More than 60 years ago, brutal authorities choked the life and jazz out of a vibrant corner of Africa.
They called it Sophiatown – the Chicago of Africa – a free-wheeling, musical, multiracial community close to the heart of Johannesburg and the birthplace of many an African musician. Too close, according to the apartheid authorities.
“We won’t move!” was written on the walls. Police made sure people did on a February morning in 1955. Before sunrise, they drove out 110 families with nothing but hastily packed belongings. This foreshadowed almost two decades of forced removals of thousands throughout South Africa.
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One of them was 14-year-old Don ‘Bra Don’ Thinane who had grown up with Indian and Chinese neighbors – “a mixed bag” he says. He recalls his father leaving to search for a new home two days before the trucks and bulldozers arrived to take him away. “He knew that in about a day or two days they are going to demolish the place,” says Bra Don, who found himself dumped in Meadowlands, Soweto, with his grandmother and uncle, because of his race.
We go for a drive in search of memories from 60 years ago. Bra Don tells me this was his playground where he used to rollerskate: we are on 5th avenue heading towards Sophiatown. “Hey! Isn’t that Xuma’s place,” he exclaims as we pass the home of the first black South African to become a medical doctor, former ANC President A.B. Xuma. One of few places that survived the nationalist government’s wrecking ball.
We drive on looking for Gerty Street, where Bra Don used to live. I spot the name, barely visible, worn and stencilled in black. We turn right into the street, immediately the mood in the car changes, and so does Bra Don’s face; his eyes widen and light up as nostalgia washes over.
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“I used to scale this wall,” says Bra Don when we get to the barrier that stretches from Gerty into the Melville Koppies, a place where he spent his afternoons, and one of the few things left. “There’s nothing that can show me our house here! They literally broke it down,” he says as we carry on looking for anything familiar.
It was also in Sophiatown that he found the discipline of boxing, under the strict coach Harry Mikela. In playing the trumpet, he learned from the elder brother of Stompie Manana, one of the fathers of African jazz. It helped him escape the rough streets and in 1980, through study, he became a lawyer. Now, at the age of 71, he is one of the best known black advocates in the land.
Bra Don is one of many happy to see Sophiatown back on the map. The apartheid administration renamed it Triomf – meaning triumph in Afrikaans. In 2006, it was rechristened Sophiatown.
The jazz that died under the ugly din of bulldozers, removal trucks and police batons, is also back.
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Back To The  Future In The Streets Of Soul

It is a windy day in Johannesburg, South Africa. Thick dark clouds assemble in the sky; the wind is as swift as rush hour. As we meet, Oliver Mtukudzi carries a brown bag, full of his life, on his shoulder. He carries the bag everywhere, just as he wears his trademark poor boy cap. Dressed in a black jacket and grey pants, he stands high up on the stairs to welcome us. He is in South Africa to promote his 65th album, Eheka! Nhai Yahwe, which features South African jazz legend Hugh Masekela. It’s a remarkable career stretching back some 41 years with songs that have enlivened parties all over the world with hits like Neria, Todii and Wasakara.
“I never decided to be in the music industry. It was in me. My mother said ‘you are a good singer but you will never surpass your birth cry. Your birth cry was so beautiful’. So I believe that’s when I started singing, from my first breath,” says Mtukudzi.
Born in 1952 in Highfield, a suburb in Harare, Zimbabwe, on September 22 at 3AM; music runs in his blood. Both his parents were musicians. They met at a choir competition and the competition never ended. They competed at home and the children were the judges.
“If we needed a favor from dad, then dad won and if we needed a favor from mum, mum won.”
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It wasn’t long before he followed.
“I made a three-string guitar for myself from a tin around 1969 or early 1970s with the help of a [relative]. I was always playing it. My father didn’t like it and he broke the guitar,” he recalls.
It wasn’t going to stop him. He made up songs as a child and sang everywhere.
“One day, I decided to perform for my parents standing on the table and they enjoyed it so much I didn’t get smacked for standing on the table. I remember my mother noticed I had been standing on the table, two or three days later. That’s how good it was,” he chuckles.
Mtukudzi followed his passion. In the 1970s, he joined Wagon Wheels, a band which included yet another Zimbabwean star, Thomas Mapfumo, the man who wrote Nyoka Musango and is known as the king of Chimurenga music.
“I love what I do. If I was doing a career, I would be worried about how much money I can make. I am yet to decide on a career to take on. This is not a career for me. I am just doing me. This is about understanding the purpose of a song, to bring life and hope to the people and to heal broken hearts. If you do it right, there is more in appreciation than getting paid.”
His skill is appreciated from Angola to Zimbabwe. He has won many awards; among them, the National Arts Merit Awards, Zimbabwe Music Awards, KORA Awards and South African Music Awards.
“All my songs are my favorites. If it’s not one of my favorites, I will just throw it away. You won’t get to hear it. It won’t make it to my album. Awards are an appreciation. They shouldn’t put any pressure on me, otherwise I will lose the purpose of the song,” he says.
The deep voice of Mtukudzi has brought music to the next generation. Taught by their father, his children Selmor and Sam Mtukudzi became music stars in their own right.
“One day, in March 2010, I was in Johannesburg and my son, Sam, was supposed to pick me up in Harare at the airport.”
Mtukudzi sent Sam a message telling him he was no longer coming. Unfortunately, the text didn’t go through. Sam drove to the airport to pick him up. And tragedy struck.
“I got a call that evening and they said he had been in an accident on his way home from the airport. They were taking him to the hospital and I was to come as soon as possible. They wouldn’t give me the details,” says Mtukudzi.
When he arrived at the airport all his close friends and family were there.
“I realized something was really wrong. They were all crying and I knew my son had passed on. I couldn’t believe it. My last words with him, we joked and now he was gone. I am still learning to live with it.”
This is a big loss for Mtukudzi. Sam performed and toured with his father.
“He was always on my left side when he was on stage with me. That alone, when I’m on stage, it makes me remember he is not there. Every time I am on stage, I feel the emptiness but it is also therapeutic because I feel him the most when I’m on stage.”
After Sam’s death, it was hard to sing again. In 2012, after two long years of grief, Mtukudzi released Sarawoga – in his mother tongue, it means “left alone”.
“Some of the songs in the album were meant to be in collaboration with my son so this was some kind of therapy for me. I didn’t want to throw away the work we had sweated on. I had to finish it off,” he says.
One of the songs in the album is Shamiso, named after Mtukudzi’s daughter.
“Sam was more of a friend than a son. One of the songs we were working on was Shamiso. She was getting married and we were going to sing the song at her wedding.”
It hasn’t been an easy journey. According to Mtukudzi, for as long as there are people, there is something to talk about and if there is something to talk about, then there is something to sing about.
“My music comes from the people, the environment and some of it from personal experiences. Things come up when I’m driving and I park on the side and write it down, you don’t budget time for a song. This is a tough industry. There are a lot of obstacles but you have to be strong. There is no shortcut, you just have to go all the way and remain true to yourself,” he says.
As Mtukudzi learns to live with the loss of his son, he is trying to break barriers. He is adapting a famous 1961 Zimbabwean book, Pfumo Reropa, spear of blood in chiShona, by Patrick Chakaipa.
“I’m not going to retire. I can’t run away from myself. I noticed that some of our literature is being thrown away. It is being ignored probably because there are no visuals to them, so I felt I should take one of the popular books at home and script it into motion picture to encourage our youngsters to be more interested in African literature.”
Through the loss and the pain, Mtukudzi is trying to build something of substance for Africa out of the ruins. Surely, that is a tribute to the loss of a loved son.

