Kuantan, Malaysia, seems a long way from the translucent dusk and rich red earth of peaceful Malawi. Standing in the heart of an ancient swamp the daylight is fading to an impenetrable gloom. Seeping through my toes in the dusk is brackish black peat water.
If it wasn’t for the stifling humidity and the call of a fish eagle over the pristine distant forest I could be in a stinking bog in the Scottish Hebrides. To the north of the ‘Black Jewel’ forests of southern Malaysia, where I stand, the brilliant LED lights of a remote state of the art refinery glow through the Asian night.
Over its metal ramparts, migrant Malaysian workers scurry over scaffolding like ants. They are part of a race that is seeing the world’s biggest mining and technology companies scour the ends of the earth to break China’s stranglehold on rare earths – a band of obscure but increasingly strategic metals integral to our technological world.
Today, this dank and rather obscure corner of Malaysia represents the new frontier for refining rare earths – a group of 17 largely similar metallic-chemical elements used in products from smartphones and televisions to hybrid-car batteries. This plant has been built to refine ore from the Mount Weld mine deep in the Australian desert, 2,500 miles away.
Inside these humble rocks from the outback are rare-earth minerals, crucial ingredients for smartphones, as well as wind turbines, hybrid cars, and night-vision goggles. Minerals such as neodymium are used in magnets that make phone and laptop speakers vibrate to create sound. Or europium, a phosphor that creates the bright red on an iPhone screen. Let’s not forget cerium which makes our perfect metal smartphones shiny and new as they move along the assembly line.
The Malaysian refinery’s backers, Lynas, believe they will eventually be able to meet nearly a third of the world’s demand for rare earth materials here. Most crucially, Kuantan’s refinery is the first rare earth ore processing plant to be built outside China in nearly three decades.
It’s arrival, and the decision by China to scrap its quota system restricting exports of rare earth minerals after losing a World Trade Organization case, could also signal Africa’s entry into the burgeoning market. Lynas believe they are backing a clear winner as the global demand for technology reaches new heights. Yet it is a venture not without risk. Historically, rare earths have proven tricky to process.
As Malaysia learned the hard way a few decades ago, refining rare earth ore usually leaves thousands of tons of low-level radioactive waste behind. As a consequence the west has largely left the dirty work to Chinese refineries. The world’s reluctance to process rare earths has meant that China now mines and refines at least 90% of the global supply – allowing Beijing a virtual monopoly that has handed them a global trade weapon in an increasingly high-tech world.
Last September, China imposed a two-month embargo on rare earth shipments to Japan during a territorial dispute, and for a short time even blocked some shipments to the United States and Europe. It’s an environmental and economic backstory that does much to explain Lynas’ $230-million investment into the world’s most advanced rare earth refinery but one that also concerns environmentalists.
Critics of the Lynas plant claim it will generate 28,000 tons of solid waste containing radioactive by-products annually. The most controversial element in the waste cocktail, claim Greenpeace and local campaigners, is thorium, a mildly radioactive element that is toxic in large doses and easily spread through wind and water. Exposure to thorium is tied to increased risk of cancer. Although the sprawling plant is located on the Gebeng industrial estate, about 30,000 people live within a two-kilometer radius and 700,000 reside within 25 kilometers of the refinery.
Lynas claim that the final waste material will have levels of radioactivity low enough to allow it to be transported overseas. A team from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also assessed the Kuantan plant and judged it to meet all safety standards.
Here, along the Andaman coast, the debate ploughs on. In many ways it feels like I have been here before. In 2006, I, like many other correspondents, obsessed over coltan, traveling across Goma and Kivu as rebel groups stationed throughout the eastern Democratic Republic Congo waged war on both one another and the government over that most pliable of soft metals – coltan – placing bonded slaves and kidnapped children into the supply chains of major electronic firms who sought it.
Coltan’s value, like rare earths, was, at the time, hard to understand. Short for columbite-tantalite, it is an ore that takes on heat-resistant properties when it gets refined. It’s also capable of holding a high electrical charge for a long time. Both characteristics make it an ideal component in circuitry design, particularly in smartphones and other electronic devices, which constantly need to improve battery life.
For NGO’s coltan was the poster boy of the so-called 3TGs: tantalum (coltan), tin, tungsten and gold, all used extensively in the electronics industry. To many within the electronics industry, coltan and other conflict minerals is an old narrative. But the truth is Africa’s entanglement with potentially damaging technology minerals might actually just be beginning.
Our obsession with technology means our need for rare earths can only grow exponentially. Today, geologists also believe Africa has more than half the world’s deposits of carbonatites, the type of rock formation seen as the prime hunting ground for rare earths.
Another advantage Africa, in particular South Africa, offers is vast amounts of monazite sands left over from other mining operations from which rare earths can be extracted. The Great Western Minerals Group’s Steenkampskraal project in South Africa, for example, has some of the highest concentrations of certain types of rare earths of any mine outside of China.
Perhaps surprisingly, given its relative low-profile in the mining sector, the most promising site on the continent is the Kangankunde Hill region of Malawi. According to the US Geological Survey and Lynas, who have interests in the southern African nation, the potential is significant.
According to Will Dawes, Chief Executive Officer of Canadian company Mkango Resources, Malawi could become Africa’s largest rare earth producer.
“Malawi ticks the boxes in terms of resource potential, a stable political environment, infrastructure and government support,” he says.
Dawes believes there are at least five potential major rare earth mines in Malawi, of which Mkango’s Songwe Hill project is the most advanced. It is undeniably a factor that could transform one of Africa’s most historically weak economies but also bring considerable environmental concerns.
As with processing rare earths, extracting individual elements from the host mineral’s chemistry is a complex and energy-intensive process, involving strong acids and other hazardous chemicals. Radioactive materials such as uranium and thorium are often found alongside rare earth elements, and these can end up in the ‘tailings’ – a toxic stew of waste products from the refinement process.
Rare earths must be separated and purified using hydro-metallurgical techniques and acid baths. As a consequence, the foul waters contain radioactive elements which, if ingested, cause cancers of the pancreas and lungs and leukemia. But, with Malawi’s mining promise comes a lead lining to their economic cloud at least.
As a consequence of rare earths’ troubled history, major corporations like Siemens, Samsung and Toyota are already designing new products that use fewer rare earths or substitute materials.
It is also predicted that recycle rates of rare earths from existing products, very low because of the expense and complexity involved, may also increase in future. Honda, for example, has already begun extracting more than 80% of its rare earth materials from nickel-metal hydride batteries.
Julian Kirby, lead campaigner for Friends of the Earth’s Make It Better initiative, which aims to make companies come clean about their supply chains, is adamant that “environmental costs must be factored into the prices of rare earths”, creating an incentive to recycle existing materials. Kirby also believes there should be a change in reporting by major firms to ensure it includes non-financial information. Only then, he claims, will electronics manufacturers take greater responsibility.
In Malaysia, rare earth refining on their doorstep has split public opinion.
To date, more than 1.2 million people signed a petition calling for Lynas to close its plant and thousands have taken to the streets to express their opposition to the rare earth refinery operating the country. The presence of the facility has sparked one of the biggest environmental movements in Malaysian history. According to one local campaigner in Kuantan, China’s loss of its rare earth monopoly will also prove a loss for the rest of the world, including Africa, as the floodgates open on a toxic trade.

