In quiet Centurion, near Pretoria, you will find South Africa’s leading rowing boat maker, John Waugh. He lives around the corner from what he calls his office. This is where he and a handful of craftsmen make boats used by everyone from club rowers to Olympic champions.
The workshop stands on a large piece of land. It’s a white house where every room, including the upstairs, has at least one boat in it. The walls and floors are covered with dust, paint, tools and plastic. The raw materials used to make the boats are scattered throughout the house.
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Waugh has been building boats here for 34 years.
“I decided to build boats, working at night, as a hobby, just for myself. I started in my garage… 500 hours later I came out with a boat,” says Waugh.
Cape Town-born Waugh took interest in rowing at 20, when he was studying in the then Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. He graduated in Botany and Zoology and had an MSc in Marine Biology. He moved to Durban, on South Africa’s south coast in KwaZulu-Natal, with his family to work as a scientist. This is where he began fixing boats as hobby. He became a passionate artisan, who eventually quit his job and moved his family to Johannesburg to start his boat-making business.
“It was a total obsession once I started,” says Waugh.
However, it was not easy to find money to get the business running.
“It was quite difficult [getting funding]. I tell my staff that I started with R500 ($56), which is true. Today… materials could cost you R120,000 ($13,500) could be R105,000 ($12,000). It’s quite a lot of money.” says Waugh.
Rowing is not a cheap sport and those who can afford it are a small, privileged group of South Africans. Waugh’s customers are largely South African private schools and universities. These schools can afford to spend anything between R185,000 ($21,000) and R245,000 ($26,000) on a single boat, according to Waugh.
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The third boat he made was for rower, Colin Graham, who was a member of South Africa’s national rowing team. The very same team, which won the South African championship in 1980 in Waugh’s boat. And then the orders began to flood in.
Italian boat maker Filippi, the most recognized international boat-maker donated a four skull boat worth close to $18,000 to the South African rowers after they won gold at the London 2012 Olympics. His four skull boats cost anything between $17,000 and $21,000.
Yet the industry is not as steady as one of its finest boats.
“We had one winter where we only had one order for the whole month… One telephone call could bring in R250,000 ($28,000),” says Waugh.
International brands are fierce competition for Waugh as some South African clubs import. Waugh has taught a handful of employees how to build these boats in hopes of keeping the industry afloat. Lucas Muruku, who has been working for Waugh for 20 years, says that it takes five to six years to master boat making. Lucas was working as a gardener, when Waugh asked him to join him in his workshop. He has been with Waugh ever since. But Muruku’s job came under threat when Waugh and his wife were violently attacked in their home and left seriously injured.
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“… He was seriously ill, following a violent break-in at his house… He was in hospital for three weeks. We weren’t even sure that he would come back… They nearly killed him,” says Muruku.
After thirty four years of having his hobby as his job, his family thinks it’s time that he retires. For him, it’s not that easy.
“It’s more than just a job, it’s a labor of love,” he says.
Perhaps we’ll see the fruits of his labor gliding on the water for many years to come.

The Boat Master

His trainer claims he possesses the extraordinary hand speed reminiscent of the legendary Sugar Ray Leonard. His detractors warn that South Africa’s Tommy Oosthuizen’s love of fast food, women, clubs and bars could cause irreparable damage to a career destined for greatness.
They hope the riot act, read by his promoter Rodney Berman will force Oosthuizen, defending super-middleweight champion of the International Boxing Organization (IBO), to abandon what critics claim is an ill-disciplined lifestyle.
Berman admitted to berating Oosthuizen for his failure to make the initial super-middleweight limit on the Friday before the fight against the veteran Colombian slugger Fulgencio Zuniga, on November 10.
“Exposed as a party animal” and “preference for pubs and clubs outweighs his yearning for the gym” were some of the phrases used as boxing writers challenged Oosthuizen’s struggle to reach the super-middleweight limit of 76.36 kilograms.
Zuniga also warned Oosthuizen, after the 24-year-old South African needed extra time to shed 800g to make the weight.
“You can be the best boxer but if you don’t take your career seriously, then you will have serious problems. He has got to be very careful about such things if he wants to mix it with the big boys out there,” says Zuniga.
Berman was equally blunt in his assessment: “I don’t want another Johnny du Plooy or Dingaan Thobela. Tommy is young and impressionable. I read him the riot act about his weight problems. I have seen so many boxing careers that were ruined because of a lack of dedication”.
“Potentially, I see Tommy in the super-middleweight section for another three years. After three years, he might have to move up to the light-middleweight category, as he is a tall fighter at six feet four inches. He can use the next three years to leave a legacy.”
Harold Volbrecht, Oosthuizen’s trainer, the former South African welterweight champion who fought 54 professional bouts, dismissed criticism about Oosthuizen’s love for pubs as mere media hype. He said the wrong friends and a lack of respect for money contributed to his weight problems.
“He doesn’t respect money enough.”
Oosthuizen admitted that the wrong lifestyle exacerbated his weight problems.
“Sometimes you take four cool drinks instead of two and you start loving barbeques. Currently, I’m seeing a sport psychologist, Jannie de Wet. It’s about the right focus and peaking at the right moment. He also helps me to deal with women and things like that and to find the right balance between Tommy the man and Tommy the sports person.”
Probed about his alleged love of the bars, Oosthuizen said he’s definitely no pub loafer, although he might have a drink.
“Yes, I have socialized, but it was not outrageous,” he added.
“The fight against Zuniga was a turning point. I will never have trouble with the weight limit again.
“I felt I could have stopped Zuniga in his tracks. But because I had to make the extra effort to shed weight, it drained and weakened me. Next time, I will ensure that I am within the limits three to four weeks before a fight.”
Oosthuizen’s father, Charles, was a brilliant boxer, according to Pierre Coetzer, a former heavy-weight champion of South Africa. Charles Oosthuizen, the former South African middleweight champion, fought 35 professional bouts between 1984 and 1991.
“My father taught me to stay humble and to train harder than my greatest challengers in order to outperform them in the ring. It’s true to say that boxing is in my blood. That’s why I ventured into the ring for the first time at the age of six,” says Oosthuizen.
Berman considers Oosthuizen a gifted south paw and arguably the Ernie Els of South African boxing.
His hand speed is extraordinary, he says, and he has a strong jaw that can withstand severe punishment.
Volbrecht said Oosthuizen’s hand speed is the equal to that of a former welterweight legend, Sugar Ray Leonard.
Oosthuizen, undefeated in 22 bouts, is ranked fourth on The Ring Magazine’s list of super-middleweight fighters in the world.
Du Plooy, one of South Africa’s finest and most charismatic heavyweight champions of the past thirty years, acknowledges Oosthuizen’s abilities but has a stern warning about the pitfalls.
“Tommy is extremely talented and a very good counter-puncher, like his trainer, Harold Volbrecht, was. My advice to Tommy is: stay away from booze, from wrong friends and train hard.”
“People claimed that alcohol and cocaine caused my downfall as a boxing champion. That’s not the truth. I did not fulfill my potential because I was lazy and did not train enough. I doubt if I did 500 kilometers of road work during my entire career.”
“After the completion of my boxing career, I snorted my way through more than a million rand of cocaine. With the help of God and my committed wife, I started a successful business career. And consequently, I have trained four or five world-champion fighters, so my life is on track. I have been clean from cocaine for 12 to 13 years. I have earned the T-shirt and have paid my school fees.”
“To me, Brian Mitchell is the type of role model that Tommy should attempt to emulate. I don’t know if he won a world title as an amateur but look what he achieved as a professional fighter thanks to his total dedication.”
If Oosthuizen won’t heed Du Plooy’s advice, his corner might remind him of how a love for fast food temporarily ruined Roberto Durán’s reputation.
Durán, considered one of the greatest lightweight boxers of all time, retired at the end of the eighth round in his world welterweight fight against Sugar Ray Leonard in 1980 by using the dreaded words no mas (Spanish for ‘no more’).
The Panamanian, whose bingeing and fasting had taken its toll and had him ill-prepared for the bout as he battled to reach the weight limit, looked clumsy while Leonard danced around and taunted him.
Durán was unfit for the contest and retired rather than face the inevitable humiliation at the hands of Leonard in the later rounds, as his stamina faded, claimed the publication Lords of the ring, The greatest fighters since 1950.
Volbrecht said HBO—an American premium cable television network, which reaches around 30 million subscribers in the States and broadcasts in at least 151 countries worldwide—is already on board for a possible unification bout in the super-middleweight division involving Oosthuizen that was hosted by the States in March.
“If your fights are broadcasted on HBO with its massive appeal you have arrived,” he says.
Volbrecht hinted to the fact that Oosthuizen might fight against Adonis Stevenson as an elimination-bout for a showdown with Carl Froch, the super-middleweight champion of the International Boxing Federation (IBF).
Stevenson, Froch and Mikkel Kessler—the super-middleweight champion of the World Boxing Association (WBA)—are marque-names in a division that has attracted the attention of WBO, while super-middleweight fever is spreading amongst adorning fans.
It presents Oosthuizen with opportunities to forge a reputation as one of South Africa’s finest-ever super-middleweight fighters, provided he contemplates the history lesson of the No Mas-fight and takes to heart the timely and fatherly advice from Du Plooy and Berman.

