In this home away from home, the grey-haired former British cabinet minister holds forth in a South African hotel – one glimpse of the glint in his eye and you can imagine the long-haired rebel he once was, running riot and giving the finger to authority.
Forty six years ago, Peter Hain was probably the most hated man among white sports fans in South Africa; the country of his birth. He was barely 19 when he earned the moniker ‘Hain The Pain’ and emerged as chairman of the rebellious anti-apartheid campaign, Stop The Seventy Tour, in Britain. With his friends, Hain ran amok, invading rugby pitches and causing mayhem for the touring South African teams between 1969 and 1970. Their campaign helped bring an international ban on the lily-white South African sport teams of yore.
“I was sports fanatic, like a lot of South African boys. I understood that sports could be the Achilles heel of apartheid, because apartheid in South Africa was terrible and was condemned but still (their) cricket team was appearing at Lord’s and the Springboks at Twickenham. Football (was) everywhere and athletics and so on. So, I thought if we hit that then we could really hit white South Africa morale very deeply,” Hain told Forbes Africa after giving a speech in Johannesburg.
Hain graduated from an unruly activist to a Labour Party minister under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, between 2001 and 2015. Brown was a fellow anti-apartheid activist in 1969.
Back in 1966, his parents, Walter and Adelaine Hain, were jailed for opposing apartheid and were exiled in London. His parents continued their activism, protesting outside the South African embassy in Trafalgar Square. The teenage Hain immersed himself in non-violent, anti-apartheid protests at all sports grounds.
“In 1969, it was a period of a lot of direct action and non-violent protests, students occupying the campuses, protests against the Vietnam War, in 1968 students revolted in America, I was part of that generation. I thought there was no good in standing outside the stadium holding up placards, that doesn’t get you anywhere, so we ran onto the pitch, we stopped the matches.”
That was not all. Hain and his friends booked a young woman into a London hotel where the Springboks were staying. The woman jammed the door locks of the Springboks rooms the night before a test match at Twickenham. In the morning they had to break the doors down. Then the campaigners lured the Springboks’ driver into the hotel. Just a few hours before the kick-off, the protesters stole the bus with half of the team on board. One of the players wrestled with the driver and the bus crashed into other cars. It took the police an hour to unchain the driver who was tied to the steering wheel.
“South Africa was expelled from the Olympics until Madiba (Nelson Mandela) walked out of the prison and became the president. Those South African teams were never South African, they were white South African teams,” he says.
Now, 50 years after his family’s unceremonious exit, Hain was back in South Africa to address the Wits Business School about Brexit; populism, and the European refugee crisis.  Commenting on the thorny issue around the Springboks’ lack of transformation, he says it doesn’t happen overnight.
“You have to have positive action to promote African, colored and Indian players. But you also have to be competitive internationally. And squaring those two is pretty difficult, I would simply say, it’s going to be bumpy, but somehow you are going through a phase of transition. The cricket team is very, very good. Compared them with when I was protesting, it is millions kilometers better,” he says.
The week Hain arrived, the university fees protests raged across South Africa.
“The economy is being neglected by the ANC. The schools systems are horrifying. In the global school performance index out of the 140 countries, South Africa is 138, below Benin and Mauritania, the poorest countries in the world. This is unacceptable. Where is the money going? They have done fantastically in building houses and giving electricity to people who didn’t have under apartheid,” he says.
Hain was sneaked into the Sunnyside Park Hotel in Parktown, Johannesburg, a few miles from the Wits Business School. The establishment that brought him here was under siege from hot headed activists. The more things change, the more they remain the same.