Rare Pollution  And Profit

It was a business born of tragedy in Uganda. When Best Ayiorworth’s father died, it spelt struggle. She dropped out of school for lack of money. But it led her to starting a microlending business at the age of 19.
Ayiorworth was just 12 years old when her schooling came to an abrupt halt. Her unemployed, widowed mother tried her best to get all her children through school. But she died trying. It was left to Ayiorworth’s eldest sister and brother.
“When I was around senior 2, the brother who follows her and my other sister intervened and started pushing us ahead. So I managed to reach senior 4, but they could not go further than that. I wanted to go further. I wanted to join A-level, go to university, but I couldn’t,” says Ayiorworth.
“Meanwhile the same problem I got was that even if my mother didn’t die, I was going to face something of that kind because I saw it happen to my big sisters.”
Often in Uganda when families struggle to put their children through school, the girl is forced to stay at home. A lack of support from parents and girls reaching puberty add to the pressure leading to young girls dropping out of school, even in areas where schooling is relatively cheap.
“That was actually one of the biggest problems. I grew up seeing that and me dropping out was a blow. That is actually something that awakened everything that was in me. I always saw those things happen around me. It was not something that made me feel like ‘oh I have to do something,’ but when I had to drop out myself, that thing pained me. It pained me like crazy,” she says.
All was not lost for Ayiorworth. Her elder siblings encouraged her to attend vocational training schools where she learned catering. The director of the school saw something in Ayiorworth.
It led to her joining KampaBits, a youth-based ICT organization that improves the lives of those living in informal settlements. It’s here that she learned graphic and web design. During the course at KampaBits, Ayiorworth joined S7 Project, a skills empowerment center in Kampala. While there, a firend of the founder of S7 Project, Laura Fredrick, helped her get her first job as a chef at Little Donkey, a small Mexican restaurant in Kampala.
Ayiorworth and Fredrick had talked of the idea of keeping girls in school, with the help of a goat. At the time, at 19 years old and having grown up in a village, it was inevitable that her first idea would be inspired by the environment she grew up in.
“I wanted to get goats and give it to girls or their guardians. So when the goat gives birth, after three months I get back the kids if they are two or three and I leave the goats with the girls so that it can give birth again. And the goat can help the girl. They can either sell it or it keeps giving birth and it multiplies and the girl is supported that way,” she says.
The only problem was Ayiorworth didn’t have money to buy a goat. She went back to the drawing board and came up with another idea that would win her awards.
“I knew the community where I came from and I knew the pettiest businesses that mothers could do and they could earn something for me. [I thought] maybe I should support the mothers with that category of girls, with the business so they can support the girls,” she says.
With her first salary of $40 she earned from Little Donkey, she made loans to 10 women. They sold anything from second-hand clothing to fried peanuts.
The business ran for about three months allowing Ayiorworth to save around Ush300,000 ($110), catching the attention of the S7 director. He was so impressed that he loaned Ayiorworth about Ush800,000 ($295) at 2% interest.
Ayiorworth registered Girl Power Micro-Lending Organisation (GIPOMO) and structured it so that the education of girls was tied to loans.
The women are grouped in threes as a prerequisite in getting a loan, of which they pay a monthly 10% interest.
“If I give you Ush10,000, you have to bring back Ush11,000. Then I can give it back to you right away. The idea is to make sure the money is secure. The interest remains and I give you back the Ush10,000,” she says.
It was far from easy. About nine months into the business, two women ran away with USh400,000 (around $150). Ayiorworth did not allow that to dissuade her. She put in new guidelines and carried on.
One of which was if a girl that was supposed to be educated from the scheme complained three times, the guardian is booted off the scheme.
GIPOMO’s success for having developed and implemented an innovative solution to a challenge facing Ayiorworth’s community garnered her the Anzisha Prize in 2013 for young African entrepreneurs. She ploughed the $25,000 prize money into her business, boosting her savings pool to over Ush45 million ($16,500).
Her passion for education for young girls has encouraged her to implement other projects like Women in Agriculture where women are helped to make money off it through planting crops that are sold to other companies at a cheap price. GIPOMO makes a 5% interest from the sales.