Stay Away From Booze  And Bad Friends, Young Man

As the 2013 European tour began at Royal Durban Country Club in South Africa in December, the tour had a new member—take note of this name: Justin Walters. Like Branden Grace in 2012, here was another young man from South Africa on the verge of a breakthrough in the tough world of professional golf.
Also like Grace, Walters, 32, goes into his European tour campaign with just one backyard victory to his credit in the Sunshine Tour. Unlike Grace, who enjoyed a fairy-tale rise, it has been a grim journey for Walters. When he was four years old, Walters suffered a damaging and traumatic eye injury.
“I have 50 percent vision in my right eye. I suffer with double vision and lazy eye, you name it,” says Walters in the players’ lounge at Serengeti Golf and Wildlife Estate, where he was playing the 102nd South African Open in November.
“I fight a lot of conditions with it. When I was four years old, I had a pine needle go straight through my eye. I&#8217;ve had several operations, five or six, trying to help it. Right now, it&#8217;s as good as it&#8217;s going to get. I have a contact lens in my right eye. I&#8217;ve had it [the condition] so long, maybe it does hurt me, but I&#8217;m so used to it now. I can&#8217;t spend too much time dwelling on it.
Walters explains that overcast skies, rather than bright sunshine, are the biggest worry for him on the golf course.
“There will be several occasions when I&#8217;m out on the golf course when I can see two golf balls, four sets of shoes and my double vision really causes havoc. I wear Oakley sunglasses all the time, the guys take care of me and really get me through a day&#8217;s golf. They limit the fatigue on my eyes and help me do my job as good as I can.”
Securing playing privileges doesn&#8217;t come much tougher than playing the Challenge Tour for a full season, but that&#8217;s just what Walters did. The Challenge Tour, the secondary tour in Europe, provides 20 cards for the main European tour, via the season-long money list. Walters was outside the top 20, coming into the final event of the season in Italy, and needed a good finish to get his card. He wasn&#8217;t just playing for money; he was playing for his future.
Even after the first round he wasn&#8217;t lying well after a level par 71.
“I got off to a really slow start, and your back is against the wall. There was only one of two results—I was going to play well and get it done or I wasn&#8217;t.”
He played the next three rounds in 14 under par to finish fifth for the event. If Walters was two shots worse, he would have missed out on getting his card completely. In those circumstances, to come through and make the grade, shows great mental strength and determination—something that bodes well for the European main tour.
“The night before the final round, I was a little bit nervous and it was really tight. All the guys around me were right there or ahead of me. I knew I had to produce something that was half-decent. It was a very stressful day, but I got off to such a good start. I made the mental goal of not looking at a leader board the whole day. The conditions were tough and I was playing well. I managed to post a really good score given the conditions. When I tapped in for par on 18, that was the first time I looked at a leader board and saw I had managed to cross the finish line.”
Walters studied in the States at North Carolina State University, where he did business management and qualified cum laude. There he was roommates with fellow South African Garth Mulroy, who now campaigns on the US PGA Tour. Walters said the reason he went abroad was because of his father&#8217;s influence and having a back-up career, if the golf path did not pan out.
“My dad was quite hard on me, he really wanted to make sure I had a degree to go with me pursuing golf. At the time in South Africa, that wasn&#8217;t really possible. It was either a degree or you just played golf. It really improved my game and played a big role in where I am today.”
Walters explains the conditions in the States help make better-rounded players. Added to that is the high competition level at college, where the best players from around the world ply their future trade before turning professional.
“If you look at the PGA Tour and European Tour, a lot of the guys have gone through the college system. If you can show your worth there, it certainly gives you a good boost mentally and confidence to take on the pro ranks.
Walters is honest with his expectations—he doesn&#8217;t know what to expect, but with help of the healthy contingent of South Africans out on tour, he hopes to be able to cement his place among the top golfers in the world.
“I&#8217;m lucky that there&#8217;s a big tribe of South Africans playing there [in the European Tour]. I&#8217;ve already spoken to a couple of the players and the caddies, asking if they can take me under their wings and show me the ropes. I&#8217;ll be relying on them as much as I can and hopefully in a year&#8217;s time I can sit here and tell you more.”
Walters has conquered the pain of the pine needle of outrageous fortune, now he wants to conquer the world.

The Rising Star  With The Lazy Lucky Eye

No one and nothing can prepare you for what you will face in the world of professional football. Nobody warns you of the ugly side; the side that none of my team mates in Africa cautioned me about.
I started my professional football career in Belgium in late 1985. It was a giant leap from the tiny township of Mufulira, in northern Zambia, to the sophisticated streets of Brugge, the so-called ‘Venice of the north’.
I had achieved a lot in the Zambian league with my team Mufulira Wanderers. I won Zambian Footballer of the Year in 1984 and my career in the national team career was blossoming. The offer to go to Europe to ply my trade was like a dream come true. I felt privileged to have been given a chance to prove myself on the European stage.
I was strong, self-confident and determined to succeed.
In those days, black people were rare in Brugge. In fact, there were only three black players in the two premier league teams, Cercle Brugge and Club Brugge.
There were times at training when one of my team mates would swear they had seen me in town that day. When I told them that I had not left my home the whole day, they would shrug it off by saying: “You all look alike”. At first, it used to get me upset, but later I learnt to laugh about it.
To get to training I needed to take two buses and then walk about 150 meters to the ground, even in the harshest of weather conditions. Initially, all the players driving to training would drive past without as much as a hoot or a glance. As I started to make more impact in training and challenged for a place in the team, they would stop and offer me a lift. I never accepted a lift and continued walking until I bought my own car.
I conquered these examples of belittlement by strengthening my determination to prove to all that I could rise above them and prove my worth as an equal.
When I finally made it to the first team, I got the shock of my life. I was booed by the opposition fans during the warm-up. This was something I had never experienced before. The opposition fans hostility sometimes went on for the entire match.
Through concentration and sheer determination I started ignoring it.
The chants and slurs were part of the game in the late 1980s and, as I began to make a name for myself in the league, I paid less and less attention. This, coupled with resolve and fortitude, helped my mind to shut all of it out. All I wanted was to be respected for my skill, not insulted for the color of my skin. It made me more resolute to succeed.
It needs to be known that making it as a professional footballer does not happen by luck and talent alone. It takes strenuous practice, extreme discipline, unflinching determination, untold sacrifice, laser-sharp focus and dedicated commitment. Players deserve to be respected for this.
It has always been a sad state of affairs when a malevolent minority try to influence the majority. The racist chants in stands have always come from a small portion of the crowd—a small portion so intent on their team winning they would do anything to see the opposition losing, even stooping low to try to degrade them. They find a difference they can pick at and take it to the extreme. I am not sure if walking off the pitch as a reaction to this, as was the case with Kevin-Prince Boateng of A.C. Milan recently, achieves anything but victory for the offending party.
Many football players have been victims at one time or another of crude gestures, monkey noises and booing among other attacks. Players need to soldier on. We are all trying to make it in life.
Most fans around the world attend football games to enjoy the match and encourage their teams. The love outweighs the hate.
FIFA have made their position very clear in article 3 of their statutes: “Discrimination of any kind against a country, private person or group of people on account of ethnic origin, gender, language, religion, politics or any other reason is strictly prohibited and punishable by suspension or expulsion.”
My opinion is that, to try to eradicate this scourge, the authorities need to manage it better. The onus should be on the clubs and national football associations to empower their safety personnel to identify the offenders and act swiftly to remove them from the stadium. They need to be named and shamed and banned from ever attending another game. Doing so would make them think twice before shouting obscenities. If this cannot be done then we need to resort to hitting where it hurts most, by deducting points. I would support such a cause.
Unfortunately, discrimination is alive in our society, practised by a minority convinced that they are superior by one virtue or another. It does not mean we have to tolerate it. We, as the majority, need to kick it out. It is a rare disease that needs to be wiped out. As players, we need to stand tall and be strong, be immune to such pettiness. As fans we need to expose the perpetrators and stop them from infecting others with this disease.
Football is meant to conquer discrimination and adhere to the notion of fair play. Here we are in 2013, 28 years after my European debut, still talking about this scourge. How can we still call it the beautiful game?