“Every Time I’m  On Stage, I Feel The  Emptiness”

Away from a baying crowd of women with weaves, Hugh Masekela swaggers into a television studio on Fox Street in Johannesburg for a talk show. Earlier that day, he was on a talk radio station fielding questions on his disdain for synthetic hair and the popularity of weaves among African women. His remarks, and his refusal to pose with fans with synthetic hair, attracted the ire of women across South Africa.
“If he’s okay with weaved women paying money to come see his concerts then he should afford those fans the privilege of taking pictures with him,” SABC radio personality KG Moeketsi posted on Facebook.
“This thing is tired and unnecessary. We already deal with way too much misogyny, being belittled by men we love, and workplace discrimination, to not be afforded the right to wear our hair the way we want to. Mind you, I’ve never worn a weave in my life, but the right to choose your hairstyle has never been parallel to your taste in music.”
But Masekela is having none of it.
“It’s not about weaves,” says Masekela. “It’s not about weaves at all. You know, it’s about other people’s hair. Like some people wear synthetic, and some even use horsetail hair. But it’s not even about that.”
“Africans and Europeans have had a long historical issue about African hair. When we first encountered Europeans, they laughed at our hair because it was hard. And, historically we’ve been given an inferiority complex, not only about who we are but about our noses being flat, our lips being big, our asses being big, and things like that.”
“And of course we were defeated, you know, in trying to defend Africa. We were enslaved, then we were urbanized, then we were also ‘religionized’. So we’re very far from who we really are originally.”
“We are the only society that imitates other cultures. I mean we wear their clothes and everything. But the saddest part is how far we have come with trying to not look like ourselves.”
“Religion and urbanization have made Africans really believe that their own heritage is barbaric, savage, primitive, backwards, uncivilized and all those words. Psychologically, over the centuries we’ve been conditioned to think that our heritage is not good, that it’s inferior.”
The weave and what it represents is part of a much bigger picture, he says.
“Hair is one of the areas in which we’ve been put down,” he says. “But then we became exploited because apart from the issues of heritage we are the biggest hair market in the world. We spend tens of billions of dollars a year buying other people’s hair. And from a heritage and traditional perspective, that is sort of macabre.”
“So I don’t mind people wearing what they wanna wear, as long as I don’t have to take pictures with them. That’s all. It’s much more than me being an eccentric old man. There’s a whole history to it.”
“But it’s absurd when Africans fall over their feet to get their hands on blonde wigs. I mean I look at Umhlanga (the reed dance)… Half of those kids are wearing blonde wigs and weaves, and they don’t go with traditional clothes. You know, it’s the same as going skiing barefoot. It’s that absurd. But then they also put it on the children. A lot of them put it on their children. If you look at the little school children in this country, almost all of them have had their hair tampered with – their hair, in way or another, has been tampered with.
“If you saw the movie Hotel Rwanda, which was made here, you can see that they tried to wash all the kids’ hair so they look like Rwandans. And all the kids’ hair was ginger from refusing to be washed and it was still standing up by the time they were shooting. It passed over everybody’s head… people didn’t seem to notice.”
Bra Hugh, as the legendary trumpeter is affectionately known, is even disappointed by his own family.
“I was at a wedding just outside Polokwane in South Africa,” he says. “There were Venda relatives of mine and most of them were in traditional Tshivenda garb, but almost all the women were wearing weaves and wigs. One niece of mine had a red, black and yellow wig, a really shiny piece, and she had a matching one on her daughter who was three years old.”
“What that says to me is that, psychologically we have really been messed with. We are buying people’s hair but they are not buying any of our s***, except maybe a little art and craft… You know, it’s a sad joke.”
Back at the TV studio, Masekela moves on to sign autographs and I watch closely as my plus one asks Bra Hugh for a picture. Like many others in the room, my companion is sporting braids that are reinforced with synthetic hair. Masekela politely signs her book before posing with her for pictures.
Perhaps he didn’t feel like splitting hairs that day.

It’s A Sad Joke And Bra Hugh Isn’t Laughing

He dreams big yet it all started in a small corner. It was in a corner of the dusty streets of Mafikeng in the North West province of South Africa where he first drew a crowd, in school theater, at the age of six.
He’s broken barriers, filled the 20,000-capacity Dome, in 2015, and this year, he’s pushed it further by attracting around 36,000 fans to Orlando Stadium in Soweto – most football teams fail to do this. He’s proved that nothing you put your mind to do is impossible.
This is Refiloe Maele Phoolo, known as Cassper Nyovest to the world. Rapping is his game.
He steps out of a minibus with his entourage, they stop for a selfie, and I’ve noticed how spruce his style is: a bandana, a R500,000 ($37,000) watch, gold neck chain and all-white outfit. A closer look at Cassper reveals puffy eyes; he is exhausted from back-to-back performances.
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Cassper is best known for his hit song, Doc Shebeleza, and his ponytail that he cut off not long ago.
“It kind of made me look like a gimmick; there are certain things that hold you back. When you are animated it makes it too difficult to grow up. It was time to take it off because I am more mature now,” he says.
“I wouldn’t want to be this version of myself forever, I want to get better.”
All of this didn’t come easy.
The 26-year-old was born into a family of teachers, where education was important, yet he doesn’t have a qualification beyond school. He dropped out of school in grade 10, at the age of 16. His parents didn’t approve.
“It was a very emotional part of my life, and theirs as well because they are passionate about education. I sat them down and said look I’m not saying I wanna quit school and sit at the corners and smoke weed and drink my life away. I want to work, on my dream and my purpose,” he says.
Luckily they understood.
“I understand that school is very important, I wouldn’t say that school wasn’t for me but it’s just that my path was a little bit different from the normal life and what my parents thought I would do.”
He had a plan up his sleeve and went to the big city of Johannesburg for music.
“I was signed to a label called Impact Sound under Thabiso Tsotetsi; he didn’t wanna be associated with a child who dropped out of school so he watched from a distance. That’s when HHP, a fellow artist, saw me and we did a song Wamo Tseba Mtho,” says Cassper.
After two years of struggle in Johannesburg, he moved back home.
“My grandmother gave me a mattress because I didn’t have anywhere to sleep and it took a very long time for anything to happen.”
“Nobody cares who you are, people function by the monopoly of those who know each other, pull each other up, it’s not even about talents, it’s about connections and who you know,” says Cassper.
He used his sister’s last R100 ($7.50), meant for a transport fare, to buy himself a return ticket to Johannesburg.
Things started to turn around. Cassper started his career with Childhood Gangsters, a group he started with his friends. When it disbanded, he went to launch his solo career and produced the hits Gusheshe, Malome and Mama I Made It. He also shared stages with international artists Kid Cudi, Kendrick Lamar, Nas, Wizkid and Wiz Khalifa.
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The rapper also started his own record label, Family Tree, the same year he released his debut album, Tsholofelo – a taste of sweet success followed by a string of awards.
“Artists get only eight percent of their record sales, [it’s the] industry standard, and 50 percent of their show money. I didn’t want that, I wanted 100 percent of everything,” he says.
His favorite line: “God is good all the time and all the time God is good.”
It hasn’t always been good for Cassper who was involved in a public fight with fellow South African artist Kiernan Jordan Forbes, known as AKA, which led to both artists recording diss tracks about each other. Much to the public’s surprise, after Cassper’s show at Orlando Stadium, a picture went viral on social media of the two artists congratulating each other.
“Kiernan and I have been cool for a while now. We didn’t even know what we were fighting for and it didn’t make sense anymore. We were just talking how the fight was pathetic and it was over and we had to move on. We couldn’t believe how far we had made it in our careers. Every time we see each other we greet, so that picture for me wasn’t like the moment everybody made it out to be.”
“Kids really look up to us and they would do anything and everything that we do. If I’m always in the paper for doing some dumb stuff, what am I teaching them?” he says.
A few months ago, Cassper was accused by his idol, Kanye West, of stealing his floating stage idea. The rapper denies this.
“I did that stage last year at the Dome before Kanye did his show. How could I possibly have stolen his idea? I just think that it’s great that my idol knows my name and we’ll have something to talk about the day we meet. For me, it was a compliment no matter how it came out.”
Cassper has been through a lot of bad publicity in his career; he says negativity is a thing of the past.
“I can’t deal with fights. I just become a person I’m not,” he says.
Cassper says getting to the top is the easy part; staying there is harder.
“The hardest part is maintaining the same spot. In South Africa, people move on very quickly and they forget and what you have done in your career doesn’t matter in South Africa.”
His worst fear is to be forgotten.
“I don’t ever want to get to a place where nobody knows who I am, where I’m not celebrated  and people don’t love me as much as they do right now, I don’t ever wanna get to that place.”
Even though Cassper fell short of filling up the 40,000-seat stadium by just a few thousand it did not dampen his sense of accomplishment and musical bravery. In 2017, he’s looking to fill up the 94,000-seat FNB stadium.
“At the Dome I lost R3 million ($220,000) but the concept was not to make money but to shift culture. The value was not in money but an investment… I want to get to a point where an artist can walk away with R8 million ($600,000) a show.”
“South African hip-hop is the biggest music. We are African hip-hop,” says Cassper.
Love him or hate him, what is clear is that Cassper has shaken up the music industry.
“Maybe I should start acting broke now coz my success turned the game into a cold heart”. These are the lyrics from his popular hit Malome.
“Me and my dad never have one-on-ones anymore” are lyrics directed at his father who separated with his mother, at the same time when his 19-year-old brother died in an accident.
“When my brother passed away, it was a sad time for my family and it was also the first time someone from my immediate family died. Then my parents separated so, at the age of 15, I had to grow up and be a man of the house,” says Cassper.
According to Cassper, South African artists are far from famous.
“The only guy who’s actually gaining traction is Black Coffee; he has a following that’s growing all over the world. But when I travel the world I perform for mostly South Africans. I just had my first show in Germany, for Germans, who liked my music. Before that we’d create our own shows.”
“As much as we’re making it look like we’re flourishing out there, in the US, we are very far. But we’re fighting and I think our time will come.”
He is too humble to offer any estimation of how much he has banked this year.
“When I started to make money I mentioned it too much to my fans and then I became the guy with a lot of money. I’ve learned that it creates a wall between me and my crowd because they don’t see me as one of their own anymore. It’s a big mistake that I made at a very early stage in my career,” he says.
“I’ve also lost too much but it happens to a lot of us who don’t know what to do with money. I posted everything I did and everything I bought.”
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According to reports, the rapper makes R120,000 ($9,000) a show, excluding accommodation, flight and his entourage.
One of his challenges is getting his music played on radio; he asked his 685,000 followers on Twitter to help him get his new song Abashwe played.
“Please help me push it. I still don’t understand why I don’t get radio airplay so I need my fans to request Abashwe. Hope that will help.”
He’s got this far without radio; imagine where he’ll get to if his songs are on the airwaves.

The  Rebel’s Rapper Riposte

It was as tough as tough could be. From his early years, life loomed like a clenched fist in the face of Teboho Twala. These days he drives a Porsche and is a classy and elegant young entrepreneur a world away from his often tortured childhood.
At the age of 10, he was sleeping under a wheelbarrow in the yard and lived on the streets for more than a year. The reason – a troubled childhood through a mother who turned to drink and violence when Twala’s stepfather left her. His job became protecting his younger brothers and sister while dodging drunken rages by sleeping in the open in Qwaqwa, in South Africa’s Free State province, a 300-kilometer drive from Johannesburg.
Twala was left stranded without a plan, but someone was there to help him.
The first saviour was the mother of a friend, Masabata Sophie Mokome, known as ousie Sophie. She was the only one that stood up for Twala while other neighbors were scared, he says. Soon after, she told his son to fetch Twala to live with them.
“She ran a bath for me and the next day she took us to Edgars and bought us clothes,” he recalls.
Twala was adopted for over a year before moving back with his grandmother after she heard he was homeless.
Sadly, the grandmother died while young Twala was in secondary school. Fortunately, after living alone for a while, he was taken in by his aunt who is a domestic worker.
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He didn’t have an easy childhood, but the hardships steeled him into the man he is now. These days he has a trimmed beard, articulate speech, and is always on the phone.
He is a 35-year-old entrepreneur who makes a hangover drink, which also doubles as an energy drink for those who don’t drink alcohol. It is called Zzero Hangover.
It is a legacy of high school where his second saviour, his principal and biology teacher, believed in him like a father.
“Mr Ntsane; he looked after me. He may not have given me money but pushed me and I pushed myself,” he says.
Twala did so well in school that his fellow pupils collected money to pay his registration fees at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits).
“The whole school had to donate, R1, R2. Mr Ntsane and I had to go to taxi ranks and government buildings to donate and we raised R1,700 ($120),” he recalls.
Young Twala passed all his subjects and he bought himself a Pentium 1 computer for about R1,000 ($70). It was his first computer and had no idea how to operate it; he had to learn fast. He was doing his first year in a bachelor of science (BSc) degree and needed to do assignments.
Two years later, he dropped the BSc for chemical engineering; he passed and got a bursary with Gold Fields in Virginia, Free State where he was reunited with his land of birth.
Sadly, all didn’t go well. Gold Fields’ share price went down in 2004 and students had to go home. Twala was without registration fees, nor a job.
Stranded without a plan, in stepped another guardian angel.
“A friend of mine assisted me; he had just finished his master’s and started working. He paid for my registration at the University of Johannesburg (UJ). I did well there; I had seven subjects and got five distinctions,” he says.
Post-graduation, Twala worked for Impala Platinum and later got an offer to work for South African Breweries (SAB). Two years later, he got a better offer with a bigger responsibility from Impala Platinum, in Rustenburg, in the North West province. He went back and worked right through to 2011.
The blessings came in abundance. That same year, he got an opportunity to work for a German company looking for a process engineer. Through that, he got an opportunity to work in Nigeria and travel to Germany.
That is when his entrepreneurial interest developed. He was inspired by the young entrepreneurs in Nigeria.
“But also, I had a boss, Sir David Osunde that believed in me. He was an old man; he took me to big meetings. I could then do presentations to ministers. That’s the level I was at because of this man,” he says.
Twala and other engineers from other parts of the world lived in a camp in cluster houses; each owning one. Besides work, they had nothing else to do. So they would spend time at the bar.
One night, they went to a pub and had a little too much to drink. The morning after, one of the engineers had a heavy hangover and didn’t know how to get rid of it, says Twala.
He took that as an opportunity and researched what could kill a hangover.
A European at the camp told him there was a solution for that in their continent. It was in Slovakia, but it was a German product with their head office in Austria. It was confusing for the young man.
In 2013, Twala came back to South Africa for a holiday. He wanted to make the idea work and not go back to Nigeria. He contacted people from Europe and told him they have a person in South Africa with a franchise, he bought it. He started distributing the product.
“It was called Alcohol Kill, but now it’s dead,” he says.
After traveling to and from Europe, Twala lost the R1 million ($70,000) he had invested in the business.
He had to come back and rethink how he was going to make the hangover solution work. During that period, he met a neurologist who said she could make an energy drink.
“I wanted something unique; my mind was on a hangover solution,” he says.
They worked tirelessly together and got a formula after a year.
Before that, Twala’s entrepreneurial instinct had kicked in. He and a friend bought News Café; a cafe-bar and cocktail franchise restaurant founded in South Africa.
He used that as an opportunity for customers to taste his product at the bar. He was getting good responses and decided to start bottling, manufacturing and distributing the product.
Twala came across a company called Boxmore which specializes in packaging. He bought generic bottles and branded them. The next challenge was finding someone who could fill the bottles.
He was satisfied with Inhle Beverages in Heidelberg, south of Johannesburg, which filled for big companies like USN and Clover. Throughout the production phase, all the companies liked the brand and its uniqueness.
Zzero Hangover was now born and had a trial run in April 2016.
“We produced a few units and sent them to the shops. That’s when the story broke in the media which was good for us,” he says.
The product was launched in May. Today, it is found in big retail stores across southern Africa. Zzero Hangover is self-funded and directly employs 10 people and contracts about 300.
Twala went from sleeping under a wheelbarrow to driving a Porsche and looking like a hero in his childhood township in the Free State. The hangover from his tough childhood has gone.

A Tough Hangover

Thulani Khoza, a smartphone manufacturer, grew up hungry with no parents and was sexually abused. He endured it all to build his own company, Thules Telecoms.
Soon after he was born, in the east of Johannesburg, his parents abandoned him. This cruel twist of fate saw Khoza move to Bushbuckridge, a small poor town in Mpumalanga, to stay with his grandmother.
“Growing up was hard. I would walk to school and back by foot. On hot days I’d feel the heat on my feet and when it rained it poured on me. And when I get home I’d find that my aunts had only reserved food for their children,” says Khoza.
The odds were stacked against him and it was about to get worse. Khoza says a cousin raped him leaving physical and emotional scars.
“I have an operation on my manhood. It’s gets painful every winter season and it’s a reminder of what happened,” he says.
As if that was not enough, later that year, he survived two accidents; one put him in hospital for six months. Khoza was alone and cold in a world of suffering.
“It was a difficult time in my life, so much so that I tried to commit suicide five times.”
The scars on Khoza’s body tell the story of his anguish.
“I was burned by iron. I had hot water thrown over my body by family members,” says Khoza, as tears well up his eyes.
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The 30-year-old entrepreneur has a soft shaky voice but he is tough.
In those lean days his hunger for a better life kept him going. After completing matric, he moved back to Johannesburg to stay with a relative. But death was at the door; the cousin died. This left Khoza to fend for himself.
“After his death I felt lonely and I had no place to call home. So I ended up sleeping at church. The security guard would give me his jacket to use as a blanket.”
Khoza was not to be beaten.
His love for technology saw him take on a degree in computer science from the University of the Witwatersrand. Here, he also slept in lecture halls.
“I would wake up at 4AM so that other students would not see that I was sleeping in the class,” he says.
Khoza had to rely on others to pay for his fees. His church raised money to cover his first year and a bursary from MTN allowed him to complete his degree.
Surviving was not easy but he somehow managed to.
While studying, Khoza would fix people’s computers and laptops to earn extra money and his love for technology grew.
He followed his degree up with a couple of post-graduate degrees, including an Honors in Software Engineering from the University of Nottingham, in Britain, and a Master’s in business administration at Baker University in the United Sates.
Soon after completing his studies, Khoza was hired as a system analyst for South Africa’s public broadcaster, the SABC. He then left the broadcaster to join cell phone giant MTN.
“I became restless in spirit and mind,” he says.
Khoza wanted to be his own boss.
In 2008, he created his own Android-powered smartphone, which he says will boast greater security in the technology industry.
“It lets the user encode the phone. It makes the phone 99.9 percent secure,” says Khoza.
The app, exclusive to the phone for now, will help up-and-coming entrepreneurs connect with others around the world and those already established, all via an electronic forum.
Thules Telecoms has 89 employees and has received orders from as far as the United States, Britain, Mexico, Portugal, and Ghana.
“People used to look at me like I was nothing, and because of that I told myself that one day I was going to be great and get the treatment that I deserve. Yes, I suffered in life, but I decided not to live my life in anger and bitterness because it can destroy you.”
“I’ve come to realize the fact that my parents abandoned me, they don’t owe me anything. Nobody owes me anything. I’m in charge of my own happiness,” says Khoza.
Despite the lemons that life throws at him, Khoza is able to make lemonade.

Triumph That Came After  The Tears

When he talks, people listen; when he moves money, markets react and when he invests, many follow.  He is Christo Wiese, Africa’s third richest man after Aliko Dangote and Nicky Oppenheimer &amp; family, according to FORBES’ list of Africa’s 50 richest, and the creator of Africa’s largest retail store. He is ever busy as he adds to his $6.5 billion fortune, but his last investment raised a few eyebrows.
As we meet, Wiese is dressed in black pants and a black sweater; you may mistake him for an ordinary bloke on the street in Cape Town, South Africa. But, there is nothing ordinary about this man when it comes to business. His creation, Shoprite, earns revenue of $9.9 billion a year, at a time when retail is struggling. Steinhoff, the parent company of Wiese’s retail company PEP, brings in $11.8 billion. Combined, they net almost $2 billion in annual profits, operate more than 9,000 stores in 30 countries and employ over 200,000 people. He made his fortune from smart investments that earned him billions. So, why is he looking to venture into Africa’s glittering, but struggling, diamond industry?
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The family businesses, Cream Magenta 140 Proprietary Ltd. and Metcap 14 Proprietary Ltd., bought close to 50 million shares (23.54% each) in diamond company Trans Hex. This adds up to a dominant stake of just over 47%.
This isn’t entirely new territory for the risk taker. Wiese was in diamond mining in the late 1990s through an investment in Ocean Diamond Mining Holdings (ODM). He sold ODM to Namibian-based diamond miner Namco.
“I used to be in the diamond industry 40 years ago and the opportunity arose to acquire a controlling stake in Trans Hex which is one of the junior diamond mining companies and one I think has potential,” says Wiese.
The cold fact is South Africa’s once thriving diamond industry is suffering atrophy. It has no more than 200 diamond beneficiators remaining from a historical peak of about 4,500 and a decline in investment, according to Mining Weekly.
“Rough-diamond prices are too high for manufacturers, who cannot profitably polish goods at such levels. Polished-diamond prices have declined, in turn, reducing demand for diamonds from South African mines, as well as throughout the world,” it says, quoting World Federation of Diamond Bourses president Ernie Blom.
Trans Hex has not been immune. Their 2016 results suffered heavily from a sharp decline in rough diamond prices.
“The diamond market was severely impacted by excess stocks in the polishing industry and a resultant decline in demand for rough diamond. Average prices received for rough thus decline by 23.5% year-on-year. As a result, the Lower Orange River operations, which are earning the end of their reserves, moved into loss overall,” says Bernard van Rooyen, Trans Hex Chairman in the company financials.
Piet Viljoen, Alternate Director at Trans Hex, says its share price has come under pressure but the business has tried to ride the storm.
“The problem creates value in a very lumpy way. It earns a lot of money one year and then makes big losses the next year… so its share price doesn’t seem to go anywhere ever, that’s why it creates the impression that the business is under pressure,” he says.
Viljoen says it helps to have shareholders like Wiese who have vision.
“The shareholder reference can act as a provider of capital when the business needs it, do acquisitions or to fund projects.”
Trans Hex Group incurred a disappointing loss of R100.8 million ($7.3 million) and Viljoen has called it “a difficult year” but Wiese is optimistic.
“It is going well, except the exchange rate is not in favor of diamond exports because the rand is stagnant. With the diamond industry, you are not running a shop where you always know what your sales are going to be,” says Wiese.
Wiese is known for taking risks and smart investments. More than 60% of his wealth is in Shoprite and Steinhoff, while another 30% or so comes from his shares of investment company, Brait. His stock in Tradehold, a real estate firm, accounts for much of the remaining 10%. He has made investments in the United Kingdom (UK) such as clothing retailer New Look and gym chain Virgin Active. He says there is no secret behind the success.
“In this company, we have always had a philosophy, in terms of which we run our group of companies. These are the five pillars as we call it; faith, positive thinking, enthusiasm, compassion and hard work. Hard work is probably important but you’ve got to be a positive person and able to put teams together and motivate them. I am not a person running the business, I play a different role. The good business leaders like Whitey Basson and Markus Jooste are people who can put teams together, motivate them and steer them in the right direction,” he says.
There have been several enormous setbacks like the currency upset in 1985 when the rand lost about 50% of its value in less than a year, Brexit, which badly affected the share price, and great disappointments in people. It is wealth that hasn’t come easy.
“Oh yes, plenty [of bad investments]. I can’t even remember the worst one but there are many adventurous investments that just didn’t work out. I am heavily invested in wine farming and that’s not a very big lucrative business but it gives other pleasures such as the beauty of it…”
“A man’s true wealth is the good he does in the world,” goes the proverb. According to Wiese, success is more than how much money you have, it is about whether you can look at yourself in the mirror and say maybe it’s very small but my contribution made life or the world a slightly better place. Following this mantra, he is helping the poor gain title deeds to their homes. He is a sponsor of the Free Market Foundation, which is working with First National Bank to give people land tenure, and gave more than 100 title deeds to residents of Ngwathe, a municipality in South Africa’s Free State province.
“The Free Market Foundation looked at South Africa and found that there are between seven and 11 million households where the occupants own the structure on the land by they do not own the land, so they launched an initiative cooperating with the local, provincial governments to give people title to their homes. My family decided to get involved in that to make financial contributions in order to help people to acquire the title deeds to their homes,” he says.
“It is an enormously important thing for people to have a sense of ownership. People that are used to owning things do not realize how much it adds to a person’s dignity if he can say ‘this is my home. It may be a modest little home, but it’s my home and I can leave it to my children and be assured they have a roof over their heads.’”
Wiese says positivity rules his life.
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“If you are positive about life, you ignore the unfair criticism. A lot of the criticism is totally justified but you don’t focus on either the nice things people say to you or about you too much or equally you don’t concern yourself too much about the bad things people say…”
“I don’t remember anything bad people say. I always say to entrepreneurs, ‘if you start rising above the average, you become a target’. People say, ‘but that guy is not cleverer than I am, why does he make a success and I’m so clever and I don’t make the same financial successes?’ You have to know you will have people tear you down; it’s part of the game,” says Wiese.
We leave him preparing to jet off to the UK for meetings. Some may not understand his decision to dive back into diamonds, but Wiese seems to see money where others don’t.  Maybe the smart investor should take a look at the diamond business.