Although Ayiorworth started GIPOMO as a class project, it is still going strong.
Today, GIPOMO has registered over 65 women, but there’s another 200 still waiting to join. It is revolutionizing girls’ education
in Uganda.
It just goes to show what the failure to afford a goat, followed by a good idea, can do.

A Lending Scheme  No Kidding

Nazreen Pandor marches to the beat of her own drum. A daughter of political activists in exile during South Africa’s apartheid days, she understood quite young that injustice was something to be fought out.
Over 20 years later, she has made it a crucial part of her life and career in an innovative way and in an unsuspecting place.
“I grew up knowing that I had a bigger purpose, it wasn’t just about me but it was about how I could contribute to society so even when I became a director at Mazars it wasn’t that I got this job, so let’s build but it was about how can I use this job to give a voice to other women in corporate South Africa,” she says.
For the past five years, Pandor has been a director at the Human Rights and Social Compliance division at Mazars, a global auditing and tax advisory. She began her career as a lawyer at boutique law firm Mallinicks, now known as Webber Wentzel, and was trained by one of South Africa’s leading public lawyers. She left that experience knowing her strength in the world.
“I step into the world knowing I’ve been trained by the best, so I should be the best,” she had told a South African magazine last year.
At the firm she has spearheaded two very important projects that echo her commitment to social change even within the corporate environment. One is the Mazars’ Women’s Forum, a place for women within the firm to meet, talk and network with each other. The forum hosts breakfasts in both Johannesburg and Cape Town quarterly. She says it provides an avenue for women, like herself, to find role models and mentors in a network they are already a part of.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-29857 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/IMG_4125-225x300.jpg" alt="" width="225" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_4125-225x300.jpg 225w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_4125-300x400.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_4125-600x800.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_4125-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_4125.jpg 767w" sizes="(max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px" />
“I was lucky enough from a young age to have a number of role models and mentors who were saying to me, ‘you’ve got to network, you’ve got to network, you’ve got to network’ so it was something that was always ingrained in my mind.”
The other project is the ground-breaking Youth Employment Index which wants to involve the youth and various stakeholders as they deal with a daunting economic trend.
“It’s about creating decent employment. Not everyone wants to be an entrepreneur, not everyone is going to get out of school and have the idea to start something big. Some people will have to fall into blue collar and white collar employment, but how do we make sure that when our young people are coming into these places, we are stimulating the economy&#8230;”
As soon as we meet her, Pandor, calm and confident, radiates an assertive elegance in a sweeping green dress.
“I have my dresses made,” she says before we could ask about a stockist.
Pandor is a practising Muslim and has incorporated her faith into all aspects of her life and personal style. She never ignores a call to prayer and even excuses herself from meetings to pray. Her outfits match the aesthetic of the cutting edge Islamic fashion and her sheila, headscarf, is colour-coded and styled in line with the look of the day.
There are difficulties with keeping up with her faith and career in a very South African corporate environment but she feels it is her challenge to face.
“I’ve always found it very difficult. It’s almost like when I am wearing a scarf I’m forced to have a different persona and because I’m a very vocal person, people look at me [and think] ‘so she does have a voice’,” she says.
The scarf is a recent addition to Pandor’s wardrobe and a crucial step in her personal quest to live out her faith. However, her commitment to it, like her hybrid corporate-social projects,
is resolute.
“On days that I don’t wear my headscarf, I feel naked. And I was a girl who never thought about it twice, I was in my power suits and it was very different&#8230;”
It was a major adjustment in her life but it is all part and parcel of Pandor’s belief in leading by example. As her career and personal life show, she is a woman’s woman, the kind of person many young women will model themselves on without hesitation. She is inspiration that will be tried and tested.

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The Woman’s Woman

Stella Buthelezi has a confession to make.
“I don’t know how to write a CV, all my life, I have practically been self-employed,” she says. Born in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, to a family of business owners, Buthelezi had a privileged upbringing, and has never had to work for someone else. Moving to Johannesburg in 1998 post marriage, along with her husband, she has been a businesswoman, her prime areas of interest being the mining and commercial property industries.
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“They [the staff] call us Mr and Mrs B and we’ve got a few offices [in Johannesburg] , London, Australia, but whenever he walks [into an office] – which I always find funny – everyone gasps, and when I walk in, everyone is like ‘oh there she goes’, because I am always screaming from the door,” laughs Buthelezi.
At home too, she says she is the CEO. She professes a love for beautiful things, so evident in the aesthetics around her.
“This house was meant to be our house,” says Buthelezi when we meet her in her sprawling golf estate home in Dainfern, Johannesburg. Buthelezi’s six-bedroom, seven-bathroom abode is a striking, modern monolith featuring a glass façade.
The glass door at the entrance leads to a grand stairway with a gurgling waterfall under it that runs as a feature throughout the house. Besides the natural acoustics, each room in this high-tech home is fitted with speakers and a sound-system. On the walls of every room are pictures of the Buthelezi family. In the entertainment area is a framed photograph of American singer-songwriter Ne-Yo posing with Buthelezi’s son on one of their overseas trips.
Buthelezi’s idea of a warm, inviting home is the alluring aroma from the kitchen.
“Even if I am not here and we are dining out, I have trained my helpers that there [should] never be a time when you open the fridge and there is no food – it is a cold house then,” she says.
Buthelezi’s favorite room in the house is the private lounge, so private it does not boast any intrusive gadgetry – no television or electronics here, only beautiful Italian furniture, lots of reading material and a view of the garden and pool.
“I love the peace and quiet, we get to read, we get to talk.”
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-29853 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/IMG_4242-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_4242-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_4242-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_4242-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_4242-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_4242.jpg 682w" sizes="(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px" />
The fancy gadgets are reserved for the private home cinema – cleverly concealed behind a door in the bar area – where the family gets together for movie nights.
There are luxe reclining couches – complete with cup holders and ‘B’ symbols on them for each member of the family – in this roomy private theatre fitted with a state-of-the-art screen and acoustics.
Buthelezi has it all but being a wife and a mother is what she says she is most proud of.
“It’s possible you can be a mother, you can be a wife and you can still be successful.”

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Sound Investment

Kay Vittee started her career as a secretary, but with ambition and a business degree, she worked her way up to become the CEO of Quest Staffing Solutions in Johannesburg. And that’s no mean achievement, considering Quest is among the country’s top staffing solutions providers specializing in the recruitment and management of white-collar staff.
Vittee credits her success to another woman: her mother, who during South Africa’s apartheid era, with no formal education, became “the first Indian woman to hold a managerial position at a retail store”.
“I come from a background where I had a subdued father but a very ambitious mum,” says Vittee.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-29849 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/IMG_4776-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_4776-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_4776-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_4776-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_4776-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_4776.jpg 682w" sizes="(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px" />
Being brought up in an Indian home at the time meant she was to get married as soon as she finished school. Vittee’s parents did not have the means to continue her studies, so right after matric, Vittee got engaged to her boyfriend, today her husband of 28 years. Her dreams of studying further were placed on hold as Vittee started looking for work.
“I remember opening the newspaper and seeing ‘regret, whites only’ [everywhere]; the one position open was an administrative position. I remember I had this lovely pink skirt on with a drop top and as I walked in for the interview, I smiled because I was so excited. There were four other candidates and I secured the position earning R383 ($33).”
Life was not easy.
“When I got married, my room had a second-hand carpet, we didn’t have a dining room, we didn’t have a kitchen. When people came to visit, I remember getting a little box for them to sit on and I was so scared they’d fall, I do remember my humble beginnings,” she says.
Thus, at age 19, she embarked on a career, always keen to learn, and in a year, was promoted.
“I always made sure I read quite a bit on being the best I could be. It was important for me, I took my work seriously, I had a good work ethic.”
Vittee soon worked for ABSA bank, and despite being a young wife and mother, also got a few academic degrees under her belt. She was promoted as the executive of the bank’s contact centers. Quest soon offered Vittee the position of CEO.
After 14 years of corporate experience, she had no difficulties stepping in, managing a staff of 15,000. “One of the things that stood out was emotional strength, my ability to work with a diversity of people and manage change.” Regarded as a sound business leader, Vittee inspires her employees to impart superior customer service, and is a sought-after motivational speaker. Retire she will never.