The Ugly Side Of  The Beautiful Game

When Raphael Afaedor and Tunde Kehinde met a few years ago, they exchanged business cards for more than one reason.
Ghanaian-born Afaedor quit his job as a business development manager at Notore Chemical Industries to start an e-commerce company. Shortly after that , he was contacted by the Samwer brothers’ German-based incubator, Rocket Internet, to bring their African ambitions to life.
“I thought e-commerce was an area that required people with a specific type of experience and know-how. I believed I was one of those people. My heart was also bent on building something from scratch. So, I took the opportunity,” says Afaedor.
Nigerian-born-and-bred Kehinde—who worked as a business development manager for multinational beverage company Diageo and later launched a dating site for African professionals in the diaspora—had a constant itch to do something bigger on the continent.
“The opportunity came up when I found Raphael: a strong co-founder, a good financial backing and a chance to do the project in my own country. We immediately went for it and decided to launch Kasuwa, now Jumia,” he says.
Their ideas aligned and the timing couldn’t have been better for these two Havard Business School MBA graduates.
Together, they set off to pioneer the internet revolution and to organize retailing and the e-commerce market place in Nigeria differently. They rolled out two services: Sabunta and Kasuwa. The former is an online fashion store and the latter sells general merchandise. These services were merged to house a wider range of merchandise. This saw the birth of, the now-well-known, Jumia.
At the Jumia head office in Lagos, there is a beehive of activity: a young, energetic workforce taps furiously at their keyboards and engages customers telephonically, in a bid to build a one-stop shop for Nigeria’s ever-demanding consumer market.
At one end, doors are being opened to receive ordered goods. Products range from clothing and cosmetics to electronics and household merchandise. Merchandise is hand delivered from a warehouse in a matter of days, regardless of their location within the country.
Nigeria has more than 45 million internet users, around 28% of its population, which makes it the African nation with the highest number of internet users—followed by Egypt and Morocco, according to the latest internet world statistic figures. The introduction of mobile phone data and fixed wireless access services coupled with higher computer and internet literacy rates in the past few years have contributed to this boost in online shopping trends in Nigeria. According to Funke Opeke, CEO of Main One Cable Company—which has laid a 7,000km fiber optic cable linking West Africa to Europe—this number is about to increase.
“At least one in three people in Nigeria could have direct internet access during the course of 2013.”
Nigerian consumers, however, have shown little confidence in online purchases in the past for fear of fraudulent activity. A few players are taking advantage of the burgeoning e-commerce space, which helps local brands get their merchandise online. As a result, similar services in Nigeria, such as Konga and DealDey, have emerged in the past few years. These websites provide an alternative shopping experience for Nigerians.
“Lagos is the prime location to be in. The numbers are here, the banking systems are better developed here and there is a lot of activity,” says Afaedor.
Despite a growing popularity in Nigeria, the journey was hardly a walk in the park for the two business partners. As many Nigerian start-ups will agree, challenges are inevitable.
The operational costs of doing business in Nigeria, with infrastructural deficits, was more than a concern. So was finding and building a competent team.
“In our case, it was necessary to have a mind shift and focus on the bigger picture. The opportunities are here in Nigeria. This was a gap we identified and had to fill, regardless of the existing bottlenecks of doing business in Nigeria,” says Afaedor.
Barely a year old, Jumia now boasts around 50,000 online visits a day, with a daily subscriber base of more than 150,000 and is already ranked as the seventh most viewed local content site in Nigeria. It has grown significantly with new product lines and brands on its site with a good consideration for Nigeria’s online payment skeptism, which has been cleverly allayed by introducing a cash-on-delivery feature.
While their ultimate goal is market domination, the immediate concerns for Afaedor and Kehinde are new services, brands and products and to sell everything any Nigerian could possibly need. As it turns out, the fastest moving goods are fashion products, particularly clothing items.
Besides bringing a wide range of products to Nigerian households, Afaedor and Kehinde are also focused on building a dynamic in-house team.
“We pride ourselves in making this a great place to work as service is key,” says Kehinde, who co-manages a team of 200.
E-commerce is here to stay as Afaedor and Kehinde are on a mission to mitigate the tedium of shopping. So, click away as shopping is about to become faster and more convenient.

Shop Without The Drop

Entersekt never would have been established in 2007, were it not for the audacious claims by a B.Comm student and the activities of an unknown bank fraudster, which stirred up the emotions of four electronic engineering students: Christiaan Brand, Dewald Nolte, Altus van Tonder and Niel Müller.
The Stellenbosch-based software house is a fast-growing African player, which wants to establish itself in the States, the United Kingdom and beyond. Most of the major South African banking groups have already signed up Entersekt, which has been certified by Visa, MasterCard and American Express to integrate with their 3-D secure payments system. It has become an ally of the domestic banking industry in dealing with online fraudsters.
Bank corruption is one of the principal cyber-crimes in the world. According to the South African Banking Risk Information Centre, the South African banking industry incurred losses of R263.3 million ($29.6 million) in 2009/2010 for card fraud. These fraudulent activities increased by 53% in 2010/2011 to R403.1 million ($45.4 million).
According to Schalk Nolte, chief executive of Entersekt, independent statistics from IT Web show that web phishing in South Africa amounted to R320 million ($36 million) in 2011. In the second half of 2012, bank fraudsters used online banking to harvest around R100 million ($11.3 million) illegally. The country has registered 3% of the world’s phishing activities, while 46% occur in the States and 19% in the United Kingdom.
Dewald Nolte remembers how, during a challenging week filled with tests, a self-assured B.Comm student confronted him and a group of engineers, while they strolled to the Langenhoven Student Centre for a meal.
“Here I am, relaxing, and you poor guys are working so hard but I’m still going to make a fortune, much more than you engineers,” he said.
Nolte, Brand, van Tonder and Müller, who all possessed an entrepreneurial spirit, became more committed to pursuing a successful business career after the encounter. The group met weekly to brainstorm the inception of the right business. Their ‘aha’ moment came through default, not design. Brand’s mother became victim of an online banking fraudster and lost R20,000 ($2,250). Brand couldn’t believe how this was possible in an age of one-time password (OTP) access logins and online security systems.
The four students worked around the clock for over a year in a virtual garage to mastermind Entersekt.
Their enormous investment of time and money to invest seed capital for the establishment of Entersekt, conjures images of Bill Gates, the Beatles and the 10,000-hour rule mentioned by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers. He claims that 10,000 hours are needed to secure greatness and mastery; Mozart, The Beatles and Gates are some examples. The Beatles performed in Hamburg, Germany over 1,200 times between 1960 to 1964, amassing more than 10,000 hours of playing time. Gates spent 10,000 hours programing on a high-school computer in 1968, aged 13.
The four students amassed their 10,000 hours by developing a prototype, which was conceptualized into a company in 2008. Its revolutionary technology was registered at a patent-office in the same year.
The pioneers needed the intervention of two more leaders to propel the idea from their virtual garage to the commercial marketplace.
Earlier in his career, Schalk Nolte was one of 33 expatriates sent to Nigeria by Vodacom to manage a possible new venture. The deal was eventually scuttled because of shareholder concerns. Twenty eight of the expatriates remained in Nigeria to form a new management company to run V-mobile Nigeria. With Nolte at the helm of network expansion, they grew their clients from 300,000 to a couple of million, while the numbers at the base station increased from 300 to 2,500.
Nolte was approached to join Entersekt, after it had been patented but was not yet commercially formed. He realized that banks wouldn’t do business with a virtual garage start-up.
“We had to establish a presence and an address and the technopark in the technological hub [of Stellenbosch] was appealing,” he says.
Through Schalk Nolte’s acquaintance with Ramzi Mansour of Carita Investments in Nigeria, he set up a meeting in Centurion between Mansour and Dewald Nolte.
“He decided to invest in us not only because of the idea of our business but because of the people. He said he could see the passion in our eyes,” says Dewald Nolte.
Securing the finances was a considerable challenge for the students, who lacked collateral, especially in 2008 when the global recession was in full swing.
“We had to pull through tough times, pay ourselves nothing and invest everything into the seed capital of the company to succeed. In hindsight, it proved to be the right way of doing it,” says Schalk Nolte.
In internet banking a two-factor authentication system is used based on something you know, your username and password, and something you have, a cellphone. Unfortunately, such an authentication system, which relies on browser communication, can be defeated.
In the real world, people are sent a phishing e-mail; if they click on the link, they will get routed to a fake banking website, which fools them into entering their username and password. This fake site, in real time, runs a script and enters the credentials into the real bank account. When the real bank receives the credentials it sends an OTP or asks the user to generate this OTP on the token. When you enter your OTP, it is intercepted by the man in the middle, who now has access to your username, password and OTP.
The beauty of Entersekt’s system, however, is that it uses industry-standard electronic certificates to create a secure out-of-band communication channel, based on mutual authentication between a bank and its customers’ mobile devices, according to Nolte. These certificates are deployed using a light-weight application that is available for hundreds of cellphone models on the iOs, Blackberry, Android Windows Phone and Java platforms. An electronic transaction initiated through any channel (online banking, card-not-present and via the ATM) is sent to the bank customer’s mobile device for confirmation before the transaction takes place.
In the OTP system it goes via the internet, where the fraudsters have access, while this system is beyond the reach of fraudsters as customers respond to real-time requests for transactions by selecting ‘accept’ or ‘reject’. The bank retains control over the process of registering users and all communication is encrypted end-to-end and cannot be intercepted by any other party, says Nolte.
The result is true out-of-brand, two-factor authentication that counters phishing and other kinds of fraud. This system has cut online banking fraud for Entersekt’s clients to zero and annually re-issues certificates per client.
“We have found that our contracts become a net saving for the banks and not a cost increase.
When Entersekt sold their technology to Nedbank, the crime moved to other banks.
“It’s like a burglary in your street. If you increase your security and use more burglar-bars, the criminals might target your next-door neighbors,” he added.
Although the company has established a local footprint—with eight of their 10 clients based in South Africa—it has received international recognition and the demand for its services is growing. Entersekt has patented their technology in the States, United Kingdom, China and India and is aggressively pursuing markets in Nigeria and Kenya.
“We were nominated at the world’s biggest security conference in San Francisco in 2011 as one of the top 10w most innovative companies globally. We are 18 to 24 months ahead of our competitors in terms of technology,” says Nolte.
Protection to safeguard their assets is one thing; expansion to ensure a bigger global presence is a different proposition all together.
“We have a staff presence and a small office in London and we are about to open an office in Atlanta in the States… We have to be where the new ideas, the standards and the concepts are created,” he adds.

Delete Fraud. Enter.

Sola Owoloja has been working in the business for five years; he understands how to please. He had to transport a comb from New York to Johannesburg. It must have been a very special comb. He naturally said: “Yes”. You have to.
The patron staying at a Johannesburg hotel had left the comb, given to her by her dying mother, in a hair salon in New York. West Chauffeurs got in touch with the New York hotel and within 48 hours the comb was hand delivered to the patron.
Running around, chauffeuring, catering to and cajoling the rich is what makes concierge services pay. On another occasion, a patron asked to deliver an elephant across the Atlantic to the United States as a gift to his daughter. Luckily, the request was not followed through, again Owoloja would have said: “Yes”.
“Integrity is very important. If you make a promise to your guest, you have to keep that promise. We made a promise to our guests. We will bend, we’re flexible. We’ll do anything to keep them satisfied,” says Owoloja.
In 2008, Owoloja and Kagiso Dumasi saw a gap in the market for a concierge company in South Africa that would cater for the needs of wealthy travelers. Owoloja oversees the operational, financial and recruitment side of the business, while Dumasi looks after the marketing.
West Chauffeurs can make dinner reservations; find scarce theater tickets and presents in a hurry, as well as deliver combs.
Nigerian-born Owoloja learnt early on at home, in Lagos, that you have to do business however you can.
In Lagos, while in his twenties, he dabbled in the supermarket business with a friend. He moved to South Africa with the hope of running an oil services company, but failed. He moved back home but later returned to South Africa to start a business with the little entrepreneurial experience under his belt.
“When the chips are down, in the face of adversity and massive challenges, you need to still inspire people to get them to see beyond the challenges of the day,” says Owoloja.
Their Johannesburg business prospered through a link to Quintessentially, a global luxury lifestyle company, known for its high net-worth clients.
With a little help from the National Empowerment Fund, West Chauffeurs increased its fleet from two cars to eight, after making more than R1 million ($108,800) in its second year.
They relocated from the central business district of Sandton to another affluent suburb, Melrose Arch. This opened up the business meetings market. The company had to swear its drivers to secrecy as many deals were struck on the road.
Towards the end of that year, an opportunity came to run the travel desk for two new five-star hotels in Cape Town but it all went downhill from there. The two found that they had expanded too quickly.
They had entered into unfamiliar territory, in an international tourist city that has well-established hotels. West Chauffeurs found itself exposed, a small business that relied too much on the hotels for guests for business. The two new hotels were unable to fill up enough rooms to secure business for West Chauffeurs. The Johannesburg office had to keep Cape Town afloat.
“For a small company, expansion should be managed very carefully. We were profitable in our first year, but we did not think through that move carefully. We expanded very quickly without the structures to manage the expansion in terms of cash flow, record keeping,” says Owoloja.
At the end of each month the business was short of around 65% of their costs, which they had to source from the profit made during the previous year.
“It dried up very quickly. We tried to get overdrafts, personal funds to pay salaries but it was quite difficult. We picked up heavy losses in Cape Town but yes those are lessons learnt. They were painful,” he adds with a chuckle.
Owoloja says a big mistake was for the company to go without a management account and financial statements for nearly a year.
But that’s all in the past now. In early 2011, West Chauffeurs packed up office in Cape Town and focused on business at its headquarters in Johannesburg, where the company was doing well.
They signed a contract to run the travel desk for the five-star African Pride’s Melrose Arch Hotel located in the trendy precinct. Again, they struggled with being too small and having to run a high occupancy hotel with demanding clients. The hotels patrons were skeptical about making use of their services because they were much smaller than established car rental companies.
Through it all, things started to look up. The company now turns over nearly $800,000 annually.
“We went from nothing to quite a bit. There’s this very nice feeling that comes with making things work,” says Owoloja.
West Chauffeurs currently has twelve cars and employs 17 drivers and consultants. They drive clients from First Bank of Nigeria, Liberty Life and Barclays, to mention but a few.
One of their biggest achievements was beating more established companies to drive members traveling with the British Lions during their rugby tour to South Africa in 2009.
The softly spoken Owoloja says they are wary of leaping without looking, the scars of the Cape Town run deep. For now, their plans are to grow other services within the West Chauffeur brand in Johannesburg and capture the leisure market.
Surely, when the time is right, the answer will be: “Yes”.

The perils of the “yes” business

Whether your Swiss timepiece is a statement accessory—an expensive piece of ticktockery that screams your success to the world—or acquired because you are in love with the high precision, micro-technologies beneath that expensive watch face; whether it is bought as an investment piece or as a once-off, customized piece of art, your watch determines who you are in the world.
The wheel of fortune has turned since the 1970s and 1980s, when the quartz movement nearly saw the demise of the 300-year-old Swiss watchmaking industry. Hand-wound mechanisms are now firmly back in the luxury watch repertoire.
More than 20 million Swiss francs ($21.2 million) were reportedly spent on posh watches in 2012. Not only is a luxury watch a valuable portable asset, which any bank manager would welcome but in today’s market, it has a real resale value.
Every year the competitive watch industry pushes the boundaries of technical function and precision in its iconic brands for the delight of the watch junkie. New refinements include thinner cases containing more parts, increasingly sophisticated complications, such as multi-time zone movements and perpetual calendars, and an increase in the use of Métiers d’Art, using materials like enamel, wood marquetry and gold. There is even a nod to the heritage and legacy of watchmaking—the pocket watch and minute repeaters.
What better showcase for all this than one of Switzerland’s premium watch shows, the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie (SIHH) at the Palexpo in Geneva?
This is the 23rd year that Richemont—founded by South African businessman Johann Rupert—has hosted this by-invitation-only haute horlogerie fair, which attracts more than 12,000 international retailers and brand representatives from the watch fraternity, as well as 1,200 watch journalists.
Despite the Palexpo’s rather unprepossessing, hangar-like appearance, the interior is set up as a series of elegant spaces, with cream walls, butter-colored leather couches and chairs, discreet lighting and chocolate-hued carpets. Entering each booth is like stepping into each brand’s signature boutique, complete with chandeliers.
Perfectly coiffed hostesses greet guests at the entrances as waiters serve food and beverages during the show’s five-day duration.
The dress code is chic business attire during the day for the back-to-back presentations and quiet understatement for the many glitzy parties and dinners. It is important for the brands to show how well they are doing; many vie for the title of best dressed.
Georges Kern—the CEO for three of the big brands at the fair, namely IWC, Baume &amp; Mercier and Roger Dubuis—heads up a marketing campaign that creates the biggest buzz around these brands. In fact, IWC has doubled its production since 2006.
Each year the IWC has a theme, this year it was ‘The Big Race’. To celebrate its completely remodeled 2013 Ingénieur watch collection in partnership with the Mercedes-Benz AMG Petronas Formula One team, the IWC booth was decked out like a testosterone-fuelled Formula One cockpit and attracted non-stop media attention.
The friends of the brand included Kevin Spacey, Victoria’s Secret models Karolina Kurková and Adriana Lima, Formula One driver Nico Rosberg, motorsport engineer Ross Brawn, football’s Rafael Medina, Luis Figo and actors Matthew Fox and Eric Dane, as well as other celebrities from the world of arts and sport.
This year’s ribbon-cutting ceremony took place at the whimsically decorated Roger Dubuis booth, which was dominated by a giant gold-crowned eagle bearing a key in its talons, and populated by medieval knights and a falconer, to honor the Excalibur collection. Extra window dressing was provided by three friends of the brand, Daphne Guinness, Scottish actor Gerard Butler and Tomer Sisley.
Another big buzz this year was the launch of Baume &amp; Mercier’s new Clifton range, named after Cape Town’s beach by the same name—the range is apparently favored by Johann Rupert himself. The collection is expected to do very well, especially in the American and African markets.
Art formed a big part of the fair and Montblanc displayed its Cutting Edge collection, showing interpretations of its iconic star logo. The Fondation de la Haute Horlogerie also exhibited timepieces dating back to the 15th century.
The new IWC Ingénieur watches carried the tagline “engineered for men”, but the big news this year was the lady’s watch. The new diamond clad Piaget Limelight Gala women’s watches were designed for bling bunnies, and the oldest horological house, Vacheron Constantin, brought out a completely new women’s range called the Malte Lady. Cartier also put emphasis on their new Crash watches.
Panerai is truly a collector’s brand because its production is so limited and this year the brand came up with some exciting new timepieces, including the Luminor Amagnetic which resists fields of up to 4,000 side amps per square meter. The P.9000 caliber is encased inside a soft iron cage to protect it from magnetic fields.
Iconic Swiss brand Jaeger-LeCoultre celebrated its 180th birthday in style, with an appearance by Charlie Chaplin’s granddaughter Carmen Chaplin who made a short film about time. Her grandfather’s watch, which was presented to him by the people of Switzerland when he sought refuge there in the 1950s, was on display and the brand brought out an entire Jubilee collection.
Asia might be the biggest investor in this market but emerging markets like Africa are beginning to show an interest in prestige timepieces.
South Africa has a small but healthy market for luxury watches and the local jewelry trade was well represented at this year’s fair, from Bellagios in Sandton City, which has a shop-in-shop for Roger Dubuis, to Christopher Greig of Charles Greig Jewelers, Jennifer and David Moss from Picot &amp; Moss, Schwartz Jewelers and Oresti Mavrodaris from Elegance Jewelers. The latest makes and models that they put in orders for at the SIHH will be finding their way onto their clients’ wrists within the next 18 months.

