And the Oscar for best supporting actress goes to…”
The camera panned across five nervous nominees: Jennifer Lawrence for American Hustle; June Squibb for Nebraska; Julia Roberts for August: Osage County, Sally Hawkins for Blue Jasmine and newcomer, Lupita Nyong’o for 12 Years a Slave.
Last year’s best supporting actor, Christoph Waltz, was on stage at Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles at Hollywood’s night of the year – the 86th Academy Awards.
Lawrence was also a favorite for her role of Rosalyn Rosenfeld in American Hustle, but it was not to be. In a blaze of emotion, up stepped a daughter of Kenya. It was March 2, 75 years after Hattie McDaniel became the first black person to win an Academy Award for her role in Gone With The Wind. In more than seven decades, a mere seven black women have won in either the Best Actress or Best Supporting Actress categories; and only three hailed from Africa.
“Lupita Nyong’o is already an African icon, not just for what she has achieved with her remarkable win at the Academy Awards, but more importantly for what she has almost overnight come to symbolize, the undeniable truth that African women are increasingly charting their own course,” says Biola Alabi, Managing Director of M-Net in Africa.
“Here is a beautiful black woman, comfortable in her own skin, clearly highly educated, who can champion the next generation of African talent; she is a blessing to Kenya and the continent and long may she prosper. From where I sit, it is an absolute truth that the lead performances were Kenyan and Nigerian – I know its trendy to call Chiwetel Ejiofor black British but he is an Ibo boy and we claim him. However, perhaps African countries can begin to understand and appreciate the nobility of the higher arts of song, dance, theater and film and invest and support them… I would have loved to see her shout out Kenya and say something in Swahili but, hey, you can’t have it all,” says entrepreneur Obi Asika, the Chairman of Social Media Week Lagos.
What a difference six months makes. Back then, 31-year-old Nyong’o was a struggling unknown in Hollywood who lived lean and carried her own clothes.
The role that was to change her life, cast her alongside London-born Nigerian, Ejiofor, in a film based on the 1853 memoir by Solomon Northup – the tale of a free man kidnapped into slavery.
Steve McQueen cast Nyong’o three weeks before she graduated from Yale School of Drama, after a chance audition in New York. Her manager had the script ready for another client, but when Nyong’o was asked to read, McQueen was keen on her playing Patsey. It went to a second audition with the casting director.
“It was a one-hour, very grueling audition. Then I was shortlisted and invited to Louisiana to audition with Steve about two weeks later. So it was three auditions in three different states,” she says.
Filled with excitement she phoned her father, Peter Anyang’ Nyong’o, a professor back in Nairobi, to tell him the news that she was going to be in a film with Brad Pitt.
“My father said he had never heard of him, but he was glad I had finally got a job,” says Nyong’o.
It has been a long and winding journey that began in the gentle world of amateur dramatics. It was with the Pheonix Players in Nairobi that Nyong’o took her first tender steps in Shakespeare.
Drama teacher, Ian Mbugua, who ran the Phoenix Players for 19 years, remembers it well.
“Lupita first came to us as a student from Rusinga School. She was brought by her father Professor Anyang’ Nyong’o who had obviously seen her talent. Nyongo and his wife Dorothy were very supportive of the theater and used to bring young Lupita to productions. He left her in the capable hands of James Falkland who put her as Juliet alongside George Mumbai, who played Romeo,” says Mbugua.
“Needless to say she gave a sterling performance… I was very impressed by her parent’s support. At a time when parents wanted their kids to study medicine, law, engineering, the Nyongos supported her dream to be an actress. She always approached rehearsals and performances with the seriousness they deserved. She was very eloquent and had wonderful stage presence. She was a passionate actress. Off-stage she had a great sense of humor and was always quick to laugh.”
“We remember how brilliantly she played Juliet in Romeo and Juliet at the Phoenix Theatre, at the age of 14 years; how she cracked our ribs during St. Mary’s School plays, or at the British High Commission, when as a teenager, she played Natalya in Anton Chekhov’s The Proposal,” says her mother, Dorothy Nyong’o.
Nyong’o emigrated to the United States 10 years ago, where she earned a degree in film and theater studies from Hampshire College. In her summer break, she headed back to Africa where she worked on the production crew of Mira Nair’s The Namesake. In another Nairobi summer, she served as a production assistant on the set of The Constant Gardener starring Ralph Fiennes.
“Ralph Fiennes was a pivotal influence on me,” she told the New York Post. “He asked me, ‘So what is it you want to do?’ I very shyly, timidly admitted I wanted to be an actor. He sighed, and said, ‘Lupita, only be an actor if you feel there is nothing else in the world you want to do – only do it if you feel you cannot live without acting.’”
The second of six children, Nyong’o was born in Mexico City, where her father, a politician in Kenya, had fled to following the disappearance of his brother in difficult political times. The Nyong’o family hails from the Luo people in western Kenya, like Barack Obama’s father. When Nyong’o was less than a year old, her parents moved back to Kenya, where her father is now a senator representing Kisumu County; her mother is the managing director of the Africa Cancer Foundation. Her parents sent her back to Mexico, at the age of 16, to learn Spanish.
Fast forward to the Oscars, Nyong’o, who sports short kinky hair and a pale blue Prada dress, a color she says reminds her of Nairobi, picked up the award for one of the great moments in movie history. The moment when the sadistic cotton plantation owner Edwin Epps, played by Michael Fassbender, whips Patsey near to death; when it becomes unbearable, he forces her friend Solomon to take over.
“It doesn’t escape me for one moment that so much joy in my life is thanks to so much pain in someone else’s, and so I want to salute the spirit of Patsey for her guidance,” says a tearful Nyong’o on Oscar night.
What is next for Kenya’s first Oscar winner? Her next role is in a thriller set on an international flight, with Liam Neeson, that opened in February. It is likely to sell well in Nairobi where a whole new generation of young Kenyan actresses are learning their lines for the amateur stage with one eye on Lupita and the other on the future.

Lupitamania!

