Athletes do not have a choice about being role models. The only choice we have is whether we are going to be good role models or bad ones.” This was part of a speech by British basketball player John Amaechi at the Peace and Sport conference in Monaco in 2011.
Listening to Amaechi speak about the good a role model can do, I kept thinking back to Tiger Woods’ extramarital affairs. According to FORBES, Woods was the first athlete to make over $1 billion back in 2009. Since then, we have had the Lance Armstrong doping saga and the Oscar Pistorius Valentine’s Day shooting. These are top earning athletes who have inspired people and given back to society. However, they lacked integrity. Integrity gives longevity to success and fame.
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I never had a sporting role model when I was growing up because most of our stars were playing internationally and were never available. I didn’t have that person I could reach out to that would tell me just how tough my life was going to be yet motivating me to go for it anyway. Being a good role model is about having solid moral principles that guide behavior on and off the field. Role models make themselves available to spend time with people, to share their stories of success and overcoming challenges. They share their secrets in the hope of molding greater athletes and greater people. One person I look up to is Strive Masiyiwa, the Founder and Chairman of Econet Wireless. He may not be an athlete but he shows the responsibility that comes with success and this is guided by his ethics. Education for everyone is his aspiration.
Sport used to be everything to me. Now that I’m older and will soon be retiring from competition, I realize how significant education is. Sport must never take the place of education – it must assist with it. I was always an average student at high school but when I got to university I started applying the lesson I learned from training in my education. The sacrifices I had to make, believing that I could do it and my perseverance started paying off. The year I won my first Olympic gold was the same year I graduated as an ‘A’ student. Understanding what is important and highlighting your priorities is essential in conveying your message to others.
Motivational speaking is a love I found through sport because I’ve seen how it lifts people’s spirits and gives them the attitude they need to go forward. A priority of mine is speaking to children, to help motivate and guide them. I am often introduced as one of Africa’s greatest Olympians and am expected to tell you that it is okay if you are not great at school work because you can always become a sports star. I throw protocol out the window and very politely let the children know that this is wrong. Four months before my fourth Olympic Games in London 2012, I dislocated my patella and then two months later contracted pneumonia. This was a wake-up call for me and I suddenly thought that I might not make the Olympics. It was one of the most physically challenging times in my career but it made me grateful for the education I received. I had a contingency plan if the injury prevented me from ever playing sport again.
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Whoever we are, someone is always watching our behavior: a parent, a son or daughter, a brother or sister, a friend or even a person you have never met. Michael Phelps, the greatest Olympic athlete and a fellow swimmer, has recently been caught drinking and driving. This has nothing to do with swimming but because of his responsibility as a role model, he has been pulled off the United States swimming team for six months. This will take the spotlight off him until he can figure out what is important. It will also allow those who look up to him to realize there are consequences for your actions, no matter who you are.
We are all role models to someone. If we can maintain our integrity and become successful, we will not only be able to sustain ourselves but more importantly continue helping others.

What To Do When The Dream Breaks Down

On February 9, Africa’s biggest mining gathering will kick off in Cape Town, South Africa. From Australians mining iron ore in West Africa to Chinese interested in our rare earth, more than 7,000 people will arrive at the Mining Indaba to talk about the future of the industry.
One of the topics likely to come up is why the riches of mining struggle to reach the poor. Government and mining companies make promises of empowering the poor through shares and wages; most are empty.
Before a word is said, the head of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) is sceptical. Frans Baleni, the union’s general secretary, says the Mining Indaba means little to the people who live next door to mines.
“You will notice that these discussions are about issues of maximizing productivity, there’s nothing much about improving the lives of communities. In these deliberations we don’t get a platform to say what we want to say,” says Baleni.
As delegates gather, a do-it-yourself solution will be underway in another part of the country. Thousands of the country’s poorest people will be buying into its richest industry.
Baroka Tribal Mining (Pty) is a community-owned company in the Sekhukhune District in Limpopo, in northern South Africa. It represents 90,000 poor people of the Baroka Ba Nkwana tribe. This community is buying a 49% stake of Bokoni platinum mine, worth $385million, from Anglo American Platinum (Amplats), the world’s largest platinum producer. It tabled the offer early in January.
Baroka’s transaction is backed by the Public Investment Corporation, a state-owned pension fund and a bank loan.
It is a deal that is a sign of the times. Following South Africa’s crippling six-month platinum strike in 2014, Amplats CEO Chris Griffith announced that the world’s largest producer was selling under-performing mines. It wants to concentrate on the more profitable open-pit and mechanized mine.
It has taken time and perseverance for Baroka since they set up in 2009. Out of their own pocket, Baroka representatives have traveled the world trying to secure investment. They went to Russia, Thailand and the United States but returned empty handed. The question of mining strikes in South Africa was often raised.
“Everything about Baroka shows that if you believe in something, you can actually get it if you are determined. We have never received royalties from any company, yet we are buying a R4 billion ($347 million) mine. We are lucky because we have government backing. That made it easier for us. Where the mine is sitting, there is 600 million tons of iron ore. There’s a large chrome deposit. We are currently sitting with 51 percent exploration rights,” says Tshepo Phiri, Chief Executive of Baroka Tribal Mining.
“Except for Royal Bafokeng, I can’t think of any successful story regarding mining communities. The government’s role tends to be limited; government tends to rely on these companies to implement the mining charter. But our advice is that the government needs to do constant evaluation of these companies and raise the red flag quite early,” says Baleni.
Both parties have a long way to go. Amplats will get credits towards black ownership which is required by the Mining Charter. The next Mining Charter update will be out on March 31 when researchers will tell how much &#8211; or how little &#8211; has been transferred to black owners. Each company is required to show at least 26% black ownership.
Ngoako Ramatlhodi, Minister of Mineral Resources, has a broad administrative discretion to unilaterally amend the charter as and when the need arises. Non-compliance with the provisions of the amended charter will render a mining company in breach of the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act (MPRDA). Under section 47 of the MPRDA, the minister has the prerogative to suspend or cancel rights, permissions where the holder is in breach.
At least the Baroka Ba Nkwana tribe has not let the grass grow under its feet in the effort to convince poor people that a share of mining riches can be theirs too. Surely, this is a route to long-term stability in mining.