Invest In Time

“And the Oscar goes to&#8230;”.
Five little words that caused writer and director Bryan Buckley to draw a deep breath:
“When you hear those words&#8230; and you happen to be one of the five guys it could possibly go to, it is, in itself, a crazy thought. It simply just doesn’t seem real. All the films could have easily won that night. And mentally you know this going into the evening. If I didn’t think we had put everything we had into our film, perhaps I would have been disappointed in myself and thought about what we didn’t nail in the film when the winner [Curfew] was announced. But I knew this wasn’t the case. It just wasn’t our night,” says Buckley.
<div id="attachment_1690" style="width: 209px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1690" class="size-medium wp-image-1690" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/162620158-199x300.jpg" alt="" width="199" height="300" />Bryan Buckley and Mino Jarjoura with Harun and Ali Mohamed, on the red carpet</div>
He was in Los Angeles, California, at the 85th Academy Awards, where he was nominated for best live action short for ASAD—a tale of refugees, in Somalia. Sitting nervously by his side were the two leads, 14-year-old Harun Mohamed and his 12-year-old brother Ali. The day had flown by, moments before they were walking the red carpet alongside the A-listers—including Ben Affleck, Daniel Day-Lewis and Ang Lee—and doing interviews.
“The BBC was the first to interview the boys. Harun stepped forward to the microphone and began to talk about his journey in English. How far he had come, had never been so apparent. He and Ali were constantly asked what celeb they wanted to meet the most at the ceremony. And without question Harun would say Jackie Chan and Ali would say Jean-Claude Van Damme,” says Buckley.
It was a journey that began with the filming of ASAD in Africa.
Buckley is the last person you would expect to make a film about Somalia. His business is big-budget Super Bowl (American football) commercials for a quarter of a billion dollars with an audience of more than a million. Conversations with Somali refugees motivated him to create the short film with little commercial value or audience.
It all started in Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya, in 2010, where Buckley was shooting a documentary called No Autographs for the UN Human Right’s Council. He left with that feeling of hope in the face of despair. A year later he wrote ASAD.
The film was set in Somalia and shot in Cape Town. It tells the story of a young boy who must choose between life as a pirate or that of a humble fisherman. The entire cast was made up of refugees who had fled to South Africa.
Buckley says the biggest problem in producing the 18-minute short-film was overcoming the language barrier as both leads, Harun and Ali, were illiterate.
“We knew language, with the whole cast, was going to be a barrier by virtue that we were doing the entire film in Somali and I didn’t speak a single word of it. Right off the bat we enlisted in two Somali translators [who helped the boys memorize the script]&#8230; Both the boys are exceedingly bright. They picked up on things so quickly it was crazy. And then I’d act out some stuff and they would study it and follow. Always bringing their own twist. of course, like any Hollywood star would.”
The filming was taxing and Buckley struggled to shoot scenes with the rebels.
“There was just so much emotion there between them [the rebels] and the boys. It was quite clear this wasn’t the first time these refugees had handled guns. I kept thinking what horrible ghosts were haunting them after every take. And how bizarre [it was that] our cameras were recording every second of this nightmare.”
The international acclaim came with praise from Somali musician K’naan.
“He is truly a man who has supported Somalia and its people’s plight more than anyone I know. He said, ‘ASAD is an important film. It makes human the inaccurate caricature of Somalia, showing real people, a community and life beyond a land of pirates and warlords,’” he says.
The film won numerous awards at various international film festivals, including the Tribeca Film Festival and San Jose Film Festival. The Academy Awards nomination was the cherry on top but the leads almost didn’t make their big moment in Hollywood.
“The fact that they [Harun and Ali] didn’t have travel documents and that they were Somali refugees did not help matters. ASAD’s producer Mino Jarjoura worked around the clock with [South African producer] Rafiq Samsodien to get the kids there. It took government officials from both the US and South Africa, along with UNHCR to pull off the task. And they did so, in dramatic and perfect timing.”
Regardless of the outcome the team celebrated making it to the Oscars with a toast. After the ceremony they attended the prestigious Governor’s Ball.
Buckley may have walked away empty-handed but he and his two young leads stood tall for one of Africa’s untold stories.

From Mogadishu to Hollywood

It’s been some time since cars have been viewed strictly as a mode of transport; most consumers buy into a brand, rather than simply deciding which vehicle they need to shuttle them around on a daily basis.
Many prestigious manufacturers have branched out into creating clothing, luggage and other such items for brand-loyal customers, and some manufacturers have even extended their design expertise into unrelated fields. The aim here is less to do with pure profit but rather as a means to showcase their creativity and problem-solving techniques.
BMW Group is one of the few car companies in the world that has its own design studio that focuses on non-car related products. In 1995, BMW Group acquired Designworks USA and began looking at how the two facets could complement one another.
Creative solutions are also a hallmark of Porsche’s philosophy. Back in 1972, Ferdinand Alexander Porsche founded Porsche Design, with the aim of applying his company’s Bauhaus-inspired thinking to other impactful projects.
Michael Griffin, owner of the sole Porsche Design shop on the African continent, says one of his main aims is to educate the South African consumer that Porsche Design isn’t simply a case of putting logos on shirts or sunglasses. The success of the product range conceived by the luxury sports car manufacturer can be seen in the phenomenal sales achieved by the Siemens Breakfast Series. More than 1.3 million kettles were sold worldwide, which far exceeded the expected 100,000 units. Not only were the items aesthetically pleasing and exclusive, they also functioned well.
Probably the greatest, most inspirational and complex creations ever undertaken by an automotive manufacturer is Ferrari World on Yas Island in Abu Dhabi, the largest of its kind, covering an unprecedented 200,000m2. It was officially opened on November 4, 2010, and can fit seven football fields head-to-toe. If placed upright, it would be the tallest man-made structure, at 300 floors. The theme park also houses the fastest rollercoaster ride, Formula Rossa and allows adrenaline junkies the chance to experience the same G-forces as they would in a Formula One car.
Not to be outdone in the architectural realm, Porsche is looking at creating its own Design Tower, a $560 million structure that will be built in Sunny Isles Beach, Florida in the States. It will be the world’s first condominium complex with elevators that’ll take residents up to their units while they sit in their cars.
Ferrari has famously commissioned several vehicle designs from the world-renowned Pininfarina. Founded in 1930 by builder Battista “Pinin” Farina, the company has branched out into producing sporting goods, furniture, equipment, machinery, consumer products and even tried their hand at packaging.
BMW has become involved in remarkable creations such as the Intermarine 55 Yacht. This luxury vessel draws on the inspiration and insight carried over from the group’s knowledge of cars; it features stainless steel air intakes and a rear wing spoiler.
Partnering up with the United States Olympic Committee, BMW North America produced a two-man bobsled that raced in the Fédération Internationale de Bobsleigh et de Tobogganing (FIBT) World Cup in Austria on January 19. The Bavarian car manufacturer paired lightweight materials with optimized aerodynamics.
Other genres that BMW Group Designworks USA has forayed into run the gamut of consumer electronics, environments and medical.
In addition to making writing instruments, luggage, smoking items, sunglasses and watches, Porsche Design has helped manufacture products such as bottle packaging, dentist chairs and fetal sonar scanners.
The company originally came up with the first black chronograph watch in 1972, which sold 50,000 times more timepieces than Rolex. Six years later, their exclusive sunglasses range went on to shift an unprecedented six million units worldwide, not to mention the range favored by Yoko Ono that was produced in 1979.
While the sale of cars is ultimately the biggest money-spinner for these companies, non-automotive revenues generate an increasingly impressive profit. In 2012 for example, Porsche’s worldwide car sales topped out at €3.02 billion ($3.9 billion). By comparison, sales stemming from Porsche Design hit the €100 million ($130 million) mark, that’s a jump from €79.8 million ($103.7 million) in 2011.