<h6>SHERYL SANDBERG</h6>
<h6>$1.05 billion</h6>
<h6>US, Self-made</h6>
<h6>Age: 44</h6>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-6121" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Apr-May-032-035-FLIST-Billionaires-001-188x300.jpg" alt="" width="188" height="300" />
In the world of self-made, hoodie-wearing technology billionaires, Sheryl Sandberg has pulled off something improbable: She has joined their ranks without founding her own company or writing a single line of code. The fact that Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer is a woman is incidental, of course, but it’s also noteworthy: Of the 268 newcomers to the 2014 FORBES Billionaires list, 42 are women – a single year record and, more notably, the highest-ever percentage of newcomers (and of women billionaires overall – 172 out of 1,645). That’s progress. But only a bit. Only 32 billionaire women – or 1.9% of all the globe’s billionaires – had a meaningful hand in building their own fortunes, as opposed to inheriting one from a parent or husband. Sandberg joins the dozen women, including Spanx’s Sara Blakely, fashion designer Tory Burch and Oprah Winfrey, who accomplished this feat without the help of a husband or sibling. And only she and Meg Whitman, who worked at Hasbro and FTD before joining eBay, accomplished this feat as hired hands of tech companies. Thus Sandberg’s perspective, distilled in her bestseller, Lean In, seems doubly apt. In a recent interview with FORBES she said she was “real optimistic” about the dialogue and debate generated by her book, which exhorts professional women to pour more energy into their careers, stop tolerating that high achievers are termed “bossy” while their male counterparts are praised as “aggressive”, and pick partners who will share in parenting and household duties.
“Businesses are going to care about diversity not because they want to do good in the world,” says Sandberg. “They’re going to care about diversity if it’s going to change their bottom line.” She says that she hosts private “Lean In Circles” and, in her book, advocates for others to do the same. Over dinner at her home, other leading women hear from special guests. One speaker: Cisco CEO John Chambers.
“What he understood is that it wasn’t about having women in your company but about having women in leadership roles. If you have the best talent, you’re going to have the best performance.” That presumably will translate to more women like Sandberg shattering the ten-figure ceiling.
<h6>Folorunsho AlakIja</h6>
<h6>$2.5 billion</h6>
<h6>Nigeria, Self-made</h6>
<h6>Age: 63</h6>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-6122" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Apr-May-032-035-FLIST-Billionaires-002-212x300.jpg" alt="" width="212" height="300" />
Daughter of a wealthy man who had eight wives and 52 children, Alakija is Nigeria’s first female billionaire, thanks to her own lucrative oil-producing asset. After working as a secretary in a Nigerian merchant bank in the 1970s, Alakija quit her job to study fashion design in England. She subsequently founded Supreme Stitches, a Nigerian fashion label that catered to upscale clientele, which reportedly included Maryam Babangida, wife to Nigeria’s former military president Ibrahim Babangida. The government awarded her an oil-prospecting license for a 620,000-acre plot in 1993. She hired Texaco to assess the oil potential three years later, creating Famfa Oil. It went on to become OML 127, one of Nigeria’s most prolifc oil blocks. Famfa Oil owned a 60% stake in the block until 2000, when then President Olusegun Obasanjo tried to take back as much as a 50% interest. Famfa Oil went to court to challenge the acquisition. The Nigerian Supreme Court reinstated the stake to Famfa Oil in May 2012; it is now the bulk of her fortune. Says Alakija of her fate: “My entry into this [oil] business was God’s own way of leading me down a particular path.”
<h6>denISe CoaTeS</h6>
<h6>$1.6 billion</h6>
<h6>UK, Self-made</h6>
<h6>Age: 46</h6>
<div id="attachment_6116" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-6116" class="size-medium wp-image-6116" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Apr-May-032-035-FLIST-Billionaires-003-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />Denise Coates, chief executive of Bet 365
</div>
While still in school, Coates worked for her father, Peter, as a cashier crunching numbers in his betting shops. She finished school, trained as an accountant and then took over some of those shops, turning around their fortunes before selling them to large bookmaker Coral. She had noticed the success of online gambling businesses around the time of the dot-com boom and steered her family in that direction. In 2000, she bought the domain Bet365.com and launched the website in March 2001 after being shunned by traditional venture capitalists. Today, she is joint CEO (with her brother John) of online betting firm Bet365 and is by far its largest shareholder, with a 50.3% stake. Sales hit $1.6 billion last year for Bet365, which also owns British Premier League soccer team Stoke City. Her fortune comes primarily from her stake in the private betting company (based in Stoke-on-Trent) and dividends earned from over 13 years of operation.
<h6>AerIn Lauder Zinterhofer</h6>
<h6>$1.1 billion</h6>
<h6>US, Inherited</h6>
<h6>Age: 44</h6>
<div id="attachment_6117" style="width: 233px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-6117" class="size-medium wp-image-6117" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Apr-May-032-035-FLIST-Billionaires-004-223x300.jpg" alt="" width="223" height="300" />167080839SH00055_The_Americ</div>
The much-watched style maven joins the rich list thanks to the surging value of her stake in the $10 billion (sales) Estée Lauder cosmetics firm, founded by her late grandmother. The elder daughter of philanthropist and World Jewish Congress leader Ronald Lauder, she now presides over her own lifestyle empire. In 2012, she launched her eponymous brand, Aerin, starting with makeup (of course) and now encompassing perfume, accessories, jewelry and even decor, fabrics and lighting for those wishing to emulate her modern Manhattan-via-East Hampton aesthetic. While the beauty line was launched in collaboration with Estée Lauder, she operates the rest as a separate company. She remains image and style director at her family’s conglomerate, where she has worked for over two decades, starting during summer breaks from the University of Pennsylvania. Lauder often mentions her grandmother in interviews and recently tweeted a favorite saying of Estée’s: “I didn’t get there by wishing for it or hoping for it, but by working for it.” She’s married to her college sweetheart, Eric Zinterhofer, a Harvard M.B.A. who cofounded private equity firm Searchlight Capital in 2010 after 12 years at billionaire Leon Black’s investment powerhouse, Apollo.
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<h6>jane lauder</h6>
<h6>$1.15 billion</h6>
<h6>US, Inherited</h6>
<h6>Age: 41</h6>
<div id="attachment_6118" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-6118" class="size-medium wp-image-6118" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Apr-May-032-035-FLIST-Billionaires-005-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />FINANCO RETAIL</div>
The granddaughter of cosmetics legend Estée Lauder became America’s youngest female billionaire in 2013, joining the ranks following a transfer of shares in the family cosmetics empire. In April, Lauder will take the helm at Clinique, a mall-staple skin-care line and one of the 30 brands under the Estée Lauder umbrella. Her new gig as global brand president marks the culmination of 18 years at her late grandmother’s company; she joined in 1996, a year after graduating from Stanford. Before being appointed to run Clinique, she oversaw business at natural-makeup company Origins. She replaced her father, Ronald, on the Estée Lauder board in 2009 and now serves alongside big sister Aerin and cousin William. Her husband, Kevin Warsh, also a Stanford grad, was the youngest-ever appointee to the Federal Reserve Board; he’s currently a visiting fellow at their alma mater’s Hoover Institution. The couple lives in Manhattan’s trendy Nolita.
<h6>Carrie Perrodo</h6>
<h6>$10 billion</h6>
<h6>France, Inherited</h6>
<h6>Age: 63</h6>
Singapore native Ka Yee (Carrie) Wong was already a top model when she met French entrepreneur Hubert Perrodo in the early 1970s. At the time, Perrodo was traveling the world drilling for oil and gas. Soon they got married. Sharing the entrepreneurial bug, Carrie launched her own agency, Carrie Models, while Hubert started his first business. In time, Perrodo formed Perenco, which has become one of the world’s biggest family-owned oil companies, with estimated annual revenues of $6 billion and far-flung operations in the likes of Gabon, Peru and Cameroon. Hubert and Carrie enjoyed the good life; he was a keen polo player and wine lover who bought up Bordeaux vineyards, including Château Labégorce. Perrodo died in 2006 while hiking in the Alps. Carrie and her three children, François, Nathalie and Bertrand, are heirs to the company, though a breakdown of their stakes is not clear. François now chairs the company and likes to race cars. Nathalie oversees the wine investments. Carrie sold Carrie Models years ago, but the agency remains active to this day.
<h6>Sandra ortega Mera</h6>
<h6>$6.1 billion</h6>
<h6>Spain, Inherited</h6>
<h6>Age: 46</h6>
<div id="attachment_6120" style="width: 238px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-6120" class="size-medium wp-image-6120" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Apr-May-032-035-FLIST-Billionaires-007-228x300.jpg" alt="" width="228" height="300" />OLEIROS, SPAIN &#8211; AUGUST 17: Sandra Ortega Mera, daughter of Amancio Ortega and Rosalia Mera, attends her mother funeral on August 17, 2013 in Oleiros, Spain. (Photo by Xurxo Lobato/Getty Images)</div>
A daughter of Inditex clothing retailer Amancio Ortega, the world’s third-richest person, Ortega Mera enters the ranks sooner than she had hoped, taking the place of her late mother, Rosalia Mera, who died suddenly of a brain hemorrhage while on vacation with Sandra last August. Her parents, who started the apparel business in their living room, divorced long ago. While her half-sister Marta works at her father’s investment arm, Ortega Mera devotes her time to Fundación Paideia, the non-profit her mother started to support vocational training for people with mental and physical disabilities. (Her brother Marcos, who shares the fortune, has cerebral palsy.) She has a psychology degree from the Universidad de Santiago and lives in the Galician town of La Coruña, on the Atlantic coast, with her husband and three kids.
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The Class Of 2014 Leans In

South Africa’s youth represent around a third of the country’s population. Young people are the future; they are a national resource and a source of renewal.
The country’s 20-year-old democracy includes ‘born frees’, referring to the generation born after the apartheid era ended in 1994. They have only known a free South Africa. It is estimated that just over 600,000 South Africans were born the year the African National Congress (ANC) came to power. The polls will determine a new National Assembly as well as new legislatures in each of the country’s nine provinces. As per the website of the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC), there are about 700,000 registered male and female voters in the 18-19 age group.
There has been a lot of speculation about the impact the vote of the ‘born frees’ is likely to have; some say this generation is apathetic and uninterested in the current political discourse. FORBES WOMAN AFRICA took to the streets of Johannesburg to gauge the sentiments of the young voter.
<h5>One excited registered voter is Nikita Maharajh from Durban in KwaZulu-Natal province. She is a graduate student of chemistry at the University of Witwatersrand.</h5>
“As a kid I remember reading a poem which said, ‘one vote can change the nation’, and it has stuck with me until today. Born in 1994, I am a product of democracy. I hope  our generation will be the change for a better South Africa.”
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-6113" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Apr-May-030-031-FOCUS-Born-frees-002-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />
<h5>Refilwe Morapeli has heard stories of the hardships faced by her parents’ generation. Morapeli’s father was a political activist during the apartheid years. She refuses to be swayed by the politics of the past, and has chosen to find her own identity without being cynical.</h5>
“Being able to vote at my age is incredible. My parents and grandparents lived through apartheid and I believe they have set the standard of the importance of being involved with citizens of the country and how morality should be part of our country’s values.”
<h5>Courtney Townsend, a photography student at Vega School of Leadership, believes casting her vote will increase her chances of changing the future.</h5>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-6109" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Apr-May-030-031-FOCUS-Born-frees-003-207x300.jpg" alt="" width="207" height="300" />
“I live on a farm in Nelspruit [capital of Mpumalanga province], and our house is the only decent one in the area. We are surrounded by hundreds of shacks occupied by people who haven’t tasted the fruits of South African democracy. The majority of families residing around my parents’ farm, Low’s Creek, either work at the mines in the area or in nearby farms, and their children attend schools that cater a very low standard of education that can only get them so far in life. The government has failed its people. The wealth gap, for which I hold it accountable, still needs to be addressed.”
<h5>Dumelang Makhooane is a 20-year-old first year photography student at Vega School of Leadership in Johannesburg. Despite the freedom of choice in the upcoming elections, she says many first-time voters will be influenced by their parents.</h5>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-6110" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Apr-May-030-031-FOCUS-Born-frees-004-300x205.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="205" />
“Freedom is an illusion. As much as you get democracy, you don’t really get the democracy [that was promised]. As much as my generation is encouraged to participate in this significant election, it does not change the fact that a huge governing body in the life of anybody my age is family. Our parents still play the role of government in our lives.”

Born Free, But Is It An Illusion?

Politics is a dirty game, but when gender becomes part of the mudslinging, there is a dangerous detraction that muddies political waters, especially at a time when South Africa should be building on its 20 years of democracy.
While women’s participation in politics in South Africa may rank among the highest in the world, there is disparity between the way female politicians are treated in relation to their male counterparts. Politics allows an attitude of permissiveness, where sexist insults and criticism are par for the course in the cutthroat, survival-of-the-fittest political game. It is almost as if so long as you decry rape and violence against women, most other gender-based barbs, quips and caricaturizations sneak by the green light.
Recent media articles, debates and Twitter trends have trained a sharp spotlight on how 20 years into democracy, gender issues continue to be entwined with issues of race, class, lingering social division and double standards. It is this complexity that is at the heart of the matter.
FORBES WOMAN AFRICA spoke to three prominent South African politicians about how much of the glass ceiling they have smashed. While the positions they hold shape critical agendas, female politicians are routinely name-called, even by each other.
Why does the African National Congress Women’s League (ANCWL) not believe it can put forward a female presidential candidate and why does Twitter trend because of an MP’s dress?
Helen Zille
Democratic Alliance (DA)
As head of the opposition, Zille is no stranger to dishing out criticism or taking it. She believes strong women leaders – the DA’s top three are women – are comfortable and confident to lead.
What concerns the Western Cape Premier, though, is that the hostile arena of politics dissuades other women from entering the fray. “I fear many women feel inhibited from assuming leadership roles because of the abuse and invective they face in the public square,” she says. And the invective that circulates is not for the faint-hearted. Former African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) leaders Julius Malema and Floyd Shivambu have openly passed comments about her, which Malema has later defended as part of “public debate”.
“Persons guilty of sexist behavior should be named and shamed. There is no place for such behavior in our society. But, we need to address the underlying causes of sexism, which begins in the family and in communities,” she says.
Zille came under fire earlier this year following a public spat with DA Youth leader Mbali Ntuli, who criticized the DA’s march on the ANC headquarters during a jobs march. Zille called Ntuli a “princess” and “prima donna”, but she says: “I was describing indulgent and petulant behavior. My response would have been equally robust if it was directed at a man.”
Zille cautions that gender issues can become media fodder and headline grabbers. It can take away the focus that recognizes the strides women have made.
Mamphela Ramphele
Agang
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-6106" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Apr-May-024-025-Elections-003-207x300.jpg" alt="" width="207" height="300" />
Mamphela Ramphele’s entry into the political arena as leader of Agang last year was bound to see daggers drawn. She was not surprised, but is disappointed at how a woman in power still unsettles many men.
“The more women succeed, the more many insecure men feel threatened. Women remain ‘out of place’ as leaders in male-dominated societies and it is not in politics alone,” she says.
It was Ramphele’s peck on the lips with the DA’s Zille, in their short-lived political partnership earlier this year that took on all kinds of sexualized caricaturization. It shifted from jokes and the material of satirists to become crass, cringe-worthy and below the belt – all with sexist overtones. She puts it down to media’s inability to move forward or to look at the deeper context surrounding issues of sexism in society. For Ramphele, it means the debate must move forward and beyond gender as seen in isolation from other issues that threaten freedom. It is the role of media, business, those in education and female leaders to use their power more definitively. She insists South Africa is ready for a black female president, however, she is under no illusion that women in many sectors of society remain second-class citizens.
“For millions of our daughters, the notion of gender equality remains a distant dream in the daily battle just to stay alive. How can they see themselves as leaders? Yet women lead families and communities, providing the strength and stability (emotional, financial) for many. We need to find ways to empower women to lead in their communities and beyond,” says Ramphele.
Thandile Sunduza
African National Congress (ANC)
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-6105" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Apr-May-024-025-Elections-002-207x300.jpg" alt="" width="207" height="300" />
“Maybe if I wasn’t pregnant I would have just been able to make a joke about the tweets, but why is it not okay for big women to show off that they are pregnant. Why is big not a brand or sexy? We have many big African women in Parliament, but we play the culture card when it’s convenient for us,”
says Sunduza.
She says it was hurtful that it was mostly women, and black women in particular, who led the Twitter taunts.
“We have a pull-her-down mentality that shows we are still not liberated. When women don’t stand up for each other, we elevate the patriarchy that still exists in Africa.”
She takes a swipe at journalists who tweet before they think, egging each other on.
The damage was done in minutes.
“Of course we have freedom of expression in this country, but people need to think about other people’s dignity and rights,” she says.
Sunduza says a growing culture of mockery as acceptable behavior, be it gender-based or otherwise, is worrying.
“How many people were interested in the President’s State of the Nation speech, and how many more people were interested in my dress? What does it teach our young people? That’s sad [to] me,” she says.

‘Women Must  Stand Up For Each Other’

Almost two decades since the ground-breaking Beijing Women’s Conference, no country in the world can claim gender equality. As the United Nations Under Secretary-General Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka notes, giving women equal opportunity and removing economic structural barriers, will spur inclusive growth. This view is echoed by prominent economists, such as the African Development Bank’s (AfDB) Mthuli Ncube and AGH Capital’s Charles Okeahalam, who say studies show that providing economic opportunity to the other half will without doubt lift growth.
“As with most issues of social transformation, reducing gender inequality is a process, not an event. The key issue is for society to distribute inputs and resources in a way that allows for a full set of economic and social opportunities to be more gender neutral. In Africa, this would lead, as it has done in a number of more industrially advanced societies, to an increase in the opportunity cost of maternity,” says Okeahalam. Yet women remain largely marginalized. According to the WEF’s 2013 Global Gender Gap Report, there are no African countries in the top 10 economies that have closed their gender gaps in the main categories of education, health, economy and politics. Lesotho and South Africa are the best placed, at number 16 and 17 respectively. Overall, the region closed 66% of its gender gap last year, though in education, the continent holds last place.
The 2014 report will be released at this year’s WEF, to be held in Abuja, Nigeria, from May 7 to 9. Women’s issues will be addressed in various other forums around the gathering, says Huguette Umutoni, WEF Africa Team Co-ordinator.
“We are looking to have women’s issues as a common thread for many of our sessions be it around jobs, entrepreneurship, agriculture, peace and security,’’ says Umutoni.
Femmes Africa Solidarité’s Bineta Diop, recently appointed the Africa Union Commission’s special envoy for Women, Peace and Security, will be one of the co-chairs of the Abuja summit. There will also be two other sessions focusing on female leaders.The forum’s efforts are part of a broader struggle to increase women’s participation in the continent’s development. AfDB’s 2014-2018 gender strategy is closely linked to its 10-year strategy, which promotes inclusive growth.
“Investing in women and girls is smart economics and impacts everyone positively,’’ says Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, the AfDB’s special envoy on gender.
The statistics certainly make for some sad reading. A fifth of Africa’s women have bank accounts and the United Nations Development Program says the continent has suffered a 60% loss in development because of gender inequality.
African women and girls are among the world’s poorest, have the highest illiteracy rates, earn amongst the lowest wages and even in agriculture, where women dominate, productivity is 30% lower than men because of lack of access to inputs, according to the AfDB. Klaus Schwab, the Executive Chairman of the WEF, says it is everybody’s responsibility – governments, civil society, educators and media – to provide policy frameworks and the environment to empower women.
“There is not one path to parity, but many. Cash transfer programs, equal access to credit and financial services, parental leave, affordable childcare facilities, innovative hiring processes, redesigned career paths and meaningful mentoring programs are but a few of the types of changes that  must be made,’ says Schwab in the 2013 Global Gender Gap Report.
African governments have also been making strides. In March, South Africa’s parliament passed a gender bill that criminalizes discrimination against women and seeks to improve their access to education, training and skills development. But across the continent, the absence of statistics and lack of gender mainstream planning means more remains to be done.

Invest In Us, It’s Smart’

It’s a feat getting three powerful women in the same room, at the same table, on a Monday morning. Louisa Mojela, Gloria Serobe and Wendy Luhabe make it seem everyday. They are hard-hitting businesswomen. Yet five minutes into the pleasantries, you get a different feel as you repeatedly hear the words ‘trust’ and ‘happy’.
Trust is what built their company, and happy is the attitude they sport, the clothes they wear and what they call their two-storied, artfully-appointed office in Johannesburg’s leafy Houghton suburb.
“It’s the happy house,” says Mojela, Group CEO and co-founder of WIPHOLD (Women Investment Portfolio Holdings), one of South Africa’s best-known first generation empowerment companies owned and led by women.
True to Mojela’s word, a visit to WIPHOLD House, and random conversations with smiling staff, from the secretary to the finance manager, reveals a camaraderie that appears not prompted, not effected. But this corporate haven has been built on the back of 20 years of trials, tribulations – and triumph.
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In its 20th year, WIPHOLD has a net asset value of more than $200 million; and this says a lot about a company that started with seed capital of $100,000 at a time when BEE (Black Economic Empowerment) was a little-known acronym.
At its core is a women’s empowerment model that has given financial power to grassroots black South African women from across the spectrum in Nelson Mandela’s Rainbow Nation. It’s a model that has stood the test of time, and the truth is, is still going strong, run by two of the four founders.
Today, WIPHOLD is 55% black owned, run with an all-female board, and as the first BEE company to establish permanent broad-based shareholding, has more than 1,200 direct and 18,000 indirect women beneficiaries through the WIPHOLD Investment Trust, more than 250,000 indirect women beneficiaries through the WIPHOLD NGO Trust, and is represented across South Africa. These days, it is also an operating company with interests in financial services, cement and coal.
But behind the WIPHOLD success is a story of grit, gumption and tireless tenacity. It is the story of four women, called the ‘Wip Four’ by the press in the early days, who founded a company weeks before a free South Africa was emerging from the dark shadows of apartheid.
Apart from Mojela, Luhabe and Serobe, the fourth founder, Nomhle Canca, is no longer associated with WIPHOLD, she left in 2002, but has fond memories of those early days (see box).
Luhabe, a thought-leader and mentor listed by FORBES as one of the most powerful women in African private equity, says their vision worked from the beginning because it was not about them.
“It was a vision to serve, to pioneer something that had not been done before, and because of that, it took us almost two years to get to a point we felt we had a sustainable business model. WIPHOLD’s vision is powerful because we didn’t rush into it,” she says.
“We wanted to build an institution that survives long after us. It also meant for a while we were the ones to add features to the baby,” says Serobe, CEO of Wipcapital and one of the two cofounders running WIPHOLD today.
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How they did it
WIPHOLD was formed in 1994, but the deliberations had started a year before, when it was apparent South Africa was on the cusp of a new world, one that would bring black South Africans into the mainstream. History was about to be made, and the ‘Wip Four’ wanted to spearhead it.
The epiphany came at a workshop in Johannesburg aimed at telling black business about the new opportunities opening up.
“That workshop was full of men,” says Mojela. Along with Serobe, Mojela was already working at the time at Standard Corporate &amp; Merchant Bank (SCMB) in Johannesburg, while Luhabe was an accomplished entrepreneur running her own company Bridging The Gap, which equipped black graduates with corporate skills.
And so it came to pass that in Luhabe’s small office in Melville in Johannesburg, the four met every Tuesday evening for 18 months, brainstorming over endless cups of tea, snacks and mangoes (when in season). Their vision took shape on the drawing board, slowly but surely.
At the heart of this vision were women from South Africa’s small towns and villages. Real women who were not numbers, but had names, jobs and who poured their sweat, blood and tears into their savings.
The vision was based on a simple premise: that these women would be given the opportunity to invest in South Africa’s biggest companies. So far, they knew only about savings, now they would learn about investments. “The enabling vision was created to give them a sense of ownership and empowerment at the same time, which is quite unique,” says Luhabe.
It is to WIPHOLD’s credit that for the last 20 years, it has been able to pay its shareholders dividends.
“Again, [we have been] very different from most empowerment models where only a few benefit. Our shareholders will confirm they have had benefits out of their investments,” says Luhabe.
David Shapiro, a Johannesburg-based investment expert and Director of Sasfin Securities, says WIPHOLD had an advantage as they had a head start.
“They started 20 years ago and stuck to it. They went through ups and downs but were fortunate. As early entrants, it allowed them to do prime deals. They are well-connected and highly competent ladies.”
The story of WIPHOLD cannot be told without harking back to the nineties, when the company reached its zenith. It was not easy doing business in a new South Africa.
“We underestimated the uphill [task] until we were in it. There was a big mountain to climb, and we had to break it down. Whether it was about meeting chauvinist or racist men, we knew this was the world we were getting into and we had to adapt with a lot of pain. The challenges were just too layered,” says Serobe.
Did the black brotherhood help? “One of our biggest challenges was our very own black brothers,” says Mojela. “We all came from historic disenfranchisement, and it was clear they were going to move ahead looking for these opportunities for themselves. But we thought, ‘we are big girls, we will hold our own hands; after all there was the four of us’.”
The rapport between the four didn’t happen overnight. It was built on a common vision. Mojela calls it the “glue” that bound them.
“The BEE was just an appendix for many of our male counterparts. For us, it is the reason for being,” says Mojela.
The first task was to come up with seed capital of $100,000. Each of the four founders had to chip in. Serobe was the first – helped by her young brother-in-law. Mojela was the last, taking three months to source funds from friends and family. “Credit to my partners [who waited],” she says.
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What ensued was two years of slog, covering South Africa’s nine provinces with roadshows, convincing the women it was time they took responsibility for their finances, and shift from savings to investment.
One of the first workshops was at the Carlton Hotel in Johannesburg. They told the women, although they were providers of labor and consumers of goods and services, they had no part in wealth creation.
“Our strength was in numbers. The minute we decided to use women in the plural, it was only befitting we went out and galvanized them,” says Mojela.
“We had to convince them what we were doing had integrity and their hard-earned monies were not going to be misused. We also had to convince the business community we knew what we were doing,” says Luhabe.
Skepticism also came from the corridors of power. “We had no political credentials. People asked, ‘who are you?’” says Mojela.
So they looked towards the private sector for counsel.
Although Mojela, Serobe and Canca came from the banking industry, they were venturing into a sector they knew little about. They looked to the few who bought into their vision. One such was Geoff Snelgar, who they call their ‘godfather’. He offered them his boardroom on 66 Marshall Street.
In 1995, Snelgar formed Baobab Solid Growth, a listed entity with a market cap of R30 million (approx. $8 million at the time) that would incorporate black shareholders. Snelgar met with a number of potential empowerment shareholders, including Mojela and Canca, when they shared their vision.
“I thought it was a fantastic vision and, just as importantly, I really liked these people and their story. We agreed I would reserve a 10% shareholding in Baobab until the ladies could afford to pay for it. It was a verbal arrangement, promised completely on trust. Where most empowerment men I spoke to were hesitant, the ladies were the only ones who said ‘Yes, we want in. Let’s do it’. Who would’ve thought such an ordinary downtown meeting would pave the way for such a tremendous profit?” says Snelgar, now Chairman of Capricorn Capital Partners UK Limited, in the recently-released book commemorating WIPHOLD’s 20 years.
Baobab’s share price kept rising, and its market cap went to R3.5 billion (approx. $574 million) over four years. Baobab eventually became Theta, which later became African Bank Investments.
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“If I could pinpoint one thing that impressed me most about WIPHOLD, it’s their integrity. A huge number of companies were set up under the auspices of broad-based economic empowerment – but were in actual fact a front for siphoning profit to a select few. WIPHOLD faced that choice many times. I remember the girls complaining about the lucrative opportunities they were missing out on. But they stuck to a vision that ensured their women beneficiaries were top priority,” says Snelgar.
“We have had to trade off certain things and let go of opportunities to make this work. We would have been billionaires as we speak if we hadn’t taken this route,” says Serobe. “We are both commercial and social, that’s why we are not billionaires,” adds Mojela.
Even as the ‘Wip Four’ were garnering female shareholders at the roadshows, they had to put something tangible on the table, and that was a portfolio of investments to the tune of R39 million (approx. $8.66 million) in 1997. The plan was a public offer for women only. This led to the creation of the foundation of WIPHOLD – the WIPHOLD Investment Trust.
“For every woman who subscribed in WIPHOLD in 1997, when we did the IPO, it fit that we created an investment trust they could participate in at no cost to them,” says Mojela.
The women were allocated units in the trust equating the number of shares they subscribed to in WIPHOLD. Mojela says it was important to form the trust as the custodian of the WIPHOLD vision with superior voting powers to WIPHOLD, just in case there came a point in the future when the company’s empowerment values were threatened.
The day the IPO opened is one none of the four founders will forget, as it was full of emotion and color.
“It was a very interesting day,” says Mojela. Cheques poured in from women from across the country, men called on behalf of their wives and daughters, and women from all walks of life, from madams to maids, streamed to their office in downtown Johannesburg holding affidavits., wanting to sign up. The two years of galvanizing them were finally paying off. In the end, it raised R25 million ($5 million).
“This was historic. Women had never raised that amount in the country. None of the BEE companies in existence then had. We were able to do that because we had prepared the ground in the first two years. The women were ready with their savings and wanted to participate,” says Luhabe.
And that was not all.
Next step was making the most of the opportunities.
“We needed R500 million (approx. $100 million) to take the company forward. There was an investment opportunity that required R250 million ($50 million) in 1998 so we went back to our shareholders with a ‘rights offer’. We knew it was going to be uphill, but the surprise was that in 12 months, these women were able to put R76 million ($12 million) on the table,” says Mojela. The remainder was privately placed with institutions.
With expansion and more investments came the challenge of adhering to the company’s original vision. “Institutions come with big cheques and big demands. Up until then, the company was 100% women, and now, we were diluted significantly,” says Mojela.
What entailed was a painful transition.
The institutions wanted liquidity. So WIPHOLD became the first women-only empowerment company to list on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in March, 1999. The net asset value of the company then was a whopping R1 billion ($162 million).
Making new ground
Up until then, WIPHOLD had been an investment portfolio company, so the founders decided to embark on financial services, an industry they knew on account of their backgrounds in finance. They took this strategy to the shareholders, who signed off.
“But as we implemented it, hell broke loose,” says Serobe.
The shareholders felt this was competition.
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“We were going to do things they did. They assumed we were miserable women who wouldn’t attempt anything more serious than micro-lending. Our idea was dwarfed in their heads. But we bought the top team of investment bankers – the Princeton and Stanford types – in the country. Our model now went head on with that of our shareholders,” says Serobe.
And this led to the genesis of Wipcapital in September 1999, which Serobe took charge of in 2001.
It was probably the most difficult phase for WIPHOLD, when it had to de-list in 2003. “It was a tense period,” says Mojela. “Business was not as expected, our salary bills were huge, we had to downsize, and were still hounded by shareholders. We had to go back to the drawing board. We decided the only salvation was to de-list from the stock exchange, return the cash to our shareholders and be left alone. In order to pay out, somebody needed to help us with hard cash. Ultimately, we got Old Mutual and did a scheme of arrangement.”
“We saw the original vision falling apart. The listing gave liquidity, but its downside was women had become a minority in their own company. The country and private sector weren’t ready for this. Through a scheme of arrangement, we bought off everybody including the women shareholders and brought them back into the shareholding via the trust,” says Serobe.
In 2005, WIPHOLD struck a headline-grabbing BEE deal with Old Mutual, which now owns 32.8% of the company.
“Starting from scratch after de-listing, WIPHOLD only had R166 million ($20 million) of [unlisted] assets. But today, we are a stable company with happy employees. We have grown from four to 40 employees, and will go from 40 to 400 in another 20 years,” says Mojela.
Miranda Feinstein, an executive consultant at Johannesburg law firm Edward Nathan Sonnenbergs, who was the architect of and continues to chair the WIPHOLD Investment Trust, and has known the founders for a long time, says she has seen their will strengthen with every adversity.
“Along the way mistakes were made; at times institutions treated them somewhat dismissively, but they always bounced back. At times, I saw they were disconsolate but one of their greatest traits is endurance. To this day, the WIPHOLD Trust is making financial benefits available to its women beneficiaries,” she says.
To reinforce their original vision, WIPHOLD also created the NGO Trust, addressing projects for women and children. Its creation increased the number of women to more than 250,000 beneficiaries, while the beneficiaries of the original trust stood at 18,000 (all of who participated in the 1997 IPO).
Through the WIPHOLD Trust, 80% of its income and profits are distributed to beneficiaries, and the remaining 20% to charitable organizations dealing with women and children. The two trusts account for 32.5% of the group’s shareholding.
Nongovernmental organizations like Tshwaranang Legal Advocacy Centre (TLAC), a center that promotes the rights of women to live free of violence, confirm they receive significant financial benefits from WIPHOLD.
&#8220;Last year, we received R270,000 ($25,000) from WIPHOLD. Their benefits help a lot to meet our operational costs,&#8221; says Shireen Motara, Executive Director of TLAC.
Recognition has come from abroad as well. The International Institute for Management Development (IMD) business school in Switzerland has used the WIPHOLD model as a case study.
WIPHOLD is now taking the model internationally. “The WIPHOLD story can be replicated anywhere in the world. We are taking the same workshops we did in South Africa in 1994, to the rest of Africa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Zambia, Mozambique and Ivory Coast,” says Mojela.
WIPHOLD has partnered with Jidong Cement, a Chinese cement company, to build a plant in Limpopo, South Africa. Like financial services, the cement sector here is not known to be a business for women.
“But that’s exactly what excites us,” says Serobe.
The cement plant is a R3 billion ($280 million) project that will come online in 2015.
In 2009, WIPHOLD entered into a deal with Sasol Mining, leading to the creation of one of the first black-women controlled mining companies in South Africa, with 51% owned by WIPHOLD.
WIPHOLD has come far, and there have been other women-led investment companies like Nozala after them, but has the country been able to keep up?
“I can understood why 20 years ago, the captains of industry, our black brothers and the women behaved the way they did, but today, I have no patience for all three, especially women who don’t have the appetite to take on challenges. They fear trying. We had hoped in 1994 that by now, there would be many WIPHOLDs. Yet, 20 years later, in the same model, there is not another entity,” says Serobe.
The legacy they leave behind is not numbers, but a generation of African women who have learned to invest and be independent.

To The Power Of  Three

It’s half past five on a Thursday morning, the sun barely over the horizon. A mist swirls between the 25 canoes packed onto the banks of the Msunduzi River at the Natal Canoe Club in Pietermaritzburg. The paddlers in Group A, the best in African river racing, are already sweating. It’s very humid early. Some stretch, others check their canoes for the last time. They stare straight ahead, focus as sharp as a needle; they head off.
This race draws tens of thousands. Only 1,000 qualify, fewer make it to the finish line. This is how Africa’s toughest river race has run since 1951. It’s a journey across 119 kilometers of wild and treacherous waters in the searing heat of the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) province.
The Dusi Marathon was born around a campfire in Italy, during World War II. South African soldier Ian Player looked into the flames and came up with the idea of a downriver race. At the time, Player was in the 6th South African Armoured Division attached to the American 5th Army. It took six years after the war was finished for Player to organize the Dusi and he was the only one to finish it. It took him six days, eight hours and 15 minutes. He survived two days of low rivers, a flash flood and a night adder bite.
These days it takes paddlers less time. Each year it changes between singles and pair races. Among the thousands, Andrew Birkett and partner Sbonelo Zondi were the first to finish this year’s race in seven hours and 43 minutes, 10 minutes off the fastest time ever.
“The whole journey has been amazing! I’m super chuffed, especially with our discipline over this last year, and it’s a really special feeling to have won. It almost feels like this is the first Dusi I’ve ever won because of the whole change in start procedure here on day three and the finish is a really amazing experience,” says Birkett shortly after standing in triumph as his canoe crossed the finish line.
Birkett has now won it four times. For Zondi, the win meant more. He crashed out in the singles race last year  after leading into the final day.
This year, records were broken in the women’s category. Abbey Ulansky, known as the Dusi Queen, clinched her ninth pole position when she crossed the line with partner Robyn Kime, called the Dusi Princess, making it their third victory in a row.
“I’ve just finished my masters two weeks ago which has made the build up to this year’s race quite challenging. Now that the Dusi is done, and my studies are done, I’m free and my boyfriend and I are going traveling,” says Kime.
When most people would take a break at a hotel in Mauritius, Kime’s idea of a holiday is traveling on a yacht from Cape Town to Rio de Janeiro and then going mountain climbing in Bolivia and Peru. Ulansky announced she is retiring from competitive racing now that she has a family to look after.
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Day 1
A gunshot cracks in the distance. The 25 canoers in Group A flail with their paddles at a mad dash from Camps Drift. Around the corner is the Ernie Pearce Weir, a narrow meter-high drop into a wetland piled with river rocks and rimmed with spectators.
The fastest have more room, the rest pack like sardines down the narrow fall. To the cheers of families and boys screaming school war cries, the canoes scrape each other in the muddy water. Paddlers swear as they are thrown into reeds, rocks and cameramen. Those who escape swiftly, gain a few seconds.
The sun rises and the heat is even more oppressive. Seconders, or team helpers, mostly friends and family, run down the riverside with buckets of iced water and sponges for the racers. Water squeezed from the sponges turns to steam in the blink of an eye.
At the end of the day’s race, Nkosi Mzolo, a member of the Soweto Canoe &amp; Recreation Club (SCARC), in Johannesburg, recovers in the shade. SCARC are more used to paddling through sewage and fighting off angry fishermen at their home turf, the Power Park Dam. It’s a world away from the clean air of KZN.
Where most competitors will travel back to Pietermaritzburg to rest and then leave at 4AM for Day 2, Mzolo will go home to see his mother where he grew up, five kilometers from the end point.
“The hardest thing about the Dusi is running eight kilometers with a 22 kilogram canoe on your back. You have to train running with the boat,” says Mzolo.
The man, who spends every moment he can on the water, spends the rest of his time saving lives.  He’s been a paramedic for four years, and is studying to be a doctor.
On one Dusi race, Mzolo needed a medic of his own. Mzolo hit the Ernie Pearce Weir along with six other canoes. Mzolo went under. The other canoes went over him. When he surfaced he knew two ribs were cracked and he was forced to forfeit the race. This time around he finished the day in 12th, a long way off Birkett and Zondi.
“I’ll never miss a Dusi, its fun but it’s really hard,” says Mzolo.
SCARC helps children in Soweto get into canoes. The effort has paid off; among them are eight of the most promising canoeists competing in this year’s Dusi, he says.
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Day 2
The race pushes through the Valley of a Thousand Hills, a mountainous countryside littered with rondavels (Southern African-styled huts) and roaming cows. On dirt roads that rarely see rubber, convoys of 4x4s stretch from one side of the valley to the other. People washing clothes in the river get caught up in the action and cheer as the paddlers fly past.
“One of our biggest worries was making it to Inanda Dam in one piece. There are some treacherous rapids like the Washing Machine where you have to slide over a rock which is a hazard. Many guys have lost their lead in waters leading up to the dam,” says competitor Calvin Hellens.
“Every second counts in the Dusi. Most people have to start the race with a new canoe. It lowers the risk of it cracking. By the end, it looks like an old one,” says Hellens’ crew member Kate Swarbreck. The two compete in the mixed category in a canoe that cost them R6,000 ($550).
You can pay up to R20,000 ($1,800) for a top of the range model, they explain. Some of the stranger costs are for carbon fiber paddles, which break frequently on rocks. Seconders often throw spare paddles from bridges to the racers below.
The paddlers are more frightened of water hyacinth than the Inanda Dam. Thieves stole a cable holding the river weeds a few days before. Organizers had to think fast. Their solution was to drive a speedboat to make a channel through the choking weeds. With weeds overcome, the race is set for the final day.
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Day 3
The unforgiving heat roasts on the final day. Although it is a much shorter distance, it is by far the most exciting with nine rapids, says Swarbreck. Another disadvantage for the leaders is that they must wait for the entire field to begin, before they can paddle on.
At 10:45AM, with temperatures well into 30 degrees, Birkett and Zondi leave the Inanda Dam with a nine-minute lead. The winners take no chances with the rapids and opt to use the optional portages—that is getting out of the water and carrying the canoe rather than risk foundering on the rocks.
Danger lurks in the water. A number of canoes shatter and sink in the rapids of Day 3. In 6th place, Jacques Theron and Shaun Griffen’s canoe splits in half on the rocks of the Tops Needle Rapids, a few kilometers into the day. They are seen running on the road, carrying half a canoe each, near Molweni Causeway, half an hour later. No one knew where they were going or what they were doing. A seconder comes to help but the two turn them away. Four and a half hours later they cross the finish line in Durban on foot.
There is also danger out of the water. Children pelt Anna Adamova and her partner Abby Addie, second in the female category, with stones 20 kilometers from the end of the race. Adamova finishes the race with blood pouring down her face. She goes for emergency care after the finish line.
That sums up the grit you need to survive the Dusi, Africa’s ultimate adventure race. Surely the soldier paddler Ian Player would have approved.

Blood, Sweat  And Weeds

Broad and tall, Francois Pienaar is a big man in every sense of the word. A man who ploughs his own furrow. He muscled his way to win the Rugby World Cup before millions of viewers and nearly 20 years later had the guts to dress up as a potato chip in a Lays commercial.
“Sometimes you will be remembered for that, not for the rugby career. When I check-in at the airport the lady at the counter would look at me and say: ‘Oh, the Lays guy,’” says Pienaar.
In many ways, Pienaar is an enigma. He is the law graduate who never argued a case; the conservative Afrikaaner who led his reluctant players to coach black youngsters in the townships; a man as South African as a springbok, who now spends most of his life outside of the country. On the way, he is trying to find the next Pienaar destined for rugby glory.
The image of Pienaar accepting the World Cup trophy from former president Nelson Mandela, dressed in a number six jersey, is one that lived long in the memory.
“Seeing Mr Mandela wearing my jersey was very incredible, emotional and humbling,” says Pienaar.
Overnight Pienaar became a household name through that unifying moment—an Afrikaaner and a former political prisoner together.
“For Mandela to ask everyone in the country to support the Springboks as their team was unusual but also visionary. The 1995 story was a story about human triumph, where a country that was much divided got an opportunity to celebrate together. All religions and creeds became world champions for the first time.”
The celebrity status stuck. In March this year, Pienaar the businessman shared a stage with Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple, and Jordan Belfort, the American stockbroker, at the South African Success Summit in Johannesburg, before 5,000 delegates.
Pienaar and Belfort grew up worlds apart but both saw their life stories told by Hollywood. In the 2009 movie Invictus, Matt Damon played Pienaar. Leonardo DiCaprio played Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street.
The only disappointment about the movie for Pienaar was the rugby.
“It’s the human story of how South Africa came together and there are a lot of emotional scenes that I like about it but I don’t like the rugby scenes. They are awful. If you played the game, rugby is more beautiful than what is shown in the movie. But, I can understand it was made for the American audiences.”
Pienaar has business interests in university sports development, media and entertainment but says his initiative, Make A Difference Foundation (MAD), is his way of giving back to the poor. Pienaar is the chairman of MAD and it enjoys the support of other former international captains, such as David Kirk, the first winner of the World Cup for New Zealand in 1987, John Eales of Australia, Martin Johnson of England, John Smit of South Africa and Nick Farr-Jones of Australia.
“Make A Difference gives back to the poor people. We founded it 10 years ago in order to help kids in the townships and impoverished areas,” he says.
“We get them to good schooling and give them financial backing to achieve success. One of our first learners we brought on board will be receiving an engineering degree at Harvard University this year,” says Pienaar.
Pienaar says these days he lives for sport development. He runs a business called Varsity Rugby which was founded in 2008. It gave birth to the Varsity Cup tournament, in which eight universities compete. A second tier competition, the Varsity Shield, arrived in 2011 and was then followed by the under-20 category, Young Guns.
“I am passionate about sport. My first love at school was cricket but rugby took over. I have been very privileged to see how sport can change people; it can transform people as well as communities and a country.”
Varsity Rugby not only makes money, Pienaar says it has produced nine Springboks (players that have represented South Africa internationally) and hundreds of professionals in the domestic leagues.
“Sport is powerful; it can unite or divide a nation. Rugby in the years of apartheid divided us and in the democracy it united us.”
Pienaar was among the first group of South African rugby players to play in Europe. He signed with Saracens in London and became CEO of the club, before returning to Africa to live in Cape Town.
He thinks it is naïve to stand in the way of players who want to maximize their earning potential in the richer overseas leagues. This is the exercising of freedom that Mandela would no doubt have approved of.