The Billionaire Diving Into The Depths Of The Diamond Business

The dearth of peace in one corner of a nation usually brings economic disequilibrium and global scorn to the entire country. In Nigeria’s case, its lingering crises with the militant Islamist group, Boko Haram, is an investors’ nightmare, an additional dilemma for a nation struggling to climb out of an economic recession.
Boko Haram has reportedly killed over 10,000 Nigerians since 2009, snatched at least 20,000 people (mostly young women and children) from their homes, recruited hundreds of men into its fold and dislocated over 2 million people in the country’s north east.
The sect’s abduction of 276 girls from their Chibok town boarding school on April 14, 2014, however, opened a horrid chapter in the annals of Africa’s most populated nation. Initial reactions to the incident ranged from disbelief, official denial and disgust.
The opening lines of this sad chapter began with many questions: Are certain sacred cows responsible for the heist? Why is the Boko Haram menace predominantly a northern Nigeria phenomenon? Who are the silent sponsors of the militants? Is it a quasi-political movement or are they just a ragtag army of delinquent rogues and rebels? Who is leveraging the threat for economic and political gains?
Some of these questions still remain unanswered.
<div id="attachment_5506" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5506" class="size-medium wp-image-5506" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GettyImages-614598810-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" />Some of the 21 Chibok school girls release gathered during a meeting with the Nigeria Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo in Abuja, Nigeria 13 October 2016 (Photo by next24online/NurPhoto via Getty Images)</div>
Protest marches in many capitals fueled by the #BringBackOurGirls campaign may have focused global attention on the plight of the kidnapped Chibok girls and their parents. They, however, have not galvanized freedom for the girls. Well over 900 days after the Chibok incident, most of the girls are still missing.
Treated as human loot and bargaining chips by Boko Haram, there is palpable fear many of the girls have either been sold as slaves, married off to Boko Haram chieftains and supporters across West and Central Africa, or lost their lives in the wilderness of the Sambisa Forest bordering Cameroon and the Lake Chad region. Boko Haram has become a nasty national migraine, compounding government’s laundry list of unfinished business.
On that dreadful night, some of the girls managed to escape within hours of their kidnapping, jumping off lorries and running into the bush. In total, records show that the insurgents made away with 219 girls.
In October, after several reported sightings of the teenage girls around Sambisa forests by locals, 21 of the remaining students in captivity were freed. The Nigerian authorities attributed their release to successful negotiations brokered by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Swiss officials acting as intermediaries with Boko Haram.
For Nigerians and parents of the girls, this is good news but minor progress. Security experts say the multi-national effort to free the girls from captivity may gain momentum with this minuscule result. Was this a swap deal? Possibly. But no one is talking. The Abuja rumor mill has it that four or five Boko Haram commanders in government custody were freed as part of a swap. Government officials deny that any such “political transaction” took place. But Nigerians do not believe their government on this matter. Information Minister Lai Mohammed says the release of the 21 girls is “the first step” towards the liberation of all the remaining girls.
Recent military offensive against Boko Haram has achieved some success. In July 2015, the regional force tasked with obliterating the insurgents was boosted with 8,700 troops from Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria. Up until early 2016, Boko Haram was practically the de facto government controlling huge swathes of the northern Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states. Recently recovered territory across these states is now home to about 2.4 million internally displaced people (IDPs. Borno State alone has 13 official IDP camps, each with at least 10,000 people, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW), which has reported incidences of camp leaders, vigilante groups, policemen and soldiers raping and sexually exploiting women and girls in the camps.
“It is bad enough that these women and girls are not getting much-needed support for the horrific trauma they suffered at the hands of Boko Haram,” said Mausi Segun, senior Nigeria researcher at HRW. “It is disgraceful and outrageous that people who should protect these women and girls are attacking and abusing them.”
President Muhammadu Buhari acknowledges the smoldering humanitarian issues, reportedly saying his government was taking the ‘IDP headache’ seriously. “About 60 percent of the children in the camps don’t know their parents, or where they come from,” he says.
Receiving the 21 girls, and their parents, at the Presidential Villa in Abuja, he promised to rehabilitate them, urging them to return to the normalcy of their respective communities. Government will provide comprehensive medical, nutritional and psychological care and support, and also “assume responsibility for their personal, educational and professional goals and ambitions in life.”
“These dear daughters of ours have seen the worst that the world has to offer. It is now time for them to experience the best that the world can do for them. The government and all Nigerians must encourage them to achieve their desired ambitions,” the president said.
The same presidential attention, medical and academic scholarships and special care obviously await the other 197 girls when and if they ever come out of captivity.
In a meeting with Peter Maurer, President of the ICRC, a few days after the release of the 21 girls, Buhari welcomed the support of the G7 group of nations in the rebuilding of the decrepit infrastructure of northern Nigeria. He told Maurer he would only continue negotiations with Boko Haram if “they agree to involve international agencies like the Red Cross.”
Maurer informed the Nigerian leader the ICRC operation in northern Nigeria and the Lake Chad region is the second largest in the world, after Syria.
Two weeks after the release of the ‘Chibok 21’, the Nigerian Senate passed a bill to establish the North-East Development Commission. It will rebuild the troubled and impoverished region. For the girls taken by Boko Haram, it might be too little, too late.

Good News  But Little Progress

They call them zama zamas which means ‘those who try their luck’. Wearing his traditional Zulu earrings, looking hirsute with whiskers on his face, this is Dumisani Ngcamu, otherwise known as Ntshebe – ‘the bearded man’. He is an illegal miner and has been risking his life for eight years trying to scrape a handful of gold dust underground to support his eight kids. He works in abandoned mineshafts around Johannesburg, a city in South Africa built on gold.
“You see, here in Johannesburg, gold is everywhere but people don’t know that. Sometimes you don’t have to go deep, it’s closer than you think,” says Ngcamu.
A trip to Johannesburg from his village Nquthu, in the KwaZulu-Natal province, looking for greener pastures, led Ngcamu to illegal mining even though he never worked in a mine. Immigrants from neighboring Zimbabwe, the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo and Mozambique introduced Ngcamu to this industry as a marketer of syndicates.
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“I was earning R30 ($2.20) a day, I did not mind how small it was because I had food on my plate. I knew this was a serious job when I got arrested, but luckily for me I had learned every process of mining. I knew where to find gold,” says Ngcamu.
After he was released he went on his own and started mining in built-up areas.
“I mined within near distances, I reached barriers where you would find houses and firms, I then realized I could make more money in abandoned mines. That’s when I started working with other people,” says Ngcamu.
It all revolves around a shanty town called Denver, near Johannesburg, where most of the residents are from the KwaZulu-Natal. Here, shacks and shady corners are full of idle youth who drink to drown their sorrows and clusters of people playing chess and cooking meat. The majority of people in this area are the poorest of the poor and try to make a living through illegal mining and crime.
“Whenever government officials wanted a gunman, they knew Denver was the perfect place. R5,000 ($370) was enough for criminals here, but today you won’t find a single criminal because everyone is involved in mining,” says Ngcamu.
“You would hear that a policeman has been shot at Denver hostel on a daily basis, no police officer would enter this place back in those days, but today we are able to communicate with them.”
The troubles on the surface match the problems underground. There’s fighting between factions and theft among rival groups of illegal miners.
“They used to rob our stuff. When you’re down there you need to act like an animal. Things I encounter down there are devastating. I saw someone being hit with a hammer on the head; if you are a handsome young man, without a beard like mine [laughs], they would rape you and kill you. I was lucky not to get caught. Shootings and a person being lost is common in there.”
Ngcamu survived a horror encounter with a rival faction.
“You even have slaves. They catch you, tie you up like you a goat, hold you hostage and make you work for days. Your job would be to work and you deliver the gold dust up until the exit point. If you say you tired, they kill you, and luckily I managed to escape,” he says, while chuckling.
He says foreigners are most prone to such torture.
“When I look at this country, foreigners are not seen as humans, they are seen as animals. Those [foreigners] who I mined with were mostly victims of such things. If it is a group of mixed nationals, then things will get sour.”
Such experiences led Ngcamu to appoint people to act as security guards who would look out for them while they dig. He knew where to find them.
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“You know who is a criminal in your area so we appointed criminals from Denver. We told them the money they will make with us is better than what they would make from crime.”
“Now we are free, because we know people are looking out for us. Everyone is benefiting. Police are happy because there is no crime,” he says.
Illegal miners even pay the guards with a plate of gold dust after they have returned. As it is a community business, women and children are also involved. Women are mostly employed in the manufacturing of the gold. They are tasked to use a piece of equipment called a phenduka – a hand driven cylinder.
Iron balls and water are added inside the perforated phenduka stand. After spinning, the water is sifted into plastic buckets until liquid mercury is visible when being strained. The end process is burning the liquid mercury until it becomes solid gold, then it goes to the market.
David van Wyk, a mining analyst who has studied illegal miners for decades as a researcher for the Bench Marks Foundation, knows the lives, challenges and syndicates of zama zamas. You’d be forgiven if you mistook him for Albert Einstein with his vast knowledge.
“In Africa, before colonialism, people did small-scale mining. Traditional African mining was small scale artisanal mining all over Africa. You still find it in Burkina Faso, it also happened around Great Zimbabwe. If we want a situation that is not so disorderly, that is no so violent and unsafe, we need to pass regulations for small-scale mining and allow it to take place,” he says.
According to Van Wyk, small-scale mining started 200 years ago, before big companies started operating, but it is seen as a threat to the weakening South African mining industry.
“As we have a downward curve in the availability of gold mining, we have an upward curve in small-scale mining.”
“Economically their costs are very low, they do not use a lot of water they do not use a lot of electricity, they don’t use a lot of technology,” says Van Wyk.
He believes the reason there is factional fighting is because of the syndicates the zama zamas work for. Syndicates struck a deal with the zama zamas to buy gold from them; they then sell the gold to the formal economy. They provide zama zamas with food and water and make deductions when workers, like Ngcamu, return from digging. Van Wyk, though, says some of the syndicates are against illegal mining.
“My allegation against the Chamber of Mines, who are always making a noise about zama zamas, is that their people are involved. My second problem with the Chamber of Mines is that they represent monopoly mining, that’s why they are very much against zama zamas.”
“In South Africa, if you are black and you shoot an animal, you are a poacher, but if you are white and shoot an animal you are a trophy hunter; same applies to mining.”
The Chamber of Mines of South Africa refutes the claims.
“It is simply a mischievous claim. As is the case in most countries around the world, mineral resources in South Africa belong to the state and may only be mined by licensed operators. It doesn’t matter whether it is small-scale, medium-scale or large-scale mining, the point is, it needs to be regulated,” says Charmane Russell, spokesperson of the Chamber of Mines.
“If we formalize zama zamas and actually create laws and regulations and organize them into cooperatives, then there can be training in mine health and safety for these guys,” says Van Wyk.
Mines Rescue Services has been rescuing trapped illegal miners for the past 92 years.
“The challenges we face is that there are no maps, no mine plans. We do not know where to go. We work in extremely dangerous conditions. That’s why we have to work with illegal miners to guide us to a place where these guys are trapped,” says Christo de Klerk, CEO of Mines Rescue Services.
De Klerk and his crew use specialized equipment to roam underground and search for illegal miners. He believes the conditions illegal miners face is inhumane.
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“If you look at the amount of the bodies we have recovered, a lot of those bodies were killed during the faction fighting; these people are armed and very dangerous.”
“Authorities have to get together to stop them, we have to stop the inflow of illegal immigrants, we have to try and close all these holes, the prosecution of these people is important but the main thing is that the syndicates who buy gold and sell the gold must be infiltrated and stopped,” says De Klerk.
Ngcamu disagrees.
“Government needs to rethink things; they shouldn’t listen to those who say shafts should be closed because it is risky. We know it is risky; they should stop acting act like they are in sympathy with our lives when they just want to prevent us from getting small fortunes. We’re hungry, they should let us eat,” says an irate Ngcamu.
Not far from Denver, Ngcamu takes us to a place where they first started mining. It seemed like a long day at work for the security guards who were looking out for the illegal miners. Not far away is a metals factory. Pointing towards it, Ngcamu has a story to tell.
“You see when they started operating here, they would call the police on a daily basis to come and arrest us for mining next to their company. Luckily for us, the officers were black, they were our brothers, and they understood us. Criminals used to steal their metals, but now it has all stopped. They do their business we do ours, it’s just a mutual agreement,” he says.
After some explanation and pleading, one of the security guards who didn’t want to be identified agrees to speak and sugarcoats how they deal with criminals.
“We tell them what they’re doing is not right and should never repeat it. A lot of people know what gold looks like so they would be taking chances to undermine us,” he chuckles.
“You see, if government closes these mines that would mean he has killed all of these guards and their families. That would make government responsible for deaths of these people,” says Ngcamu.
The whole country was in shock as scores of miners were rescued in an abandoned mine in Langlaagte, on the outskirts of Johannesburg. Four dead bodies were recovered in a day that proved to be the last throw of the dice for illegal mining, events there brought about a lot of public debate on how to stop it.
“What happened in Laanglagte doesn’t deter me; whenever you enter a certain job you will face challenges. Even in firms, you can die reading a newspaper; you can die even though you occupy a top position. So what happened to our brothers won’t make us cry, to our brothers’ families we send our condolences but we expect anything down there. When we go down we pray, when we return we pray,” says an unapologetic Ngcamu.
The mine in Laanglagte is abandoned by Central Rand Gold, leaving opportunities for Ngcamu and his crew to make a living. Van Wyk believes Central Rand Gold, listed on the in the London Stock Exchange, should never have received a mining licence in the first place. The mineshaft is situated at George Harrison Park which has been a national monument since 1946. Next to the park is the 99-year-old school, TC Esterhuysen Primary School, with its football pitch 10 meters from the mine pit.
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“The mine did not have water, so they used the school’s water, which is illegal as well. When we talk about illegal mining, we always blame zama zamas, but people don’t know how many big monopoly mining operations, listed on the London Stock Exchange, that are operating illegally and flaunting the laws of this country,” says Van Wyk.
Ngcamu says nothing will stop them from mining.
“If I stop, what will I say to my two kids at university? People need to be fed, for me stopping is not an option.”