Brands In The Fast Lane

On March 1, 2001, a small bank opened in South Africa with the aim of providing easy and affordable banking services to its customers. Attracted by this alluring promise, in no time people were queuing up to open a Capitec account. Today, the bank has more than four million customers; clearly CEO Riaan Stassen’s move from the liquor industry to banking has been a fortuitous one.
Born in Cape Town, Stassen earned a Bachelor in Commerce Honors degree from the University of Stellenbosch. He then did his articles and CA qualification at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) before spending 14 years in the liquor industry.
The course of his career changed in 1995, when Stassen was asked to reengineer Boland Bank, a conservative regional bank established in 1900. After South African retail billionaire Christo Wiese bought Boland, it merged with Natal Building Society (NBS) and Board of Executors (BoE).
Stassen spent five years at BoE Bank, during which time he came up with a different banking concept: a retail bank for mid-to-lower income people. According to Stassen, the incumbent banks were failing in four areas: accessibility, affordability, simplicity and personal service. He left BoE with his management team and a goal to succeed where others had failed.
Stassen says that South Africa’s existing banks had never transformed to align with the cultural diversity of the country.
“So we saw that as quite a key opportunity for us to create that cement with our customer base,” he says.
Stassen and his team were approached by PSG Holdings, a company owned by South African millionaire investor Jannie Mouton, to manage PSG Specialized Lending, its micro-lending company focused on low-income customers. The name was changed to Capitec and the bank listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in 2002.
It was no easy road for Capitec. The start-up capital was R250 million ($28 million), it listed with net assets of just under R400 million ($45 million), at R2 (around 2 US cents) a share. Within three months its market capitalization dropped to just under R50 million ($5.6 million).
The first few years of Capitec’s life were dedicated to developing an application platform that could handle high-volume, low-value transactions, efficiently and at a lower cost.
The system is run from Bellville—a small town just outside of Cape Town. From there the bank runs the administration that usually takes place at branch level, shifting the branch focus to its customers. The last fundamental of the technology component is the ability to conduct all processes in real time.
The bank uses fingerprint biometrics to counter fraud and is currently testing new ATMs fitted with the system. Capitec is also the first bank in South Africa to allow coin deposits at ATMs, further evidence of its focus on low-income customers.
Stassen says other South African banks are rife with high costs, lack of transparency and confusing jargon.
“We believe what a person needs from a bank is to move money, to park money and to get money,” he says.
Capitec’s solution to this is its Global One account—a single account that can be used for transactions, including online purchases, as a savings vehicle and as a way to apply for credit. Customers can get up to R230,000 ($25,700) in cash within minutes of applying for a loan. This amount is determined by an affordability assessment based on their monthly cash flow and is repayable over one to 84 months, also based on personal ability. The interest paid, 17% to 28%, also depends on the individual’s credit profile.
A big bone of contention in South Africa has been unsecured lending. In the past, borrowers were required to secure a loan with collateral. With unsecured lending, clients do not need this security, “In South Africa nowadays unsecured lending has become a swearword, and that’s absolute nonsense,” says Stassen.
He points out that as far as Capitec is concerned, it’s not about the assets a person has, but their cash flow.
“There are 20 million active credit clients in South Africa. There are 1.8 million credit clients who have any form of home finance, a mortgage grant. Only 1.8 [million]. So what are the other 18 million people doing to improve their standard of living?” asks Charl Nel, the head of strategic communications at Capitec.
Few deny the fact that South Africa, like most of the world, is a consumption-driven society as opposed to a saving one, or that defaults are part of the territory, but as it currently stands, over 95% of Capitec’s book is current. Despite citizens’ household debt often being greater than disposable income, according to Capitec’s interim results from September, its number of arrears had decreased to 4.4%.
“The profile of our credit client is definitely changing as we are seeing new credit clients with higher income levels attracted to our offer,” the interim report says.
According to a report by South Africa’s National Credit Regulator, unsecured credit in the first quarter of 2012 grew by 49.4% year-on-year. This is a rate far higher than any of the other types of credit.
Capitec has millions of customers, and Stassen attributes the bank’s success to widespread discontent with the big four banks among their customer base, as well as its strong proposition to customers. His is the first bank in South Africa to be open on Sundays, a move that persuaded one of its large competitors, Nedbank, to follow suit.
“We had to think a lot on our feet. We change things a lot. What we thought was going to work had to be changed slightly. And often in a very old, stale, established organization you get resistance and that’s dangerous because people kind of trip up the process,” says Nel.
How does the bank manage to make money and a success out of low-cost banking, especially when they have kept their prices unchanged for the past three years? As most business minds know, you can only undercut your competitors for so long before it becomes costly. Stassen says Capitec could only be priced significantly lower than their opponents if they took smaller margins or lowered their cost structure. Their solution appears to be running the bank like a production line.
“Stassen is an exceptional CEO. One of the best that I’ve come across because since he joined Capitec we’re really focused. They developed a great computer system and it’s a great success,” says Mouton.
Stassen admits that they were initially ignored by the bigger banks because they started off as a micro lending organization. When they began to look beyond this; their competitors believed their primary focus would be on the unbanked and the lower income market. Then around two years ago the more established banks started to take notice.
Capitec now has around 9% of South Africa’s banking market share and their most important objective is to attract primary banking accounts, those into which salaries are directly deposited. The bank also plans to launch a credit card at the end of this year.
The interim results stated that Capitec’s transaction fee income for the first six months of the financial year grew by 61% to R583 million ($65 million) year-on-year. Headline earnings per share grew by 35% to R7.02 ($0.80). Income from credit was R3.6 million ($403,000), which the bank says is due to growth in the unsecured credit market.
The management team at Capitec had been part of a share incentive scheme, allowing them to buy into the company. Last year, there were numerous reports and speculation as to Capitec’s health and suggestions that its captain, Stassen, was abandoning ship, and that other executives were offloading their shares too. When asked about it Stassen says: “It was very bad reporting”.
The truth of the matter is that Stassen sold most of the shares in his own name but that 95% of his investment in the bank is held by a company in his family trust. The private investment company owns more than R400 million ($44.8 million) worth of shares.
“I believe it’s extremely dangerous for executives to be over-extended to the company they run,” says Stassen.
He says this is because, when executives become over-exposed, they start making short-term decisions and manipulate numbers to protect the share price.
Last year, Capitec sought to raise funds through a rights issue, which increased the bank’s capital base by R2.25 billion ($252 million). The funds were for the extension of the branch network, with 55 to 75 new branches proposed for this year, and to increase lending.
Earlier this year PSG sold off some off its stake in Capitec to repay debt incurred in the purchasing of approximately R724 million ($81 million) from the rights issue last year. PSG’s stake in Capitec has dropped from 32.2% to 28.5%, and the company says it will not be selling off any more of its shares.
Then in February, the South African Public Prosecutor confirmed that it will launch a formal investigation into a black economic empowerment deal, from 2011, resulting in a consortium with ties to the country’s ruling party acquiring nearly R1 billion ($122 million) worth of Capitec shares. Nel says they will cooperate fully with the investigation.
Capitec is currently focusing on South Africa but will start identifying opportunities in other countries on the continent. Its long-term goal has always been to internationalize its banking model. Infrastructure is however a concern as the bank is highly reliant on technology. As the fastest growing retail bank in South Africa for individuals, winner of Africa’s Top 100 JSE Companies for the second time, forging into an under-tapped market and making the big dogs follow suit, could mean Capitec will lose its underdog title.
Goliath may not be down and out yet, but he is certainly taking notes on David.