What Mandela’s Captain Did Next

How many of the 32 coaches that will going to the FIFA World Cup in Brazil in June will still have a job after the tournament remains to be seen. If past experience is anything to go by, at least half may be out of a job.
Some will be sacked; others will leave. The end of a big tournament is often the right time to take on a fresh challenge.
The World Cup is often a catalyst for change because it is the end of one cycle and the beginning of the next.
Most football associations around the world do their planning in four-year blocks, starting after one World Cup and leading up to the next. So, it is only natural that there will be some change after this year’s event in Brazil.
<div id="attachment_2672" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2672" class="size-medium wp-image-2672" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/180300328-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />GENEVA, SWITZERLAND &#8211; SEPTEMBER 10: Spain coach Vicente Del Bosque looks on during the Spain v Chile international friendly at Stade de Geneve on September 10, 2013 in Geneva, Switzerland. (Photo by Harold Cunningham/Getty Images)</div>
Being a coach, especially an international one, is a stressful job. Coaches are always under pressure to get results, it does not matter which team you are in charge of, from Spain to Djibouti, fans and media expect success—the measure of that success is the only thing that changes.
Even Vicente del Bosque, the current coach of Spain feels the pressure. He won the World Cup with his country in 2010 and followed that up by claiming the 2012 European Championships as well, arguably the two most difficult international competitions to win.
Defeats for Spain have been rare, but when they do come, such as in the final of the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup against Brazil, or even the 1-0 loss to South Africa in a friendly in November, the questions that are asked of him, his players and his preparation are intense.
Del Bosque has built a level of expectation around the side and in so doing increased the pressure on himself. A single defeat is met with a lot of soul-searching. Goodness knows what would happen if they lost back-to-back matches, something that Spain has not experienced since 2006.
A lot of this pressure is also created by the media. It makes for great headlines and plenty of discussion online, but the truth of the matter is Del Bosque knows his job is under no real threat.
He has been tasked with taking Spain to the World Cup in Brazil and that is where the real pressure will kick in for him. What counts in his favor is that he knows he has the players to succeed.
Other coaches have different kinds of pressure, where the expectation for success is there but the playing personnel cannot back it up.
Coaches know better than anyone else the true quality of their players and just how much they can conceivably get out of them. They may get a bit of luck now and again to help them along the way, but for the most part they have to work within the constraints of their squad.
Being a national coach is vastly different to leading a side at club level.
With a club you work with the players six or seven days a week, you can work on their weaknesses and help them develop their strengths. You can sit through endless video sessions with them and analyze to a fine detail to try and get things right.
That is simply not the case at a national team level. You only have the players for a few days before a match. In that time your job is to decide which combinations will work best and try and get the side as organized as possible.
You can run some drills, you can provide some analysis of the opposition and sit through a few team meetings but that is about as far as it goes. Then, maybe, you see the players again two months later.
Leading up to a World Cup is different, where players are available for camps some three weeks before the start of the tournament. That is a slightly better scenario, but still nowhere near enough time to get your message across to your team like the coach of a club can.
That is why plenty of excellent club coaches have not been able to translate their success to the international stage. They are two very different roles. It is also why many coaches say the international game is not for them. They miss the daily interaction that club coaching brings.
Coaching at a national team level involves scouting for players, sitting through hours and hours of football on a weekend and knowing hundreds of players inside out.
There is a skill in knowing what you are looking for and picking players who complement one another. And, of course, you have to deal with the advice you receive from colleagues, agents and the media.
To be successful, coaches have to rise above that and need to have a clear picture of how they want their team to play and which players will best achieve that.
There is something to be said for carrying the hopes of a nation on your shoulders. Millions of people are expecting coaches to raise their spirits. That is real pressure, knowing that young and old are relying on you to provide the victories that will either leave the nation in a state of euphoria or despair.
Players often carry the blame in the media, but at the end of the day the buck stops with the coach and it is he who could lose his job. Players will keep on playing, maybe not for the national team but certainly their clubs, and their income is secured.
Coaches have to rely on their players to keep them employed. If you see a coach praying on the sidelines, it is often because they feel helpless.
As a coach you can pick the best players and devise the perfect plan but it only takes one small error from a defender, a slip by a goalkeeper or a penalty miss from a striker to lose a match. That is the thin margin between success and failure for many coaches.

If you want to coach your country—pray

Many high net-worth families lose a lot of their wealth when it is administered by the generation that follows them. By the time the third generation takes the financial helm, the picture gets even worse: 90% of the wealth is lost forever.
Standard Bank’s chief executive of private clients, Margaret Nienaber, says that research has shown that around 70% of families lose their wealth when it’s passed down to the next generation.
The estimated wealth to be transferred between generations over the next few decades stands at $41 trillion. It is the biggest transfer of wealth the world has ever seen.
“It is vital that the younger generation is equipped with the correct financial knowledge to enable them to safeguard their inherited assets for future generations,” says Nienaber.
She notes that the statistics and wealth on the continent is still fairly unknown and that the potential is much bigger than originally estimated.
“If we look at the culture of wealth and growth of wealth in Africa, it’s quite amazing to see that Africa will have 81 percent more billionaires by 2018,” she says.
The latest US Trust Insight on Wealth and Worth report shows that six out of 10 parents in the United States showed concern that their children would not be able to control their inherited assets.
“Ensuring that wealth is preserved, passed on and increased over multiple generations requires a joint effort by the parents as well as the financial institutions they partner with,” says Nienaber.
In Africa, only a few of these family-controlled businesses enjoy longevity. The survival rate of most of these beyond the founders’ generation is extremely low. An example is that of the late Nigerian business mogul Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola, who at one point was one of the wealthiest men in Africa. He successfully built one of Nigeria’s biggest business empires consisting of an airline, a chain of newspapers, real estate, fisheries and retail. After his death in 1998, his businesses crumbled. None of them exist today.
More than half of wealthy parents are not fully confident their children will be well-prepared to handle a financial inheritance. Younger parents are more confident in the next generations’ ability. Some believe children can’t handle wealth until the age of 25 when they’re mature enough.
The report shows that the most difficult part of fulfilling the responsibilities is having sufficient legal or financial knowledge. The best way to solve this is through financial education.
“The issue is the same in Africa as it is with the rest of the world. What we have picked up is there’s no real opportunity where these high net families, who are very busy by nature, can send their kids to get a valid view to these things that are important,” she says.

Fading Family Fortunes

The ignominious ousting of Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, arguably Nigeria&#8217;s most recognisable Central Bank governor in history, heralded a tidal wave of public opinion and sent shockwaves throughout financial markets.
Following allegations of financial misconduct in the bank’s 2012 annual report, Sanusi was questioned by Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan in May and suspended in February while on assignment in Niger. The timing has led some to conclude that it is a consequence of the embarrassment he caused the government by questioning the country’s national oil company over $20 billion that was missing from the national account.
The action caused debate over whether the president acted legally since the constitutional provision for removal of the Central Bank governor states it must be approved by a two-third majority in the senate. In the aftermath, the naira recorded a significant loss in value, trading at N169 to $1 from a previous day closing price of $163. This was described by Proshare, a market intelligence firm, as the worst single day drop in 15 years.
Sanusi was a symbol of Nigeria&#8217;s economic stability because of his prudent monetary policy regime. His achievements included reducing inflation of over 11% in 2009, when he assumed office, to single digit rates, as well as maintaining exchange rate stability which saw the naira strengthening against the dollar over the past 24 months. The overall performance of the system under his watch fueled confidence in Nigeria&#8217;s economy and led to heightened interest in the country’s bonds and investments.
Predictably, his abrupt removal was met by a panicked response from investors. The government moved quickly to reassure stakeholders, with finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala emphasizing that the prudent fiscal and monetary policies that had been pursued up till now, will be maintained.
While the minister’s assertion and a similar statement by the interim head of the bank, Sarah Alade, provided some calm, the system will continue to be characterized by uncertainty until at least several months into the tenure of the incoming helmsman, Godwin Emefiele, the CEO of Zenith Bank, one of Nigeria’s largest lenders.
Emefiele, a former university lecturer, is a veteran of the banking sector having been on the management team of Zenith since it was founded in the early 1990s. While his nomination is surprising, he is viewed favorably by industry observers due to his reputation as a steady hand.
In light of these events, Nigeria’s monetary policy authorities are faced with the formidable challenge of facilitating a stable environment that will enable continued growth of the economy. At the previous meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the bank’s policy making authority, key issues were identified which pose a challenge to monetary stability in the near to medium term. These include the depletion of the country’s reserves, dwindling flows of foreign investment, the widening gap between the official exchange rate and that of authorized dealers, and the upward tendency of inflation.
These will persist in the coming months as the country prepares for national elections next year. Investors are likely to tread cautiously as the outlook evolves, hence authorities may resort to implementing extraordinary measures based on coordinated fiscal and monetary policy actions, in order to stem volatility. However, the recent high growth potential classification of Nigeria as part of the MINT countries, along with Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey, means overall interest in Africa’s largest economy in waiting is unlikely to wane.
Meanwhile, Emefiele will assume office as the 11th governor of the Central Bank. With a calm disposition that is the antithesis of Sanusi’s vibrant personality, he is viewed as having a temperament that is more suited to the role. Highly regarded by colleagues and observers, he will need to leverage his considerable experience to build on the achievements of the bank’s previous leadership, as he steers it through a period of uncertainty.
The manner of Sanusi’s removal has raised old questions about the independence of the Central Bank governor in a country where political leaders wield considerable influence. While he has confirmed that he will not go back to the job, Sanusi intends to challenge his removal in court in order to clarify the legality of the president’s action for the benefit of his successors.