‘Hain The Pain’ All Grown Up

Felix Sater is not a name that has come up much during the presidential campaign. That he has a colorful past is an understatement: The Russian-born Sater served a year in prison for stabbing a man in the face with a margarita glass during a bar fight, pleaded guilty to racketeering as part of a mafia-driven “pump-and-dump” stock fraud and then escaped jail time by becoming a highly valued government informant.
He was also an important figure at Bayrock, a development company and key Trump real estate partner during the 2000s, notably with the Trump SoHo hotel-condominium in New York City, and has said under oath that he represented Trump in Russia and subsequently billed himself as a senior Trump advisor, with an office in Trump Tower.
Usually such an association would ignite a political firestorm. From the Clintons’ Whitewater deals to Richard Nixon’s relationship with Florida banker and developer Bebe Rebozo, all the way back to 19th-century industrialist Mark Hanna’s influence over William McKinley, presidential candidates
have long suffered by dint of association.
Sater has been profiled in the Washington Post, on ABC News and in several other outlets. But few have taken much note of him, presumably because Trump has said, under oath, that he barely knew him. “If he were sitting in the room right now, I really wouldn’t know what he looked like,” he said in a deposition in November 2013. Asked how many times he had ever conversed with Sater, he said, “Not many.” And asked about a previous BBC interview, in which he was questioned about Sater’s mafia connections, Trump said he didn’t recall the interview.
This past December Trump went further: “Felix Sater, boy, I have to even think about it,” Trump told AP, referring questions about Sater to his staff. “I’m not that familiar with him.”
End of story? Not quite. Looking into Trump’s deals, FORBES has uncovered numerous e-mails and sworn statements that indicate Sater was closer to Trump, his organization and his children than previously revealed. Additionally, FORBES has connected three billionaire oligarchs from Kazakhstan to potential deals involving Trump and Sater.
Why does this matter? The story of Sater and the one involving billionaires quietly backing the Trump-Bayrock deals speaks to a key virtue of any good businessman – due diligence – that seems especially relevant for a candidate running on private sector acumen and the need to do “extreme vetting” of those seeking to get into the country.
It wouldn’t have taken much vetting to get the scoop on Sater. FORBES retained a highly regarded global-risk-assessment firm to conduct a background check, using only what was available to it in 2007 – the year the Trump-Bayrock relationship was promoted. The investigative firm (it asked not to be named for fear of political repercussions) discovered many facts that we’re revealing here and others that have come out before, including felony convictions and organized crime ties. Such due diligence on Sater could have been done for $5,000.

All The (Potential) President’s Men

It’s a 542-kilometer drive from Johannesburg to Beitbridge. As we arrive the sun is shining its warm golden light over the bridge connecting South Africa and Zimbabwe. There are no birds chirping over the Limpopo River. It seems like a peaceful morning, until you get closer.
There is pandemonium as hundreds of cars line up to be stripped and searched before proceeding into Zimbabwe. A journey to Harare is delayed by at least three hours. President Robert Mugabe’s government has banned the importation of basic goods from South Africa. All banned goods are confiscated.
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Priscilla Ngwenya is a woman in the autumn of her life. She has brown wrinkly skin, dull brown eyes and a jutting jawline that makes her look tired of suffering. On this day, she says she has endured pain and penury working for her grandchildren at home in Zimbabwe. She is not about to let anyone else gain from her sweat, nor her liters of cooking oil that she is trying to import.
“I will not work for the police. I work too hard for you to take food I bought for my family for yourselves. If I can’t get this to my hungry grandchildren, then no one else will have it,” she says as she pours 20 liters of cooking oil onto the street that she carried 2,000 kilometers from her job as a domestic worker in Cape Town.
Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Industry and Commerce banned basic imports of goods, such as cooking oil, coffee creamers, hair extensions, body creams, building material, furniture, baked beans, cereals, peanut butter, jams and mayonnaise. It is all part of a “Buy Zimbabwe” campaign that government hopes will see factories built in its land.
With millions worth of goods going into Zimbabwe, South Africa is the largest importer to the country and the biggest trading partner.
“[The ban] is a desperate move by Zimbabwe, to try and preserve their currency and to stimulate internal trade, however [it is] not viable as no local company can provide the basic consumer goods that South Africa offers,” says Ian Cruickshanks, Chief Economist at the Institute of Race Relations.
“This government is very stupid. We buy from South Africa because it is cheaper and it’s the only way for us to survive. Buying anything made in Zimbabwe is very expensive. The rands I earn can’t support my family,” Ngwenya screams throwing the empty bucket on the ground at Beitbridge.
The ban on imports has irked many like Ngwenya. Next to her is a man breaking the plastic electrical conduits he isn’t allowed to take across the border.
Just days before, traders burned a warehouse, where the confiscated goods were held, and barricaded the roads with rocks and burning tyres, forcing the closure of the border, believed to be the first time in history.
“I buy goods in South Africa and sell them here in a small shop in Bulawayo. That’s the way I have been surviving and keeping my family afloat. I used to be a teacher but I couldn’t deal with the lack of payments by government and I decided to get into business,” says Prudence Dube.
Tuleka Ngci, of GoAfrica, who has been transporting goods from South Africa to Malawi since December, says business has been slow after traders blocked the Beitbridge border. Ngci transports goods such as groceries, fruit and vegetables from South Africa through the Zimbabwean border to Malawi every week.
“If we can’t pass through the border to buy goods then that means there’s no business for us. Customers blame us for what is happening in Zimbabwe and as a result we find ourselves in the middle of a crossfire we don’t even understand,” says Ngci.
“The restriction against imported goods is threatening the livelihood of people and when people are hungry they get angry. And in this case who knows who they’ll take out their anger on.”
According to Dube, many Zimbabweans turn to smuggling.
“My business is registered, I pay duty for the goods I buy, and I employ six people. If this ban is not lifted, I will have to go the smuggling route like most informal traders in the country. That will be a disadvantage to government. I don’t think they thought this through and looked at how we would be affected,” she says.
Smuggling goods in open sight seems easy enough to do. At the border, some authorities are not shy to take bribes. We carried a two-liter cooking oil bottle to test the system. The man doing the checks told us cooking oil could no longer be imported into the country before asking for a bribe to let us through.
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“I have a lot of friends who never pay anything. The officials are also hungry so they just pocket whatever they can get from people,” says Dube.
Most small businesses smuggle goods with the help of transporters like Bongani Sibanda.
“Because of the economic situation in Zimbabwe, smuggling is an everyday thing and we see ourselves as business people providing a service. I carry groceries, and whatever else people send from South Africa to Zimbabwe, twice a week. As long as it is not drugs or any illegal goods I see myself as helping people,” he says.
Sibanda says the ban will affect his “business”. More bribes mean higher fees.
“It will also bring in more business to us because those who cross the border to stock up themselves may be afraid to smuggle things so they will commission us,” he says.
Sibanda worked at a shoe factory in Bulawayo for 15 years before being thrown out by the factory closure. He now makes around $2,500 a month, enough to send his daughter to university in South Africa.
Sibanda may be making a buck, but the Zimbabwean economy isn’t.
According to media, the Chief Executive Officer of the Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce, Christopher Mugaga, estimates Zimbabwe could be losing $1.5 billion every year through smuggling of goods. The figure is more than one third of the country’s $4 billion national budget. Local industries have closed shop as their products fail to compete with the cheap smuggled products, cutting 100,000 jobs over the last five years. The government is said to make $60 million per month from duties charged at Beitbridge.
At the Beitbridge border post, Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (ZIMRA) Acting Commissioner General, Happias Kuzvinzwa, in a statement, has urged members of staff to desist from corruption.
“It is time to wipe away corruption! We must all know that we are accountable to the nation and seriously consider our duty as custodians of revenue laws in this country,” he says.
He says ZIMRA will intensify lifestyle audits to decrease numbers of goods smuggled into the country.
As we drive off, it seems trouble and smuggling at the border will not go away anytime soon.