A Plucky David Banking  On Beating Goliaths

Being on top of your game is key to being successful in business. But when trading internationally, there is an additional factor that is at play: cultural differences. Understanding these cultural differences can have a serious impact on business and may be the deciding factor for signing or losing a deal.
Bunga Kiala knows well about such pitfalls. As an Angolan working for a German company doing business in Africa, he is at the coalface of juggling two fundamentally different business cultures. Kiala, who grew up in Angola but has lived in Germany since the age of 16, had to quickly learn that, for better or worse, many stereotypes about the two nations contain an element of truth. And that knowing how to handle them can open many doors.
“The business environments in Germany and African countries are completely different,” explains Kiala.
They are often the reason why potential business opportunities fall through. There are two common deal-breakers, says Kiala: being late for a meeting, which Germans interpret as being unreliable. And focusing on camaraderie instead of research, academic credentials and skill.
“To Germans, only the quality of the product counts. Liking somebody is not essential,” he explains.
Those were tough lessons to learn for Kiala, who came to Germany as a teenager in the early 1990s, to escape Angola’s three-decade-long civil war. After growing up in a children’s home and attending high school in the city of Karlsruhe, he trained as an electrician and started to work for the city’s public utility company. But Kiala wanted more from life.
“The dilemma was that I didn’t have the money to study. So I continued working and went to a technical college in the evenings, for six years, to become an electrical engineer.”
His efforts paid off. After his graduation, Kiala was soon promoted, first to the position of project manager, leading a team of 40 people. His ambition and drive were also noticed by the competition. In 2007, SebaKMT, a Bamberg-based developer and manufacturer of measuring equipment that locates faults and leaks in power, water and communication networks, headhunted him.
“Like many other German companies, SebaKMT didn’t have an Africa division. For a long time, European countries believed that only South Africa and the Maghreb had economic potential, while the rest of the continent wasn’t deemed worth the investment. But in early 2000, the thinking somewhat changed,” says Kiala.
Showing impressive economic growth figures of up to 10%, African countries gained interest in the eyes of foreign investors. According to International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts, the future continues to look rosy for the continent. Seven of the world’s ten fastest-growing economies will be in sub-Saharan Africa by 2015, the IMF predicts, thereby soon outweighing Asia’s economic growth. It was this trend that gave a boost to Kiala’s career.
“SebaKMT decided to explore the African market,” he says.
As SebaKMT’s new sales director for Africa, Kiala, then in his early 30s, set up a new export division from scratch. It was a challenging task, he says, but it helped to have a product that met growing demand.
“Few African countries manage their water and electricity networks efficiently,” says Kiala.
In most nations, 40% to 60% of treated water gets lost on the way to the customer. Finding leaks quickly can therefore save millions of dollars. The same goes for faulty electricity and communications networks.
In less than five years, he brought SebaKMT’s equipment to 25 African countries, practically half of the continent. It is during those trips, he says, that he has to draw on one of his most valuable skills: understanding two very different business cultures. It all begins with the first encounter, when Germans’ famous virtue, punctuality, collides with the African thinking that good things take time and making someone wait is a sign of authority.
“It’s common to have an appointment at 2PM but your business partner won’t appear for another hour or so. It has even happened to me that my meetings were postponed for two or three days,” he says.
In a German business context, that’s an unthinkable scenario. And so, more often than not, Kiala finds himself in the difficult situation of having to straddle the divide: showing patience for “African time”, while trying to placate his fervent German bosses.
“It’s a different mentality. You have to understand it and treat people accordingly.”
It doesn’t end here. Who doesn’t understand Germans’ need for surety might perceive their let’s-get-down-to-business attitude as offensive.
“Small talk is kept to a minimum. Nobody asks how your family is doing,” Kiala explains.
And those who hope to seal a deal with a handshake will get a rude wake-up call, too.
“Germans are incredibly accurate. Their business culture is about careful planning and sticking by the rules. They want 100% assurance.”
That comes with detailed written communication, which is passed back and forth repeatedly before a contract is signed.
After 20 years of living in Germany, Kiala can offer sound advice on how to deal with Europe’s powerhouse. He explains it in true, three-point German style: “First, it’s all about competence. You need to have the best product, be able to offer maintenance plans and assistance.”
Second comes preparedness.
“Be professional. Have an excellent presentation ready. Know your product inside out.”
And third—it can’t be stated often enough—be on time.
It might seem to be hard work, but it’s worth the effort, says Kiala, who over the years has come to prefer Germans’ conservative approach to doing business.
“In return, you get longer-term investments, stable economic activity and a business environment that is separate from political power and friendships. Germans don’t take a lot of risk. Everything is double secured. As a result, you don’t see big losses, even in difficult economic times.”
Kiala didn’t always think this way. When he first arrived in Karlsruhe, it took him time to appreciate the German mentality. He struggled with people’s reserved attitude, which was so different from the outgoing nature of the people in his home country, Angola.
“Germans take time to open up. But once you get warm, it’s really a good friendship. It has substance,” he says.
He stresses that this also translates to the business environment. The initial approach is cautious, but once a business relationship is built, it is sturdy.
His appreciation for German culture has led to some snide remarks from his countrymen.
“In Angola, people call me ‘the German’ because I have adopted a different way of life,” Kiala jokes.
He believes it’s less about losing his roots, it’s about making the best of both worlds.
“I try to pick the good things out of each culture,” he explains.
In his professional life, this has certainly stood him in good stead. And it’s something he plans to hold on to for a while: “I might go back to Africa one day. But for now, Germany is the place for me”.

Explaining The Unthinkable  To The Germans

Steadily, slowly, step by careful step, the three greying legal heads made their way to the reunion at Rivonia. Their progress was as deliberate and methodical as the defense they led with razor sharp precision in their finest hour, in court half a century ago.
Joel Joffe, George Bizos and Denis Kuny are the survivors of the legal team that defended accused number one, Nelson Mandela, and his comrades in facing the death penalty over 221 charges of sabotage. They are all in their 80s, two of them are still working; Bizos and Kuny, who both live in Johannesburg, tackle human rights cases. Multi-millionaire Joffe is retired in the English countryside of Wiltshire after a lifetime of legal work in London and the setting up of Hambro Life Insurance.
Joffe, who wanted to get out of apartheid South Africa, was about to emigrate to Australia when he was asked to be the instructing attorney for the defense in the Rivonia Trial at the Palace of Justice in Pretoria. The trial cost £29,000 pounds, in 1964, but the defense team chose not to take the money they had earned.
“He slept on a mattress on the floor with his wife; his furniture had gone to Australia. He was persuaded to stay. They lived on as little as possible so the defense fund could go as far as possible… What Joel showed is that courage takes many different forms, here was a lawyer who wanted out of apartheid and yet stayed to uphold the principles of justice for people who had no hope of surviving, at a time when no other lawyer would take it on. That is courage,” says accused number three Denis Goldberg.
Kuny defended fellow lawyer Jimmy Kantor, accused number 12 in the trial, who had nothing to do with the case but was scarred by it. Ludicrous evidence against Kantor, thrown out by the judge, included that he was seen feeding the chickens at Liliesleaf; therefore he must have known about the sabotage plotted there. Kantor was acquitted but his legal practice was destroyed and he went to an early grave.
The reunion was to launch the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the police raid in Rivonia, which sparked the world-famous trial. It was a winter’s afternoon on July 11, 1963 that a delivery van pulled up outside a thatched cottage at the back of Liliesleaf—a safe house used by underground activists. The van was a Trojan horse. Inside were 14 policemen and a dog. Inside the cottage was almost the entire leadership of the South African underground movement holding a meeting, including Walter Sisulu, Ahmed Kathrada and Govan Mbeki. The police jumped out of the van, surrounded the building and rushed the door. Mbeki and Kathrada tried to escape through the window but were hounded down. The police handcuffed the activists in a circle outside the cottage and let the dog snap at them. They couldn’t believe they had caught so many activists in one place.
“We have hit the jackpot!” said an excited officer-in-charge over the police radio.
Joffe, Bizos and Kuny stood at around the same spot where that triumphant statement was made, as they posed for photographs on a warm February evening. They recalled memories of the trial of the century that proved the turning point for South Africa. The trial saw the words of Mandela and his fellow accused fly around the world changing millions of minds. Overnight, the saboteur criminals were seen more as freedom fighters; the Benjamin Franklins of Africa—in the words of Bizos.
Three of these words that winged their way drew smiles on the night. Bizos, the strategist in the legal team, says he made a slight change to the famous speech on behalf of all the accused that went down in history.
“It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die,” Mandela concluded from the dock to a dramatic silence in court, according to eyewitnesses, in which you could hear a pin drop.
“I felt the speech was too strong as it was. It was an invitation to the judge to hang everyone and make them martyrs, so I recommended we put in the words ‘If needs be,’” says Bizos.
Joffe—a former chairman of Oxfam, was made Lord Joffe by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair—remembered Mandela’s reaction to the change.
“I read my speech and there seems to be an error, he said. It is my sentence and I want it back!” chuckled Joffe.
On a more serious note, Joffe recalled the handwritten note by Mandela, now in a museum, in which he wrote out his last words, if he were to hang.
“This handwritten note said: ‘I apologize for nothing, I was fighting for justice and there’s no sacrifice I am not prepared to make in the cause of justice,’ that was Mandela, faced with hanging, no fear,” says Joffe.
The lawyers have 150 years legal experience between them. They say they would do it all again and support the new South Africa, with reservations.
“In South Africa today, sadly the majority of the population is living in poverty and unemployment and one believes there is much more that government could do about that and then these problems with corruption, incompetence and efficiency would disappear,” says Joffe.
“I know that there are people, including me, who are disappointed with some of the failures of the government, some of which were very serious and unnecessary, but I don’t go along with the idea that nothing has changed. Things have changed in relation to education, health and the professions,” says Bizos.
All three are as unassuming as they are sage. You would not blink if you saw them in your corner shop buying a loaf of bread.
When I double checked with Joffe, whether his title was Lord or Baron, he smiled.
“Ag, just call me Joel.”

Three Men You Can  Bet Your Life On

The polls were open, business was closed. Fourteen million Kenyans queued up across the country to cast their votes on March 4 in what many feared would be another violent election.
For most entrepreneurs it was far from business as usual. The Monday was declared a public holiday just after month-end when shoppers normally spend fistfuls of their hard-earned shillings. The violence of 2007 was fresh in many minds and for days the capital, Nairobi, was a ghost town.
“I remember very well December 27, 2007. When the problems arose it was just around the 31st of December, we had actually come to work. It was business as usual. Suddenly we had some police officers who came into the store and said we need to shut the store and go home. There is violence coming our way,” says Karim Fazal chairman of Little Red—a Nairobi luxury designer store.
Within the hour, on that fateful December day, a mob clashed with police just outside the store in Nairobi’s Kimathi Street, says Fazal. He was trapped in his store for nearly an hour with his workers, customers and passers-by, who were trying to shelter from the violence.
The unrest spread and flared into ethnic violence that left more than 1,200 people dead and 600,000 homeless. Rioters destroyed property and productivity collapsed. The country’s economy came to a standstill and the GDP growth for 2008 fell to the country’s lowest ever, 1.7%, on the cusp of the world economic crisis.
This time around, Fazal, along with other entrepreneurs, took expensive political risk insurance cover.
“The insurance charged us two shillings for every thousand shillings worth of goods and two shillings for loss of business which I took out for three months,” says Fazal.
At the very least, Kenyan insurance companies banded together to offer cheaper political risk insurance for business.
“Loss of business will not just be prevalent to the first two days, not the day for voting and not the following one. This will carry on until we get the election results out and that the results are accepted by all parties concerned until we see normalcy returning to the business environment,” says Fazal.
Kenya’s Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) promised free, fair and secure elections. The voting was so, bar violent clashes in Mombasa that claimed 19 lives—including four police officers. The announcement of results, in a two-horse race between presidential candidates Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga, also proved peaceful.
“There seems to be a lack of security in the CBD, which will then lead to thugs taking advantage of the situation, which has been prevalent in Nairobi in the past few days because of the police being deployed at the polling centers to make sure things are peaceful. So in that way, we felt that there was lack of security,” says Fazal.
It took six hours for Fazal to cast his vote on March 4. His dream: the election of a leader who will bring peace and unity to Kenya; one who will also foster business.
“When you take the insecurity, the weariness and trepidations that we feel pre- and post-elections that should not be the case in this country. I am hoping for the next elections we will not have to look at this ever again,” concludes Fazal.
Millions of Kenyans are likely to agree.

