are literally millions of back-ups, so that you cannot delete the transaction should the bank be hacked, but also the bank is no longer needed to make the transaction. In effect blockchain cuts out the middleman making all the rules, all the money and protecting your privacy.
&#8220;The Bitcoin isn&#8217;t important. The piece of tech that&#8217;s important is the blockchain that gets tech around the world to become a super computer to transfer money to store contracts or whatever else,&#8221; says Neu-Ner.
Imagine a world where people go from place to place in driverless cars, where there are no stop streets, or traffic lights, and machines decide how fast you get to your destination. If you can dream it, Neu-Ner can see it.
&#8220;Think 10 years from now, when there are only driverless cars on the road. You don&#8217;t have to have anything on the roads created for human nature.&#8221;
&#8220;Imagine the scenario: we&#8217;re driving in driverless cars, we both need to get to work. Your car is in front of my car. You want to pass, so you would normally flash your car’s lights. But in a driverless car you&#8217;re not able to flash lights at each other and say move over.&#8221;
The solution will be for driverless cars to set up smart contracts and you&#8217;ll pay in [cryptocurrency].
&#8220;The guys who are working on driverless cars are working on that blockchain right-of-way system right now.&#8221;
&#8220;The keyword when you are thinking about the blockchain is decentralization… Just keep asking yourself, if something is centralized, how is it going to be disrupted? Because it&#8217;s going to be disrupted. It&#8217;s a new economy, where everyone who contributes earns their fair share in tokens,&#8221; says Neu-Ner.
Trading and spending   
Because it is an international currency, the Bitcoin, as well as the world, is your oyster. You can travel the world by spending Bitcoin. In Japan, for instance, over 200,000 stores now accept Bitcoin.
This is how it works.
While on the way, a Bitcoin can be purchased on exchange sites when you are starting out. All you need to do is download an app, load up some cash and then start buying. Some financial brokers will even purchase Bitcoin fractions on your behalf.
The exchanges vary but we&#8217;ve found bitcoinzar.co.za offers a number of companies that will accept PayPal, your credit or debit card, and person-to-person. There is even a BTM (bitcoin ATM) at a business called Metroman in Kyalami, Johannesburg, that accepts rand in exchange for Bitcoin.
It is even possible to get your salary in Bitcoin; it&#8217;s as simple as a shopping cart on an online store.
There are, however, pitfalls. You must research the apps and look for realistic returns when investing in cryptocurrency, especially ones you are not familiar with. Schemes, such as Pipcoin, offered high returns of 35% a month and many fell for it.
&#8220;Millions were invested in it and many lost money, because they couldn&#8217;t tell it was a scam. It was plugged as the coin of Africa. So if you don&#8217;t understand how coins are generated, you won&#8217;t know how these schemes operate,&#8221; says Ramjoo.
Bitcoinzar.co.za also recommends you don&#8217;t leave your Bitcoin on an exchange. Hackers know that exchanges are mostly honey-pots, with private user information, and, more importantly, Bitcoin that can be instantly stolen and transferred away to an anonymous Bitcoin wallet.
&#8220;People are losing their money very quickly. They are believing that if they buy into this hype today, tomorrow I&#8217;ll come away with a lot of money,&#8221; says Neu-Ner.
If you are looking to invest, ensure you have a Bitcoin/cryptocurrency wallet where you can keep your data offline and private. You should always question the authenticity of these wallets and the company should be transparent.
It is even possible to mine you own Bitcoins, although this method of earning is considered to be going out of date. At the current rate of exchange, you would be spending more money on equipment and electricity, unless the price escalates substantially.
&#8220;You can compare it to when the internet first came and emails. The whole process of us writing a letter, going to the post office, then waiting for the letter to get to the person. When the email came, the postal service became a third party, and not being used as much as we used it before,&#8221; says Ramjoo.
Banks are transforming
Africa is looking at adopting blockchain-based currency. In February, the South African Reserve Bank said it is open to issuing a national digital currency, which would likely be based on blockchain or distributed ledger technology. Senegal is set to roll out its eCFA, a digital version of the West African franc, later this year, and there are even plans to extend distribution across the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA).
&#8220;There is going to be a new generation for banks. We are starting to see it play out in the market – governments starting to issue out their own cryptocurrency. Tunisia was the first country in the world to have its own government-issued digital currency… Some people are old school and will keep their money in the banks. But the bank of the future will not be the same as it is now,&#8221; says Ramjoo.
This is just the beginning of a new system that will transform the world and make billions in the process. Many people don&#8217;t understand what&#8217;s happening; those that do will likely become even richer.
<h2>Coin Collection?</h2>
Cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin, is generated in the form of data strings. Only computers can solve the complex mathematical equations. For every completed equation, a coin is created and the coin that follows requires more data and processing power to add to the string, which in turn keeps a record of every transaction ever made.
&#8220;Bitcoin is not a company, nor does a single person or organization issue or control Bitcoins; therefore, it has no central point of failure. For this reason, nobody can inflate the currency supply and create hyperinflation crises, such as those that occurred in post-World War I Germany and more recently in Zimbabwe. In 2008, the government of Zimbabwe printed so much of its currency that in a single year, a loaf of bread increased from $1 to $100 billion. In both cases, any savings that people had in the form of national currency were completely destroyed.&#8221; &#8211;  extracts from Bitcoin for the Befuddled by Conrad Barski and Chris Wilmer
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A previous version of this story stated that there are two licensed exchanges in South Africa. This was incorrect and the article has been updated.

Author: Jay Caboz

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA