In working with thousands of career women who also have children, and being a parent myself, I’ve experienced just how challenging it is to balance contributing as we wish to in the professional world, with how we want to mother, parent and care give in a present and loving way. Personally speaking, when I was forging my corporate career years ago, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I didn’t want the CEO track. My top priority in my life was to be in the fabric of my children’s lives in a meaningful, enriching way when they were young. I didn’t want to blow that or have serious regrets later in life. “Calling in” on the phone from another state (or coast) each night to read them a bedtime story or hear the highlights of their day (because I was traveling for work) was not how I wanted those years to pass.
To be clear, I’m not judging anyone who has different priorities – we all must choose our own. What’s key to your success, I believe, is to identify your own unique life priorities, and live from that knowledge each day. (Learn more about how to honor your own life priorities while balancing the needs of others.)
Most women I know want, and need, to build a fulfilling career and an enriching life outside of work. They want both, not the either/or that we’ve been told are our only options. But to do that, research has shown that women, as a first step, must adjust their mindsets, their limiting beliefs and their openness to committing to working and balancing outside life. That’s not all that’s required to modify our current competitive career model that doesn’t find a majority of women, but it’s an essential step in women taking charge of their lives. This requires women doing the inner work of overcoming key obstacles in what they believe is possible, and revising five hidden, limiting assumptions they’ve come to make. To learn more about this need to reframe the possibilities and shift away from these constraining assumptions, I connected with Jodi Detjen, co-author of The Orange Line: A Woman’s Guide to Integrating Career, Family and Life. A professor of management at Suffolk University, Jodi teaches management at MBA, undergraduate and corporate education levels, and writes and trains about the skills required, and organizational aspects related to living an integrated life. She is also a principal partner of a boutique consulting firm, the InTrinsic Group, delivering outcome-focused leadership development and coaching to foster effective performance.
Jodi explains: “In our research of 118 women (college educated, middle class), women who were successful at integrating career, family and life, had reframed five key assumptions about what it means to work and participate in family life with the highest degree of success, fulfillment and happiness.”
Jodi shares the five hidden assumptions that keep women from balancing work and home more successfully.
“I am solely responsible for home and family.”
When women in dual-parent households believe this, they feel overly-pressured and burdened to own it all: children’s development and the domestic responsibilities including the laundry, food preparation, shopping, cleaning, home repairs, etc. They may delegate some chores (e.g. garbage) but they tend to grow weary from the conflict that emerges around delegation and are often more comfortable just doing it themselves to get it done more quickly. For women with a partner at home, reframing this assumption to “we are both responsible for home and family” opens up all sorts of important possibilities. Now, we can say: “My career is important and so is yours. How do we figure out how to get the necessary chores done together?” Jodi’s interviewees hired help, shared care, switched off chores, held their kids more responsible and accountable, or gave up doing school projects. The key is to stop over-functioning and involve everyone in the family in a healthier, more appropriate way that builds self-reliance and independence.
“I’m afraid to negotiate if I don’t have permission.”
Everyone tells women to negotiate more and so many women don’t. Research has found, however, that when women have permission, they do negotiate – and often out-negotiate men. For example, if a job has been advertised that “salary is negotiable,” three times as many women will apply for the posting than they do when there’s no mention that wages are negotiable. When women believe they are invited to negotiate, they do so much more readily than when they fear they will be seen as “pushy” or “demanding” to get what they want. (Sadly, there’s some justification to their fears – research has shown that success and likability are positively correlated in men and negatively correlated in women).
Jodi’s tip: Forget permission. Women need to reframe this assumption toward, “I will be paid what my skills and contributions are worth and not less.” Tell the world what you deserve. Do this based on data you compile from a thorough evaluation of compensation trends in your field. Send a strong signal that you value yourself, and understand the importance of the contributions you’ve made, and will continue to bring to the table.
“I’m afraid to negotiate if I don’t have permission.”
Everyone tells women to negotiate more and so many women don’t. Research has found, however, that when women have permission, they do negotiate – and often out-negotiate men. For example, if a job has been advertised that “salary is negotiable,” three times as many women will apply for the posting than they do when there’s no mention that wages are negotiable. When women believe they are invited to negotiate, they do so much more readily than when they fear they will be seen as “pushy” or “demanding” to get what they want. (Sadly, there’s some justification to their fears – research has shown that success and likability are positively correlated in men and negatively correlated in women).
Jodi’s tip: Forget permission. Women need to reframe this assumption toward, “I will be paid what my skills and contributions are worth and not less.” Tell the world what you deserve. Do this based on data you compile from a thorough evaluation of compensation trends in your field. Send a strong signal that you value yourself, and understand the importance of the contributions you’ve made, and will continue to bring to the table.
“I must be perfect in all I do and I am not good enough.”
These two assumptions combined together keep women from seeking advancement, promotions, raises and embracing growth. Jodi has experienced many women sharing their beliefs that they simply were not ready for the next level or that they preferred to stay as an individual contributor. But in looking beneath these statements, Jodi found a need to be perfect and a prevalent feeling that these women weren’t living up to their perfectionistic ideals. Reframing this assumption of “I’m not good enough” to “I am a work in progress, and I am ready for growth” allows for new pathways to open and new opportunities to be embraced. Rather than berating herself for having a messy home, one woman declared that her messy home was an emblem (that she was proud of) of her commitment to her work. She believed her house was perfectly fine, mess and all, and didn’t feel “less-than” because of it.
Another woman, when asked to take on a new role, at first thought “I’m not ready for that” but then reframed her assumption. She looked around at her male peers doing similar roles and realized that she indeed had all the qualifications and experience she needed to succeed and thrive in the role. She negotiated a new title, a raise, and took the job.
“If I follow the rules, good things will happen.”
Women have learned from their school days that when they follow the rules, teachers will like them and reward them. But in business, the rules are quite different. Following these school-based rules – keeping your head down, doing all your work and doing just what’s asked of you – won’t get women promoted. Instead, they must take responsibility for themselves and their careers, and ask for what they need, want, and deserve. Create a regular forum to share with your managers what you’ve accomplished and contributed, and the value you’ve provided. Talk about your accomplishments, not in a bragging way, but as a way to let managers and teams know how the enterprise is moving forward, and how you’ve facilitated that growth. (Check out Peggy Klaus’s book Brag: The Art of Tooting Your Horn Without Blowing It, for tips.) You’re in the driver’s seat of your career. Expecting good things to occur without actively facilitating these positive outcomes is a recipe for disappointment, or worse, failure.
Reframing these five assumptions is a powerful strategy that frees women up to see and embrace growth and new possibilities. Don’t let your mistaken assumptions perpetuate self-limiting behavior. Realize that what you believe is what you will create. Don’t wait for anyone else to offer you opportunity and growth – reach out and grab it.

FIVE Hidden Assumptions That Keep  Women From Living Larger

As one of the millions of species that inhabit this earth we, as human beings, have a unique gift – the power to choose how we want to shape our way of being in the world. We may have been born with a certain disposition, but there is huge choice as to what we make of it.
As a leadership coach, I want each person I work with to be conscious of their personal leadership style, as it manifests in every avenue of their lives, both personal and professional. I get clients to pay attention to the language they choose and the impact of that choice both on themselves and those around them.
One company I have worked with has its weekly executive committee meetings in the ‘War Room’. The lang-uage of the War Room is military: Up to now, X has beaten us; next month we will destroy them. We must identify the weak spots. We must throttle them by the jugular.
However, the effectiveness of feminine energy is having an impact, slowly but surely. CEOs of some predominantly male boards are noticing that executive teams that include women are creatively different and solve problems more innovatively, less aggressively. Testosterone in the boardroom is not quite so predominant in these teams. A review of bottom-line performance of global companies suggests that diversity pays off.
Many women in leadership pos-itions have really struggled to get there. I coach women leaders who feel that they have had to work harder than the men around them to prove their worth. I have coached black women who feel burdened by affirmative action. They feel it is used to cast doubt on their ability, and that some people will say that race rather than excellence got them to the top.
However, there are women in leadership roles who have not only survived and won these battles, but have also adopted the aggressive ways that made their lives so tough.
I have worked with clients who experience certain women leaders as overly assertive. They even use the word ‘bully’ to describe the coercion used toward those who are weaker or who have less power.
How does bullying manifest in the world of business?
Unreasonable work requests made at any time of day. I am your boss. You will do this for me now, because I say so. I have the right to email you at 9pm and to expect you to respond.
Bullies translate the power of their status into the right to interrupt disrespectfully or even walk out of the room while you are still speaking.
The bully may also assume the right to criticize in a manner that is humiliating, sometimes in front of other colleagues.
Physically, bullies may ‘throw their weight around’ by using intimidating body language, volume and tone of voice.
But beware of the subtle bullies; those who exercise a more sophisticated, psychological bullying smile and who smile while they turn the screws.
How do women support each other when there is a female bully in our midst? I have noticed many women choosing silence. Either they are fearful of offering critical, supportive feedback (after all, the person is a bully and bullies often respond by lashing out), as they are worried that such a reaction will be career limiting. Or as a woman, they do not want to be seen as critical of another woman. Some simply resign and hope that the retention problem will be noticed.
However, I have also observed collusion and denial. The wish to have women represented at senior levels can translate into silence around inappropriate leadership behaviors.
It pains me to witness women leading badly. It does not have to be this way. We can choose another path. The available literature indicates the enhanced business results from leadership styles that encourage, motivate, build, validate, appreciate, respect boundaries, and pay attention to timeous constructive criticism.
The Tao Te Ching, a classic text by the ancient Chinese poet, Lao Tzu, is widely acknowledged in the world’s wisdom literature. The last stanza of his chapter 76 reads:
An army that cannot yield will be defeated A tree that cannot bend  will crack in the wind Thus by Nature’s own decree the hard and the strong are defeated while the soft and gentle are triumphant.
As women leaders we have power. Let us use it wisely. Let us play to the strengths of the feminine. Let us design the brand we aspire to build. Let us work out how best to support each other and hold one another accountable.