Anything Is Possible  If You Wish Hard Enough

Various consumer brands are facing overwhelming challenges. Slowing global sales are placing pressure on companies aiming to expand their footprint and achieve real sales growth in sub-Saharan Africa, a region boasting a growing middle class and strong economic growth.
Financial results of two of the world’s largest breweries, SABMiller and Anheuser-Busch InBev, show declining global sales, and many other companies are feeling the pinch as well. These consumer brands are affected by getting their products to the African consumer and inefficiencies in the supply chain is a thorn preventing them from succeeding on a continent with over a billion people.
Some other challenges could be that despite strong distribution strategies, products are simply not available and brand visibility is inconsistent due to stock exchange. South African food and clothing retailer, Woolworths Holdings, cited difficulties in their supply chain among other reasons for closing down three stores in the continent’s most populous nation, Nigeria, in 2013.
According to Jeremy Haysom, the Vice President of Business Development and Supply Chain Solutions for DHL in the Middle East and Africa, the greatest challenge facing consumer brands as they venture into Africa is establishing an efficient route to the consumer.
“With growing urbanization, city populations have shown exponential growth in recent years and are expected to grow by over 25% over the next 10 years. There has been an explosion in the number of supermarkets and convenience stores established in cities to serve the customer,” he says.
“While these stores are located in prime locations, the back-end of the supply chain serving this retail revolution is in its infancy. This results in inconsistent stock availability and regular outages, a lack of brand visibility and most importantly product availability.”
Retailers handle their own international supply chain, which is managed from a distribution center, quite well. But the problem lies at the back of shop where manufacturers have to manage their own deliveries into the retail outlets. This causes a number of issues, including multiple deliveries from multiple suppliers at any given time causing considerable congestion at the back of retail outlets.
“Unless there is collaboration between a retailer and a consumer manufacturer you will continue to see inefficiencies at the back of shop and you will continue to have the knock-on effect that has on congestion and other issues around these developing cities,” says Haysom.
He adds that this is a general challenge seen in sub-Saharan Africa, excluding South Africa. The South African market is mature and has ironed out many challenges and multiple deliveries into retail outlets do not occur anymore.
“You’ve got consolidation, collaboration between consumer manufacturers and retailers to ensure that multiple deliveries of one vehicle going to a retail outlet. Therefore pretty much the brand and the brand market can be taken onto the shelf, where you’d expect everything to arrive at the shop and there would be a certain high percentage of on-shelf availability in the retail store,” says Haysom.
“What you see outside of South Africa is different. Consumer manufacturers are having to undertake a part of the supply chain deliveries from their side onto a retail side and inefficiencies occur and on-shelf availability is affected.”
So what must be done in 2015 for retail to deliver on Africa’s promise? Haysom says there is little or no collaboration between the supermarket and the supplier which results in regular out-of-stock situations. Retailers, both multinationals and regional, need to invest in bolstering the back-end or supply chain serving this retail revolution. Consumer brand companies that are keen to translate Africa’s latent potential into real success need to recognize the relative immaturity of the African supermarket industry and put in place strategies that will successfully navigate inventory management.
In his book, Africa’s Future Darkness to Destiny &#8211; How The Past Is Shaping Africa’s Economic Evolution, Duncan Clarke says the state of Africa and its economies today marks the departure point for the future. We know the past has shaped the present: for the future, what do we really know? And those words couldn’t be any truer.
The key to winning in Africa is through the little things that are done in 2015 which will help retailers overcome supply chain inefficiencies.

African Retail  Needs To grow up

The FORBES AFRICA Person of the Year for 1324 could very well have been a certain flamboyantly wealthy King of Mali, says Martin Meredith, the celebrated British historian of Africa.
“The richest man, that the world has ever seen, was Mansa Musa. [He] makes a Hajj to Mecca, arrives in Cairo and literally hands out gold bars to the waiters. He wrecks the money market for ten years or more&#8230; that story of his arrival eventually finds its way to Europe&#8230; the first European map, the Catalan map of 1376, has a portrait of [him] with a caption that says, ‘this is the richest man that the world has ever known.’”
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His gold-dishing arrival in Cairo inspired the first Spanish expedition to the continent, hunting Musa’s gold. The expedition set out for West Africa, searching for the fabled ‘River of Gold’, but the crew got lost and all were presumed dead.
At his death, Musa was worth around $400 billion, which make’s Bill Gate’s $81.8 billion look paltry.
As his empire fell, so did Africa.
“I discovered the extraordinary parallel themes of African history, compared to what is going on now. It has always been that Africa has been this enormously wealthy continent and yet it is the poorest continent. There’s a paradox about it,” says Meredith, who examines this 5,000-year paradox in his latest release, The Fortunes of Africa.
Meredith has had two careers in Africa, far from gold bars; first as a journalist, then as a historian. After fulfilling his boyhood dream of navigating the Nile, when 21, he moved to Lusaka and became a journalist.
“The first president I ever interviewed was Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, at the age of 22. He was a sort of giant intellect. We were sitting out in the State Palace in Dar es Salaam, looking out across the sea and there was Nyerere, hoping for real intellectual debate. Instead, he was faced with a green, inexperienced reporter who wasn’t giving him any argument!”
After 15 years reporting on the continent, he left to become a research fellow at Oxford University which spawned a shelf of books.
“I am essentially a story-teller, which is what journalists are, but the stories I tell have a very large dimension,” he says.
His first book, 1979’s The Past is Another Country, was a story of a soon-to-be independent Zimbabwe. Since then, he has written on everything; from elephants to Nelson Mandela. His most successful was The State of Africa, a contemporary history.
His latest title came after a year’s research. He calls it a standard history of Africa, which picks apart the economic roots of conflict and poverty on the continent, drawing on years as a foreign correspondent.
“This extraordinary World Bank figure [says that] 40% of Africa’s private wealth [is] held outside Africa which [contrasts] with the Asian experience. They have levels of corruption which are pretty high too but what happens there is that wealth is ploughed back into businesses, they might be mafia-type organizations, but they build factories and industries so the money is ploughed back.”
On the other side of the gold coin, Africa has a penchant for vanity projects like the Pyramids of Giza right to Mobutu Sese Seko’s ruined Gbadolite Palace, which had a private concord airstrip so he could fly off shopping.
“The money in Africa is taken out by the ruling elite and the growing middle class, so it’s safe and secure and they can enjoy buying properties in Europe. London is awash with Nigerian millionaires! Corruption happens everywhere, you expect a certain level of it. Where the focus of ambition lies in making as much money as possible, regardless of the circumstances, that is when it becomes dangerous. It affects so many African countries.”
The greed-inspired accidents of history are at the root of Africa’s woes. The Spanish expedition, inspired by Mansa Musa’s riches, led to centuries of extraction of African wealth for foreign gain. Hence, the birth of the infamous resource ‘curse’.
If in the last 5,000 years of this continent, the past has become our country, then, as the old adage goes, those who do not learn, or remember, their history are condemned to repeat it.
Meredith is certain to write it.