The Recruiter Who Will Never Stop Hiring

It would seem Rolene Strauss’ life is full of second chances. Perhaps that’s why she has an abiding philosophy: “Everything happens twice, the first time in your mind and then in reality.”
As a child, she imagined herself one day winning the Miss World pageant. They would call her name, place the crown on her head and she would float on stage smiling and waving like a queen.
At age 22, it happened. For real.
From a petri dish to the world stage, it has been an interesting journey.
“I’m a test-tube baby,” says the beauty from Volksrust, Mpumalanga, South Africa.
Her mother, a nurse, had struggled to conceive. After five years and several failed attempts, she and Strauss’ dad, a doctor, turned to modern medicine, deciding to give fate a second chance.
In 1992, Strauss was the product of the first successful EIFT in-vitro fertilization procedure in the medical facility at the University of the Free State in the Free State province of South Africa.
As destiny would have it, ironically, after high school, this was the world Strauss would come back to, to study medicine.
“I’ve always wanted to be a doctor. Maybe because of the fact that I was a test-tube baby, maybe because of the fact that my parents were very passionate about health,” she says.
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Climbing Trees
A year after she was born, Strauss’ parents naturally conceived her younger brother, who her mother Theresa says was “sent from heaven”, while her daughter, who she calls Lolla, was mischievous and climbed trees as a child.
“Rolene was adventurous…and even as a child, the person with the strongest will and mind we knew. She excelled in everything she did. The way we remember Rolene, as a curly-haired girl, is the exact way she is today. Just a little more mature,” says Theresa.
In 2011, 19-year-old Strauss acted on her dreams, took a leap of faith and entered the Miss South Africa competition.
Paledi Segapo, a judge on the Miss South Africa 2011 panel, describes Strauss as a “late bloomer”.
“When she entered [for the first time], she didn’t seem like a strong contender, very innocent and fragile,” said Segapo in an interview on eNCA.com in December last year.
That first time, Strauss was placed in the top five.
“I remember standing there and when they didn’t call my name it was almost a relief,” she had said in an interview with Top Billing last year.
No, this was not the end, but a new beginning. Strauss thereafter enrolled for medicine at the University of the Free State.
In her fourth year, she put her studies on hold and gave her beauty pageant dream another shot. More confident and well-prepared, this time she took home the crown (March 2014).
There was more to come.
The Miss South Africa competition was merely a dress-rehearsal for the world stage.
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Cool as a breeze
In December 2014, Strauss embarked on an even bigger journey as one of 120 contestants at the Miss World pageant in London. The contestants from around the world were all vying for the diamond-sapphire-turquoise crown that would place them in history books alongside the likes of Aishwarya Rai (Miss World 1994) and Nigerian Agbani Darego (Africa’s first black woman to win Miss World in 2001).
Strauss smiles as she thinks back to her time in London.
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“The thing I will always remember from this experience is the different cultures I got to experience. We ate Thai food every night in [Maeya Nonthawan Thongleng] Miss Thailand’s room. The US is very popular for their sweets, so Miss USA [Elizabeth Safrit] brought a lot of sweets for us to try… Miss Australia [Courtney Thorpe] was probably my best friend – people actually said that we look alike. It’s so funny because she’s amazing at doing make-up and I was good at doing hair so we helped each other for the final.”
On the night of the pageant, Strauss was as cool as a light breeze on a hot summer’s day.
“I was so relaxed. I had the same feeling I had on the Miss South Africa stage. I remember looking into the audience, I saw my parents there. My mom was very relaxed but my dad was so stressed…I wouldn’t say I expected to win but I was ready.”
That night, Strauss took home the Miss World crown and became the third South African to win the competition. Past winners were Durbanite Penny Coelen in 1958 and Anneline Kriel in 1974.
Strauss floated on stage, wearing a light pink off-shoulder gown. The crowd’s gaze fixed on her treasured crown, no one had even noticed her Miss South Africa sash had slipped to the bottom of her dress.
“It was a childhood dream that came true and as big an honor as it is, it is still a responsibility&#8230;But it’s also not the destination; it’s the beginning of a new journey,” she says.
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A New life
While some may think beauty pageants are merely platforms to objectify women, Strauss sees it differently.
“If you look at beauty, it fades. What we are working on is a legacy that will last beyond our lives. If you really look at what Miss World has achieved in raising millions of dollars for charities, you’ll see that we’re making a big difference in people’s lives.”
After the London win, she arrived in Johannesburg to a hero’s welcome as thousands of fans, celebrities and supporters gathered to welcome South Africa’s newest pride.
Many who followed her journey on various social media platforms felt they already knew her.
“As soon as I hit the ground in South Africa, it has been quite hectic. I expected a few people to be there but not at all as it was. They had a choir singing. One of the girls who I gave a wheelchair to during my reign as Miss South Africa was there. I’m overwhelmed by the support.”
After hours of photographs, handshakes, hugs and gifts, Strauss sat through a number of press interviews at The Maslow Hotel in Sandton.
When it came to the final interview of the day, you wouldn’t have blamed her for wanting to kick off her heels, slump on the couch and replay recorded responses from her previous interviews.
Yet, when she opened the door of her hotel-room for this interview, she showed no signs of fatigue. She shone in a short bright yellow dress, sparkling heels and the crown intact on her head. What’s her secret?
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Fan Of A Princess
“I actually do my own hair and make-up which comes in handy because I don’t always have someone. I have someone who helps with styling, Werner Wessels, and he’s been helping me [from] before I became Miss South Africa. My style is kind of the way you tell a story without people being able to speak to you. My style icon is Princess Kate Middleton,” she says.
At the end of 2015, when Strauss’ Miss World reign ends, it will be back to medical school, university lectures, late-night study sessions and patients.
“It’s part of who I am, part of what I want to be. I want to be able to practice and I also want to start a business that focuses on women’s health…I like the holistic approach to women’s health and my health because I believe that your mind and body are interlinked and connected so if you look after you mind you automatically look after your body, also vice versa.”
Before she hits the books, Strauss has an exciting year ahead traveling to 50 countries, starting with China, India and the Philippines. She will also be working on various ventures including the ‘Beauty with a purpose’ project that raises money for humanitarian projects across the world and, as stated on her blog, a biography titled Life is a Garden.
“In life, you get a lot of platforms to do good, to reach for your dreams and have a positive influence on other people’s lives as well. Whether it’s through education, being a doctor, or others have the platform of being good at sports. That way, I’ve received the platform of Miss World and I’m going to use it to do good,” says Strauss.
Diplomatic passport in hand, her heels in her bag and the crown never too far away, she is ready to make the most of all the chances life has gifted her.