The Border On A Slow Road To Nowhere

<h5>You has had a fantastic 2013, with a gorgeous campaign, an incredibly successful partnership with Mr Price and an emerging designer of the year award. What keeps you inspired in this cut-throat industry?</h5>
I try to keep myself focused as much as I can. I know I am living in a microwave world, successes come and go, and life is fast. So I don’t focus on my short-term goals but instead I focus on my future and how I want my life to be. I have certain rules of conduct from when I started in this career, and that is to involve myself in projects I can handle, to always carry through what I have promised a third party, and to be polite, listen, learn and be mentored by those who have done what I am doing. I have understood that I am not alone in my life and in a small way I am responsible to my community. Like the way I have been inspired, I will inspire. It is not an easy road, so I keep my family and close friends close by.
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<h5>What, in your mind, are the challenges facing designers in Africa? Following that, what are the opportunities that you can forecast for growth within the fashion industry on the continent?</h5>
The challenges facing designers in Africa are the same as the ones that the rest of the world faces, plus the fact that we are not as experienced as the rest of the world. So issues like cash flow, sufficient resources in all levels, and highly experienced workers is always a “juggler’s game”. But having said that, Africa is still in its experimental and growth phase in fashion, therefore, the potential for growth is there. And with the aid of First World technology, we are able to reach certain milestones of our own. First among them is that the fashion and textile industry is a credible industry that can add to the economy. Giant companies like Mr Price or Woolworths, who perform well, have associated themselves with designers by seeing their potential and investing in their brands. Magazines team up with designers to do pop-up stores, we start seeing more collaboration between ourselves too. So the need for progress is really present.
<h5>Are institutions such as AFI creating a large enough platform for all African designers as opposed to a select few, or should designers be doing more to promote themselves?</h5>
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I think what AFI is doing is fantastic and only the beginning. They provide the platform and we participate. At the same time your business is yours, so you do the best you can to promote it and make it successful. Relying on others is not really recommended and can be counterproductive. If these platforms were not there, we would still have to promote our garments, shops, business, etc.
<h5>Are fashion shows outdated? What other avenues would you suggest to designers who don’t have the means to showcase?</h5>
There is an excitement and intrigue in following or attending fashion shows. It’s part and parcel of being in the industry but that does not limit a designer to let their work be known in other ways. Many do private viewings and invite loyal clientele and their friends; there are various media outlets that can advertise your products like fashion spreads that always need new, interesting content; or dressing a well-known personality that fits the ethos of your brand.
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<h5>Following the Samsung show at AFI, where fashion and accessory designers from across the continent collaborated to create complementary ranges, will we be seeing more of this cross-continental collaboration from you going forward? And if you could collaborate with anyone from Africa, who would it be?</h5>
I would love to collaborate again, of course! I would like to work with a brand that is like-minded and stands for progress on this continent. I associate myself with NGOs like RedCap Foundation purely because they believe in investing time in our future leaders.
<h5>You are a great example of hard work and business savvy. What fundamental steps should designers be taking to create growth and ultimately make money from their craft?</h5>
Vision, persistence and support. Surrounding yourself with the right people is my biggest rule.
<h5>How important is keeping your product local, thereby keeping the work and money within the continent, and ultimately giving back to the economy and community?</h5>
It’s very important because everything is generation-based and you determine what people after you are going to stand for and believe in. So if being our own leader is important now, it will be important tomorrow.
<div id="attachment_5922" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5922" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-medium wp-image-5922" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2013-Dec-Jan-055-057-FSH-010-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />Marianne Fassler</div>