WOMEN POWER: THE ABILITY TO CHOOSE WISELY

Under the scorching African sun, in Sudan, a seven-year-old boy stands at attention. His fragile frame struggles to hold the AK47. The blank stare on his face betrays the atrocities he has lived through so far. At the command of his superior he runs into the bush. His mission is simple: no prisoners; kill them all. The stutter of the firing gun drowns out the screams. This is one of millions of boys who will never know what it feels like to play with Lego and toy trucks. With each passing day his hardening heart stifles a distant dream of a joyful childhood.
That boy, Emmanuel Jal, now in his thirties, has a made a career by telling his stories though music as a hip-hop artist. But the memories of death and destruction stick with him like the bullets in the chamber of an assault rifle.
“Everything I do today is mostly inspired by my past. I consider myself a soldier, but I fight with a microphone instead of an AK47. The battle that I’m fighting now is not because I am bitter; I am fighting to create change and I’m using dialogue and ideas instead of using force.”
In many ways Jal is still one of the lost children. He doesn’t know when or where he was born, but he thinks it was in the early 1980s. At the age of seven, after both his parents died, Jal went to a refugee camp in Ethiopia where he was recruited by the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA).
“Just as we approached the SPLA training facility, some members jumped out of the bush and started beating us… The next day we were shown how to attack towns, make weapons, make houses for ourselves and how to cook. The training was harsh and I thought that once we had finished I was going to kill my trainer.”
When Jal was around 13 years old, the SPLA began to turn against each other. During this time, a group of them plotted their escape. The plan was to walk to a place called Waad. They thought it would take one month, but it took three. Only 16 of them survived.
Jal was taken in by a British aid worker who smuggled him into Nairobi. After her death, he was on his own again. The night terrors of his time in Sudan became worse and often left Jal on his knees. He may have left Sudan; but it never left him. Although he had dreams of being a pilot or a doctor, music was where he found peace.
In 2005, Jal released his first album Gua, meaning peace. The album focused on life as a child soldier, government corruption and the future of Africa. Although Jal’s music connected with many; it was too real for others.
“Music with a message behind it is very dangerous because you are educating the public; you are letting people know their rights… The system is scared of highly intelligent people who have more information about life because once they know, they can’t turn away.”
Jal’s music has seen him perform alongside the likes of Bob Geldof, the Soweto Gospel Choir and Josh Groban. In 2008, Jal performed in London for Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday.
In 2008, a documentary on his life, War Child, received international praise. It was shown at various festivals including the Tribeca film festival where it won the Cadillac Audience Choice Award.
From child soldier to musician and activist, Jal has one mission. It’s highlighted in the lyrics to his song War Child: “I believe I’ve survived for a reason to tell my story to touch lives&#8230;”
Through his music he is doing just that. With the mic as his weapon, he fires words of hope for those who suffer in silence.

Music To Dull The Nightmares

Is the experience of coaching women different to coaching men? I posed this question at my coaching book club, which meets regularly for two hours of zesty discussion. We are all women.
The question sparked a lively exchange. Some of us had recently read Barsh and Cranston’s How Remarkable Women Lead. Some argued that the points made could equally apply to men.
I thought about the clients I have coached. Certainly men and women bring common issues to their sessions: self-esteem, presence, being grounded under stress, delegating, networking, managing upwards, etc.
So what have I noticed that is different?
Some women clients of mine want to get out of what is called the ‘velvet ghetto’, the ‘pink collar’ jobs for women in areas considered to be gendered: human resources, public relations and marketing. They want core business jobs that show their delivery on the bottom line. I have only had one male client trying to make this switch.
Recently, I attended a briefing in the financial services industry. The Manco was indeed a MAN-committee! Fourteen of the 15 members were men; the lone woman was the director of human resources.
But progress is being made. Career guidance at my convent school proposed social work and teaching prior to our becoming stay-at-home mothers.
Most of my women clients (with or without children) take on more household responsibility and struggle more with the work-life balance. In her keynote address at the launch of FORBES WOMAN AFRICA, Cheryl Carolus said: “Superman for women is a con job. Superman has a mother and never worries about matching socks both coming out of the washing machine, or what’s for dinner and whether there’s enough cat food.”
One of my black women clients sits on a board that has only two women members. One of her challenges was how to engage with the men during the breaks. She was angry: “The chairperson could only think of saying, ‘I like your shoes’. I realized that none of the men on the board have wives that work; they have ‘charity wives’. They can’t relate to us.”
I am not saying that all men are like this, and there certainly are ‘charity wives’ who are hard-working philanthropists. But our history of patriarchy leaves all of us, women and men, with a legacy that needs to be addressed alongside the legacy of race.
One black woman COO arrived at her new job. Her welcome from the CEO (a black man) included a description of how the previous incumbent (a woman) had failed. He had given her two days’ notice to prepare an important document for submission to the board. He had approved six weeks’ leave for her most senior direct report (a black man) at a critical time when compliance reporting was due. That same report had been on the shortlist for the COO position and was rumored to be the CEO’s preferred candidate. No wonder she felt that she was being set up to fail.
In her chapter, ‘Gender Issues in Business Coaching’ (Passmore, 2013), Sunny Stout-Rostron reviews Lerato Motsoaledi’s 2009 doctoral thesis, Executive Coaching in Diversity.
“Motsoaledi studied issues of male insubordination to female authority, finding that in several instances males refused to accept it, projecting in-adequacies on to women leaders and using aggression as a tool to dominate them. Although the women managers wielded power as individuals, they still had to deal with being a member of a subordinate group expected to comply with traditional patriarchal roles,” Stout-Rostron notes. Motsoaledi argues that being black as well as being a woman adds another layer of challenge that white women do not experience.
Research indicates that companies with more women in senior management have better results; others note that better, more forward-thinking firms hire more women.
In 1973, Samora Machel, the late president of Mozambique, said: “The emancipation of women is not an act of charity, or humanitarianism. The liberation of women is a fundamental necessity.”
Carolus, at the launch of this publication, noted, “Let us be there for our men folk – to help them on their way to the joys of freedom from sexism. For in the same manner that racism dehumanized black and white, sexism diminishes the potential of both men and women. Let us break the culture of silence we sometimes impose on ourselves.”
It is not easy. I have known of women executives who assert their authority so fiercely that when I have coached their male direct reports, loss of self-esteem is identified as an issue.
Moving forward requires commitment and compassion. I will share with you what has worked with my clients. Send me your experiences and concerns: helena.dolny@gmail.com

Should coaching be gendered?

Brian Mitchell grew up in a ring. When he was three years old, his father, Brian Mitchell senior, was a South African bantamweight champion. He was throwing punches from the age of nine. In the late 1980s, his boxing career lit up with 45 wins, 21 knock-outs, 12 World Boxing Association (WBA) Super Featherweight titles and an International Boxing Federation (IBF) Super Featherweight title. They called him the ‘Road Warrior’; he couldn’t fight at home because of sanctions in South Africa. Boxing brought him tragedy as well as fame. Now he is on the road again, paving the way ahead by spotting new boxers.
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From the ring to the ringside seat, the ‘Road Warrior’ says his name is one of the many reasons why boxers in Africa are drawn to his gym.
“It was quite a simple process for me. I had retired undefeated and to stay with boxing was easy for me. I left the game for three years, never went close to a gym or a fight, then I decided that boxing had been my whole life, and I opened a gym and became a trainer,” he says.
After training boxers for 10 years, Mitchell decided to move into the business side, using all the knowledge of his 35 years in the boxing world.
Mitchell’s rise to fame was hardly glamorous. He was raised in a broken home on the rough side of Johannesburg, in Troyeville. Mitchell grew up fighting in the streets more than in the ring. It steeled him through 10 years as an amateur. By the time he turned professional he was well conditioned and fame beckoned. On a spring evening in 1986, Mitchell won the World Super Featherweight title against Panama’s Alfredo Layne at Sun City, in the North West province of South Africa.
Victory proved bittersweet. South Africa was shunned from international sport because of apartheid. It forced Mitchell to become a wandering champion; traveling the globe to fight opponents on their home turf, with few South Africans to cheer him on.
“I think the fact that I was never able to defend my title in my own country did a lot for me. I had to all of a sudden become a man and stand on my own two feet and be half a politician and half a world champion boxer. Wherever I went I was bombarded with questions about apartheid and being a white South African. I had to stand up for myself from that point of view. I had to say ‘look I’m not a politician, I am a boxer, but what I know about politics, where I come from, boxing in the townships has no racial issues,’” he says.
“It was tough but it worked for me. It helped me to get to the hall of fame in boxing in 2009. In hindsight, all the hardships made my career. Fighting my opponents in their backyard and earning dollars helped me a lot. I didn’t have anybody bugging me for fight tickets. You had nobody around,” says Mitchell.
Nearly 30 years on, Mitchell has found many promising fighters. Among them is Democratic Republic of the Congo-born Ilunga ‘Junior’ Makabu. He has fought everyone he can in Africa and Mitchell is lining Makabu, who now has a WBC cruiserweight silver belt, up for fights in Monte Carlo.
“He can compete with the best in the world. He in fact phoned me to manage him. He said he wasn’t getting enough activity, enough fights. He knew I could get him fights so he phoned me and we did a bit of a deal,” he says.
According to Mitchell, boxing in Africa is on the rise. The popularity of what he calls boxercising, people who like training but never intend to fight, has increased interest.
“Boxing is a funny sport. Through the years it goes up and down. Right now, there are a lot of good fighters in the world. There is a lot of talk about boxing. A few years ago, it was going through a bit of a slump. It depends on who the actual figureheads are at the time. You need those personalities, like Floyd Mayweather and Muhammad Ali.”
In South Africa, top fights draw in crowds of 3,000. A Mayweather fight in Las Vegas gets 100,000. But most of the money in boxing is made from pay-per-view.
“In the States, pay-per-view is huge. Hundreds of millions of people will pay to watch a fight. The casinos pay to host them as well. Imagine two million hits paying $100 to watch a fight. Supersport [South African sport channel] will pay $200,000 for the fight,” says Mitchell.
Mayweather’s fight against Saul ‘Canelo’Alvarez drew $150 million in pay-per-view revenue with 2.2 million buys. The prize money is nothing to sneeze at either. Mayweather was expected to roll in a guaranteed $41.5 million appearance fee and a final take could approach $100 million after ticket sales, according to FORBES magazine. Makabu gets $10,000 for his fights.
“You’ve got to make it big. Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao are some of the highest paid sportsmen in the world. But they are the best in the world. I wouldn’t say it’s the best-paid sport in the world. If you get to the top, you’ll be a superstar. Guys have much better equipment available. They have fancy machines with treadmills, nutritionists and sports psychologists. That’s changed for the better. But I think the fighters were better in the seventies and the eighties than they are now. I think as far as toughness goes and work ethic and training in the gym, there were more characters worldwide that stood out in the eighties,” says Mitchell.
The glitz and glam of boxing does have its dark shadows. Mitchell’s longest shadow was cast by the death of Sowetan-born Jacob ‘Dancing Shoes’ Morake, the only boxer to beat Mitchell in a fight. Mitchell connected with a right cross to Morake’s head. The knock-out punch ended with Morake’s neck hitting the ropes. He never regained consciousness, dying in hospital a day later.
Mitchell says he paid for the funeral and it was hard to move on.  But he did.
“It was something that happened that you don’t expect to happen and you don’t want to happen. I wouldn’t have won a world title if I had retired after a fight like that. I left it. I can’t take the blame for it directly; it was part of the sport. You are going out there to knock him out and beat him, but you’re not looking for a tragedy.”
According to Bob Yearham, in charge of boxing at Emperors Palace in Johannesburg, Mitchell is the face of the sport in Africa.
“He’s a great man and presenter; he’s rubbed shoulders with the best,” he says.
The man who is a legend in boxing rings around the country is humble about his exploits. He says his most memorable punch was thrown where it all began; facing off with Layne. He’s also a man who doesn’t really enjoy boxing movies, but has a secret respect for Rocky and Million Dollar Baby. You could say the ‘Road Warrior’ has traveled every avenue in boxing. The only thing you could say he hasn’t done, is bite off someone’s ear.

The Road Warrior Points The Way

Kopano, dress me up but I don’t want to look like $1 million.’
This is an instruction that 27-year-old Kopano Motsoeneng is very familiar with. ‘While the wheels of fashion are moving at the speed of light, many women still value the safety of classic, timeless style. These are the women Motsoeneng caters for. He is a stylist whose passion for making women look good has motivated him to embark on a career where he has the pleasure of telling high-earning women what to wear.
Motsoeneng’s introduction to the fashion world came at the tender age of 11. He recalls advising girls in his school on their Matric farewell dresses.
He also devoured the contents of any fashion magazine he could get his hands on, until he finished high school, and registered at a fashion school in Johannesburg, South Africa. Here Motsoeneng learned that being a fashion student did not necessarily mean that all you could become was a designer. He was hopeless at making patterns, but he was a skilled salesperson.
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He joined small boutiques, which allowed him to interact with cust-omers and introduce them to different designers’ brands. Motsoeneng identified a unique opportunity to pair designers with potential clients.
In 2012, he launched Strictly KP. His main order of business was hosting intimate fashion events where a number of local designers and potential clients gathered in a small venue set up like a boutique store. Designers showcased their garments and clients nibbled on snacks and sipped champagne as they shopped.
With each gathering, Motsoeneng cemented his relationship with the circle of designers. They began to trust him to sell their clothes, while maintaining respect for their labels. His network to diversify, as clients began seeking out Motsoeneng’s fashion advice talent on a more personal level.
One day he received an unusual request: ‘I’m going on a trip, do you mind packing for me?’
“All I thought was, ‘you only see this on reality television!,” Motsoeneng laughs.
It was his first personal styling job. The client was going to Europe and needed him to pack her luggage “strategically”. He was paid $37 just to pack lightly enough to allow the woman space for shopping spree purchases. She must have been happy with his decisions; she still calls on him regularly.
With each consultation, Motsoe-neng aims to help a woman identify her signature style and feel confident about the choice. His typical clients are self-assured corporate leaders, who need him to diffuse the black, grey and navy items in their wardrobes with some vibrant colors that can they can wear to social events.
Over time, however, Motsoeneng has learnt that not all corporate women wear black, grey and navy suits. Twenty-nine-year-old head of operations at Liberty Intelligence Insurance, Lerato Olahleng, expresses her quirky personality within the confines of her ‘boring’ office dress code.
When she first met Motsoeneng, he helped her pick out an outfit at the store where he worked. He studied her style and would keep her informed about any new stock that she might be interested in before it hit the shelves.
Olahleng says Motsoeneng has helped see her wardrobe’s potential.
“He’s helped to get rid of that feeling you get when you look into your wardrobe and think you have nothing to wear,” she says.
For Olahleng, money is no object when it comes to Motsoeneng’s services. She says she loves being able to sleep in on a Saturday morning and spend much-needed quality time with family and friends, instead of being at the mercy of busy, overwhelming malls, trying to find something to wear.
Motsoeneng introduced Olahleng to the brain child of 29-year-old designer Isabelle Lötter, Sies Isabelle! The label is aimed at larger women, who enjoy looking both feminine and fashionable.
And when Olahleng saw an ele-gantly draped tweed coat-dress by Sies Isabelle!, she couldn’t resist. Lötter says the coat-dress is a top seller because it is a flattering cut.
“My target market is a curvy figure like myself. I basically design for me… there’s a big gap in the market for curvaceous women who have style but can only shop at stores like Donna Claire,” explains Lötter.
Her range is so wide that both her 75-year-old grandmother and a 14-year-old cousin can wear her designs. Lötter particularly appeals to professionals like Olahleng, because her clothes are expressive and not rigidly corporate; they can easily be dressed up or down.
The fashion business is a tough one. Countries like China are mass producing their goods much faster than the local industry.
“South Africa’s textile industry is almost non-existent at this point… a lot of my fabrics are imported,” Lötter admits.
She says South African designers are no competition for China, mainly because local consumers are not discerning enough.
“They don’t understand why they should pay $67 for a dress when they can buy it for $9.60 at China Town.”
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Despite what you may think, Motsoeneng does not only style women. He consults with one couple on a weekly basis, planning both their wardrobes for the week ahead. At first he was advising only the woman, but one day she asked him to style her husband, a prominent businessman who travels frequently. When he received a message saying, ‘Thank you so much for picking this outfit for him, he went on his trip with a spring in his step’, Motsoeneng realized how much a good outfit can do for men as well.
That aside, most of his clients are women. One of the biggest lessons he has learnt is that even high-powered businesswomen have insecurities.
“As much as women say they don’t care what people say, they really do, because they are often judged by what they look like,” he explains.
One of Motsoeneng’s more unusual clients is neither a businesswoman nor a corporate player. Karusha Pillay is a nursery school teacher who, in her own words, “doesn’t get dolled up for work” in case she ruins her clothes. Outside work, however, she embraces her femininity and wants to look glamorous.
Pillay does not earn a lot of money, but says she finds Motsoeneng’s services invaluable, because he sources pieces that are tailored for her body shape and which last season after season. Pillay says she was won over by Motsoeneng’s personal approach.
“Styling is very personal because I come into your personal space, but I always try to establish trust with my clients on first consultation,” says Motsoeneng.
Another of his secret weapons is using young, talented South African designers who have the potential to compete with international labels like Zara, but cannot afford the rent. Sourcing from less recognized brands gives his clients a sense of exclusivity, which is often lost when trawling the retail chains in a shopping mall.
And despite all the challenges that the South African textile industry presents, Motsoeneng believes that “you are not taking a step back; you’re simply doing the cha-cha”.

Pairing to get the right fit

A couple of weeks ago I went on a real vacation. I didn’t bring my computer, I shut off my phone. The only time I even thought about work was when my mind wondered to topics of long term strategy. I didn’t worry about the day-to-day operations at my company even once. Why? I did not need to. I had a strong and capable team that kept everything moving forward in my absence.
Early in my corporate career, a manager leaving on vacation said to me, “Unless my house is burning down, don’t contact me.”
I was shocked by his brazen disinterest in work while he vacationed. “This guy is not going to last long,” I thought. Instead, it was one of the best leadership lessons I ever received. He had a chance to take a well-needed break. His team members had a chance to stretch their leadership, develop confidence, and grow. His actions were signs of an effective leader. But most leaders balk at the idea that a manager-level employee would even think of telling others that they will not be available during their vacation.
&nbsp;
<h4>Surviving vacation</h4>
In his Forbes article Take A Serious Vacation: A CEO’s Advice To All CEOs, Jim Moffatt, the chairman and chief executive of Deloitte Consulting LLP, says, “If your business can’t survive your vacation, you’ve got a bigger problem.” He suggests that leaders and managers treat their vacations as a “test” – not just of the leader’s ability to take a break, but of what happens to the organization when they are absent for an extended period of time.
However, the inability to take a vacation isn’t limited to the corner office. A recent study by Kelton Research commissioned by the Radisson hotel chain indicates that nearly half of the total American workforce doesn’t use all of their allotted vacation days. From my experience leading HR functions at mid to large sized companies, I can confirm that the core offenders are managers and leaders. And when asked why this group of hard working professionals left vacation days on the table, most sighted their fear of losing momentum or missing quarterly or annual objectives. In other words, they felt that things would fall apart as soon as they left.
Perhaps these managers and leaders are a product of a workforce that simply has too much on their plate. Kelton’s study did find that heavy workloads were one of the primary reasons workers decided not to take more time off. If this is the case, organizations must ask a critical question – who is taking a break from the day-to-day operations to think about the long-term strategy of the business?
&nbsp;
<h4>The problem with doers</h4>
If corporations don’t ask and answer this important question, they may very well find themselves with an organization full of doers and no leaders. While all companies certainly need both, employees need to be able to recognize and respect the difference. An organization full of doers is simply not going to last.
The story of Edwin H. Land and Polaroid is a glaring example of the fate of an organization of doers, brilliant as they may be. As Polaroid grew, Land had teams of people working in shifts at his side. As one team wore out, the next team rotated in to continue the work. Land was at the core of everything at Polaroid and was even accused of wearing the same clothing for eighteen consecutive days because he refused to take a break. Subsequently, his successors mismanaged the company and the once-great organization headed into a downward spiral. In his 2012 book Instant: The Story of Polaroid, Christopher Bonanos tells the story of Polaroid’s competitor Kodak referring to Land’s company as “He” instead of Polaroid. In October 2001, Polaroid declared bankruptcy.
I have worked for both doers and leaders. Despite the hours doers work, I always learned more from the leaders. One of the best leaders I worked for told me that as an HR executive I should be sitting in the lobby greeting employees and reading the paper. This is a bit extreme, but what he was saying is that I needed to spend my time thinking about the big picture – our people strategy to drive our business forward. I shouldn’t be down in the weeds chasing up performance reviews, reviewing improvement plans, or attending every vendor meeting. He encouraged me to build a strong team to do that work.
The other problem with doers is that they frequently don’t lead by example. It is disingenuous when a leader tells me to stop working and take a vacation or recover from an illness, but a week later they show up to work coughing and sneezing. Some doers will boast about not having taken a proper vacation in 10 years. Working for these leaders, I never felt I was allowed to fully unplug despite their encouragement to do so. As with all aspects of effective leadership, walking the talk is the only way to create lasting change.
&nbsp;
<h4>Making yourself redundant</h4>
A leader is not doing their followers, boss, or organization any favors by building a team that can’t function without them. They have a duty of care to teach their followers to fish instead of fishing for them. At day’s end, the true test of effective leadership manifests itself when a leader is absent.
The one thing that all effective leaders do is make themselves redundant so they can move on to even greater challenges and help more people – knowing that the team they built will flourish and carry on the mission. All my personal success as a leader has been a result of living this principle. The only boasting I do is about taking all my vacation each year. I encourage you to do
the same.
As a leader or manager, here are three simple questions you should ask of yourself daily to ensure you are practicing effective leadership and building sustainable teams and organizations:
<ol>
<li>Can I go on vacation without my computer and phone?</li>
<li>If I get sick, can I focus on getting better without working or being in contact?</li>
<li>If I quit today, would my team/organization continue to be successful and grow with minimal disruption?</li>
</ol>
If you can’t answer ‘yes’ to all the above questions, you need to either build a new team, develop the one you have, start trusting your people to work on their own making it okay to fail and learn from mistakes, or move into a role that does not require people management.

Make Yourself Redundant:

William Duk had every reason to be pleased with himself as he strolled along the lovely, long pristine beach at St Lucia in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province. He had celebrated the spectacular turnaround of his once-doomed business, by hiring a hotel, inviting 110 guests and marrying his bride, Briggie, in wild and convivial weekend in Umzumbe on the
south coast.
“We had a record sales month in April and I thought, ‘Great, I can I get married and have a honeymoon in peace,” says Duk.
“It was a nightmare. The honeymoon, wasn’t really a honeymoon.”
As the scores of guests clinked glasses in a final farewell at the hotel in Umzumbe, on the south coast of KwaZulu-Natal, little did Duk know that tens of thousands of transport workers in ports and depots across South Africa were going on strike for more pay. For thousands of business people like Duk, who rely on imported materials, this was going to prove a cut to the jugular.
It had been a short career as an entrepreneur for Duk, who had graduated in accounting from the University of Cape Town in 1999. He left to cut his teeth in the one of the world’s liveliest financial markets.
“I went to London for two years to work with South Africans, Kiwis and Australians in banking at Lloyds and the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). We were all on contract and partying every night, you had to have a South African passport to get into Fulham and Putney in those days. On bank holidays we would spend five hours in traffic just to get to the M25,” he says.
“At the end of the two-year holiday visa I was marched out of RBS—they had a change of human resources and they said I had worked longer than my time. On these holiday visas you are only meant to work 50% of your time in your chosen profession. So, I got a part-time contract in a small technology services company. I was meant to leave the country after that, but my new employers convinced me to stay for another six months and then another six months and then I rolled out four- and-a-half years later. That time was pivotal; the London business was going into Europe, employing 200 people, and I was financial director. I was opening offices in Madrid and Paris for voice and data services like PABX and call centers.”
Duk flew home to Cape Town in 2006, with a pocket full of pounds, determined to invest in his future. He had always wanted to be an entrepreneur, like his father and grandfather, this was his chance and in many ways it bore out the Chinese proverb: Be careful what you wish for.
It all began with an investment in property. Duk went to Atlantis, a small town a short drive from Cape Town, to buy a factory from the Plantation Shutter Company, which made wooden louvered shutters for windows out of rare imported hardwood. The company was going into liquidation.
“I bought the building and spent the next few weeks looking for a tenant. I got a phone call from the silent partner, who I bought the building from, he said he was coming to Cape Town and wanted to meet. I looked through the financial information he showed me and thought this shouldn’t have happened. Working in a European company, you know how much working capital can be stretched. It was down to mismanagement, more than fundamental problems with the business,” says Duk.
“I bought in for a rand and took over the debts and liabilities. I didn’t have any cash—that was all tied up in property—I used the cash I had paid into the business for the building to finance a rescue plan. This was February 27, 2006: the doors of the business had been closed; 40 people hadn’t been paid for three months; suppliers were in the courts trying to get their money; there were 49 clients who had paid 50% of their deposit and expected their shutters to be installed before last Christmas. The business was a million rand in debt. It was as bad as it can get.”
It got worse from day one, as Duk tried to salvage what he could amid angry customers. He needed every ounce of his affable nature.
“My first job was phoning my clients and saying, ‘Hi, I am William from the Plantation Shutter company’ and they were saying, ‘Have you got our lawyers letters?’ I calmed them down and said, ‘Let me explain.’”
Duk was encouraged by the fact that 39 clients still wanted shutters, even though they had already waited for five months. It took nearly six months to placate the angry 39 and fulfil their orders. It took 18 months to turn around the business and by April it was selling a 1,000 sets of shutters-a-month and turning more than R40 million-a-year ($4.6 million). It was a dramatic turnaround that helped Duk win the Sanlam Business Partners Entrepreneur of the Year Award for 2012.
So Duk could be forgiven for feeling replete as he walked on the beach in St Lucia, on his honeymoon, on a sunny May afternoon. This warm feeling evaporated in a heartbeat as the strike by tens of thousands of dock and transport workers, in support of a 15% pay rise, hit home.
“I got an SMS saying we have got a problem with our timber supply,” says Duk.
In many ways, timber was the Achilles’ heel of the business. The shutters have to be made from durable Obeche hardwood, that will not warp, from the forests of Ghana. It has to be shipped from Accra to Cape Town and then transported by truck to Atlantis. In 2010, this supply line proved highly vulnerable in the face of a strike that was to cost South African business an estimated R7 billion ($803 million).
The upshot was that the factory in Atlantis ran out of wood and angry customers once again lurked in the wings. So, Duk was on the phone, on the beach, day in day out, in a frantic bid to keep the wheels of his business turning.
“So, it was all about buying time and putting a plan in place. If we were a smaller company we could have gone down the road to buy, but we were no longer a small company. We were consuming 320,000 kilograms of timber a year. I spent the entire day phoning timber merchants and suddenly the price had gone up 25%. I ended up negotiating with a few of these, but we couldn’t get enough, soon enough. We are a 21-day turn around operation. I ended up trying to juggle production and speaking to my clients around the country. I spent the entire day on the phone trying to put a plan in place. The worst moment of that day was realizing that everything we had worked for to restore credibility, in an industry not well known for its reliability, was at risk. We couldn’t afford to make excuses. For us it was going out and getting whatever timber we could at the best prices, paying 20% more than usual,” says Duk.
To make matters worse the supply of wood that Duk needed so badly was so near, yet so far. As the strike wore on, three 40-foot containers of hardwood from Ghana bobbed in Cape Town harbor, with no one to unload it. An email from the clearing agent said it all.
“Wait, hope and pray…. Here’s hoping the comedy of errors turns into that romantic comedy with a happy ending,” says the email.
The strike ended on May 27, 2010 but that wasn’t the end of the troubles for Duk and his timber. There was a scramble to see which of the tied-up freighters was to be unloaded first on the docks of Cape Town, as frustrated customers gathered on land. Duk says the problem was that the clearing agent didn’t have the captains’s cellphone number, so there were more delays as he had to wait for information through the shipping line.
“It went from bad to worse, the strike broke on the 27th and then we had to wait another two or three days for our containers to arrive on land,” says Duk.
“After two-and-a-half weeks of uncertainty. It was absolute relief. The ball was now in our court so we could put a plan in place….”
Duk took his wife to their favorite restaurant that night, a little older and wiser than they had been when they married just a few weeks before, after the strike that could have pulled down the shutters on his business.

Wait, Hope And Pray: How A Strike Can Ruin Your Honeymoon

Throughout my career, Nelson Mandela, was a long-distance motivator for me. Whilst enduring the challenges that come with living in Europe, with a darker complexion, my mind constantly reminded me that there was a man in South Africa that had endured and was still enduring much greater challenges. The great man inspired me to hold my head up high and forge ahead. He makes me proud to be an African.
In Zambia during my youth, the African National Congress (ANC) was always talked about in a very hush-hush manner. I don’t think as children, our parents wanted us to know much about all the brave men and women exiled in our country. When it came to Nelson Mandela, great tales were told: how this man that was put in jail for his fight against the brutality of apartheid; for the right to be treated as a human being; for the right to be free. We didn’t have a picture of him, we hardly knew what he looked like, but we all knew of his courage and determination. He was our hero.
In Belgium and Holland in the late 1980s and early 90s there was much debate about apartheid in South Africa. Holland, in particular, was a melting pot of activists. It was in 1987 when my Dutch colleague, Ruud Gullit won ‘World Footballer of the year’ and dedicated his award to Nelson Mandela that I realized, my hero was a world hero and that there were other people in the world that truly cared for justice and democracy.
I was 28 when he was released in February 1990 after 27 years and I realized that he had been in jail for almost as long as I’d been alive! What a tragedy, I thought with anger. Yet when he came out of jail, he spoke of peace and harmony, without any bitterness or animosity towards his captors. He rose above the hardship and suffering and triumphed as a human being. He is an example to humankind that good overcomes evil—a victory we Africans were proud of; a victory that was an example to the world.
My career later took me to Mexico, where racism was a foreign concept to the friendly Central American country. I got a call from South Africa inviting me to play in the ‘Nelson Mandela Farewell game’—African XI vs. World All Stars XI—in honor of the great man who was about to step down as president. That weekend, I travelled for two days for thousands of kilometers by bus to an away game in Mexico. I arrived back in Mexico City at 8am, only to jump on a plane to South Africa. My trip took me from Mexico City to Paris and on to Johannesburg. I arrived in South Africa on the morning of the game. There was so much excitement, that fatigue was forgotten.
That day we were invited to have lunch at the Sandton Sun and Nelson Mandela arrived to meet us. Each and every one of us was dumbstruck by his presence. I remember one thing in particular: we had lunch, and I was with Jorge Campos and Claudio Suárez from Mexico. They were playing for the world team. When we went to greet the man himself, we asked one of the waiters to take our picture, which he did. On returning to Mexico we found that the picture he had taken was blurred. The waiter must have been shivering because the great Nelson Mandela was in the frame that it was completely out of focus.
This farewell match for the president of South Africa took place on August 17, 1999.  Coaching the World XI team was England coach, Roy Hodgson, and his team included:   Dunga; Christian Karembeu; Thomas Hassler and Hidetoshi Nakata to mention a few. Our African XI, coached by Jomo Sono, consisted of: Lucas Radebe; Doctor Khumalo; Mark Fish; and Phil Masinga. A great line-up for a great leader before 40,000 people at the Ellis Park Stadium in Johannesburg. I scored two goals in that match with the second goal in the 89th minute of the game. The final score was 2-2.
During the line-up I clearly remember feeling intense emotions on shaking his hand. I could ‘feel’ his greatness. I was humbled to be in his presence. For me, this was not just a football match, but a significant moment in my life, for me this great man epitomized what football should stand for: determination, courage, sacrifice, loyalty, forgiveness, goodwill and fairplay.
<div id="attachment_942" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-942" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-large wp-image-942" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/TL_586712-1024x668.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="309" />Kalusha Bwalya celebrates scoring the first goal. Mandela Farewell , 17 August 1999 , Ellis Park. Mandela XI 2 v FIFA World Stars 2 Photo Credit:©Duif du Toit/Gallo Images</div>
<div id="attachment_943" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-943" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-large wp-image-943" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/AV_00020236-687x1024.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="707" />JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA &#8211; AUGUST 17: Neslon Mandela before the start of the Mandela XI 2 versus FIFA World Stars 2 match at Ellis Park on August 17, 1999 in Johannesburg, South Africa. (Photo by Gallo Images / Sunday Times / Karel Prinsloo)</div>
I met him again, in Zurich in 2003, when we all waited anxiously for the announcement of the host of the 2010 World Cup, to which I was an ambassador. We shook hands and he commented that he knew me well and was my fan. I was bowled over by his humility and kindness. He was my fan? I was privileged to be one of the 16 people that were called in to make representation to FIFA on why this prestigious event should be hosted in South Africa. I felt very proud to be in the same room as Mandela, I believe that his presence was what ultimately swung the decision in our favor when South Africa was chosen as the host country.
I have read many books about Madiba but one of my favourite quotes is “There is no passion to be found playing small—in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.” There is such motivation in those words, they are so wise and so very true.
I was honored to once again be able to take part—after nearly a decade—in another match to honor this extraordinary man. It showcased some of the best players in the world from the past and present including the likes of Abedi Pele, Doctor Khumalo, George Weah, Samuel Eto’o, Daniel Amokachi, Ruud Gullit Christian Karembeuand Lucas Radebe to mention a few. We played in Cape Town on July 18, 2007 in a gala prelude to celebrate the great man’s 89th birthday. The game united the global football family in a ‘90 Minutes for Mandela’ tribute. It commemorated the man who was instrumental in the decision to bring the FIFA World Cup to Africa for the first time in 2010.
In my leadership roles, as coach and administrator, I try to live by another one of Nelson Mandela’s quotes: “It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership.” It is words like these, his wisdom and his largeness of spirit that make him an everlasting icon. He dedicated his lifetime to the promotion of human rights and democracy.
This great man has been my motivator throughout my career, albeit from a distance, he was with me all the way. His values in life are exemplary and deserve to be emulated. He remains, my hero and a bastion of hope for Africa and for the entire world.

How Nelson Mandela  Won The World Cup

Thabo Molefe, famously known as ‘Tbo Touch’ in entertainment circles, is not your typical, hunky, media personality. In all frankness, mention of his name rarely inspires dreamy emotional reactions from adoring fans. And even though he does his fair share of kissing babies and dishing out top-notch prizes on his many media platforms; the lion’s share of the coverage is about his “annoying” American accent, tabloid titbits of his personal life and how he is supposedly the world’s biggest name-dropper; hell-bent on importing American culture to Africa.
As someone who is no stranger to his drive-time show on South African Metro FM, and the many television shows he has hosted; I was not surprised or put off by the strong American influence which marks his speech and content. With Touch, it is definitely all about hip hop, basketball and “swag”.
“What a lot of people do not know is that my family has a very strong exile background,” he says. “My connection to the US is enforced by the fact that I was raised there, schooled there and I even lost blood there,” he continues, explaining that his father, Vernon Molefe, was assassinated there because of his political activism.
“My father had a project which saw him working with South African struggle icons. Through the Nelson Mandela Education Fund, he facilitated troubled South African kids to be taken to the States to be educated , away from the horrors of the apartheid uprisings. So one can say that I feel indebted to his cause,” Touch elaborates. He says his father was shot seven times in 1992, and that his murder remains unsolved to this day.
“I was taken in by Bishop Noel Jones who became my guardian, as a way of paying homage to my late father,” he says.
The month of July is of significance to Touch. This month brings to a climax his plans of returning to permanently live in the United States, and as he puts it—this time he’s going there to make huge investments, and not to look for hand-outs, like before.
“I feel that I have come full circle as Tbo Touch. In as much as I am grateful for the opportunities that I have been given by the national broadcaster (SABC) since my return to the country seven years ago; I feel it is time to take my radio show, The Touch Down 3-to-6, to New York, where it will be broadcast live on a daily basis for the next three years. This has never been done on African radio before, and what it basically means is that instead of calling up big name artists like Jay Z or Mary J. Blige and speaking to them telephonically, I will have them live in studio interacting with our South African listeners,” he says with palpable excitement.
“This has taken many months to set up. My team and I have been at pains to get the national broadcaster’s buy-in, but now I can announce that it is all systems go. We have set up our own studios in New York, and we have engineers on-site working around the clock to make sure that the show runs seamlessly. The radio show will also feed content to other programs as well. Top American broadcaster Ryan Seacrest has been doing it for years; I feel it is now my turn to do it for South Africa.
“No one can debate the fact that New York is the hub of the entertainment, and more specifically, music industry, so really one has not achieved global recognition until you have a New York footprint.”
While this is clearly great news for him as a broadcaster, Touch says he won’t be the only one benefitting from this new arrangement.
“One of the main reasons I am this excited about the venture is because the show, even though broadcast from New York daily, will continue to play African music.” For many decades, Africans have been flooded with American music and culture, so it is about time someone takes ours to them.
“I am hoping this will give local artists another avenue to be exposed and “picked up” by the real captains of the music industry—the kind of artists that practically live on the Forbes’ richest lists. And I am hoping this will be an opportunity where collaborations and meaningful partnerships between those artists and African artists can be fostered,” he says.
Music and radio are not the only elements central to Touch’s relocation; television station SABC1 has also commissioned him as an NBA Basketball sport correspondent, which means he will be courtside every week, linking fans to the game and its icons.
“The culture of basketball and the NBA has been continually growing around the continent since the late 90s, sadly though we could only watch re-runs and old games, but now we will stream it to the continent with no serious delays. As a game that I personally love as well, I am also very excited that I will be experiencing it up close and sharing that experience with the sport’s many African fans,” says Touch.
Not only does Touch seem to have the entertainment side of things well-covered. He is also gearing up to become a businessman in the hospitality industry, which may come as a surprise to many.
“My relocation will also coincide with the launch of a restaurant franchise I am opening up in Manhattan with my business partner Jeff Christie. The restaurant will have a special twist—its main commodity will be trading in wine from South Africa, and we will also have a live-streaming camera linked-up to another franchise in Cape Town, so that patrons on either side can have a kind of shared experience,” he explains.
“The restaurant’s music catalogue will also consist entirely of South African and African music. So I am working very closely with the South African Department of Tourism on this project, as I believe that the restaurant will have an impact on more people wanting the actual South African experience,” Touch says. He needed to raise $450,000 to get the business on its legs, which he did subsequent to getting many doors slammed in his face.
Asking him whether he will consider living in South Africa again, seems a bit foolhardy at this stage for a man with his kind of plans, but alas it has to be asked. “My concert production company, called Touch Lives, will continue to be based in Johannesburg. Touch Lives hosts four major concerts every year, and I will be here for each one. I also have a two-year-old son who will continue to be based here, even though his mother and I have come to an agreement that he will spend some time with me in New York. In many ways South Africa is still my home,” he concludes.

Touching African Lives From The Big Apple

On May 2, it will be exactly half a century since a bunch of highly talented African footballers led Portuguese giants Benfica in the thrashing of Real Madrid 5-3 to retain the European Cup.
It was a dynamic team with an African heart. The captain was from Angola, the goalkeeper, midfield general and striker were all from Mozambique. Arguably, the most talented of all, nicknamed The Sacred Monster, was a midfield genius who had fought his way up from the streets of Maputo. Another of the players rejoiced in the name, The Black Panther. A dream for an advertising copywriter or a public relations executive, surely?
In June, it will be two years since the FIFA World Cup kicked off in South Africa. Since then, there has been a lot of talk about how Africa could sell itself, its football and folklore. After all, the football fans of the continent appear to buy enthusiastically into the plastic razzmatazz around European football, with its endless programs and promos on satellite TV. At football grounds across Europe, there are statues and pictures of the famed players of the past, many of whom may not have even made it into the Benfica team that mauled Real Madrid in 1962.
<div id="attachment_690" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-690" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-large wp-image-690" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/DSC00350-1024x768.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="356" />Captain José Águas and Mário Coluna celebrate beating Barcelona in 1962</div>
The question is: why doesn’t Africa celebrate its heroes and rich history with such vigor?
Now, any advertising wizard worth their salt, with a yen to market African football, could do a lot worse than start with the story of the four African musketeers of Benfica in 1962. What a quartet they were: José Águas, the captain, was born and bred in Luanda; goalkeeper Alberto da Costa Pereira was born in the tiny Mozambique port of Nacala and learned his football at Ferroviario in Maputo; Eusébio—The Black Panther—dribbled his way through the dust of the streets of Maputo to an international career with Portugal, scoring 733 goals in 745 competitive games.
Last, but certainly not least, the tough and intelligent midfield schemer, Mário Coluna. Like Eusébio, Coluna learned to fake, dribble, trap and pass on a patch of sand in the Maputo township of Mafalala—a piece of ground that survives until this day and is still full of barefoot youngsters kicking a ball. I can almost hear an advertising executive thinking about this one.
A Portuguese sports journalist dubbed Coluna ‘O Monstro Sagrado’—The Sacred Monster—because he said the player was both terrifying and beautiful. Surely, only a Latin romantic, a journalist to boot, could have come up with a name as evocative.
Coluna, who had the sleek and robust physique of a light-heavyweight boxer, scored one and laid on another on the night Benfica trounced Real Madrid in Amsterdam. He outwitted Real, who had legends Puskás and Di Stéfano in their side. The year before, Coluna had scored with a blinding long-range volley as Benfica beat Barcelona 3-2, in Bern, to win the cup for the first time. Coluna celebrated, stripped to his waist, with trophy in hand, alongside his captain and fellow African, Águas. It is a picture that hangs in pride of place on the wall of his Maputo home to this day.
In the prime of his career, Coluna went on to lead the famous Magricios, considered to be one of Portugal’s finest teams, to the 1966 World Cup in England. In that famous team were two more men from Mozambique, Vicente and Hilário. In those days, colonial Portugal saw Mozambique and Angola as its overseas provinces and players from these countries were considered Portuguese. All were African right down to their boots.
Eusébio was top scorer in the tournament, with nine goals. Arguably, Portugal should have won the World Cup for the first time in their history in 1966. The team suffered through a touch of home town favoritism from the organizers. The semi-final against England was supposed to have been played in Liverpool, but was switched by the English organizers to Wembley in London at the last minute—despite the fact that it had been agreed it was unfair to allow the home country to play all of its games at the national stadium. It meant Portugal had to travel down by train overnight.
“We didn’t get any sleep on the train. We were so tired when we got to London, we could hardly play,” Coluna once told me in the suburbs of Maputo.
Despite this, England won by a 2-1 whisker, with Eusébio scoring a penalty in reply.  Just imagine the indignation and weeks of headlines if a similar trick had been pulled in 2010.
Which brings me back to my point; when I read the other week that Eusébio had been ill in hospital in Lisbon, it occurred to me how little we hear of these former legends, while the television in the corner prattles on about other players not fit to lace their boots.
All of the Africans mentioned above made it when football was a game for men-of-men—hard men-of-men, for that matter. Coluna, who played 677 times for Benfica, showed me a huge, ugly scar below his right knee, a souvenir of a night in Rome in 1968 when an Italian defender crushed his ligaments. The referee didn’t even caution the defender, such was the violence of the game in those days.
“The doctor said I would never play again, but I knew better,” Coluna told me.
On top of that, most of these African soccer heroes lived lives steeped in the game. Coluna used to pinch his dad’s socks to make a ball to kick around the Maputo streets. His father, shopkeeper José Mário Esteves Coluna, was a goalkeeper and founder of Coluna’s team, Desportivo de Maputo. He died, from a heart attack, while watching his beloved club in 1959.
Coluna came back to Mozambique in 1975 and coached a small town club, Textafrica in Chimoio, for the country’s first ever championship in the newly independent nation. He served with distinction as a parliamentarian and football administrator. Benfica still sends him a pension in euros.
My point is that African footballers like these should be celebrated by the continent as a way to market the game and encourage the youth of the continent to excel in it. Their names and deeds should be used in advertisements, splashed over posters and plastered on the sides of buses.  Statues should be built and their names known the length and breadth of the continent.
When you have a compelling human interest story attached to a name like The Sacred Monster or Black Panther, who needs an advertising copywriter to write a catchy slogan to market the game?