They Dig, They Die

South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma desperately tried, but failed, to block the release of the public protector’s report that implicated him, several politicians, and state-owned enterprises, in the so-called state capture saga.
In the same week that controversial fraud charges against the Minister of Finance Pravin Gordhan were dropped, the president and two of his ministers were dealt with a sickening blow by the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria. On November 1, Judge Dunstan Mlambo struck off the roll the application of the Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, David van Rooyen. Minister of mineral resources, Mosebenzi Zwane, and Zuma also failed to have the report interdicted. Zuma’s lawyers withdrew their application and the judge ordered the office of the Public Protector to release the report in a few hours.
The report implicated Zuma, several ministers, and some businessmen, in colluding in state capture with the Gupta family. Brothers Ajay, Atul, and Rajesh Gupta, from India, have numerous business interests in South Africa.
Former Public Protector, Thuli Madonsela, had planned to release the report on October 14, her last day in office, but Zuma’s lawyers applied for an interdict to prevent the report being released.
In a television interview soon after the state capture report was released, former South African president, Thabo Mbeki, said he believes Zuma will respect the law.
“I would like to imagine the president, like everybody in the country, would take the report seriously, study it as the presidency has suggested. Study it closely with the view to taking whatever action might be necessary. I don’t know what it would be, but it must be based on assessment of what the Public Protector has said and the implication of those statements if they are indeed correct,” said Mbeki.
In 2005, Mbeki suspended Zuma, who was the Deputy President at the time. Zuma was accused of having a corrupt relationship with his former financial advisor, Schabir Shaik. Although the charges against Zuma were dropped, Judge Hilary Squires found the two had a “generally corrupt relationship” and Shaik went to prison.
Zuma dodged serious charges then. Will he be able to repeat the trick after the state capture report? The Public Protector stated that Zuma must appoint a judicial inquiry within 30 days to investigate the allegations. Zuma, however, says he plans to go back to court to challenge the report. He says it is inconclusive and needs to be reviewed by him.
Prince Mashele, a political analyst and senior researcher at the Centre for Politics and Research at the University of Pretoria, says the African National Congress (ANC) missed a golden opportunity to fire Zuma when the Constitutional Court ruled he had misused state funds to upgrade his Nkandla homestead.
“The report is a clear indication that South Africa is run by a corrupt government and people who join politics to enrich themselves at the expense of citizens. This is a simple message to the rest of the world that we are no different from the rest of the continent. This doesn’t put us in a positive light. During the tenure of Presidents Mandela and Mbeki we gave the impression that we were different, but Zuma has confirmed the stereotypes that we cannot run our countries,” he says.
Mashele says he cannot imagine the ANC repairing its dented imagine before the national elections in 2019.
“The ANC is doomed. They can only go down. Come 2019, if they are winning the elections, they can only do that with a small margin. They have been constantly losing the people’s support. I won’t be surprised if the people dump them for the opposition,” says Mashele, is the author of The Death of Our Society and co-author of The Fall of the ANC: What Next?.
Scathingly, Mashele says we must all thank Zuma for revealing our true African character, that the idea of the rule of law is not part who we are, and that the constitution is a concept far ahead of us as a people.
“How else are we to explain the thousands of people who flock to stadiums to clap hands for a president who has violated their country’s constitution?”
“Now that we have reclaimed our place as another African country, we must reflect on, and come to terms with, our real character and imagine what our future portends,” says the despondent Mashele.
Unless a credible and independent investigation into the state capture allegations takes place, that future could be bleak.

