What makes a made-in-Africa handbag desired by women around the world?
It’s the ingenuity of the designer, who works craft into commerce, and elevates an age-old street art to the realms of global fashion. Akosua Afriyie-Kumi, founder of AAKS (pronounced ‘axe’) luxury handbags in Ghana, has done just that, slowly reviving a Ghanaian craft and taking the colors of Africa to the world.
The timing couldn’t be more perfect, as African fashion, design and art are now center stage internationally.
An AAKS handbag is vibrant; its creator infuses it with hues reminiscent of the rich red earth, the sweet yellow ripeness of mangoes, or the deep greens and blues of an African coast.
Being a creative had long been a part of Afriyie-Kumi’s life in Ghana, where she was born and grew up until the age of 19.
Fashion was a logical choice for her, but it proved difficult to study it in Ghana as the country offered no formal means of education in the arts at the time.
Afriyie-Kumi chose to study in the United Kingdom (UK), where she completed her studies at Oxford Brookes University and Kingston University, graduating in 2009. By the time she was ready to return to Ghana in 2013, she had interned for luxury womenswear label Peter Pilotto and British designer Matthew Williamson.
By then, she had already been toying with the idea of creating woven bags.
“I knew that there was basket-making in Ghana. Before, I was thinking I’ll stay in the UK and do it from there, then realized it’s best if I [go back],” says Afriyie-Kumi.
“It was me really coming to Ghana and seeing baskets around, and I felt [that] nobody has reinvented this product. It was just a basket being sold by the roadside, and nobody had moved it on.
“I felt I would be the best person to do that with my fashion background, to be able to push it to another level, and make it more [about] luxury.”
Returning to Ghana to start a business wasn’t easy though: she had to travel to the north of Ghana, almost 12 hours way from her home in the south, with no guarantee the weavers would be able to bring her vision to life.
Ghana, like many other African countries, may not be vast in size but makes up for it with its multiple languages.
Twi is more widely spoken in the south of Ghana, and Frafra is its equivalent in the north, which meant conversing with the weavers was a challenge for Afriyie-Kumi. And they were also used to weaving with straw, as opposed to raffia, the core material of her handbags.
Despite the initial hurdles, Afriyie-Kumi launched her brand in 2014; the handbags are handcrafted by women from 100% local material sourced in Ghana.They are stocked in stores in the UK, United States, South Africa and Kenya. The retail price for a small AAKS bag starts at £67 ($98), and from £210 ($306) for a larger piece. Whoever said there was no money in indigenous natural fiber?

Akosua-AAKS

Bag And Forth

There is little chance Basani Magadzi will forget the smell of squalor and poverty that characterized her childhood in rural Giyani in South Africa’s Limpopo province.
Yet the air of her humble home was always redolent with the sweet scent of the citrus and lavender of her mother’s favorite fragrance, so reminiscent of childhood for Magadzi even now.
She didn’t know then she would one day take her olfactory obsession and turn it into profit.
Magadzi is the founder and owner of Baneli Perfumes in Johannesburg, far away from her village. Today, she talks about names like Richard Branson and Steve Jobs (her role models), Coco Chanel and Jo Malone (the brands she wants to compete with).
The road from Giyani to Johannesburg, from penury to perfumery, was a challenging one.
She had displayed a talent for entrepreneurship early, buying and selling sweets, which she called Funny Faces, while still in primary school. Her precociousness saw her taking on a degree in commerce specializing in banking at the University of South Africa. She then went on to work at Nedbank in Braampark, Johannesburg.
It was only a matter of time – three years – before she gave up a stable job with a regular income for the highs and lows of entrepreneurship.
“I knew I had it in me to go into business,” says Magadzi, 30 now.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-31671 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Basani-070-681x1024.jpg" alt="" width="681" height="1024" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Basani-070.jpg 681w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Basani-070-300x451.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Basani-070-600x902.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Basani-070-200x300.jpg 200w" sizes="(max-width: 681px) 100vw, 681px" />
She swapped calculators for the flacon (ornamental perfume bottle). Three years on, she believes she made the right choice.
“What’s the point of staying in a place when you know you are unhappy?” she says of her short-lived banking career.
Dipping into her R40,000 ($2,471) savings, slowly but surely, she developed her perfume business cultivating a network of suppliers and establishing a good rapport with them, whilst also getting trained and learning from them.
“I am still young and do not have much responsibility. I realized it was the right time to take the risk and venture into my passion.”
With hard work, she took her business from an informal enterprise to a large-scale manufacturer and supplier of perfumes. She makes 5,000 50ml bottles a month.
Magadzi launched Baneli Perfumes in 2013 in the backroom of a church. Her business has since grown to include orders from Namibia, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Opportunities came in the least likely places.
“When I visited the DRC, I bumped into a woman who operates a number of businesses. She smelled a perfume I was wearing and asked where I had bought [it from]. I told her I made the perfume and she said she would want to order [them] from me,” she says.
Magadzi says selling perfumes is more than a business for her, it’s her life.
“If someone takes this from me I would be finished. I have turned down investors with big pay checks as I want autonomy.”
She says she also has another objective – job creation.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-31672 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Basani-012-681x1024.jpg" alt="" width="681" height="1024" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Basani-012.jpg 681w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Basani-012-300x451.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Basani-012-600x902.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Basani-012-200x300.jpg 200w" sizes="(max-width: 681px) 100vw, 681px" />
“I also see this business as a vehicle for empowering people. If I open shops, I fear this will take agents out of business. I feel like it’s part of my calling to empower people.”
Magadzi considers herself a protégé of leading business icons.
“I like reading articles and books by Richard Branson and the late Steve Jobs. I am positive that with the knowledge I am gaining, by 2035, Baneli Perfumes will be a household perfume [for] 90 per cent of Africans.”
She also has big plans for the short-term.
“By December 2017, the business will be valued beyond one million rand as I intend to migrate from manual production into a highly-mechanized platform.”
Whatever she does, she says she will never be a salaried employee again because she believes the workplace limits creativity.
She is also now focused on broadening her understanding of perfumes.
“I have always loved perfumes because it stays in one’s memory forever,” says Magadzi. Just like the citrus and lavender of her mother’s scents that set off all the right notes of success.