Selling The Sacred Monster And Black Panther Should Be Easy

When I first met multi-platinum selling, multi-award-winning singer, Lira, about 10 years ago, she was a struggling artist dying to be taken seriously. She had just quit a promising job as an accountant to take the risk of a music career. It was a massive leap of faith and things really looked bleak for a while, thanks to a failed debut album and the fact that she was tied to an unwanted recording contract with a music label.
What a difference 10 years makes. This may sound really corny but, back then, there was something about Lira that made me a believer. There was something in the way she outlined the picture of her fantasy career as she saw it in her head, and that made me really want her to succeed. After all, she had quit a career that most of us were raised to believe was it.
“I was employed full time, I read the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and it was at that moment that I decided I wanted to do something bigger with my life and music was the tool that would help me achieve that,” says Lira.
As I meet Lira in 2012, it is a weird moment, like we have come full circle. Not only has she won 10 South African Music Awards (SAMAs) and been nominated twice for an MTV Africa Award,  Lira has become one of the best-selling African artists to date, who has been on front covers around the world.
It was the disastrous first album that made all the difference.  Lira went into a deep introspection, changed from RnB to Afro-pop and started singing about aspirations and dreams instead.
“In retrospect, the failure of that first album was necessary in me becoming who I am today. The pain and discoveries I made resulted in Feel Good, Soul in Mind and Return to Love—the albums that are most personal to me,” she continues.
The albums that Lira mentions achieved an incredible level of success across the continent. Feel Good, which is Lira’s second offering, was a best-selling album in Kenya in 2004. She has since performed in almost every corner of the continent; countries like: Angola, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Swaziland, Namibia, Ghana and Benin.
When Lira tells me during the interview that her next move is to conquer the giant music industry in the United States, I am reminded once again that it is probably wiser to be a believer where she’s concerned.  There are many more believers:  325,000 Facebook fans and 50,000 followers on Twitter, to be precise.
“I am currently packaging an album—a kind of ‘best of’—that will be distributed in the States. Then I will launch a full-on performance tour. America is a huge market. It is a very influential market and I feel that cracking it will make it easier to infiltrate smaller markets. Oprah Winfrey chose one of my songs to feature in a documentary produced for her television network—OWN, and from the smaller tours that I’ve done in the States already, I believe that America is ready to see and hear an urban African,” she continues.
This will be a bigger leap of faith than leaving accountancy. The United States has proved a graveyard for African artists. Many have been called, few have been listened to.
To improve her chances, Lira has taken on one of these slick management companies in California.
“My American manager has been amazing. In the space of two months, I have been featured on magazine covers in the United Kingdom and Dublin, and have featured in editorials inside over a 100 publications. I really like that my management is globally-minded because my plan right now is to have a global career,” she adds.
As Lira goes into the intimate details of her plans, she reveals what could be her most powerful weapon.  She is clearly someone who thinks a lot about the struggles that lie ahead; someone who, as they say in the boardrooms these days, has blue sky thinking and also sees the big picture—if you will pardon the dalliance with mixed metaphors.
“The idea was never to be a South African artist—but a global one. I looked at my childhood, my education and everything else, and I designed an image that showcases me as a ‘modern African’. I am a product of now; I am not trying to be traditional as I have always been exposed to urban culture. I was raised to be proudly-African, but at the same time to be an African who could be ambitious and not limit myself to one space. I was raised to know that I can transcend borders and know that growing up in this continent didn’t mean that I would have nothing to offer the rest of the world,” she says.
“I have always [learnt] from the mistakes of people that came before me. After having seen how others have fallen, I told myself that I had to learn and retain as much control as possible. The beautiful thing with that is that it became my own vision, and I could direct it any which way I saw fit. It comes with a lot of pain, but record companies have a thousand artists on their rosters, and are notorious for treating artists as just another catalogue number. Right now I am the commander of the financial structure that I and my whole team survive on. It is not the other way round where my managers pay me a certain percentage of the earnings that come in from my brand—I pay them as sub-contractors. This includes my band, the design team, the management company and the booking agency. I use Sony Music solely as a distribution agent for the music product,” says Lira.
“My philosophy in life is that you can do and be anything that you can imagine, so the more examples you get to see, the more motivated you get. If I can do it; principally, anybody can as well. The fact that my career broke in the manner that it did may be unique to me, but essentially, this proves that it is possible to self-actualize and live your dreams,” she says.
Right now, if anyone is living their dream, it is Lira.

Sing Up For The  Accountant Who Has Balanced Her Life

As we wait at the Johannesburg Country Club on a warm Friday afternoon to meet Thabo Maseko, the youngest qualified PGA golfer, it is hard to know what to expect. Could he be Africa’s Tiger Woods in 10 years, or just another very good weekend golfer?
The Johannesburg Country Club, an oasis of trees and grass amid concrete, is to the north of the city and alive with activity. Some people are hitting balls on the lush green fairways, while others take a late lunch. From behind us a young, polite man arrives and greets us.
<div id="attachment_503" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-503" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="wp-image-503 size-medium" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/IMG_6128-300x197.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="197" />Thabo Maseko at the Johannesburg Country Club</div>
There are no other black golfers in sight. In fact, before 19-year-old Maseko was born, most black golfers weren’t allowed to compete on South Africa’s golf courses, let alone play professionally in tournaments including the Sunshine Tour, a prestigious tournament that Maseko has just qualified to play in this year. In those days, most black people on golf courses were caddies—a million miles away from an aspiring black golf professional like Maseko.
“It’s a dream come true—something I’ve wanted to do pretty much my whole life. It did come a bit early, but I was definitely ready for the change. I’m just relishing the challenge, to be honest. It’s an amazing feeling and I’m looking forward to it,” he says with a big smile on his face.
Maseko, who is ranked 835th in the European golf ranking, is humble and just happy to be doing what he does best—play golf.
“It’s exciting because I’m just playing. I’ve got nothing to lose and I’m young. You know other guys are playing for their lives; it’s like a real job for them. I’m just having fun out there and I’m doing what I love. Instead of going to varsity, I’m playing golf—it’s just awesome,” Maseko says.
Maseko, son of former CEO of the South African Government Communication and Information System (GCIS), Themba Maseko, says he started to like golf after watching his dad play socially. Maseko says he then started hitting balls around when he was about 10 years old, but it wasn’t until he saw Tiger Woods on television that he wanted to be a professional golfer; he started playing, aged 12.
It’s not easy to make it as a professional golfer, and one has to go to tour school to qualify as a professional. Maseko attended The Golf School of Excellence in Observatory, Johannesburg, and had to finish in the top 10 out of his group to qualify as a tour professional.
“That week is an intense one—you play four rounds, you know you can’t mess up; every shot is really important. It really was a difficult week, but I’m glad I came out,” Maseko says.
Mike Taylor of the Sunshine Tour says Maseko is exceptionally good for his age and is a promising talent. “He’s got his head squarely on his shoulders and looks pretty sharp when he’s on the green. He broke 70 on his first day of tour school trials. He played confidently and has really good skills,” says Taylor.
“At the end of the day, I’m working towards a goal; so in the next couple of years, hopefully I can be number one. I guess we’re all practising hard out there—it’s long hours—we just want to be the best we can, really,” Maseko says enthusiastically.
Opportunities are endless to make money in the game and can turn a golfer into a multi-millionaire.
“Put it this way—playing for $460,000 a week in prize money, if you finish in the top 30, you can make around $13,000-$20,000 a week straight,” says Maseko.
Life can be tough without sponsors because golf is an expensive sport.
“We’re also speaking to a few new potential sponsors right now; we’re going to be signing in the next couple of weeks—I can’t say right now who I’m speaking to, but it’s pretty big. They’ll be giving me tons of money a month to go play, and I’m going to Europe as well; they want to support me, especially because there hasn’t been a young black golfer on tour. So people are giving me opportunities and it’s looking good.”
So what does the young golfer hope to achieve in the near future? “I’ve only been professional now for about four weeks, so hopefully as soon as I find my feet, I’ll make a few cuts and make a bit of money. But right now, I’m not thinking about the money. I just want to go and show my talent and pick up the trophies,” Maseko says, smiling confidently.
Tiger Woods must be looking over his shoulder.

Could The Next Tiger Woods Be From Africa?