184A9133

The Second Chance That Changed Her World

Michael Holding stands tall, confident and imposing as he emerges from the commentary box hidden in the grandstands above SuperSport Park, in Centurion, near Pretoria. He looks more boardroom than boundary in his black suit and red tie; he’s still fit and lithe. You could easily imagine the six-foot-two giant tearing to the wicket and sending a rocket past your nose.
This is the youthful looking 60-year-old, with his silky smooth Caribbean accent, they call Whispering Death. A dramatic epithet that stuck around a lot longer than most of the batsmen he bowled to from Lord’s to Lahore. It sprang from an observation from umpire Dickie Bird that you could never hear the light-footed Holding as he ran to the wicket.
Holding was a lethal weapon for the West Indies, once the world’s most feared team that never lost a test series, home or away, for 13 years. In his pomp, Holding was one of the fastest and meanest.
On this trip to Africa, Holding is as passionate and fiery as ever as he holds forth from the commentary box. Sadly the team he bowled for with pride is not so fiery. Holding worries the future is even grimmer.
“We had four cricket teams at the school when I played at Kingston. Now at the same school, we have one team. It’s just a senior team and you struggle to find eleven people that want to play cricket. I was asked to help out with the coaching on one occasion about five years ago. When I went and saw the guys that were turning out to practice, I was shocked.  Sometimes at practice when you expect lots of people trying to make the final eleven, we were trying to find eleven people,” he says.
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With three formats of the game; tests, one day internationals (ODIs) and twenty20s (T20s), Holding believes players are overwhelmed and overworked.
“I’ve been saying it for many many years; there is too much cricket being played. When you think of the volume of cricket each country is playing; the fact that they have got to think about rotating players, especially the fast bowlers, and picking so many different teams in so many different formats of the game, I am not too sure if the game itself is benefiting,” he says.
Many sides, without huge budgets, like the West Indies, can’t afford test cricket. Instead they focus on the lucrative shorter formats – ODIs and T20s – which are less gruelling than the five-day tests. The shift also means larger pay cheques for players.
“Test cricket is supposed to be the highest form of the game and you are not seeing that among other countries. Again you are not seeing that among countries because of the fact that there is so much cricket being played and so much time being afforded to other formats of the game instead of test cricket,” he says.
As South Africa, the best test team in the world, squares off with a former best team in the world, the view from the stands is grim. On this December day in Centurion, the stands are as empty as the practice nets were at Kingston in Jamaica.
“The mere fact that people are watching less test cricket now as before means the finances are not there for test cricket. They are certainly there for the shorter format. You see much more people turning up for the shorter games. Television companies tend to pay a lot more for the shorter format. So there is a lot more money coming in through that format,” says Holding.
“I was here for the Australia test series in South Africa. I thought it was going to be a grand series and it turned out to be a pretty good series – too short in my opinion. But I expected to see full stands; I expected the grounds to be sold out every day with the standard of cricket that was expected to be played and the standard that was played. And it wasn’t. The atmosphere was not what I expected to see.”
As a fast bowler, a Twenty20 match – which is four hours long – is too quick even for him.
“Everyone knows I am not a fan of Twenty20. They call it cricket, I don’t. That is why I just say Twenty20&#8230; I don’t blame any of the players at all for dedicating so much time to it. Cricket sportsmen do, in particular, have very short shelf lives. If someone is giving you a lot of money to do something that’s not very difficult, you’re going to take that money and make sure when you get to the age you have to retire you have a sound foundation. I don’t blame any cricketer at all for playing it. The people I blame are the administrators. They don’t play the game. Their sole job is to administer the game and look after the game and they are not doing a very good job of it,” he says.
It’s a sign of the times that many of the West Indies big hitters made themselves available only for the shorter format game against South Africa. It’s not the only time test cricket has suffered. In October, West Indies players walked out on their test series in India over a pay dispute.
“This is not the best West Indies team available, but a lot of things have passed under the bridge in regards to availability of cricketers. We hear people talk about being available for the shorter format of the game and not the longer game but that’s just the trends and the way it’s structured. [West Indies] will play a lot better at the shorter format of the game, if Chris Gayle and Darren Bravo and Kieron Pollard are available for the World Cup. Someone mentioned that they were winners of the Twenty20 World Cup not too long ago. That is a form of the game the West Indies are doing a lot better at. That’s a form of the game that the poorer countries are doing better in,” he says.
Change could be in the Caribbean breeze. The West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) led by Clive Lloyd, former captain and World Cup winner, is trying to turn cricket around, says Holding.
Holding hopes that offering salaries for the first time to first class level players will help to entice more. The large sums of money on offer from the emergence of World Series Cricket was the spur for Holding to dump a career in computer programming at university and focus on his cricket, he says.
“A lot of things need to come with that. You need proper facilities. You need to make sure kids want to play it at school. You need to make sure they are developed when they get into the first class level, otherwise you are having all mediocrity. There is no point in paying nine mediocre cricketers to play. You won’t improve the standard of cricket just by paying them. It doesn’t work that way. You need to make sure the infrastructure is there to move one level to the next to get to first class level, otherwise there is no point,” says Holding.
“I played a lot of cricket as a kid. When I was ten years old, I played my first cricket match. The structure we had in the Caribbean then, and in Jamaica in particular, was very good. You could move though into those higher levels.”
There was a time batsmen prayed not to face the fire of the West Indies. In the 21st century it is a sad fact the West Indies pray for their stars Gayle, Bravo and Pollard to deign to play.
These days, Holding lives far from cricket in Miami in South Florida. He dearly wants to see his team return to greatness. He stares longingly over the African horizon at the thought.

