It is a warm winter’s day in Johannesburg, South Africa. Nkosana Mazibisa is a long way from home but he is eager to make his mark; here and abroad.
Mazibisa was born in the heart of what used to be Zimbabwe’s industrial town, Bulawayo, in 1988. They call it KoNtuthu Ziyathunqa, the place that exudes smoke, in isiNdebele, because of its industry. The harsh economic conditions in Zimbabwe took the smoke from the air.
“There is so much potential in my country. When I was young, I remember the town was full of smoke from industries making many homemade products. Many of these industries have closed down and it is up to us to revive them and create jobs,” says Mazibisa.
Mazibisa wants to be the Bulawayo reviver. The idea of fixing the city dawned on him in his high school debate team in Bulawayo.
“The country was collapsing and we had a debate at school about these issues and how to solve them.”
When it was over, everyone went home and continued with their lives, but not Mazibisa. He started thinking about the role he could play. He graduated and worked hard but that debate haunted him. The smell from Bulawayo factories he was accustomed to growing up was a distant memory.  Home-grown brands he had loved were off the shelves and replaced by international and South African brands, so he swapped his well-paid job for entrepreneurship.
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“My family was shocked. They didn’t understand what I was doing because there are no jobs in Zimbabwe and I here I was resigning. That didn’t scare me. I knew that I had to do my bit to make a difference. That’s why I decided to start a business to solve the unemployment problems we have and revive our industries,” says Mazibisa.
He founded a food retail brand, Swaad “The Taste of India” and Mazibisa Inc., a brand strategy consultancy firm in Bulawayo Zimbabwe.
“I could have gone to Harare but we need to resuscitate Bulawayo and I am playing my role in its revival. Most countries have a brand that represents their nationality. In Zimbabwe we used to have such brands like Willards but now there is nothing. My country at one point was the breadbasket of Africa. Seeing all the big brands we had disappear from the shelves gave me a challenge. I realized Zimbabwe is in a way an extension of South Africa. We have South African shops and brands now, but very few of our own, those brands don’t necessarily resonate with Zimbabwean consumers,” he says.
Swaad makes snacks such as biscuits, potato crisps and dried fruits in a small factory in Bulawayo.
“I want to one day see the smoke from factories cover the blue sky like I used to when I was child. It would mean the country is healing and we are making our own products again instead of importing.”
Mazibisa’s ambitions to make a difference are far and near. He chairs Mawaba School Development Committee (SDC) in Bulawayo as the youngest SDC chair in Zimbabwe’s history. He built a state-of-the-art computer science laboratory which has been adopted for all city council and government schools. He is currently working on a $2-million double-storey lecture theater block and multi-purpose swimming pool project which is due before end of 2017. He is also one of FORBES AFRICA’s 30 under 30s for 2016 and a Mandela Washington Fellow.
These accolades were born of struggle.
“When I decided to start a business, I applied for the government youth fund twice but I didn’t get it. I saw this failure as a stepping stone and not a stumbling block,” he says.
With Zimbabwe’s harsh economic turmoil, dreams are often bleak. He used the little savings from his job to start a brand strategy consulting firm to raise funds for Swaad.
“Lines of credit are slim but the fact that we have a crisis means we have an opportunity to create a new order. Crisis means opportunities for entrepreneurs to rise and create opportunities. Sometimes it feels like I am fighting a losing battle but I always remind myself of the bigger picture. This is my purpose and I am ready to see it through. And this is more than about making money but also creating national pride and valuing local brands, ” says Mazibisa.
He says each of their products have a message from the CEO to ensure the clients feel valued.
“People also fill in their names and birthday details at the till when they buy our products. On their birthday, I send them birthday wishes. Buying local is more than just the brand but a story of national pride and I am hopeful that Zimbabwe will rise again.”
In Mazibisa’s eyes, where there is smoke there is pride.

The Bulawayo Reviver

Positive news is flowing out of Africa these days. The global consultancy Ernst &amp; Young, now EY, ranks Africa as the world&#8217;s second-most attractive market after North America.
If anyone had asked me, I would have pointed at China as the world&#8217;s second-most attractive market after the United States (US).
Okay, forgive me. China is the world’s biggest factory yard. Can Africa be a base for a global factory and one day rival China’s manufacturing might? Yes it can.
Let’s start with the obvious. African governments certainly need to invest more in healthcare, education and innovation. They need to promote more public and private capital into infrastructure – roads, modern railways, power plants etc. These steps should – all things being equal &#8211; further facilitate intra-Africa trade which also needs to grow. Presently, African nations conduct only about 10% of their trade with each other, according to the World Bank, which also reports that the continent’s share of global trade in value terms currently stands at less than 5%.
A substantial share of the world’s timber, diamonds, gold, cobalt, copper and platinum come out of Africa. Transforming Africa’s raw materials into finished goods before exporting them to the rest of the world would also help.
South Africa already exports German technology (BMW sedans) to the US. Ethiopia has excellent leather and coffee. Kenya produces world-class tea and horticulture. Beyond its crude oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports to international markets, Nigeria’s movie and music industry has practically displaced European and American pop culture across the continent, helping to rekindle African pride, local talent industries and worldwide appetite for indigenous African content.
Foreign firms are all over Africa, scrambling for opportunities. In China’s case, its direct investment in sub-Saharan Africa has jumped from virtually nothing in 2002 to $18.2 billion in 2012. The EYs and McKinseys of this world are only stating the obvious: Africa is a very safe bet for Western and Asian companies, European private equity firms and fund managers from Silicon Valley looking for superior return of investment (ROI). The counterpoint to this fact is to ask how well Africa will harvest its ROI delivery capabilities.
Will Africa take advantage of its unique spot in global trade to improve its society and environment?
Africa’s business and political leaders attending the US-Africa Summit in Washington last August came away with more than $14 billion in investment pledges by American firms.
According to the Brookings Institution, cumulative foreign investment in sub-Saharan Africa grew from $33.5 billion in 2000 to $246.4 billion in 2012. Former New York City mayor, Mike Bloomberg, says it is now factually incorrect to refer to Africa as an emerging region.
“Africa has finally emerged,” he says.
We all, however, need to look beyond the continent’s sweet and sour stories to see this emerging reality. The harsh reality of life in Africa for so long has been one of stagnated growth and arrested development fueled by endemic graft, penury and scarcity in the midst of affluence, painful and unprogressive politics, career militants, religious and ethnic strife, wars, cross-border epidemics, currency constipations, illicit trade, human trafficking and the sheer reluctance of Africa’s elite class to confront the bogey of nepotism.
Thankfully, these harsh realities are being attenuated – at national and sub-national levels – by positive exemplars of economic and social progression and by a new wave of afro-centric thinking which seeks to locate and redefine Africa’s role and position in the evolving global polity.
Practically every corner of the African continent today is adding value to Africa’s new growth story. A McKinsey report released in August 2014 states that the continent is home to eight of the world&#8217;s top 15 fastest-growing economies between 2000 and last year, with growth topped only by East Asia, which includes China.
Several sectors – the entertainment, financial services, telecommunications, information technology and agriculture sectors – have helped to galvanize this growth spurt.
Responsible for most of the foreign investment streaming into Africa, their cumulative contributions to social and economic transformation will continue to spur growth and new jobs. They have been the most receptive to the disruptive influence of innovation. They have helped to define the new picture of Africa rising out of the development woods.

Africa Is A Safe Bet

It’s hard to determine Sol Kerzner’s net worth due to his complex web of properties, consultancy fees, dividend income, tax havens, and public and private interests. What’s clear is that he’s sitting pretty in retirement.
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His is a story with humble beginnings.
Born in August 1935, in Troyeville, a rough part of Johannesburg, Kerzner was the youngest of four children. A couple of years later, the close family moved to the nearby Bezuidenhout Valley. While in Johannesburg, Kerzner’s parents, who were Lithuanian immigrants, ran a café and he gives credit to his eldest sister for raising him since his parents were busy seven days a week.
Kerzner was not the best student, more of a boxer, preferring sport to books; he is surprised he made it through school without a problem. His father sent him to Damelin College for his last two years of schooling, where there was no sport to distract him.
He went to the University of the Witwatersrand to study accounting, not knowing what else to do. After graduating, he moved to Durban to do his articles at a top firm. His parents had taken up a lease for a 50-room residential hotel in the coastal city. Kerzner convinced his dad to buy another, down the road, that had a liquor license. He would work there at night, while keeping his day job as an accountant. This gave him his first taste of the industry in which he was to make his fortune.
At night, they would change the light bulbs – and the mood – in the dining room, playing some music to create a spot where the revellers and sailors could unwind. It’s a place Kerzner says was far from five-star but definitely interesting.
In 1962, things were going well for Kerzner. He was a junior partner at an auditing firm and was offered a chief financial officer job at a big industrial company. Instead he bought the lease of the Astra Hotel in the backstreets of Durban.
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“I can’t tell you exactly why, I just got the urge to give up the profession [accountancy] and actually get involved in the hotel [business].”
While he was saying his goodbyes, one of his clients, Herald Franckle, asked why he was doing this when his career in auditing was going so well.
“I’m going to build South Africa’s first great hotel,” Kerzner said.
Kerzner had been receiving brochures from holiday destinations like Miami and Hawaii, and looking around Durban he realized South Africa wasn’t in the same league.
“I’ve always had confidence that South Africa should be able to do as well as any other country.”
The Astra Hotel was just a test run to get a feel of things, complete with dinner club and cabaret to draw in a crowd. He ultimately wanted to build in Umhlanga, a few kilometres north of Durban, because he used to take his girlfriends there and thought it was a ‘nice spot’. Trying to get his vision across, and prove he wasn’t crazy, Kerzner drove Franckle to the spot he had in mind and hooked himself an investor.
At the end of 1963, the designs for his big project in Umhlanga were complete and the bulldozers were on site. But Kerzner had never been abroad, so in November he flew to Miami, via New York. After checking in at the hotel, Kerzner asked a cab driver to show him every hotel in Miami Beach. The trip lasted from midday to 2AM the next morning. By lunchtime the following day, he was back on a flight to New York and recalls hearing about John F. Kennedy’s assassination while he was in the elevator. When Americans were weeping, he spent the night in New York looking at hotel lobbies
and restaurants.
He was convinced his designs were as good as what he had seen in the United States. Kerzner recalls articles in the Sunday Times calling him crazy and over capitalized. He was in his twenties and little worried him. His bet paid off and turned out to be exactly what South Africans were waiting for.
In 1964, the 88-room Beverly Hills Hotel, boasting uninterrupted views of the Indian Ocean, became South Africa’s first five-star hotel, with a R1 million price tag at the time.
The Elangeni Hotel in Durban was bigger and attracted a lot more financing since Kerzner now had some credibility. While he was building it, South African Breweries approached him and together they founded one of South Africa’s largest hotel groups, Southern Sun, now Tsogo Sun. Kerzner later founded Sun International.
A casino license was to prove a spur. A concession was up for grabs in Bophuthatswana, an independent homeland of the apartheid regime. Kerzner and his team won the concession with a warning to deliver.
This became Sun City, a renowned resort around 150 kilometers north west of Johannesburg. The four hotels, two Gary Player-designed golf courses, manmade lake, artificial rainforest and entertainment center took about 10 years to complete. When the resort first opened in 1979, the place was so overwhelmed the doors had to be locked. The estimates of 2,000 day visitors were way off with almost 15,000 turning up that first weekend. Kerzner laughs about how he had to come out with a megaphone to turn people away. The 6,000-seater Entertainment Centre opened with Frank Sinatra in 1981, in breach of the cultural boycott imposed on the country.
“He [Sinatra] walked in, he got on stage and he started singing with the orchestra and he stopped after a few bars and said ‘Sol, I’ve played all over the world… I’ve never played in a room with the sound as what you’ve created here, this is the best room I’ve ever worked in.’”
Kerzner sold his stake in Southern Sun in 1983 and a deal to sell out of Sun International was finalized in 1992. He left South Africa for London in 1987 to break into the international market as he felt he had reached the ceiling at home. It was tough because of the negative feeling towards South Africa at the time. Sentiment changed after Nelson Mandela’s release from prison in 1990.
Two months after his release, Mandela’s office called Kerzner to discuss a meeting. It took place at Kerzner’s Johannesburg home and was about his relationship with the then president of Bophuthatswana, Kgosi Lucas Manyane Mangope, and Zulu chief, Mangosuthu Buthelezi. Mandela wanted to create a united South Africa and wanted Kerzner’s help.
When Kerzner asked Mandela about his thoughts about the controversies surrounding Sun City, the then future statesman said he thought it was great that a young man was creating thousands of jobs out in the countryside.
The business was not easy. Kerzner had to face bribery allegations. In the late 80s there was a long investigation into an alleged R2 million bribe to Transkei‘s prime minister, George Matanzima, for exclusive gambling rights.
Kerzner soldiered on to build award-winning international ventures that include Atlantis Paradise Island in the Bahamas, the One &amp; Only Resorts and The Palm in Dubai.
The Bahamas adventure began when Kerzner was approached by an investment bank to see if he was interested in American entertainer Merv Griffin’s bankrupt Paradise Island resort. He bought it in 1994 and launched into a major redevelopment and expansion program – demolishing the entire front and creating a nearly 60-hectare aquarium that allows you to walk under the sea. The resort ran throughout the construction with cheaper rates, scaffolding and all.
Paradise Island became Atlantis when the Governor General’s wife came over for tea one afternoon, heard the plans and said it sounded a lot like the lost city of Atlantis.
The response was great and occupancy high. Michael Jackson wanted to see it for himself. His tour of the water habitat ended in a mob of tourists taking pictures and getting autographs, none of which fazed Jackson or his bodyguard.
In 2002, the One &amp; Only Resorts were launched in tourist destinations. In 2009, the $128-million, six-star and seven-story One &amp; Only in Cape Town’s V&amp;A Waterfront opened six months ahead of schedule.
Located on Dubai’s manmade Palm Jumeirah is The Atlantis Palm Dubai, a $1.5–billion and 1,539-room joint venture between Kerzner International Holdings Limited (KIHL) and Istithmar World, a private equity and venture capital arm of Dubai World Corporation. Home to a seven-hectare waterpark and 65,000 marine animals, it survived a fire in its lobby before its $20-million opening. Being the biggest opening the company has ever had, a lot of the money was committed before the global financial crash, so the show went on. It featured impromptu performances from friends like Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson and Natalie Cole, as well as fireworks by the same company that lit up the Beijing Olympics.
Istithmar bought out Kerzner’s 50% stake in the resort in 2012 and sold it last year to the Investment Corporation of Dubai (ICD), the emirate’s sovereign wealth fund.
Kerzner historically had no capital and relied on financing and strategy, and as a result his ventures had always been financed conservatively. This policy changed in 2006. His son Howard ‘Butch’ was chief executive officer and told him it was a great time to go private. The markets were great and everyone was doing it. The company was taken private in a reported $4 billion buyout; a $2.6 billion mortgage to finance this came at a most inopportune time.
The global recession led to a decline in leisure travel. The situation in the Bahamas was bad. The group also had to face the threat of competition from Baha Mar, which had found a new financial backer and builder in the Export-Import Bank of China and the China State Construction Engineering Corporation, and was being built less than 10 miles away from Atlantis Paradise Island. Brookfield Asset Management held a small piece of the Kerzner loan, $175 million, and went into debt restructuring talks – converting the debt into equity. Brookfield took ownership of the Atlantis and One &amp; Only Ocean Club in the Bahamas, as well as a 50% stake in the One &amp; Only Palmilla, in Mexico, but KIHL held on to long-term management contracts for
the properties.
In 2006, when Butch died in a helicopter crash in the Dominican Republic, Kerzner took two weeks off to figure out if he would take the helm again. This was in the midst of building phase three of Atlantis. It was work that eventually helped him through that difficult time. It was then that he knew it would never be a family business.
“He was one of the few sons who was able to stand up in terms of talent to a great father, and you don’t see that much in my business,” Donald Trump once told the Los Angeles Times about Butch.
The ICD purchased a significant, yet unspecified, stake in KIHL for an undisclosed amount; Kerzner stepped down as chairman and was replaced by Mohammed Al Shaibani.
There is no question in Kerzner’s mind that there are still some investment opportunities in Africa’s hospitality industry. He believes that Africa has opened up and is a whole new ball game.
Although Kerzner has retired, he’s not ready to sit around and do nothing. He is involved in a joint €790-million bid for Club Med with Andrea Bonomi, a former chairman of Banca Popolare di Milano.
During his career, Kerzner planned to open hotels in Zimbabwe and built Chobe Game Lodge in Botswana. He recalls taking in Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton for what was to be a two-day visit. When Kerzner got back to his friends two weeks later he found out that not only had they not left, but had decided to get married on the banks of the Chobe.
A 50-year career has its fair share of mistakes.
“In business, if you’re going to be successful and do things that are a little out of the ordinary, invariably you’re going to make mistakes.”
He just tries to avoid the very big ones and has had too much fun to do much differently. One missed opportunity was turning down an offer to be the first person to get involved in a gambling operation in Macau. Another big mistake was going private.
“It’s not only all about how much money you would have made and what you would have got. It’s about having a little bit of fun, being able to create things.”
The part of the business that excited Kerzner most was creating it all and watching it come to life. He feels that his intricate involvement in the design process is part of the reason he has succeeded.
When you are this enthused by what you do, it’s hard to balance work and family. Kerzner has been married and divorced four times, has four children and 10 grandchildren. He feels blessed to have the family and friends he has and admits that he perhaps got a little too carried away with his work.
After a quashed unauthorized biography, we can only hope for a sanctioned one giving greater insight into this private yet well-known personality.

The  Five-Star Millionaire

Helena Dolny has always taken the road less traveled. Currently, she heads up Grey Matters, a consultancy which focuses on leadership development, strategic planning, coaching and institutional transformation.
At 60, she is an accomplished, world-renowned empowerment specialist, writer and author of several books in fields as diverse as coaching, economics, organizational design and biography. Her vast expertise in navigating the choppy waters of corporate South Africa on the cusp of change and transformation is exactly what drew me to her as a potential columnist for FORBES Woman Africa.
I also knew Dolny had a way with words after reading her poignant account in the book Slovo: The Unfinished Autobiography. In it, she explains the context in which her late husband, Joe Slovo, wrote his memoirs, and why they were left incomplete. Slovo, one of my personal heroes, is a legend and icon of South Africa’s liberation struggle. He was the country’s first housing minister and served in former president Nelson Mandela’s Cabinet. Slovo died of leukemia in 1995, barely a year after democracy dawned. Dolny was his second wife.
Her inside track on the vagaries of corporate South Africa struggling to come to terms with change comes from her many experiences in the public and private sector. In 2005, Dolny served as the director of leadership development, coaching and mentoring at Standard Bank. It was a role which she says offered her the opportunity to recalibrate the bank’s delivery team. Prior to that, in 2001, she was with the human resources division of First National Bank. Her book, Banking on Change, is an engaging and candid account of her tumultuous experiences as the managing director of the Land and Agricultural Bank of South Africa. Dolny headed up the bank from 1997 until her dramatic departure in 2000, when she was embroiled in a spat over the direction of the organization and the pace of transformation.
Dolny also served as a member of the Presidential Commission on Rural Financial Services, and in 1996, was an advisor to South Africa’s first minister of agriculture and land affairs, Derek Hanekom.
Her journey towards becoming a coach and empowering women leaders in the corporate sector spans many decades. Dolny’s professional passage started when, as a youngster, fresh out of university and armed with a degree in agrarian economics, she made the journey from the north of England to the shores of Africa. Along the way, she came into contact with revolutionaries, rural peasants, presidents and academics, all of whom set her on a course that would invigorate her life forever.
The heady winds of change were sweeping across the continent. Dolny had been involved in the anti-Apartheid movement during her student days in England. Through her work in Zambia, Mozambique and later in South Africa, she soon came into direct contact with those at the epicenter of change in southern Africa.
Explaining her decision to work in empowerment and development, and the connection between land and economics, Dolny often makes reference to her parents. Both were World War II refugees; her father was Polish and her mother hails from what was then Czechoslovakia. Her folks were ‘salt of the earth’ types, she says, and could have become very different people, were it not for their class positions . While her mother, who had greater class mobility because she finished school later on in life , became a nurse in England, her father was a factory worker.
“Although my dad worked in a factory, he was very inventive and always practical. In a different society he could have been an engineer. When growing up we heard stories of their lives during the war. Given my parents’ upbringing, I am not surprised that I wanted to go into an enabling environment,” she says.
“In my gap year I travelled to Zambia. I had to come via South Africa, and eventually, after completing my studies, I ended up in Mozambique.”
Dolny’s passion for and interest in land issues was sparked in part by a friend’s father, who owned a dairy farm. She also remembers wanting to study something ‘practical’ instead of philosophy. She enrolled in agricultural economics at Reading University in the United Kingdom, as conventional wisdom at the time dictated that “because you were a girl”, it was advisable to “read economics, rather than science”.
Shortly after Mozambique won its independence in 1975, Dolny found herself designing a bookkeeping system.
“When [The Mozambique Liberation Front] Frelimo took power in the 70s it was a very powerful time. It was a time of barefoot doctors doing stints in villages among the rural masses. I remember, at that time, my first task was designing an accounting system for people who had just come off a literacy course. Then we could dream,” she says, smiling.
As an agrarian economist in Mozambique’s Ministry of Agriculture, Dolny worked with farming cooperatives on development planning and bookkeeping from 1976 to 1981. She then joined a Canadian non-profit organization called Cuso (Canadian University Service Overseas), which supported development projects in Mozambique.
Dolny has traversed both the public and private sector as an economist, banker, empowerment specialist and currently as an executive coach. However, the thread that runs through her work over the years is a belief in the need to build and develop strong and ethical leadership in public and private institutions.
“The fish rots from the head,” she says, stressing the importance of developing and harnessing credible, quality and capable leaders.
As a member of Comensa, and with a string of degrees (including an MBA and a Master’s in professional coaching) under her belt, Dolny is at the cutting edge of her industry on the continent.
Asked to explain the difference between coaching and mentoring, she says, “Coaching is customized learning. Mentoring is about cloning little mini-mes.” Coaching, she continues, allows her to develop systems that are uniquely tailored to the individual.
In the November edition of FORBES Woman
Africa, Dolny will be debuting as a regular columnist, offering insights into how to navigate corporate culture and architecture across the African continent.

Tag: Consultancy

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

The Bulawayo Reviver

Africa Is A Safe Bet

The Five-Star Millionaire

Helena Dolny