It is a well-known fact that each career has its own burden; lawyers are said to be shrewd, with negotiable morals; doctors are supposed to have handwriting that no one can read; models are often dismissed as dull, empty vessels living on coffee and vitamins, bothered by little apart from keeping themselves as thin as a rake.
Once in a while, a long-legged beauty struts onto the scene to shatter this stereotype. Iconic models like Iman, Kimora Lee Simmons and Tyra Banks have proven that looks, brains and ambition can combine to create a deadly combination on the path from catwalk to boardroom. This is the path that African supermodel Millen Magese is treading.
Magese is one of the faces of Africa and a fixture in the many fashion shows across the continent. She has worked with every big-time designer in Africa and recently moved to New York, where she is under the management of Ford Models.
I meet Magese at her penthouse in the plush suburb of Sandton in Johannesburg. She is back in Africa on a kind of working holiday, and as she walks me through the house into her home office, she tells me that she is in town for one day only ahead of a tour of Africa.
Magese’s story is one of stark contrast. One thing that fascinated me was the fact that Magese is actually painfully shy, even though she makes her living on a runway, often wearing nothing more than lingerie.
“Growing up, I had a huge problem facing the world. I was so shy and the idea of interacting with strangers frightened me. At some point, I remember getting into the habit of wearing the Muslim burka, covering myself like an Ethiopian woman because I felt protected underneath all that fabric,” says Magese.
“I just felt like I was too tall and awkward and my neck felt like it was too long for my body. It was my father who first introduced the concept of modeling to me. He would say: ‘There’s this model called Iman; she has a long neck just like yours and she is making waves all around the world. At that point, I had planned to study to become a human rights lawyer,” she continues.
Magese’s ambition to become a lawyer faded when her father had his first stroke and could no longer work to support their family, let alone pay law school fees.
“My immediate family consisted of me, my four brothers and sisters and our parents, but at that point, there were 15 other relatives living with us, so we were quite a big extended family. After completing my high school studies, I went straight to work as a cashier and waitress at an upmarket bar and restaurant to help ease the load of supporting the large family.”
Magese earned $25 a month and gave $20 of that to her family.
A few months into her job as a waitress, she found a job as a CEO’s personal secretary and that meant her salary took a leap from $25 to $60 a month.
“Back then, as far as I was concerned, I was working hoping to save enough money to get to university. Unfortunately, my father’s condition deteriorated as he suffered two more strokes, so there was even more pressure to generate more income to cover our ever-mounting bills. So when my family members brought up the discussion of the possibility of me entering the Miss Tanzania beauty pageant, I started to seriously consider it. I finally did enter, and I won the title,” she says.
Winning the Miss Tanzania title in 2001 meant that Magese could now support her family and take herself through university. It also became the beginning of her career in fashion. After her reign as Miss Tanzania ended, she took up an offer to move to South Africa, where she quickly got picked up by modeling agency scouts and bookers.
“My plans of moving to the United States at that point had failed after I was refused a visa. But because I have always considered South Africa to be the ‘New York of Africa’, I took the opportunity as the next best thing for me,” she states.
After finding her home with the agency, Ice Model Management, in Johannesburg, the task of turning her from a beauty pageant queen into a fierce runway model began.
“As soon I got the rhythm of this whole modeling thing, there isn’t a casting that I went to that I didn’t end up being booked for. From runway shows to magazine fashion spreads and television commercials, I have featured in ads for big brands such as Coca Cola, Vodacom, Guinness Milk Stout, JC Le Roux and Edgars, to name just a few,” she says. In the fashion stakes, Magese has become a top model and the face of fashion shows of top designers such as David Tlale, Gavin Rajah, Nigerian top designer Tiffany Amber, Deola Segoe and African Mosaic.
After her work in the modeling world took her to Milan, Paris, Hong Kong, Germany, China, Spain, India and Norway, Magese’s dream of living and working in the United States came true when scouts from Ford Models spotted her on the ramp during New York Fashion Week.
“The scouts came backstage to meet me and told me that even though they were currently not taking on any black models, they believed my look was going to sell. I met with them the following day. And I immediately signed with them,” she says.
It has been over a year since she’s been based in New York, and since then, Magese has bagged quite a number of top modeling jobs, but her biggest coup so far has been the on-going campaign she does for high-end label Ralph Lauren.
“I have just renewed my contract with Ford Models for another year, but I am already making plans to come back home and launch my company, MMG (Millen Magese Group). I am aware that a career in modeling lasts for a short time. The company will basically consist of a modeling agency, and I am also in the process of conceptualizing a continent-wide modeling competition that will be flighted as a reality TV show—very similar to what Tyra Banks is doing with America’s Next Top Model.”
The lady who has raised herself out of poverty in Dar es Salaam has the guts for anything.

From Shying Away From The World To  Conquering It

It takes a lot of passion and persistence to make a film in Africa. Very few succeed; many more fall by the wayside in a tough game.
Carolyn Carew, CEO and executive producer of Born Free Media (BFM), is one of the survivors with 25 hard years in the film business. It has been a lifelong love affair with film, which began when she was a child.
“We’d put up a little white sheet in the sitting room and watch movies on our 16mm projector. Around the World in 80 Days and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang were among my favorite movies. We also had a local cinema in Krugersdorp, where I grew up, called the Vordet, and we used to go there every Saturday—it was like an outing for all the girls and boys.”
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Carew’s path into working in movies was more difficult. She left the University of Cape Town with a post-graduate degree and worked for 10 months as a social worker. Through her sister, Carew snuck into the film industry in 1987, as a driver on a film called African Farm.
“I would also observe on set what the first and second assistant directors did; and from there I went and applied for other jobs. I then worked as an assistant director for a few years—and that’s basically how I got in,” she says.
Carew is now established, but life on set is far from easy.
“SA is one of those countries on the continent where you get the patriarchal attitude. I think sometimes people don’t really like to take advice or take direction from a woman—so that can be quite challenging. For me it wasn’t so much the gender issue that was challenging, but the amount of hours. When I look back on my 25-year career, I think I’ve worked an average of 14 to 15 hours a day, a good six to seven days a week. It’s been an incredible commitment that one has had to put into it. SA’s has got a competitive edge; we’ve got very good crews here, very good locations and we’ve got very good equipment. On average per year, we service at least 10 to 15 feature films—big ones; and about five or six co-productions,” she says.
Money remains the industry’s greatest problem.
“It would be the most amazing thing if we could get local individuals, people who have money and want to invest in cinema, to invest in the film industry. I think a lot of the time, the risks can outweigh the profits, so people don’t really want to invest in film. It’s quite a challenge,” says Carew.
Taking advantage of the Brazil, Russia, India, China (BRIC) relationship is another way to build and grow SA’s film industry, Carew says. South Africa already has a co-production treaty with India, but not with China and Brazil. “I think if we could find a way even within those four countries to exploit our content, we’d be able to achieve a lot because therein lies a huge industry.”
She reckons the markets where South African or African products could do better are Europe, some parts of Asia, India and Latin America.
Carew is at the legacy stage of her career.  She helped to found the Newtown Film School in Johannesburg in 1992, and has won several awards. Her most memorable achievement was in 2007, when BFM won Best Director for the TV drama series, When We Were Black, at the South African Film and TV awards. Recently, BFM won the Amnesty International Award for Human Rights for a documentary called The Life and Times of Robert Sobukwe.
Despite the industry being so tough, Carew says she would encourage her son to follow in her footsteps.
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With three feature films in the pipeline, her life’s work is film, and with it, the hope that one day an Oscar for Africa will shine through the financial worries and long hours.
Many drift into making movies, including Carew, but for Kutlwano Ditsele, it was all he ever wanted to do.
“My mother says she stopped watching television with me when I was about nine years old because I was already spotting things that people wouldn’t normally see. By the time I was 11, I had more VHS tapes than I had toys; I even started building towers with my tapes, that’s how many I had,” he says.
It was also tough getting his mother to support his choice of career.
“My mom knew how difficult the industry was, so she didn’t want me to pin all my hopes on film knowing that a lot of people don’t make it; she wanted me to have security,” Ditsele says.
First he went to study public relations at Varsity College, and media at Boston Media House. But because his heart wasn’t in it, it wasn’t long before he applied to the New York Film Academy in Los Angeles to follow his dream. Ditsele then worked at a Johannesburg production company before co-founding Ripple Films in December 2010. He believes it can tell the great untold African stories.
“The first stories were told in Africa; we love telling and hearing stories. We no longer sit around fires and tell stories; the fires have now become the screens. I think we’ll be telling stories for a very long time to come in Africa; filmmakers will always have jobs. The main thing is finding a way to get the original stories out there.”
But this is proving to be difficult. For many people, African stories live in soap operas, where the viewership figures are high.
“The key is to get those people who are sitting and watching soap operas to sit in the cinema. South Africa doesn’t have a cinema-going culture and due to our small industry, our institutions don’t have the liberty to take as much risk as Hollywood.”
Ditsele says the African film industry needs to take more risks, but all too often creative freedom is choked by cautious investors.
“Our biggest problem here is we have too many people telling us what the audiences want and what we should do. They say, ‘This guy made a movie like this and it did well; you should make a movie like that guy too.’ No variety will come out of that and audiences will end up watching the same thing over and over again.”
“I still have the opportunity to live and make films in Los Angeles, but I choose to stay here because of the promise and the talent that the South African industry has. I think we have what it takes to get to the Nolly, Bolly or Hollywood level. Sticking to our guns, knowing exactly what we want to do and not giving up is what will get us there. You also need to find mentors – and don’t be arrogant; take notes.”
Ditsele believes it is also all about distribution.
“You can make the next City of God or Avatar, but if you don’t have distribution, it means nothing. Our own distributers don’t play our films enough because of quality control. But as it is, we don’t have enough films, and the two or so films that we do make are screened for a week and then taken off because X-Men is coming out,” he says.
For Ditsele the challenge is to make an African film that is better than X-Men.

Tag: Career

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