Person Of The Year For 1324

It was 6,900 kilometers from home in Cape Town in sweltering, overwhelming, heat of the inky black jungle. Architect and bird watcher, Vernon Head, stood with a spotlight in hand, on a remote jungle mountainside in Ethiopia’s Great Rift Valley looking for something few on earth had seen before.
“It’s a strange place at night… You know that not many people have been there, especially at night. Everything that comes into the spotlight, you are never sure it is something new,” he says.
It wasn’t easy in the darkness; the fluorescent light attracted a host of flying creatures. Bats flew in the air, insects stuck in Head’s teeth and stinging flying ants crawled up his legs. This was the hunt for one of Africa’s most elusive animals. Head and his team, carrying nets, looked over their shoulders as they risked gun-wielding villagers, who resented their intrusion. They scoured every bush. This was the hunt for the world’s rarest bird, the Nechisar Nightjar.
The hunt began with a phone call from England. Over the crackling telephone line, Head, who was in Cape Town, heard the story about a roadside relic in a paper bag; a muddy bird’s wing that was found by Cambridge-based scientists on safari in 1990.
“On that expedition, three hundred and fifteen species of birds were seen; sixty one species of mammal and sixty nine species of butterfly were identified; twenty species of dragonflies and damselflies; seventeen reptile species were recorded; three frog species were filed; plants were listed. And the wing of a road-killed bird was packed into a brown paper bag,” says Head.
The wing sent the scientific world aflutter.
“Normally to describe a bird species you need the actual bird, which means you need to have seen it. In this case they just had a wing squashed in the mud next to this smugglers track on a plain of the African rift valley in southern Ethiopia. It became known as the only bird species ever described to science that no one had ever seen,” he says.
For 20 years, experts have tried in vain to catch a glimpse of the nightjar. The wing sat gathering dust in the drawers of the British Natural History Museum in Tring, England. Ian Sinclair, a bird watcher, was on the phone to Cape Town and wanted Head’s help.
“In the field guides that list the birds of Africa, when you go to the nightjar section and get to the part where is says Nechisar Nightjar, you just see a drawing of a wing. Then you look at the map next to the wing [and] there is a little ‘x’ with a question mark. It’s quite exciting; you want to see it… [Sinclair] said to me ‘why we don’t give this a go?’”
It was an $18,000-voyage of discovery that Head, Sinclair and two other bird enthusiasts wouldn’t pass up. Their first port of call was protection; bird watching is strangely fraught with danger.
“In that part of southern Ethiopia, there are still a number of tribes that are remote and their cultures are remote communities detached from the modern world. They still traditionally fight over grazing land. These fights over grazing land, where in the past they used traditional weapons, they are now using AK-47s. It’s never a good idea if you are a bird watcher and you are driving through a valley and on either side are a bunch of people with AK-47s that have a disagreement with each other. You have to have some security. Preferably people from one of the tribes who understand the nuances,” says Head.
Many bird watchers have laid down their lives spotting birds. A tiger killed David Hunt in the Jim Corbett National Park in India; Phoebe Snetsinger survived being raped in New Guinea before dying in a road accident in Madagascar; and Ted Parker died in an air crash on route to Ecuador.
“[Bird watching] is a big ecotourism industry. It’s massive. Bird watching in America makes more money than golf; it’s a $60-billion business. There still are these weird things out there. Nature is quite resilient in our modern day. There are secrets out there in nature waiting to be unravelled,” says Head.
“When I was six or seven, on my grandfather’s farm, I learned to go bird watching on the wild open plains of Northcliff, before it became a city. It’s strange when you drive through it today and you used to run around here and see Burchell’s coucal and aardvark. There was even rumored to be a Leopard in the Roodepoort hills. That’s only some 40 years ago,” says Head.
A world away, in the heat under the stars in southern Ethiopia, Head’s spotlight falls on a very large thorny bush and catches a pair of a golden copper-red reflection: eyes.
“We knew what to look for. We knew it was going to be a nightjar. I mean we’d seen the wing. The bird we saw, funnily enough, was a male, but the wing itself was from a female. We were able to deduce this because of the white in the wing, it was slightly creamier. Male nightjars generally have bigger white patches. And it had this huge white patch in its wing. It made it unlike it was any other nightjar in Africa. There was no doubt.”
After all the 6,500 kilometers, mean insects and the heat, the men couldn’t catch it. The nightjar flew away into the night. Head and his fellow bird watchers continued to record the sighting, a precious notch in the bird watching community. Just another day in the strange and dangerous world of bird watching.

Guns, Bats And Biting Insects In The Steamy Darkness

Andre Fourie left the lecture rooms and aboratories behind to become the chief executive of Poynting Holdings; the largest wireless antenna designer and manufacturer in South Africa.
Fourie founded his business while he was a lecturer at a university in South Africa. Today, the company focuses on four main technology segments: monitoring and communications antennas, commercial cellular end user antennas for 3G, LTE and WiFi consumer antennas; cellular coverage solutions for operators and cellular infrastructure providers as well as digital television solutions to TV broadcasters.
Since leaving his academic path, Fourie has never looked back. The new path led him to the helm of a R387-million ($33 million) company, as of January, and listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange’s AltX board. The AltX provides smaller companies with access to capital while providing investors with exposure to fast-growing smaller companies in a regulated environment. Poynting’s share price is up 82% since 2008.
When he was a boy, Fourie’s father, a bank manager at the time, advised him to never work for a salary.
So, while he was still at school, Fourie would buy old radios, fix and then sell them. It was a skill he learned from his grandfather who was a farmer.
“I grew up in an extremely Afrikaans environment, including the typical army conscription at the time. And there I got advised by a guy, I think I got a very multicultural exposure which I think people missed about the military background that all of us were forced to take. And secondly, he said, ‘You must go to an English university, you can’t be this Afrikaans,’” says Fourie.
With this recommendation, he chose to study at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in Johannesburg.
“It was a strange thing for an Afrikaans boy to do. At that time, they’d just burned the flag [the old South African flag used during apartheid] and that was a wonderful experience for me. It opened my eyes to how well you can do if you mix different cultures together,” he says.
Fourie graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering.
“Within one year of doing my fourth year, I started lecturing because my lecturer immigrated to the United Kingdom and, at the time, I was the only guy who knew something about antennas; you can imagine not that much,” he says.
He completed his master’s degree and was appointed as a research officer for the engineering department. In 1991, he also decided to work on a PhD in engineering.
“So I started building a research group and in the nineties we formed a company and started with consulting work. The company operated for about 10 years from Wits,” he says.
This company was Givati Fourie and Associates. It invented and designed its own products as well as provided specialized design services to the industry.
In 1996, the company was disbanded and Poynting Innovations was formed, with a similar business model and Fourie as chief executive. Four years later, Fourie says the company wanted to start manufacturing low-cost antennas and so he founded Poynting Antennas. With this, his staff increased from eight to 124 employees.
Though getting his company on its feet was not easy, Fourie got a helping hand from the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), the Department of Trade and Industry and the military.
“I credit the government for helping to start our business, they really helped us in the beginning,” says Fourie.
Ten years after receiving his PhD, he became an assistant professor but decided he should focus on Poynting fulltime. In 2005, Fourie delivered his last lecture and ended an 18-year  university career.
Today, Poynting is a Pretoria-based company with a manufacturing facility in nearby Centurion, where he has a modest office on the ground floor. Their products are aimed at large international military systems integrators and distributors who contribute about 80% to Poynting’s turnover.
In April, the company released good results for six months to December 31, 2013. Its revenue increased by 27.4% to R53.5 million ($5 million) and after-tax profit increased 72.7% from R2.2 million ($200,000) to R3.8 million ($347,000).
The 50-year-old Fourie says the company is positioning itself as a leading player in the triple-play future. This is the convergence of television, voice and the internet on one digital platform.
Poynting acquired 100% of the issued share capital of the Pretoria-based African Union Communications (Aucom) in March for R49.5 million ($4.6 million). It was funded by the issuance of 66 million Poynting shares.
Poynting’s chairman, Coenraad Bester says this is the company’s first major deal since listing and they anticipate that it will more than double its turnover.
The acquisition increases the distribution of Poynting’s digital television products into the African markets.
Aucom works with a lot of broadcasters in Africa, where digital migration is creating a huge demand for solar-powered systems that enables the viewing of new channels on new platforms.
Fourie says the deal will significantly increase the market share of both companies and facilitate the raising of additional capital for the development of projects to meet the needs of the growing African digital television market.
In July, the company acquired two more key acquisitions including Radio Network Solutions (RNS) for R110 million ($10 million). According to Reuters, the deal will be settled by a cash payment of R60 million ($6 million) and the issuance of 18.2 million new Poynting shares at 275 cents each.
The company also acquired Poynting Europe, which distributes the company’s commercial antenna products in Europe. Fourie says these two acquisitions will help turn the company’s fledgling commercial and cellular coverage solution (CSS) divisions to profitability.
Fourie says Poynting remains focused on acquisitions to improve international sales and contribute to the current defence, telecommunications and digital business.
Not bad for an Afrikaans boy who started by selling radios.

How A Farmer And An Old Radio Made An Entrepreneur

Stafford Masie brought Google to South Africa and paid a hefty price. With 20 years in IT, Masie worked with some of the biggest names in the industry. And if ever you want insight into his tenacity, you have to go back to Bloemfontein in the 1990s.
“When I came back to South Africa, I worked at Telkom as a network analyst. I then became an instructor; they sent me to Cape Town and Durban to do a training course and then they sent me to Bloemfontein. It was a five-day course; I was prepared to do it and then these white guys walked in, asked if I was the instructor and walked out. They refused to be taught by someone of color. I was confused and angry; I didn’t know what to do. A lady came to me and said ‘look this is the situation, we are dealing with it, please go back to your hotel’. So I went back to my hotel distraught. I remember calling my dad and he said ‘You have to choose between two paths, you could be the victim or you could go back in there tomorrow morning and make sure you are the best of the best,’” says Masie.
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“I went back in and today some of those guys are my best friends.”
By 2006, Masie had traveled and lived abroad, and held one of the top positions at his then company Novell SA. His success, however, kept him away from his wife and children. Just when Masie thought it was time to rekindle his relationship with his family, he was given the biggest opportunity in his career – Google SA. Stafford did it all; he developed Google Search, Maps, Street View and he hired staff.
It was three years too many for his family and his personal life ‘hit the wall’. Masie was forced to leave Google SA to spend time with his crumbling family.
“I left Google reluctantly, I left Google negatively, I left Google unwillingly, I was hoping to salvage a marriage and spend time with my children again,” says Masie.
But it was too little, too late. His marriage ended.
“I got lost over all the years of giving so much to my career. I lost family and a marriage.”
Masie, the husband, lost, but Masie, the entrepreneur, was determined to win. He threw himself into his work. Masie sent shockwaves through the payment space, creating Payment Pebble, a device that turns your smartphone or tablet into a mobile card machine to receive credit or debit card payments on the go. It was a world first through his founding company, Thumbzup, founded in 2010.
“I have the greatest team, that’s what I have. So whatever anyone else is building out there, I don’t care. I’m not building a product to compete, I am building a team to be sustainable,” says Masie.
The idea of Payment Pebble came to Masie in an unexpected way that he will never forget. While waiting to see a mayor in the Gauteng province, a woman with a baby strapped to her back with a towel was rushed into the mayor’s office in tears. Stafford asked the receptionist what was going on, she explained that the council had turned off the woman’s utilities because she hadn’t made payments. The woman had the money, but wasn’t able to make the payments because she had just given birth to twins and fell ill during childbirth. With no lights or water in the middle of winter, one of the twins died.
Masie knew he had to do something.
“The Payment Pebble wasn’t a technological thing; my love for IT is personified by this. IT can solve that woman’s problem. That guy could have showed up at her house, if he had a payment pebble, he could have accepted her card payment and there could have been a full reconciliation of payment. He would have left and not switched off the lights and the child would be alive today,” says Masie.
“The Payment Pebble is a good example of African innovation solving African problems, it’s a great product,” says Mark Walker, the Regional Director for Africa at the Industrial Development Corporation.
Stafford took his idea to the banks.
“We spoke to all the banks and we realized that all the banks wanted a product. What we liked about Absa was that they wanted a partnership,” says Masie.
Four years later, the Payment Pebble is the largest mobile point of sale in Africa and is launching in one of the largest financial institutes in Australia and Latin America.
Masie believes his leadership style is the reason for his success as an entrepreneur.
“First of all, I am not a boss. I think I am more a leader, someone who is in the trenches shooting with the soldiers. Even though I may be a higher rank, I am in there with them. It is the only way I can be,” says Masie.
Lydia Paledi, an office manager at Novell SA, worked under Masie during his time at the company and has high praise for the entrepreneur.
“He was the best boss I’ve ever had and I wish he could come back.”
Despite his success, Masie dwells on his mistakes. He admits that he thinks of quitting at least once a day.
“It’s a constant battle with yourself; when you invent something, it’s nice to see it on billboards. When you pass Melrose Arch there is this massive billboard, when you look on the TV, it’s on CNN. It’s an incredible feeling but it’s short lived. You are always looking for the next big thing,”
he says.
Masie’s dream was to become a rescue helicopter pilot. Even though that didn’t happen, he is settled with his Payment Pebble and his microlight and six-seater Jabiru planes that he flies privately.

The Smile That Says  I Survived

There’s no better place to take a photograph of Rosette Chantal Rugamba than on the terrace of the landmark Hotel des Mille Collines by Kempinski in Kigali. It’s easy getting permission for this from the hotel’s management. Rugamba is well-known here and a regular.
The hotel affords a 360-degree view of the city and its splendorous rolling hills. Rugamba, in an orange suit and matching necklace, views the twinkling lights of Kigali and takes a deep breath of the crisp night air. She has had much to do with this vision of the city.
Twelve years ago, she was appointed Rwanda’s tourism head by the country’s president, Paul Kagame, and tasked with turning around the country’s tourism infrastructure.
She had never lived in Rwanda before that. Her parents had fled the country to Uganda in 1959 and she grew up as a refugee with her seven siblings. Her parents never let them forget they were Rwandan first. The children were encouraged to learn French and culturally attuned to their country’s traditions. Be it books, music or dance, their home reverberated with Rwandan nuances, as the family lived on hope they would one day return home.
Her father was a brewer and her mother a teacher, but their humble home was always open to fellow Rwandans.
“There was always plenty of food,” recalls Rugamba. “And if you had to roll out a hundred mattresses, so be it.”
As her parents’ first-born, there was pressure on her to perform – and excel. She studied political science at university in Uganda. She married Henry, an Ugandan, and thereafter moved to London. Her husband worked for the British telecom industry, while she started her career with Harrods as a customer services manager. Today, she lauds herself for having been among the team that launched the first Harrods store at Terminal 3 in Heathrow airport. Yet another milestone: she was “among the 100 people” who started Eurostar.
“I am the sort of person who always wants to start things,” says Rugamba.
Although she was settling well in Britain, in her heart, she recalled the songs of Rwanda, the songs on its flowing rivers and rolling hills.
In 1984, she decided to ‘risk a trip’ to Rwanda, which was still in the throes of the liberation struggle.
“I wanted to experience the country and so toured it for the first time. I was satisfied but not sure if I would ever see it again.”
In 1996, Rugamba joined British Airways as its sales and marketing manager for East Africa, and she subsequently moved to Uganda. Rwanda’s horrific 1994 genocide was still fresh on her mind.
“We used to do a lot of fundraising for the people and the soldiers. My mom’s family was completely wiped out,” says Rugamba.
In 2002, she received a call from Kagame, asking her to return to her homeland. At the time, things looked positive for Rwanda.
“I asked myself ‘what value can I add?’. I am eternally grateful to the President that he unleashed the potential I never knew I had.”
Kagame wanted her to raise Rwanda’s profile through tourism and turn it into an engine for economic change in the country.
“The brief I got from him was ‘make sure every tourism dollar is spent in the country,’” says Rugamba.
When she took over as the Director General of Tourism and National Parks in January 2003, she was six months pregnant and a newcomer in her own homeland.
“The tasks in front of me were huge. I was coming back to a country I had never lived in and tasked with tourism in a country that had never known it. I felt like a tourist in my own country,” she says.
She embarked on the job with passion.
“The country was embedded in me. I was so excited that for the first time I was given a Rwandan passport, the one given to government officials but one that came with responsibility. It actually meant I was now a part of the transformation of the country.”
It also came with personal sacrifice – for a while. She came to Rwanda leaving her family behind in Uganda.
“My husband said ‘you go, we will be fine, you are getting a chance to serve your country, we can manage’. Women can’t do it without the support of men,” says Rugamba.
The first thing she did was get on the radio every Sunday at 3PM, talking about the country’s tourism potential and the role Rwandans would play.
“Tourism is multi-faceted and for it to succeed, the masses needed to be involved. We had to get the coffee, tea and ICT sectors as well to support it.”
Her mandate was to grow the tourism numbers, build restaurants and hotels, and offer tourists local handicrafts and every reason to visit Rwanda.
“Rwandans are very patriotic and they linked [tourism] to the visionary leader they loved so much. Until then, everyone only knew Rwanda for the 2Gs: the genocide and gorillas. It was time to showcase whatever else Rwanda had to offer,” says Rugamba.
Tasked with reinvigorating tourism in the ‘Land of the Thousand Hills’, for the next seven years, she reoriented the sector putting in place new policies and strategic master plans. She launched the country internationally with a new pitch: ‘Rwanda – the new dawn of Africa’.
“I was so determined to sell the vision. I went to the [East Africa] region, gathered the tour operators and brought them here. The target was high-end eco-tourism.”
Eugene Rutagarama, who as the Country Director of IGCP (International Gorilla Conservation Programme) worked closely with Rugamba for eight years, extols her ability to tackle problems and take a stand on tough issues.
“Rosette Rugamba is an energetic person, an inspiring leader to her peers and to any person who happens to know her well. I was always impressed by her innovative approach to complex situations and her strong desire to reach a high level of accomplishment,” he recalls.
Her efforts paid off.
By the time Rugamba stepped down in 2010, tourism had become Rwanda’s top foreign-exchange earner. The tourism master plan for Rwanda’s Vision 2020 had been laid out, and the country was a stand-alone destination in the East African bloc.
In 2003, when she took on the job, tourist numbers in Rwanda were a mere 13,000. When she left in 2010, that figure had risen to 790,000.
In 2013, Rwanda had more than 1.1 million visitors and tourism generated $293.6 million. The number of hotel rooms in the country has risen to 8,417. It was 650 when Rugamba started. To accommodate the demand, the current airport has recently been expanded and a new airport is being built in Bugasera.
It was time for Rugamba to find a new challenge.
“I saw what tourism could do for Rwanda. I wanted to do the same for Africa. My vision is to go everywhere,”
she says.
She chose to turn entrepreneur, starting Songa Africa, a luxury tour company focusing on sustainable tourism.
“There was room for an indigenous luxury tour company headed by a woman. I had the passion, local knowledge and appreciation of the luxury clientele. I started with an old laptop and a contact book, but with a vision.”
In March, her company completes five years. She admits to having international celebrities, presidents, film stars and media moguls as clients. She has been consistently recognized as one of East Africa’s leading tourism and conservation strategists.
“What happened to me is magical,” she says.
Rugamba’s company is launching its first custom-built luxury eco-lodge in March and will be rolling out three five-star lodges to the tune of $5.5 million. Her company is also getting into conference tourism in line with Rwanda’s strategy to position itself as a business destination.
All this has meant extensive travel for Rugamba.
“Oh my goodness, I have hardly been in the country these last three months,” she says. But wherever she goes, all roads lead her back home to Rwanda.

Harrods, Heathrow,  Home

He may be a bit slower these days, but the ball still sticks to his feet as if it were on a string. Forty years on, Paradise Moeketsi dribbles like the maestro who broke the law to teach him. His name was Sir Stanley Matthews – the black man with a white face who thought the game could overcome all.
On this same Soweto street, then a patch of field, Matthews changed Moeketsi’s life.
<div id="attachment_3390" style="width: 217px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-3390" class="size-medium wp-image-3390" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/2669097-207x300.jpg" alt="" width="207" height="300" />Stanley Matthews outside-right for England and Blackpool FC, in action during a match for Blackpool. (Photo by Frank Harrison/Getty Images)</div>
“I was highly influenced by this man. He used to play without any formation. A lot of people say Mandela is the greatest, I disagree; it was him. He was a gentleman; he was never given a yellow card or a red card! He’s phenomenal, out of this world,” says Moeketsi.
Moeketsi was one of Stan’s Men, the team Matthews fostered in Soweto. His teacher was the David Beckham of his time who broke the law on segregation in sport to coach in the township.
Now a football coach in his own right, Moeketsi practises everything that Matthews preached. In his 20 years, the Soweto coach has trained and mentored young players who made it to the South African national team, Bafana Bafana.
“I met [Matthews] when I was very young. I was around 11 and now I’m 51. It was the first time, personally, that I met a white man,” he says.
Matthews’ trained 60 young players under the eye of apartheid police in what was as much about courage as it was about sport.
“It was unsafe, a white man in Soweto; in those days it was difficult. I thought [that] white people were not good, that they were bad people, but I changed&#8230;”
For many of Stan’s Men he was the first white man they had ever seen, if not, he was certainly the first who had been kind to them.
Matthews’ first trip to Soweto was in 1955. Completing his pre-season training with his young wards, he returned to England just as his team, Blackpool, was ready to do battle with Arsenal at Highbury.
According to Matthews’ memoir, The Way It Was, his manager, Joe Smith, was anxiously waiting for him in the team’s hotel lobby.
“Where the bloody hell have you been?” he says.
“South Africa, I rang and told you but you never listen,” replies Matthews.
“When did you get back?”
“Last night.”
“Are you match fit?”
“Yes.”
That day, Matthews, who had kicked his last ball in Soweto, played what is considered one of his best games for Blackpool securing a 3-1 victory. His boots may have lived in England but his heart was in Africa.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-3392" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/IMG_2612-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />
“I had some extraordinary experiences during my time in Africa. In Ghana in 1956, I was crowned King of Soccer&#8230; The initiation was a real crowning as befits a king and left me not a trifle embarrassed. A witch doctor danced around me then spat on a football [that] I had at my feet. I was then seated upon a throne, a crown placed on my head, and my clothes removed and replaced by traditional Ghanaian robes&#8230;”
Matthews travelled through the continent; from Ghana to Zimbabwe but most of his time was spent in Soweto coaching Stan’s Men. He moved to South Africa briefly with his wife, Mila, in the 1970s.
“It was 1975 and apartheid was, of course, still very much in force&#8230; I never had any luck with it and for years had happily stayed in Soweto on my visits there to coach. I simply ignored it and for the most part, I am relieved to say, those misguided people who inflicted it upon that beautiful country chose to ignore the fact that I flouted its rules,” he says in his book
According to Matthews, Stan’s Men were a promising bunch of dreamers who were funded by the Sunday Times newspaper in Johannesburg.
“The boys told me that their dream was to go to Brazil and play football there, though they knew this would never happen.”
Moeketsi and his fellow teammates had a point. It was the height of apartheid, an exit permit for a black football team would have been nigh impossible. Then there was the issue of money, none of their families could afford a passage to Brazil. They believed it was mere fantasy.
Matthews decided to make the trip happen, flouting apartheid to the extreme. He used his reputation and connections to secure money from a Coca-Cola executive and the Sunday Times. A Brazilian airline offered 16 free tickets to Rio de Janeiro.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-3393" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Marie-photo-300x196.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="196" />
Then, Matthews and his men headed for the airport under the threat of arrest.
“I figured that if we turned up at the airport for our flight, the authorities would not prevent us from leaving the country because it would cause a major incident,” writes Matthews.
He was right. They let him go, with the first all-black football team to tour outside of South Africa. The authorities were content to send two secret agents to tail them.
Moeketsi, like many of the Soweto players, couldn’t make the trip.
“My grandfather was worried that I wouldn’t come back so I didn’t go. It was difficult; a once-in-a-lifetime trip and our parents said ‘No!’”
On the flight there, Gilbert Moiola, the 18-year-old team captain, turned to Matthews and shook his hand.
“Stanley, you are a black man with a white face,” he said to his coach, a title coined during the crowning in Accra.
The team arrived to a hero’s welcome and a grand reception. Along with meeting Pélé, they also trained with Brazilian coaches including Zico. Matthews even had tea with the Great Train Robber, Ronnie Biggs, at his Rio apartment, who told him that he was a fan of Charlton Athletic.
The legacy of that remarkable trip, even for Moeketsi who did not go, is strong in Soweto.
“It took so long to forget about him. Even today, he’s still alive in Soweto. His spirit is still with us,” he says.
Matthews died in 2000, just months after he made his last trip to Soweto, before Moeketsi had a chance to say goodbye.
“I asked him to take me to England, but unfortunately he passed away.”
In 2010, the year the football World Cup came to South Africa, Moeketsi finally made the trip to Stoke City, the club where Matthews made his name in the town where he was born. It had been almost four decades since he first saw Matthews gliding across the rough Soweto pitch.
“The important part of it is me being able to fulfil my dream, to lay the wreath on Sir Stan’s grave to say thank you so much… I’d [wanted] to come and thank him and say rest in peace,” he told journalists at the stadium where Matthews’ remains are buried.
Matthews’ daughter, Jean Gough, stood beside him and was clearly touched.
“It’s so wonderful that he’s come all this way just to do this. It’s really emotional for me,” she says as they both battle tears.
On the note attached to the wreath was the farewell that Moeketsi couldn’t deliver in person.
“Sir Matthews, thank you so much for what you did in our country&#8230; I will never forget you.”

The Black Man  With A White Face

The pavement outside Pretoria’s High Court sounded like Kinshasa on this fateful Friday in late November.
A handful of the 300,000-strong Congolese community in South Africa pounded the pavement with dance and chants.
Echoes of anger rang in their songs: “Kabila must go, Kabila must go” and “Tuta Muua, (We will kill him),” sang around 50 protesters.
“It’s better to live in hell than a South African prison,” says David Muyembi Bakajika.
The men had spent 23 hours a day locked in their cells with an hour for exercise.
Mussassa Tshibangu was merely glad to feel the sun on his skin.
“It is the first time that I see people, so many people, just walking in the streets. I am very happy.”
President Joseph Kabila was the man the 15 freed men were accused of trying to overthrow. Those released were part of the group recruited by Kabuka Lugaba Andrian Kilele, who remains in prison, for so-called anti-rhino poaching training at a remote Limpopo bush camp. They were arrested instead.
All of the men were charged under the Foreign Military Assistance Act for engaging in “mercenary activity” and rendering “foreign military assistance” as well as collectively conspiring to “commit murder” under the Riotous Assemblies Act.
The Hawks, South Africa’s undercover police agents, executed the sting operation and believe that the 15 were foot soldiers of a coup attempt. Prosecutors couldn’t make the charges stick.
“We stopped proceedings [because] it became apparent that we wouldn’t secure convictions due to a lack of evidence,” says National Prosecuting Authority spokesman Nathi Mncube.
Thesigan Pillay, lawyer to 14 of the men, says it was a partial victory.
Four of his clients, including Kilele, are believed to major players in an unfortunate plot remain in custody. They are: James Kazongo; Lunula ‘Patrick’ Masikini; and Kilele ‘Jeff’ Mukuti.
Etienne Kabila, who claims President Kabila is a relative and initially assumed to be the coup’s mastermind, is out on bail but still faces charges.
The men were released shortly after midday and the crowd burst into euphoria. The men were embraced, hands were shook, prayers were said and supporters danced.
Soon after the men were welcomed back into the world, the crowd escorted them to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) where they were promised help with jobs and homes. It was a 40-minute walk away.
While there, the men were summoned inside, the journalists were asked to stay outside. On their return, they were holding business cards from the ICRC. They say that they were offered support with their transition back into society, be it employment or lodgings.
As those released begin to make a new life, and leave the trauma of the old one behind, the other five return to court on January 26.

‘It’s Better  To Live In Hell Than A South African Prison’

Is there still easy money to be made in South Africa’s cellular industry? For more than 15 years, the sun shone on the country’s two big mobile operators, Vodacom and MTN. The companies enjoyed an effective duopoly – despite the launch in 2001 of Cell C. Their shareholders reaped the dividends.
But about five years ago, the market began changing. Consumers started using their phones more to access the internet and data services, and proportionally less for making calls. Smartphone sales began to boom, and a new breed of over the top (OTT) providers – companies like Skype, owned by Microsoft, and WhatsApp, owned by Facebook – began providing (often free) alternatives to the network operators’ historic profit centers of voice telephony and text messaging.
They did this by leveraging the operators’ data networks. WhatsApp has decimated person-to-person SMS messaging; Skype, Viber and similar voice dialing services that route calls over the mobile operators’ data networks promise to do the same as next-generation 4G/LTE networks expand and as supported handsets proliferate.
The operators have found themselves in a quandary. By building these next-generation, high-speed data networks, they are effectively erecting the infrastructure on top of which the dreaded OTT providers can compete with them head-on in their most profitable business areas.
Industry bosses, like MTN South Africa CEO Ahmad Farroukh – who has warned that operators and OTT providers have to reach some sort of agreement if the former are to continue investing billions each year in network infrastructure – are adamant they won’t become ‘dumb pipes’. This is industry jargon for operators that provide low-margin telecommunications infrastructure in a utility-type model without profiting from the value-added services that flow across this infrastructure.
Operators want to retain their historically high profit margins by tapping into this value-added services business as voice margins decline. They’re looking to provide services like streaming media and mobile banking and e-commerce – taking them into competition with media companies and financial services institutions.
Both MTN and Vodacom have launched mobile banking solutions – the former recently concluded a deal with Pick n Pay, while the latter has relaunched M-Pesa – and both are looking at video-on-demand (VOD) services similar to America’s Netflix. But neither company has experience in the media industry or financial services and profitable success is far from guaranteed.
While all this has been happening, competition from more traditional competitors — the smaller network operators — has hotted up dramatically.
Cell C has taken advantage of falling termination rates — the fees the operators charge each other to carry calls between their networks — to slash call prices. Vodacom has been quick to respond to the challenge; MTN followed later, but only after it lost significant market share to its smaller rival.
Voice tariffs have probably now fallen as far as they will. Cell C, the instigator of the price war in mobile voice, seems to be back-pedaling a little on previous aggressive price cuts, especially in data, where it’s recently hiked out-of-bundle charges. Vodacom, although reacting to Cell C’s aggressive moves, has been able to hang on to higher prices than its rivals in voice and data services, perhaps because it has a superior network.
Cell C, burdened by debt that some industry insiders say runs into well over $850 million, is in a difficult position. Although it’s won market share in recent years, it is still short of the 25% target its former CEO, Alan Knott-Craig, said it needed to ensure its future success.
Telkom, meanwhile, has effectively given up on the idea of being an infrastructure competitor in the mobile market, with its plans to outsource management of its radio access network to MTN. Unless something spectacular goes wrong, that deal should be wrapped in early 2015.
The future of Cell C is what will determine the shape of the industry for the rest of the decade. Are its shareholders prepared to continue fighting a war of attrition against Vodacom and MTN? Or will they look to sell the business? And who would buy it? France’s Orange, perhaps? Or India’s Bharti Airtel? A sale to a well-funded foreign investor keen to shake up the South African market could up the stakes dramatically.

Is There A Future In Cellphones?

No nonsense businessman George Prokas was taught from an early age that you need to stand up for yourself. During his dispute with South African network provider Cell C that is exactly what he did, he literally took it to the streets.
“If you’re first in the queue, you’re first in the queue,” says Prokas.
In 2012, Prokas applied for two cellphone contracts for his children. In 2013, one of the phones needed to be repaired. Being a relatively new phone, Prokas handed it in to the network provider in expectation of a new phone. What he got was the run around.
“Eventually we were getting bounced from pillar to post. After about eight months, I kept going back to the store. I went there, my daughter went there, my wife went there. I screamed the whole of Sandton City (shopping mall) down. We were just falling on deaf ears and in the meantime I was paying the account, I didn’t have the phone but was still paying for the account. The last time I went to Cell C, I had an argument with a guy who runs the store after telling him I was going to stop paying. He laughed at me and said ‘you can’t stop paying because you signed a contract’. I said ‘I beg your pardon; I put my surname on a piece of paper to honor an obligation on a service you have not given me, until I get the phone back I am never going to pay,’” he recalls.
Prokas kept his word and stopped paying for the phone he did not have. A few months later, Prokas walked into a dealership to purchase a car for his wife, the bank turned him down, he was furious. The reason for the rejection was emailed to him soon after and he could not believe it. Cell C had listed Prokas with the credit bureau because he stopped paying for the broken cellphone account.
Prokas tried to solve his problem. He called the Cell C call center, he sent emails and he even tried to locate the owner of the store he was dealing with. With no joy he decided to take more radical action.
He placed a banner – that cost him over R60,000 ($5,200) – on a very busy intersection in Johannesburg. It read: Cell C – the most useless service provider in SA.
Prokas warned Cell C about the banner but they did not budge.
“I sent the mock-up of the banner to Cell C via email. I said ‘if you don’t solve my problem this is what’s going up’. I was looking for a solution and somebody to talk to,” says Prokas.
With his lawyer by his side, Prokas did as promised and put up the banner. Soon after, the banner broke out on social media and Cell C went to court. The High Court in Johannesburg dismissed an application for an interdict by the service provider to have his banner removed. Prokas won the case, got his legal fees covered and kept his banner.
“Cell C had acted incorrectly, they never addressed his concerns, not once,” says Raymond Druker, Prokas’ lawyer.
“What George has put up on that banner was not defamatory, it was fair comment.”
According to a study done by global market research agency Ipsos, the banner brought home that most people have become accustomed to inferior service.
“He (Prokas) basically vocalized what I think a lot of people are experiencing but they don’t have the means or the personality to do what he did. He set such a precedent by doing what he did,” says Renita Kramer, Head of Loyalty Research at Ipsos South Africa.
Ipsos adds that it’s become more important than ever for companies to pay attention to their customers and solve their problems.
Sifiso Falala, CEO of Plus 94, a market intelligence company, has recently released the Plus94it app, a mobile app that allows South Africans to share their experiences in the service industry with the people responsible for those experiences. The app receives over 1,000 comments a month.
“The majority of the consumers that come on to the app are frustrated. We get things like they are too big to care about the little guys, once they concluded the sale they are not concerned with the quality of the product or service,” says Falala.
“Mobile telephonic companies and network service providers tend to really irritate people to a large extent.”
“There has always been a principle in law that contracts can’t be against public policy, but the overriding law in South Africa is that people are bound by what they sign. But you can’t require people to pay when you don’t give them the service they’re paying for. But it hasn’t gotten to the point where if you get bad service you are legally entitled to stop paying. There is a lot of development that has to happen along those lines,” says Druker.
Cell C responded to the matter by saying: “Cell C has resolved the matter with Mr Prokas and has nothing further to add over and above what has already been communicated through various media channels. Cell C is continuously improving its customer service across the various touch points of the business, including the franchises.”
Otherwise the banner of indignation could rise again.

Revenge Of The Frustrated Customer

The living room of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s Soweto home in Johannesburg is all Nelson Mandela – there are portraits, photographs and perpetual reminders of South Africa’s first black President on the walls, floors, tables and showcases.
Yet, the most enduring mental image of Mandela and Winnie is from that bright afternoon on 11 February 1990, when Mandela, in a brown suit and tie, stepped out of the Victor Verster prison in Cape Town, one fist punching the air in a victory salute, the other holding Winnie’s hand.
We meet Winnie in her home in November. She is misty-eyed when she talks about Mandela’s final days, but smiles when reminded of that headline-grabbing moment when he was set free. It is a moment she revisits often, as it signalled the dawn of a new era in South African politics.
February marks a quarter of a century since Mandela’s release from prison.
“Isn’t that amazing? It seems like yesterday,” says Winnie, now 78, when we mention it to her.
She is dressed in the traditional attire of the royal Thembu tribe, worn for a year in honor of Mandela’s passing. She says she will wear it until the ‘cleansing rituals’ on the first anniversary of his death observed in Qunu in South Africa’s Eastern Cape where he was laid to rest.
In December, after the ceremony, Winnie made headlines when she told reporters the Qunu property is rightfully hers, and did not belong to Mandela’s widow Graca Machel, who she famously said ‘owns a whole world’ in her native Mozambique.
She challenged Mandela’s estate, seeking rights to the Qunu home, claiming the land was given to her during Mandela’s imprisonment.
Winnie was married to Mandela for 38 years. The couple divorced in 1996.
During our first meeting in November, Winnie had reiterated that future generations should be reminded that the family’s legacy is not about commercial gain.
“The African National Congress was not the ANC Pty Ltd, as some members of the family think sometimes… every family has its problems, and there are those who seem to think the legacy of Mandela is associated [with] material things. It can never be that… The legacy of this family is a political legacy. Therefore, I thank God it will be carried on by this side of the family.”
“We need to remind future generations that the Mandela legacy is not what you can make out of his name… It’s not about creating entities that are going to give capital to you because you happen to have the last name as Mandela. That was never the case. Our legacy is political, it was never about material gain… It’s not about how many millions you can make out of exhibiting whatever [has] a Mandela face. It’s not about the statues popping up all over the country, it’s not about egos… I never ever wanted to be associated with such things… Ours was a political sacrifice, it was not material.”
Her second daughter Zindzi, also present at the interview, said that those who want to celebrate Mandela should do so thoughtfully.
“We understand that he didn’t belong to us alone. But we never thought that even in his passing, he will still really not be ours, because there are constant reminders… people choose to celebrate him in the way they think fit without thinking of what traditional protocols are required, without thinking that the most decent thing is to consult the family first,” she says.
It is no secret that the Mandela moniker is a money-spinner. His face has graced coins, billboards, paintings and commercials. It has often been reported in the country’s press that his legacy status has been hijacked by government, private institutions, even some members of his own family.
Zindzi claims that people come up with ideas and then go to the family for endorsement. She sees this as a total ‘disregard’ to his wishes.
“In some instances, we have been shocked at how distasteful some of the projects and concepts are, because very often, it’s more about the people themselves as opposed to his legacy. Dad distinctly said when he retired that ‘I want you to rely less on my personal image… and focus more on my legacy. The greatest gift you can give me is to start living my legacy and values in my lifetime and my sunset years…’”
“It is very important for people to always introspect when they are thinking of celebrating him and when they are thinking about living his values. And if they are not sure, just to respect the simple protocol of consultation. Like any other family, we would never embark on a celebration of another icon without recognizing that… he didn’t exist as a tree trunk without branches, he had family. And it becomes so hurtful when it is overlooked.”