Stormy Days Ahead?

The warm sun fell on my skin and I woke up. The air was still. Only the sound of The Pride of Africa gliding over the train tracks could be heard. I smiled, stretched and then opened the window. The sun hovered over the hills as its rays gently grazed the vast fields of green. We passed abandoned brick houses on farms, cows grazing the fields and a few windmills which caught the gentle breeze. The scenery was calm. It made me forget the bumpy ride which kept us awake the night before.
The evening got off to a good start. It was our first night of the three day trip from Pretoria to Cape Town on The Pride of Africa, one of several Rovos Rail trains. My colleague, Lerato Seko, and I were among the 63 passengers, from around the world, on board. The train consists of 36 suites, 20 carts, two dinning cars, one lounge and an observation deck which has the best views on board. The suites range between R14,300 ($1,300) and R28,600 ($2,600).
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During the day, the dress code was smart-casual; at night it was formal. With the sounds of classical music and laughter in the background, we were served a four-course meal, each paired with finely selected South African wine. The two of us can hardly taste the difference between a cabernet sauvignon and merlot but the wine connoisseur, Adam, made it his personal duty to educate us.
After dinner we became acquainted with some of the other passengers, mostly older couples and two newlyweds on their honeymoon. As South Africans, we became designated tour guides to the international tourists, offering advice on things to do and places to see. A few passengers asked to take pictures with us, perhaps because we were the only travelers of color on board.
That night, as I lay in bed, I looked up at the magnificent night sky and was awestruck by the clarity of all the constellations; I only wished I knew how to identify them. In Johannesburg you can barely see the Southern Cross.
We were sound asleep when we were harshly woken by the jolts of the train traveling at its maximum speed of 60 kilometers per hour. We felt every movement, every turn and every stop. This happened every hour or so and we were convinced that we weren’t going to get any sleep on the trip. In the morning we were greeted by warm smiles from guests who seemed to have slept like babies. I thought it was only us who had felt the thumps in the night but I was relieved to hear another lady say she placed a chair in front of her bed to prevent her from falling.
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As the day went on, we stopped in Kimberly to see the famous Big Hole. We walked across the bridge, in the scorching heat, to peer into the famous man-made attraction.  In my opinion, they should rename it the Gigantic Hole of Kimberly because it’s 215 meters deep and has a circumference of 1.6 kilometers. We looked down and saw the aqua blue-green water at the base of this massive crater. It’s hard to believe that years ago men from around the world slaved away to dig up rocks, that once cut and polished, would become one of the most valuable diamonds in the world.
We were taken on a tour of the diamond museum where we saw various uncut stones and the Eureka—the first diamond found in South Africa. To my amazement, I learnt that there is no such thing as a black diamond. In fact, black spots found in diamonds decrease their value and are usually cut out.
Our final day began with a five-kilometer walk through open fields to Maaitjiesfontein. After the train dropped us off and steamed away at full speed, I was almost certain we would never see it again. A few kilometers later, and some complaining about our skirts and sandals not being the right attire, we made it. Maaitjiesfontein is a small town situated in the Karoo, Western Cape. The town has 370 residents who are delighted to live in a place where crime is low and everyone knows each other’s name. Some of the main attractions included: a transport museum showcasing vintage trains from 1982, a London double-decker bus which takes people through the town and a coffee house, which when we arrived, seemed like the social place to be. After our visit, we hopped back on the train and began our final leg of the trip.
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Two hours before we arrived in Cape Town, a few passengers met in the observation car at the back of the train. As the mountains and vineyards surrounded us on both sides and the tracks disappeared in the distance, we shared one last glass of champagne and toasted to the journey that was.
Upon arrival, I had a conversation with our cab driver who couldn’t understand why we had traveled by train.
“I don’t get it. It takes two hours by plane and 16 hours by bus, so why did you take a train that takes three days?” he said shaking his head.
I smiled, “Don’t worry; it’s not that kind of a train.”

The $2,000  Train Ticket

Hester Maria Mende has just arrived in Scotland after a three-month holiday crossing continents, cultures and time zones. She is yet to discard the boarding passes she has collected from Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City, Kuala Lumpur, Sydney and Auckland on this recent trip. Call this retired 67-year-old former South African IT developer and opera singer a globetrotter, and she is not satisfied.
For Mende, the world is not enough.
Late December, Mende was basking on a sunny beach in Thailand when she received news of her clearing the first round of interviews for a one-way trip to Mars in 2025. Now, one of 1,058 chosen candidates, from a total of 200,000 from around the world, she will be in the final two rounds that will determine man’s foray on Mars soil.
She has no doubts she will make it.
“I believe myself to be the perfect candidate for the first mission because the people in my age group and my circumstances are the ideal cannon fodder,” Mende tells FORBES AFRICA.
“I absolutely want to go. To be on another planet, to be a part of that first step will be the ideal way of ending my life. We die anyway, so dying in the midst of this exhilarating endeavor will be fantastic for me.”
Early last year, Mende spent R300 ($27) to apply for the mission. She read that Mars One, a non-profit foundation, was seeking to establish human life on the red planet and she was immediately hooked.
“I have always been keen on science-fiction, but here was a chance to live my dream, experience space in my lifetime,” says Mende.
Probe her further and the real reasons emerge. Retirement and the death of a loved one.
“I lost my husband [in an armed robbery attack in Johannesburg] seven years ago, I have no children and although I have five siblings, I realized that post-retirement, you really need to find a support system of your own. I have led a full life. Nobody depends on me, nobody’s life will stop when I am gone.”
Mende confesses she withdrew from the world for several years after her husband’s demise. Signing up to be a part of the Mars mission added a new purpose to her life—and death.
At the moment, Mende is preparing body and mind for the next round of interviews due shortly. While the first round tested her mental strength, the next two levels will determine her physical agility to withstand the rigorous eight-year training that will ensue. If selected, she will be one of only 24 to 40 candidates training in teams of four. The team with the greatest chance of survival will be the first to undertake the seven-month journey—without a return ticket.
If Mende is one of them, she will be 78.
On the Mars One website, the project’s co-founder Bas Lansdorp describes the candidates as our first tangible glimpse into what the new human settlement will look like.
The website states public interest will help finance the project; the estimated cost of dispatching the first team is $6 billion.
Mende and her teammates have already been briefed about the drill.
“There will be ample work to accomplish for the first team,” she says.
Hydroponics—a method of growing plants in water rather than soil—will have to be established, the settlement will have to be maintained and new ways of survival devised.
Mende, who ended her career implementing IT projects for state-owned power utility Eskom in Johannesburg, says she has always walked off the beaten track.
“I always enjoyed being at the forefront of new disciplines. I started in IT when computers were not widely known, I started on project management when it was new,” she says.
Alongside a busy career, Mende, a trained classical singer, also sang on national radio, TV, and performed at operas across South Africa.
Singing is something she will miss on the red planet as the atmosphere is not conducive for sound.
And what if she does not qualify?
“I hope with every fiber in my body that I will. I am trying not to be fixated, but I believe my sense of humor will get me up there.”

‘I Want To Die On Mars And Hope My Sense Of Humor Gets Me There’

Overnight, Mandla Maseko went from an unknown DJ from a township to a media sensation making history as the first black African to go to space. Even he’s surprised.
“I remember years back, I think a year or two, I Googled myself and only found one picture on the third page of results. Now, when I Google myself, I’m on the first page,” says Maseko.
Maseko grew up in Mabopane, in the Soshanguve township, north of Pretoria. As a young boy, he enjoyed space films like Armageddon and Apollo 13. But the idea of one day becoming an astronaut was unimaginable. He dreamt of being a lawyer or a policeman.
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“We were not brought up to think that we could be bigger than big. But I always knew that I was destined for greater things.”
After high school, Maseko studied civil engineering at university but dropped out because of financial difficulties. He then had a line of temporary jobs including a dead-end sales job where he earned R10 ($1) an hour.
“I said to them, ‘Guys this is how much I spend a day and this is how much I’m getting a day. So if you look at it, I’m not really earning anything’… Then I quit.”
While at home, lounging on the couch and listening to the radio, the unemployed Maseko heard about the opportunity of a lifetime. Axe Apollo Space Academy was giving 23 people a free trip to space. Step one in the process was to send a picture of yourself jumping off from anywhere. Maseko sent an image of himself jumping off a wall at his house. He originally wanted to jump off the roof, but his mother did not like that idea.
The picture secured a call from the judges, who asked why the 25 year old wanted to go to space.
“I want to defy the laws of gravity. And possibly go down in history as the first black South African in space.”
Maseko, along with 29 other contestants, made it to the next round of the competition which was held in Parys, a town in the Free State province of South Africa. The contestants were faced with a number of challenges, including the infamous vomit comet.
“You stand up against the wall, the walls start spinning and then the floor disappears. So you’re standing on the edge, being pushed by the G-force up against the wall. The challenge was to push yourself up against the G-force and pick up five flags beneath your feet and put them above your head, one by one.”
The second challenge involved skydiving 10,000 feet above the ground then dropping sandbags on targets while plummeting. The final six contestants were put into an air combat jet that spun and flipped around.
“They wanted to see if you were going to vomit or pass out. Immediately after getting off, we had to write a test… I was fine. I’m a typical township boy. We don’t vomit in such challenges,” says Maseko with a chuckle.
The last leg of the competition was held at the Global Space Camp in Orlando, Florida in the Unites States. Maseko was one of three South Africans representing his country. He felt like a tiny star in the galaxy when he found out that there were 109 contestants representing 75 countries, all fighting for the same dream.
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The week’s tasks included G-force, an obstacle course, target shooting, a zipline, air combat flight and zero gravity flight.
“We were divided into groups and we had to construct a rocket. My group wasn’t successful but we had team spirit… Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, was looking for three qualities: bravery, enthusiasm and teamwork.”
That night they had a graduation ceremony where all 109 contestants received a certificate of completion. Then, the big announcement that changed 23 lives forever.
“They called the first guy and I was at the back taking pictures, thinking to myself that they will call a South Africa way later, like the 10th or the 11th person. To my surprise, after calling the first guy they call my name. I was holding an iPad taking pictures, thinking, ‘Wow, really! God is now showing off.’”
The victory was bittersweet. Three hours prior to the announcement, the news of Nelson Mandela’s passing had made world headlines. He was one of Maseko’s childhood heroes.
“It felt like Mandela was like ‘I’ve run the race and I’ve completed the course, now here’s the torch Mandla. Go as a young South African and fire up the youth. Run this course and take it to new heights.’ And in my case take it to space.”
Across the world, media was abuzz as countries celebrated their new space champions. Maseko and the organizers decided to keep the good news a secret for two weeks while the nation mourned their hero.
“He broke new ground as the first black president of South Africa and I wanted my name to resonate in the same light as his. In years to come, they’ll ask who the first black president was and they will say Mandela and they will ask who the first black South African in space was and my name will come. Even if I become a quarter of what he was, it’ll be fine.”
Weeks later, South Africans would hear the news of Maseko and everyone wanted a piece of him. He was noticed on the streets, his picture was splashed across the front pages of newspapers and he became a regular on radio. For Maseko, his big moment came when he was invited to President Jacob Zuma’s State of the Nation address and was even mentioned in the speech.
Although the mission into space is in late 2015, Maseko often dreams of his first moments in space.
“I see myself at the moment where we are sub-orbiting and I see the huge blue and white round ball that is called Earth. If I get to make a call, I will call the president. I’ll sing his song ‘Umshini wami’ (a Zulu struggle song). It won’t be a dull moment,” he says.
After space, Maseko wants to study towards becoming an astronaut. He wants to give back to South Africa and continue to inspire youth to reach for their dreams. But ultimately he wants to fly back to the United States and go on another mission into space where he dreams of placing the South African flag on the moon.
A dream too far? I don’t think so, after all he’s already going to space.