NO Business As Usual

Mary Broh stands at a dusty intersection on Tubman Boulevard, squints and surveys the scene with two sets of spectacles balanced on her head, one pair perched on her nose. Broh’s solid black Chevrolet Tahoe, with a number plate reading Mayor 1, waits by the curb as the acting city mayor paces back and forth.
“This is a special project, I need you here!” she snaps into a walkie-talkie.
“Don’t touch the paint!” she tells someone moving near the small green concrete fruit and vegetable kiosk that she is here to launch.
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Liberians jammed in vans and beaten-up yellow cabs, or cruising past in SUVs, turn their heads to see what the city’s most controversial public official is up to. Dressed in a gold lapa jacket, with her fine dreadlocks pinned with champagne diamante clips, and a clunky watch strapped to her right wrist, Broh does not look like your typical city mayor; nor does she act like one.
Broh points to a small concrete zinc-roofed building with an X marking its wall.
“Someone find out who this place is for! I’ll demolish it!”
Workers in blue uniforms wielding rakes and cutlasses arrive in the back of a pickup and sweep the area at breakneck speed. Petty traders on a nearby street pack up their goods and flee; a young boy runs holding a plastic chair above his head.
“Liberian people are too dirty!” she exclaims.
After the formalities the mayor jumps into her Tahoe and hares off.
Weeks later Broh was engulfed in a scandal that seemed the stuff of a Hollywood action movie. She had rescued her friend, the Superintendent of Montserrado County Grace Kpahn from the moldy walls of Monrovia’s South Beach prison, after Kpahn was ordered behind bars by the national legislature for failing to implement a legislative mandate concerning misappropriation of the county development fund.
The legislature branded the pair “fugitives” and voted for their arrest and dismissal. Liberian president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, suspended both officials indefinitely, but citizens and the legislature were skeptical that Sirleaf would take any serious action against Broh, her longtime friend. After all, Sirleaf pushed through Broh’s appointment in 2009 despite the fact that the Senate twice rejected her nomination for mayor, though Broh could only hold the title of “acting mayor” due to the Senate’s disapproval.
The Ministry of Justice charged Broh with “obstructing government operation and disorderly conduct”; and the legislature ordered the pair to be incarcerated for 30 days, in a separate case that went all the way to the Supreme Court. Days later, Broh was met by hundreds of demonstrators gathered at the Temple of Justice, who attempted to make a citizen’s arrest. Broh was slapped and kicked by some protestors. The police dispersed the crowd.
When contacted by FORBES AFRICA for comment, Mayor Broh said she had been advised not to give interviews.
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This is not the first time Broh has come to blows with the legislature or the public. Broh drew ire when she slapped a prominent senator’s assistant across the face, which led the legislature to pass a vote of no confidence and order her arrest for failing to appear to offer an explanation for her actions. Broh claimed the woman had publicly insulted her. The legislature called her a rebel.
Broh’s critics in the political establishment say she is rude, arrogant and untouchable because of her close relationship with the president, who gave her the nickname ‘the General.’ The two met in New York in the 1990s. Broh has been the president’s special projects coordinator, the director of the passport division at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and deputy managing director for administration at the National Port Authority.
Broh, now in her sixties, lived in the United States for 33 years. She worked for a children’s wear manufacturer for 12 years, then for the toy division at Marvel Comics, managing shipping, logistics and distribution, where she kept long hours and shuffled on the subway between Middle Village, Queens and Manhattan in New York.
“If you made one mistake there would be a chain effect… everything had to be synchronized. That’s New York and you know everything is fast and I enjoy it and that’s what I bring here.”
Broh moves through Monrovia as though she is commander-in-chief of a dysfunctional assembly line.
Broh’s supporters view her as an eccentric rebel with a cause. Secretary general of the Liberia Chamber of Commerce Massa R. Lansanah says that Broh’s work has had an enormous impact on the city and made it more attractive to international investors.
“No male or female would be able to do her work. She gets into the gutters, she acts crazy but her impact is positive,” says Lansanah.
But, civil society claims Broh is creating further divisions between the rich and poor.
“She disrupts places and destroys things by instinct and that is very dangerous,” says Abdullai Kamara head of the Center for Media Studies and Peace Building.
Bestman Toe, president of The Slum Dwellers Association of Liberia says that while the city must be developed, the Monrovia City Corporation and the Ministry of Public Works, headed by Minister Samuel Kofi Woods, has failed the urban poor. Toe claims that 70% of the 1.5 million people living in Monrovia, many of who migrated during the war, live in slums.
Back at headquarters, the acting mayor sits behind an iPad at the end of an oval table in her dark, wood-paneled office. She is meeting with World Bank consultants who have been hired to help rebuild the capital city.
“We have urban growth we cannot contain and we don’t want more slums; we want to create a productive, resilient and inclusive city,” she says.
The consultants leave and Broh frantically prepares for a radio show. Three young women flit around the room searching for documents. Broh complains about her office assistants being sluggish and tells me to report on it.
She walks with swift steps down the marble corridors of city hall, her leopard print slingbacks clacking. She pulls open office doors and tells a few departments that their work has to be up to scratch because there is a journalist in the house.
“I want a clean, green city, but the people are against me!” she says as we shuffle down the back staircase.
Outside, men and women from the General Services Department sit with half-annoyed half-puzzled looks on their faces.
“I shut them down because they are inefficient,” she says.
We drive through the streets of Monrovia, past the executive mansion that is under repair, and down Camp Johnson Road. Broh’s eyes dart as she points to imperfections in the urban landscape that rolls past: rubbish on the street, buildings with faded paint and moldy exteriors, petty traders and people cooking fried plantain and kala on the footpath.
“When I don’t come on the street there is a lot of nonsense going on,” says Broh.
As the Mayor walks up to the studio of Radio Monrovia, she points to clothes drying on the ground of a construction site and market stands that she says must go. People stand outside the front of the store and begin to shuffle things off the street. Broh calls for a team to come in and clean up the area and walks up to the studio.
On air, she addresses criticism of the demolitions undertaken before the UN High Level Panel on the post-2015 development agenda that was held in Monrovia in February, she says: “They were selling their coal, they were bringing their children to bathe there, they had their slop buckets all lined up, they were brushing their teeth, bathing upfront… on the main street. Can you imagine that? Where did you ever see this?”
As Broh leaves the radio station she orders her staff to open a grubby garage, where marketers have hidden their tables and stools. A heavy man piles them together and kicks them in. She orders them to smash down a rusty roof that juts from a wall. A stout elderly woman splashes water on the ground and haggard old man runs back and forth with a small broom.
“All of these people here are illegal aliens,” she says.
A crowd gatherers around her.
“If you clean your community, I’ll respect you. Certain people can’t live in the city. You have the right to be in a city, but you can’t turn this place into a ghetto,” she says
A few days later, I asked Broh about a particular book among those lined up on her immaculate desk, From Third World to First: The Singapore Story written by Singapore’s first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. She opens the book to a photograph of Yew sweeping the streets of Singapore in his early days as a politician. Broh says she doesn’t have political aspirations, but the picture illustrates how public officials ought to behave: they should get their hands dirty.
“I find myself playing the role of janitor-in-chief,” she says.
While Broh was once lauded for her efforts to clean the city, public opinion has turned against her.
Kaifala Losene Sayon, a 34-year-old university student who has worked in Waterside market for the past 10 years acknowledges the impact of Broh’s work.
“[T]here was dirty water, no garbage collection, and no one painted their shops, Mary Broh has made 80 percent of central Monrovia clean,” he says.
But even Sayon says Broh must go.
“She don’t respect nobody’s rights. People close their shops when they see her. I will be happy if she is dismissed,” he says.
At the conclusion of writing this article a press release from the executive mansion stated Broh had turned in her resignation. Sirleaf, in a carefully-worded nationwide address, acknowledged Broh’s contribution to Monrovia and announced that Broh would be leading a project to create a market complex for women with a playground and school in the neighboring city of Paynesville.
“Mary’s methods may not have pleased everyone but there can be very little argument that she got the job done,” says Sirleaf.
I thought about how quickly Broh’s fortunes had turned.
“Nobody will dislodge me. They will not make it, I am here to stay,” she had said defiantly on the radio.
While Broh’s legacy will be contested on the city streets for months, perhaps even years to come, she is an acting city mayor the citizens of Monrovia will never forget.

Tag: April 2013

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