Backed Into A Corner But Still Throwing Punches

A year ago, students were hailed as heroes when they fought for free education. With spirit, focus and a determination to pull together in a common cause, they won an important battle on the slopes of the Union Buildings to freeze university fee increases for 2016.
Fast forward 365 days and that victory is a fleeting memory overshadowed by 831 arrests  that represent a temporary truce that has been broken. This year, students radicalized. Violence escalated on campuses and out onto the streets. In Braamfontein, Johannesburg, students from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) switched from revolutionaries to petty criminals. In the name of free education, buses were set alight and shops were looted.
In Cape Town, Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan’s budget speech was delivered to the thud of stun grenades outside Parliament. Students also began throwing petrol bombs and smashing police vehicles and library windows.
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It followed a police crackdown where students were placed under curfew, had their dorms raided and leaders arrested. It led to 831 arrests and 411 criminal cases, says South Africa’s Acting National Police Commissioner, Lieutenant-General Charles Phahlane.
“There are those who have bombarded us with calls to withdraw police officials from university campuses. We reiterate that it is the violence and criminal acts being committed on those campuses that have invited the presence of the SAPS,” says Phahlane
Former Wits SRC leader, Shaeera Kalla, was hit nine times in the back with rubber bullets while she stood with her hands raised while protesting on campus. Police maintain the crowd had, prior to this, interrupted a test and torn up papers.
Former Wits student leader, Mcebo Dlamini, was detained and held in prison for three weeks before successfully appealing and being released on R2,000 bail.
In light of the extreme nature of this year’s protests, public sympathy has waned. Phahlane maintains the police have reacted with minimal force even when “attacked and pelted with stones”.
Still, the cries of the students involved in the #FeesMustFall movement remain unchanged – free education for all.
“Conversations that were once relegated strictly to the humanities are spilling over into other departments, faculties and disciplines in ways that will hopefully consolidate them in the future, as repositioning and reconstructive efforts begin to take root,” says Brian Kamanzi, a writer and electrical engineering master’s student at the University of Cape Town.
“Currently, a Bachelor of Science program at the University of Cape Town could cost as much as R50,000 ($3,700), a steep price for education in a country where the average annual income is R88,000 ($6,600).”
“Over the years, enrolment in the country’s 26 higher education institutions has steadily grown and in 2017 it is expected to reach 1,053,420. While the intake of students considerably increased, the government’s contribution to universities’ income decreased by 18.4 percent, with the total state budget for public higher education accounting for only 0.74 percent of the gross domestic product.”
Kamanzi argues an overwhelming number of students need loans for education and are forced into debt cycles.
Concerns have also been raised that the students lack unity.
“This has been particularly disconcerting, as the discourse on inclusion of black radical feminism and representation of women and queer activists in leadership structures and media encounters has visibly given way to popular male figures and increasingly centralized leadership,” he says.
Kamanzi also defends the violent acts of students, saying that they were in retaliation.
“What followed was mass arrests, internal expulsions and court interdicts, including denial of bail in some cases; more than 830 protesters have been arrested since February. At the same time the media has not properly reported on the violence against student protesters, which has escalated to incidences of sexual assault by private security and the police.”
Amid all this, universities struggled to keep their doors open and complete the academic year. The country is also facing a $400-million graduate brain drain.
“Progress in negotiations across the campuses is difficult as many protesters are in jail, suspended or expelled. The success of the movement shall be determined, I believe, by its ability to move beyond the campuses and involve broader society,” says Kamanzi.
The question now is not how these protests will end, but if they will end.

The Valiant Cause Losing Its Way

It is the faint whiff of tobacco that turns your head as you walk through Cape Town&#8217;s cobbled Greenmarket Square. All around are tourists with coffee in hand and people talking business in sidewalk bars. Everything you can see is like modern cosmopolitan to the cries of hawkers selling African art under canvas.
Here among the new, you will find – amid clouds of smoke – the ancient, in terms of African shops.
Sturk&#8217;s Tobacconists opened its doors in Greenmarket Square on August 1, 1793, and hasn&#8217;t closed them. The business seems durable to say the least. In recent times #FeesMustFall students fought pitched battles near the doorstep of Sturk&#8217;s – even then it did not close its doors.
This 223-year-old store, which is older than the Louvre in Paris by nine days, is now owned by Alan Phillips, a former customer and bartender from Benoni in Johannesburg.
&#8220;Smoking a pipe isn&#8217;t something you just pick up and smoke and enjoy. There is a process. It&#8217;s not for everybody. The pipe bug hit and then I became a client of Sturk&#8217;s,&#8221; says Phillips, leaning on the store’s hardwood counter.
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Phillips is not just the owner, he is also a student of the history of the store. The likes of Cape governors and even at one time Winston Churchill visited it.
&#8220;Originally the entire building was [Hendrick] Sturk&#8217;s. He was a general dealer. At that stage the Cape governor&#8217;s house is where the South African Museum in Company&#8217;s Garden is. This was the CBD, it&#8217;s where everything happened. This square is where you bought your vegetables.&#8221;
Inside are relics that tell the passage of time. Phillips weighs his blended pipe tobacco on the company&#8217;s 200-year-old scale. Around him are ceramic pots that have also survived a couple of wars. Sitting next to them are vials of tobacco flavorant gathering dust in the rafters. Even World War II posters, found in a bunker in France, were brought here to add to the flavor of another time.
&#8220;Look, we&#8217;re a specialty shop. You can buy cigarettes pretty much anywhere, the street vendor the grocer, wherever.  Tobacco is our bread and butter. We blend it ourselves. When I talk about a niche business, you cannot buy a blend we produce anywhere other than where we are sitting now. We do cigarette shag and pipe tobacco blended to our own specifications, through age-old recipes.&#8221;
The sweet scent of tobacco may have layered onto these walls over two centuries, but in the uncertain 21st century the store is suffering hard times.
&#8220;It&#8217;s hard to pinpoint the exact cause. 2015 and 2016 have not been good years. The three main factors are new smoking laws, global economics and South Africa visa laws which affected us severely.&#8221;
Ten years ago, Sturk&#8217;s would sell an average of at least 80 kilograms of tobacco blend a month. By 2011, it was 70 kilograms. These days, Phillips sells 50 kilograms.
The tobacco industry has taken a huge knock globally as tighter health restrictions have been imposed. In 2013, Phillips says the South African Department of Health cracked down on smoking laws. These included store owners using designated smoking shelf zones, restrictions on advertising, and higher taxes.
Phillips&#8217; main worry is a pending amendment which, if enforced, could reduce his shelf space to a mere four square meters.
&#8220;This business sells tobacco related items only. Four square meters is going to be a problem. I cannot fit a thousand stock units in four square meters, it&#8217;s absolutely impossible.&#8221;
&#8220;I can understand the Department of Health&#8217;s point of view, it&#8217;s for health reasons. But the revenue generated through tobacco tax is huge,&#8221; he says.
Coupled with tighter laws is a decrease in tourists and a grinding South African economy.
&#8220;Although, the business can&#8217;t count on the tourism factor, as we recently found out with the visa debacle that was happening with the unabridged birth certificates, it knocked down tourism figures significantly, and our business.&#8221;
On this morning, a number of curious customers trickle in. Phillips gets up to weigh out a 50-gram pack of his tobacco blend which sells for R55 ($4) to a pipe smoker. Another customer gets his lighter filled at no charge.
&#8220;I generally buy loose tobacco in five-kilogram bundles which we then blend and repack. I try to keep cigarette turnover under 20% of total. The margins on cigarettes are very low,&#8221; he says.
Opposite the counter is Phillips’ pride and joy, an assortment of smoking pipes, hanging in fluorescent light for all to see.
&#8220;What you see here, hasn&#8217;t been purchased quickly to give a look to the shop. This is the way the shop has always looked. I&#8217;m sitting on around 150, I haven&#8217;t bothered to count in the last year or two,&#8221; he says.
Some of the pieces in Phillips&#8217; collection can cost as much as R3,000 ($225). The collection may not be up for sale, but Phillips does sell high-end pipes on the rare occasion. His biggest sale was an order for a Dunhill Christmas pipe for R9,000 ($670).
&#8220;[Pipe smoking is] exclusive, you don&#8217;t see many men with pipes, you hardly see any women with pipes. The options of the tobacco are almost endless. There is a difference in aromas, in flavors and one can blend to ones heart&#8217;s content to make something bespoke for you.&#8221;
Phillips holds a favorite from his collection. The South African-made pipe has a long stem – called a lovat – that has been rusticated in a well-known Italian Castello style.
&#8220;New, this guy would retail at R3,000. Which one would think is rather a lot of money, but considering the cost of the material and the time required to produce a pipe like this, it means the pipe maker is only earning about R100 an hour. Which is not fair on the pipe maker, but it is what it is.&#8221;
As it becomes more difficult to sell his wares, Phillips is doing the best he can to swim with his head above water.
&#8220;Talking about adaptation though, we&#8217;ve supplemented the decline in volume with newer smokeless products like snus and vaping.&#8221;
As the discussion finishes he gets up from the counter and adds: &#8220;Survival is about adaption, you see.&#8221;
Survival is going to be as tough as being a smoker in urban Africa.