One Small Step For A DJ  One Giant Leap For Africa

It was a hard place to start. It was the worst night of his life. Sello Senyatsi is from Katlehong in the east of Johannesburg. One night, back when he was in his early twenties, in the Limpopo province, in the north of South Africa, all Senyatsi had on his mind was revenge. In his hand was a gun. He found it in a car that was involved in an accident.
With this gun he wanted to get back the money he believed was owed to his father. He drank far too much and marched to the petrol station of the man he believed to be his debtor.
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“I can’t say what my purpose was then. I don’t know if I wanted to shoot him or if I wanted the money. As I entered [the petrol station premises], I fired one shot. On the second shot, the gun jammed. There were about six guys in there who got up and beat me up. He burnt my leg with a cutting torch then his police friends came and arrested me,” says Senyatsi.
Not your everyday beginning for an entrepreneur.
With a criminal record and a stint behind bars hanging over his head, Senyatsi was determined to turn his life around and to start a successful business. His cellmates would probably never believe it but Senyatsi is doing just that through Sello’s Gutters and Fianco, a shop selling bespoke shoes.
We meet at the swanky 54 on Bath hotel in Rosebank, Johannesburg. Senyatsi is dressed in luxury Italian clothing—Angelo Galasso faded blue jeans and the brand’s royal blue blazer. The designer shoes he’s wearing are a far cry from the sneakers he used to wear at varsity. Those had added cushioning because they were two sizes too big. He’s had a taste for the finer things in life from a young age and has honed that affection to this day. Growing up in South Africa’s East Rand drove him to stand out from his peers.
It was during his second year studying law at Turfloop University, in the Limpopo province, that Senyatsi’s trouble started.
His father lent a friend around R10,000 ($930) to buy petrol for his filling station, which the friend promised to pay back. The money was supposed to pay for his son’s university expenses. The mistake that Senyatsi’s father made was that he never formalized the agreement. The day before his father was going to collect the money, he died and it was left to his son to collect what was owed.
Broke and sullen, Senyatsi sold anything he could lay his hands on to eke out a living and continue with his studies.
A week later, while driving back from his father’s funeral, Senyatsi came across a car accident and stopped to help. He opened the glove box and found a gun and a wallet, both of which he took.
This was the gun he used at the petrol station, the gun that had him arrested and charged with robbery with aggravating circumstances in 1990.
“My trial didn’t even take long. I pleaded guilty. I remember when I was sentenced and they said 12 years and six months, I somehow heard 12 weeks or something else, but not 12 years… I think it took me the whole day to realize how many years I was going to serve,” he says.
Before he even made it to his cell, another convict who saw that he was very young gave Senyatsi the 411 on what went on behind bars.
“I was told that everybody knew I was coming already and that I’d be turned into a woman,” he says.
This was all because of a home-made tattoo he had got four years earlier. It meant that he belonged to a certain group and if he got into trouble, that certain gang would protect him. It also meant that he would be prey to another gang. Senyatsi removes his gold trimmed, blue strapped watch and reveals the smudged tattoo.
His first three days without food were tough. He survived on toilet paper and toothpaste. But after that things became easier, practising and abiding by the advice of the fellow convict. Along the way, he even survived a stabbing.
Following the end of apartheid, the government started to integrate the black and white prisons and this is where Senyatsi learnt to make guttering systems.
“Those prisons were well equipped; motor mechanics, carpentry, by then I mean any machinery was there. For the blacks it was just working in the fields and peeling potatoes. And that’s how they [white people] survived, learning a lot. And that’s when I learnt sheet metalwork,” he says.
He learnt all that he could and after six years in prison, he was released on parole for good behavior.
In 1998, Senyatsi started running Sello’s Gutters, a firm specializing in manufacturing stainless steel gutters. The business came by chance. His sister had placed an order for gutters, but had to wait six months before they could be delivered. Using the skills he had gained while in jail, he tried his hand at making the gutters himself, using his employer’s machines in his spare time.
His employer, a catering equipment manufacturer, was impressed by Senyatsi’s craftsmanship and told him the business should rather concentrate on gutters. During the week, he worked at the manufacturing warehouse, while on weekends he made and installed the gutters alone. Within six months, Senyatsi left the company and it subsequently closed down. His former employer then gave the machines to Senyatsi and he began making gutters at home.
He started selling and installing the gutters in Kathlehong and the nearby Daveyton township. He even gave them a different look which made them unique.
At first, he was making five gutters a month and within three months business was booming. He was getting clients through word of mouth. He even took out a loan against his house to buy new machines that would help him making these stainless steel gutters.
What made his business successful was his persistence. He even showed this quality when he gave up the gutter business. He started selling the gutters on credit and was making a loss. Having to knock on clients’ doors who delayed payment reminded him of why he went to prison.
“I had bought a car and went to Pretoria to visit my friend in another township. And my business fell away. Then I moved to Pretoria to start selling chicken,” says Senyatsi.
By the time this business had also shut up shop, he had saved a lot of money and returned to his gutter business in 2001.
“I told myself that I will not sell anything on credit anymore. Until today I do not do that,” he says.
“This [stainless steel gutters] is an innovation made from the township. I didn’t copy it from the internet or anywhere else. It’s a concept, it’s my design. I even came up with the idea of doing the gutters in stainless steel. Even my supplier would tell you that he started off by telling me that ‘Sello you’re mad, no one will buy stainless steel gutters’… Now you are talking about a project that has created a massive demand,” he says.
His business has grown from buying one ton of steel, that lasted a year, to 40 tons.
Today, Sello’s Gutters employs around 160 installers and hopes to establish a franchise with some of its current employees.
“I love seeing people grow. Money doesn’t make me as happy as empowering someone,” says Senyatsi.
The entrepreneur saw an opportunity which now generates a turnover of R20 million ($1.86 million). Houses in townships like Soweto, Daveyton and Katlehong are quickly catching on to stainless steel gutters.
“We are moving to a point where we want to be a giant for the guttering system,” he says.
While building his business, his love for fashion never faded. As someone who grew up traveling from the north of South Africa to as far as the east coast in Durban to buy or check out the latest trends, Senyatsi is a fashion head who has never liked to dress like the person next door. This passion filtered down to his two sons who died in a car accident in March last year, about three weeks before they were to open Fianco, a shoe boutique store selling some of the most exclusive Italian shoe brands in South Africa.
“I found strength… it was the hardest thing any human can face. My one son was 18 years old and the other was 21. It devastated me when we had to open it [Fianco]. We spent around R1.3 million ($120,000) on putting this shop together,” Senyatsi says.
The 46-year-old father decided to go ahead with his sons’ idea, which he says is becoming a success despite its location in a quiet street in the Limpopo province. It is inspired by the luxury shoe shops of Milan. Asked why his shop is not in the country’s economic hub, Johannesburg, Senyatsi says there are issues with rights.
“There are people who own those brands in Johannesburg. I’m not allowed to sell there,” he says.
Three months after his sons died, Senaytsi went on a holiday to Italy’s fashion capital, Milan, where he visited a shoe shop where the cheapest shoe was $5,500. On this particular day, he was lucky to have met a taxi driver who drove him to a custom hand-made shoemaker, Silvano Lattanzi.
After meeting its owner, the Fianco boutique is the only store on the continent that sells the Silvano Lattanzi shoe brand. The owner even made Senyatsi and his wife a pair of shoes and boots respectively, with their sons’ names engraved on the sole. Silvano Lattanzi shoes are handmade and comprise a business that has preserved the Italian way of making shoes which could cost around $30,000 with a 20-year guarantee.
“The market is there, we don’t disclose our customers. But I’m meeting serious people through this brand. And that is how I link it to the gutters. I’m able to speak about my gutter business with these serious people.”
These serious people probably don’t believe how a former convict is making his fortune through gutters and shoes.

Tag: April 2014

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