Whispering Death On Dying Cricket

The children from Mosupatsela Secondary School in Johannesburg appeared perplexed but transfixed on this warm summer afternoon. Before them, a tragic slice of African history from 98 years ago played out; the night their spiritual great-grandfathers perished in the freezing English Channel 6,000 miles away. These children have more democratic rights and live in a different world to the more than 600 men who died in the SS Mendi tragedy – this contrast was part of the experience.
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The play, Ukutshona ko Mendi (The Sinking Of SS Mendi), was fittingly paid for by the Goethe-Institut, the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung and the British Council, three institutes from Germany and Britain, the two states whose war drew the men of the Mendi. It is touring across South Africa. Writer, Lara Foot, tells the haunting and evocative story of the sinking of the troopship SS Mendi during the First World War.
Before dawn on the foggy morning of February 21, 1917, in the freezing English Channel, a 4,230–ton troopship, SS Mendi, was ferrying 823 men of the Fifth Battalion South African Native Labour Contingent to France. Many of the men had never seen an ocean before. Lurking in the gloom was SS Darro, an 11,484-ton ship that was speeding without signalling any warning.
With a terrifying crash, Darro, a meat ship on its way to Argentina, slammed into Mendi’s starboard, almost cutting the troopship in half.
The impact killed a large number of soldiers and terrified the rest. Legend has it that the men removed their boots and stamped a death dance on the slanting deck of Mendi, united as comrades in arms. Among them was their leader, Reverend Isaac Wauchope Dyobha. The ship took 25 minutes to sink and killed 616 men.
The brave survivors told how Dyobha rallied his men in the face of death.
“Be quiet and calm my countrymen, for what is taking place is exactly what you came to do. You are going to die, but that is what you came here for. Brothers, we are drilling the death drill I, a Xhosa, say you are my brothers. Zulus, Swazis, Pondos, Basothos, and all others, let us die like warriors. We are the sons of Africa.”
The doomed journey of the unarmed African soldiers began in Cape Town on January 16. The British asked South Africa, its colony, for troops to serve as labor battalions during the First World War. They were to dig trenches, repair roads and cut timber.
It is considered one of the greatest tragedies in South Africa’s military history. The sinking of the Mendi almost took as many lives as the Battle of Delville Wood – one of the bloodiest conflicts of the war.
In the aftermath, an inquest heard that SS Darro captain, Henry Stamp, sailed away an hour later – leaving behind men screaming for their lives in the icy water. Stamp was later found guilty and suspended for a year.
Back at the play at Mosupatsela Secondary School, Xhosa songs such as Isilo asilali emanzini (Creature doesn’t rest in water) and Yiza nabo (Bring them back) touched the heart.
Warona Seane, an award winning actor and Soweto Theatre artistic director, played the role of Noria, the grieving widow of Daniel Mafika, a Xhosa headman who drowned.
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“The British sent a black dress with a letter telling me to mourn the death of my husband. I wish they would send me another one telling me to stop. I don’t know how to stop,” says Seane on stage.
“The black nation needs healing; the souls of the deceased are restless in the far seas.”
Mandla Mbothwe, the Director and Creative Manager at Artscape says, “It is an attempt to tell the story we all never witnessed but we also try to move puzzle pieces on what could have transpired. The memory, dream and subconscious are put together to make sense of why the black men went to the war. With all their respect for the water and the sea, why did they go to the war? It was beyond them to just work for their families; they needed their land back so badly.”
The play also emphasizes the poverty and trauma for widows and children. The quest to reconnect the spirits of the deceased with their ancestral land blends with the story of the captain of the ship that rammed the men of the Mendi to their death.
It could be argued that the men of Mendi were fighting for land. They hoped their loyalty would be rewarded by land restitution.
Over a year before the war broke out, on 28 July 1914, the South African government passed the Native Land Act of 1913, to take land from black people and regulate
its acquisition.
“Awaking on Friday morning, June 20, 1913, the South African native found himself not actually a slave, but a pariah in the land of his birth,” wrote Sol Plaatje, the journalist and African National Congress (ANC) founder secretary.
The leadership of the ANC resolved on not to fight the act until after the war, and mobilized men to fight. Sadly, the men of the Mendi and thousands others paid with their lives.

Tag: February 2015

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Mosupatsela Secondary School, African history, SS Mendi tragedy, Theatre, Play, Stage, Acting, February 2015