“We Are Shocked  At How Distasteful Some Of The Projects Are”

Denis Goldberg, who faced death with Nelson Mandela in the 1964 Rivonia Trial, was in a TV studio in London commenting on the great man’s release from prison.
Goldberg was released before the others after 22 years.
“I was absolutely confident that I was the start of a process. I wanted to be out to play a role in the liberation of South Africa. I was tired of being a symbol locked up in prison and I thought the time had come to move things along. There was the offer of releases and unconditionally releases, I decided to accept because I didn’t want PW Botha’s offer in 1985 just to evaporate into thin air, he made the offer out of weakness not strength, that’s the important part,” says Goldberg.
“I was able to tell the story of how the day we were sentenced, the head of the prison security said we should have been hanged and will never walk out of prison on our own two feet; they’d carry us out in a coffin. And then Nelson Mandela stopped the car he was in and he and his then wife Winnie Mandela walked out holding their hands into freedom, and the rest is history. I was able to tell that story. We survived and the old security colonel had passed away.”
Goldberg has many memories of Mandela but one that sticks in the mind is their first encounter after prison.
“He said to me, ‘hello boy it’s been a long time. He always called me boy because I was so much younger then he was. It was very sweet and touching. I also remember a bit later when we met again in Sweden, my wife and my daughter had to meet him. He greeted my wife rather stiffly not knowing who she is and when I introduced her, he bent down from his great height and whispered to her, ‘the boy is looking good you must be looking after him very well.’”
Zakhe Khuzwayo, Group CFO of InnoVent, was 14 years old and at boarding school at Hilton College in Pietermaritzburg. The school was dismissed early so they could watch Mandela’s first walk as a free man.
“The man was an enigma, I think I had seen a photograph of him when I was younger, I didn’t know what to expect. I guess it was more exciting and anxiety to see who this guy is and see what he actually looks like,” says Khuzwayo.
Twenty five years later, Khuzwayo runs his own company and enjoys much of the freedom ushered in by the release of Mandela.
“His role was instrumental in what this country actually became,”
says Khuzwayo.
Political analyst Thapelo Tselapedi was four years old in 1990 and remembers the humble Toyota Cressida that Mandela rode through Cape Town in. He also remembers seeing the man in the flesh four years later.
“In 1994, when I was eight, we went to the Mafikeng stadium where he was speaking. After he spoke, my sister ran to him to him to try and get an autograph. Nelson Mandela was surrounded by his bodyguards and my brother and I tried to go in and get an autograph but we couldn’t. My sister was the only one who managed to get one. She got in, got her autograph, he shook her hand and then she got out. I was sad that I couldn’t break through, but my sister always kept that autograph in her room, it was very nice,” recalls Tselapedi.
A quarter of a century later, his feelings are bittersweet.
“Sweet because he has to do the impossible to calm down black people but at the same it seemed to not have been enough as it was limited by the interests that the white people had also wanted, he had to find a home for everyone and that meant compromise. The bittersweet part is characterized by where black people are now versus where white people are.”
Like Tselapedi, Goldberg has his opinions.
“I am still optimistic but I am also distressed. I am optimistic because we have achieved so much despite our weakness, despite the legacy of apartheid leaving us with an inadequate civil service, with half the population illiterate, half the population unemployed and we’ve come a long way since then and the conditions of people have undoubtedly improved. My sadness is the corruption and what I call the patronage society,” says Goldberg.
The man who stared down death with Mandela feels his country has a long way
to go.

‘I Am Still Optimistic But  I Am Also Distressed’

On February 21, President Robert Gabriel Mugabe will be 91. He has ruled Zimbabwe for 34 years making him the only leader the country has ever known and the oldest president in the world. The question grows by the day, who will run the country next?
It has been a poor few months for the aging Mugabe. He shocked delegates at the December party congress when for the first time he mistakenly uttered a slogan against his party – Pasi neZanu-PF (down with Zanu-PF).
Prior to that, he had also told a meeting that his foe and MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai had won the 2008 polls by 73%. He had to be corrected on both occasions by his close aides.
Political analyst Rashweat Mukundu says his wife Grace Mugabe, has become the de-facto Prime Minister capitalizing on her husband’s failing health.
“There is uncertainty and concern on the future of Zimbabwe as President Mugabe brutally suppresses any talk of succession and this has stalled policy clarity as no one is sure of the future. The economy has thus suffered hugely from the uncertainty and the intense focus on succession and power issues instead of service delivery and the economy,” says Mukundu.
The wheels started turning on December 9 when guerrilla fighter-turned leader Joice Mujuru, long viewed as a front runner in Zimbabwe’s succession race, was booted by Mugabe as Vice President.
On December 10, Mugabe appointed Minister of Justice Emmerson Mnangagwa his First Vice President and Phelekezela Mphoko, former Ambassador to South Africa, the Second Vice President. He has been dismissed as an also ran in Zimbabwe’s politics of succession.
Mnangagwa took over from Mujuru with help from the First Lady.
Grace is evidently an admirer of Mnangagwa or sees him as a weapon to fight her battles with the former Vice President.
Grace was known for her lavish lifestyle and poor academic performance in the months leading up to the December congress. She recently obtained a PhD from University of Zimbabwe, a doctorate she allegedly never studied for.
With others, she accused Mujuru of plotting to assassinate her husband, in a bid for power. Mujuru, a party loyalist, denies this.
The congress, that endorsed Mugabe as the party’s candidate for the 2018 elections, was castigated by former political heavyweights, like former Zanu-PF spokesperson Rugare Gumbo, as a ‘praise and worship’ function rather than an elective congress. Mugabe is without doubt losing control and it appears his wife is taking control.
Obert Hodzi, a Zimbabwean security researcher based in Hong Kong, sees striking similarities between Mugabe’s last days and that of China’s Chairman Mao.
“When Mao became very old and frail, his wife Jiang Qing and her close associates, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan and Wang Hongwen, created their own center of power preparing to take over when Mao dies. They carried out extensive purges and executions of anyone perceived to be would-be successors,” he says.
“This is exactly what we are seeing in Zimbabwe. We are likely to see the dominance of Grace and her associates for a while and even after Mugabe’s demise.”
According to the Zimbabwean constitution (Amendment No.20 of 2013, the Sixth Schedule, section 14 (4) if the president dies, resigns or is removed from office – (a) the Vice President or, where there are two Vice Presidents, the Vice President who was last nominated to act in terms of the Constitution – acts as President until a new President assumes offices; and the vacancy in the office of the President must be filled by a nominee of the political party which the President represented when he or she stood for election. A political party which is entitled to nominate a person in terms of subparagraph (4) (b) must notify the Speaker of the nominee’s name within ninety days after the vacancy occurred.
Dewa Mavhinga, lawyer and senior researcher for Zimbabwe and Southern Africa at Human Rights Watch, says that section 101 of the Constitution, which says that the Vice President takes over to finish the term of office, does not apply in this case as the Sixth Schedule supercedes section 101. Under this section, the political party nominates and notifies the Speaker of the nominee who takes oath of office to finish the term.
“His party Zanu-PF will nominate a successor, so it means succession is not automatic for VPs and could trigger chaos and instability given that the leadership of Zimbabwe security forces is highly politicized and partisan and could take sides in the succession disputes,” says Mavhinga.
Mavhinga says if securocrats prefer someone other than the First Vice President, the dynamics could tilt dramatically. Whoever takes over must purge more of Mujuru’s sympathizers in parliament and garner support in both the politburo and central committee.
Mnangagwa, a less charismatic leader than Mujuru, could stand against the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader in the 2018 elections should Mugabe, who would then be 94, fail to run as the party’s candidate. Morgan Tsvangirai’s opposition MDC party says they are poised to win the next elections. This would mean Mnangagwa’s long-held ambitions could slip through his fingers.
“All indicators are pointing to a resounding victory of Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC-T provided the elections are free and fair,” says MDC party spokesperson Obert Gutu.
“We are taking very far-reaching steps to ensure that the next elections in Zimbabwe will be held in a free and fair environment that will produce a legitimate and uncontested outcome. For strategic reasons, I am not at liberty to disclose our game plan, suffice to state that the Zanu-PF regime will not be allowed to have its cake and eat it.”
You could argue Zanu-PF had its cake and ate it for nearly 35 years. Food is at stake in the fight. Whoever takes over needs to drag Zimbabwe back to the long-lost position as the breadbasket of Africa.
A grim power struggle will play out first before the green shoots of maize can even be thought of.

Tag: February 2015

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