Anisa Mpungwe from Loincloth and Ashes

Africa offers a great payoff for Coca-Cola. The brand known for its sometimes cheesy, sometimes inspirational tag lines, taps into the past and the present pulse of the continent. Its ‘we are one Kumbaya’ images resonate with the African ethos of Ubuntu.
So too does the narrative that anything is possible, which is captured by the Coke Side of Life advertisement campaign. Both messages are consistent with the image makeover Africa is enjoying, off the back of its status as the world’s second-fastest growing region.
For a company that probably receives more bad press than Walmart, especially for its less-than-savory business practices, it is important for Coca-Cola to be seen getting it right on the continent.
Dr. Susan Mboya Kidero, recently appointed to head up the Coca-Cola Africa Foundation, which is part of the company’s philanthropic arm, is a perfect fit for Coke.
Not only is she a cheerleader for the multinational, she is an ardent believer in uplifting communities. Careful to avoid the negative reputation that often accompanies corporates operating in developing countries, Kidero neatly sidesteps the limitations of charity in a world where philanthropy is under pressure to be more than just a handout.
“I live and breathe sustainability. Whatever I do, it needs to live. I don’t like the word charity,” she explains.
Kidero joined Coca-Cola in 2008, after 14 years at consumer goods giant Procter &amp; Gamble in the United States. Initially she was appointed as the general manager of Coca-Cola South Africa, a top-10 market for the company, which brings in more than $800 million in annual revenue. During her tenure, Kidero managed to increase growth, which had been in decline, and saw Coke participate successfully as a corporate partner in the FIFA World Cup in South Africa.
If her childhood nostalgia about carefully crafted Coke branding is anything to go by, it makes sense that Kidero ended up working for the world’s most recognizable brand. It also helps that, unlike many parents, Kidero’s mother did not tell her that the fizzy drink would make her fat or cause her teeth to fall out.
“I didn’t have a negative perception. I actually grew up associating it with fun. We didn’t have (Coke) every day, and so when we did, it was generally because company was coming over and we were all going to have a lot of fun,” says Kidero, smiling.
“We once asked (at a workshop): what is your favorite memory of Coke, or any of our products? And I said: for me, it is when we were growing up, Coke came in glass and it would clink. And whenever we would hear that we would think, oh we are going to have a fun day today! That sound is still a very positive sound.”
As an executive of the multinational, Kidero takes her role as brand ambassador to heart. She says heading up the Coca-Cola Africa Foundation is a logical extension of being involved in women’s empowerment, as both are about improving lives. Kidero’s phil-anthropy is also not small change. She, like her company, operates in the big league.
Besides leading the foundation’s philanthropic activities in Africa, Kidero also spearheads the company’s initiative to economically empower five million women worldwide by 2020. Known as the 5BY20 program, it provides finance to women who want to start a business linked to Coke, such as retailing or recycling. So far Kidero has raised more than $116 million in funding for the initiative.
She also guided Coca-Cola in forging a $100 million partnership with the International Finance Corporation, a member of the World Bank Group, to provide women entrepreneurs in Eurasia and Africa with easier access to finance.
At the foundation, Kidero’s port-folio is not limited to entrepreneurship; she also focuses on water, health and education, the most pressing needs of African communities.
Back in the day, Coke stuck to conventional charity-based philanthropy. But as non-governmental organiz-ations began pushing for more sustainable ways of assisting the poor, big companies like Coke could not afford to be caught napping. The multi-national caught on quickly, and so did its corporate responsibility programs.
“We said: we need a more focused way of doing this. Our best way of doing this is by empowering the community. How do we do this? Whatever we do, the initiative becomes the res-ponsibility of the community.
“So the foundation came about bec-ause we were trying to consolidate all the different parties that were doing charity work. We said: if we bring all of that together, we will be even more powerful. The biggest thing was putting a strategy in place that was going to be sustainable,” she explains.
Kidero believes philanthropy is vital for Coca-Cola because the company cannot thrive if the communities in which it operates do not thrive. She says Coke chooses projects to invest in based on their relevance for both its overall business and for the community concerned.
In 2013, the foundation spent just under $11 million on projects – 63% went to water, 33% to health and 4% to youth development. Kidero says it is planning to spend a similar amount in 2014.
Providing water access and preserving reservoirs consume the bulk of funding for Coke’s projects. Its goal is to replenish every drop of water it uses during the manufacturing process. This of course is because the company has been at the center of several disputes with environmental groups over conserving scarce resources.
The company is often criticized for its high water consumption in regions where water is scarce. In 2006, campaign group War on Want accused Coca-Cola of drinking India dry. Farmers in Ragasthan were unable to irrigate their fields after the company built a bottling plant in the area. Also in India, a Coke plant in Kerala was forced to close down after it allegedly contaminated local water supplies.
In 2008, the multinational set targets to improve its water efficiency by 20%. In 2011, it used 293.3 billion lit-ers of water to make 135 billion liters of product, giving it a water-use ratio of 2.16 liters per liter of product.
In Africa, where the lack of clean drinking water is a real concern, the company has been involved in 42 projects in 27 countries to reduce, rec-
ycle and replenish water supplies.
The Replenish Africa Initiative (Rain) is backed by a $30 million commitment from the Coca-Cola Company and other donors. It aims to provide more than two million people in Africa with access to drinking water by 2015. Kidero is planning to bring additional partners on board so that Rain becomes a $60 million initiative.
On the health front, malaria and HIV are a big focus for the foundation.
“In (South Africa’s) Eastern Cape, we are working with (NGO) Africare on a soup-to-nuts complete HIV prevention and treatment program. What we are trying to do there is create a model where we can actually show that over time we (reduce HIV)… We can then take it to government found-ations and say, ‘this model works, it has been validated’,” Kidero says.
The foundation also pumps money into education on the continent through initiatives that improve teachers’ skills.
Over and above her professional responsibilities, Kidero has her own fund. The Zawadi Africa Educational Fund provides young African women from disadvantaged backgrounds with scholarships to Ivy League universities. To date it has awarded 230 scholarships, valued at more than $45 million.
“I believe Africa is special, even with all our challenges. Africa has given me my identity. Africa has given me my confidence. I have a huge extended family; that is how we are in Africa… Africa is in full Technicolor. If you go elsewhere, it is muted.”

Tag: Campaign

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

‘Hain The Pain’ All Grown Up

All The (Potential) President’s Men

The Border On A Slow Road To Nowhere

Anisa Mpungwe from Loincloth and Ashes

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