The 200-Year-Old  Business That Could  Go Up In Smoke

He doesn’t look much like a multimillionaire but Michiel le Roux has done for banking what Bill Gates did for software and Muhammad Ali for boxing. He wears his net worth lightly, but a very task of creating a bank that in 15 years has forced its way into the top five in South Africa’s competitive industry.
“We said let’s build a bank and we were not going to experiment on a small scale, we always stayed very close to our clients and we knew what we wanted to bring to the industry,” says Le Roux.
Capitec was born in the worst of times. In the days leading up to its launch, Saambou Bank, one of South Africa’s significant players, went bankrupt. It was a very public collapse that did the image of banking no good at all. Lines of people appeared on TV news desperate to get their money out.
“The Reserve Bank closed them on a Saturday to minimize the impact on the markets and we listed Capitec Bank Holdings Ltd on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange on Monday, 18 February, 2002, the week later. That was a terrible time to list a bank and it also meant it was a terrible time to get finance whatsoever. I know I sound like an old man saying you learn from your mistakes but it’s true. Starting a business in good times is always very dangerous because you will think business is easy when the wind is blowing from behind and the sailing is smooth. When you start with wind blowing from ahead, then you know business is tough and you grow,” he says.
To survive, when others failed wasn’t easy.
“It’s a hard slog to create the infrastructure, to network, to decide what you want to do. We take pride in the fact that at that stage, when we were also starting, Old Mutual had a retail banking license and they wanted to start a retail bank. They were looking for systems when we were looking for systems and the rumor mill had that they paid out R800 million ($60 million) for their system and that was when the rand was about R4 to the dollar but they never opened that bank because they couldn’t make it work.”
About a decade ago, few deposited their salaries into Capitec, most had never heard of it. Today, Capitec has over 7.3 million active clients, 792 branches, 11,440 employees and holds R13.7 billion ($1 billion) in shareholders’ funds. For Capitec, simplicity is everything.
At Capitec, they take simple seriously. No suits, the CEO’s office is the same size as everyone else’s, the CEO shares a personal assistant, no personalized parking spots, even the guard at the gate calls him Michiel, while the receptionist jokes freely about his sense of style – or lack thereof.
“Here, there is no distinction between people. Nobody flies business class. How you fly, where you stay, the rental car you drive is the same whether you are the CEO or the junior in the company. Everyone gets the same treatment.”
There is a business reason for this. Everyone is important.
“A bank always determines the value of the client based on their net worth which to this stage in my mind doesn’t make sense because a guy with high net worth might be very frugal with the use of his credit card whereas a guy with a much lower net worth might be exorbitant with his credit card use. The guy that is exorbitant should be much higher in the rankings but banks don’t look at it that way.”
“If you are a factory worker and earn very little, they were not that interested in you and that to me was a failure on banks not accommodating the lower income people,” he says.
This simplicity and business acumen has made Le Roux a rich man; the 38th richest in Africa to be exact, according to FORBES. In just 15 years, this fortune has grown rapidly. It has nearly doubled from around $290 million in 2011.
It has earned him recognition by the publication you are reading.
“Michiel Le Roux has been a bold entrepreneur this year and an example to others in business,” says one of the FORBES AFRICA Person of the Year judges.
You can bank on him.

Simplicity Is Everything

In a case of David against Goliath, Ameenah Gurib-Fakim beat her male opponent by a landslide to become the first female president of Mauritius, a small island off the coast of Africa that has a population of just over 1.2 million. No one expected her to win.
Gurib-Fakim, who joined the presidential office on June 5, relishes shuttering glass ceilings. In Africa, there aren’t many women at the helm of countries.
“When the people voted, they voted for a package, they knew that they would have a lady president and yet they voted massively for a party that has not made any provision for constitutional change,” says Gurib-Fakim.
Born into a Muslim Indian family, Gurib-Fakim, 56, is also a former bio-scientist and the Vice Chairman of the Planet Earth Institute, an international NGO and charity that builds a path for the scientific independence of Africa.
Gurib-Fakim published more than 28 scientific books that have been devoured around the world by students and researchers. She graduated with a bachelor of science in chemistry from the University of Surrey in 1983. She then obtained her PhD in organic chemistry at Exeter University in Britain.
“I became interested in sciences at a very young age because I had good motivated teachers who infected me with the virus of science. I went into sciences following my heart because passion was there.”
Back at home, she worked at the University of Mauritius before becoming the Managing Director at CEPHYR, a centre for phytotherapy research that focuses on using plants in cosmetics, nutrition and therapy.
“When I went back to Mauritius, I realized that the work I was doing in synthetic chemistry, the infrastructure wasn’t there and yet in the academic world you either publish or perish. I chose to publish. To publish novel things you have to have novel avenues,” she says.
This is when she started to probe into the biodiversity of Mauritius. The Indian Ocean island nation is known as a global biodiversity hotspot – it is home to about 300 plant species that can only be found on the island, which are under threat as a result of human activity and climate change.
Gurib-Fakim says she wants to drive science and technology in Africa.
“We believe a scientifically independent Africa is one with science, technology and innovation fully embedded in governmental policies and priorities, delivered by properly resourced and empowered educational institutions. A scientifically independent Africa will have both the ability to train and keep brilliant scientists on the continent, and create an inspiring new generation of academic leaders. Ultimately, we believe scientific independence means that African problems can be solved by African-led solutions,” it says on the Planet Earth Institute website.
Gurib-Fakim is also an entrepreneur.
“I didn’t stay in the academic world because my second life was that of an entrepreneur. I translated that research work on herbal medicine into a business so I can safely say I am now living my third life.”
In Mauritius many girls couldn’t go to school. After 1976, this changed and yet transformation is still the biggest problem.
“Coming back to tertiary education this is again an area where we find many women coming to do studies at tertiary level but still find the gap and where we find the downside of this, is for them to get jobs, for them to be leaders in their respective fields because society in Mauritius remains fairly conservative,” she says.
According to Gurib-Fakim, science is still dominated by males in many parts of the world.
As African countries aspire for economic growth and socio-economic transformation, Gurib-Fakim says: “It is becoming clear that any innovation or ambition to become a knowledge economy has to be driven by talented African scientists and with the knowledge that innovation is not instructed!”
She has a strong passion for protecting nature, fostering research and creating a better environment for women scientists.
This year Gurib-Fakim is nominated for FORBES AFRICA’s Person of The Year in recognition of her drive to protect her nation’s environment. She was listed by FORBES in June as being the 96th most powerful woman in 2016.
Her motto is: “Follow your heart, do what you enjoy best and you won’t have to work a day in your life.”

Step Forward The President With A Purpose

Africa has had its fair share of great leaders, like Nelson Mandela and Kwame Nkrumah. However, political power in Africa is often seen as an easy path to become wealthy. Too often, cronyism and patronage oil the wheels of governments, ensuring that corruption goes unpunished and impunity reigns. Enter Tanzania’s President John Magufuli, who is defying all the purportedly accepted norms of African leadership.
Magufuli wasted no time in implementing his campaign promises, quickly living up to his nickname &#8211; the Bulldozer. Tanzanians first felt the effect of his fresh leadership when he ordered the funds for their extravagant Independence Day celebrations be redirected to buy much-needed beds for public hospitals, immediately gaining him worldwide admiration.
His firm stance on fighting corruption, his introduction of severe austerity measures, and his seemingly aggressive development agenda, have earned him accolades. The United Nations Economic and Social Council recently named him the World’s Best President.
With just one year in office, Magufuli has amalgamated several ministries, downsizing his cabinet from 30 members to 19. He has banned the purchase of first class air tickets for ministers, and government meetings and conferences are now held in state buildings rather than high-end hotels. To the dismay of senior officials, he auctioned off their luxury cars, seen as both a right and a necessity, with the generated income being channeled into public services. He has also banned any future purchase of such vehicles.
“The president’s approach so far has been commendable and his battle with corruption impeccable. I think he will sustain his current style and won’t be putting his guns down anytime soon,” says Nicodemus Minde, a Tanzanian political analyst.
By channeling resources back into Tanzania’s economy, Magufuli’s austerity measures have been lauded and the impact is already being felt. His somewhat autocratic style is facilitated by the powers allocated to the Tanzanian Presidency. These allow him to appoint and dismiss officials, and to leverage state security apparatus to flush out and punish corruption and economic crime. He has pledged to double development spending, funded by cutting government wastage, which may enable economic gains to trickle down.
Although a chemical engineer by profession, Magufuli is not new to politics. He has been an active member of parliament for two decades, heading various ministries throughout his tenure. His radical, yet effective, methods of governance set an example for transparency, good governance and strict control of government spending. Tanzanians have grown to love his style, while citizens of neighboring nations look on enviously, hoping their leaders will take a leaf from his pragmatic book.
Ali Mufuruki, Chairman and CEO at InfoTech Investment Group, describes Magufuli’s style as steadfast.
“He has demonstrated a unique kind of consistency, an undiminishing stamina and an unswerving steadiness in his fight against the vices of corruption, abuse of office and waste of public resources.”
While Magufuli’s first year in office has been impressive, it remains to be seen whether this will translate into more economic growth, given that Tanzania was already growing by 7.9% in the second quarter of 2016. His success so far has been met with skepticism in some quarters, with some pundits warning that celebrations may be premature.
Magufuli has taken up the challenge of transforming his developing nation into a world-class economy and shown a willingness to challenge the long-standing negative views about African leadership. Years from now, Magufuli’s name might be mentioned alongside Mandela and Nkrumah.

Tag: December 2016

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Simplicity Is Everything

Step Forward The President With A Purpose

The Bulldozer Crushing Corruption