Basani-042

Scents And Sensibility

On a regular school night in Pennsylvania, United States (US), Elizabeth Akua-Nyarko Patterson set out to attend a friend’s birthday party with six other students.
Chauffeured by their high school teacher, she bantered and laughed with them unaware her life as she knew it was about to change forever.
The van met with an accident, flipping over several times. By the time it landed on its head, everybody except Patterson had been hurled out on to the street. They were luckier.
Patterson was trapped under the weight of the van, waist down.
Only 18 years old at the time, she suffered severe brain injury and for the best part of the ensuing year, had her “skull removed and placed in a fridge due to the consistent swelling” in her brain. She underwent seven head surgeries, suffered a stroke and walks with a limp. Yet, despite three years of relentless hospital visits, unfathomable trauma and the most trying circumstances, Patterson managed to pass high school, and successfully.
What motivated her to complete it, when most people would have given up any shred of hope?
“Because that is the reason we left Ghana for the US,” says Patterson.
Born in Kumasi, the cultural epicenter of Ghana, Patterson’s upper middle class parents, both of whom were bankers, did everything possible to provide the best for her and her sister.
In 1995, when her mother won the US visa lottery, a big deal in Ghana, they left everything they had worked for behind in their country in search of a better education for their daughters.
When Patterson was 10, her parents enrolled her in private school in the US, whilst the family of four shared a room in the basement of a friend’s home.
From being an outstanding student taking up to six classes, after the unfortunate mishap, Patterson had to now cope with special tutors and deploy a tape recorder for her studies. She had to request extended time to complete her exams, in seclusion, away from her classmates.
“My confidence was affected along with my sense of self and I kept asking myself ‘do I belong here’? But whenever I get those doubts, the grades come, I get an A and it validates everything and I say ‘ok let’s keep going’,” recalls Patterson.
She eventually overcame these challenges – she didn’t allow herself to have a choice – and enrolled for college in New York where she finished in three years – as opposed to the standard four years – a Bachelor of Arts in political science and business management.
After working for a short period as a teacher, both in Ghana and New York, Patterson could not cope with the physical demands of the job on account of her condition, so had to stall that career. She returned to what she loved most – studying further, obtaining a master’s degree in public administration.
As a child, she had wanted to be like her idol Barbara Walters, the American broadcast journalist, author and TV personality. However, a thesis she did on education reform policies in Ghana, during her first degree, led her down a different path.
It was only natural she felt deep empathy for children who couldn’t cope in school.
“There was a student who was struggling in school when I was teaching in Ghana, but her parents thought she was possessed by the devil and proceeded to take her to church to cast out the devil in her,” says Patterson.
She decided to take control of the situation and gave the student one-on-one tutoring for a month. The young girl’s grades improved dramatically. Patterson also attended a conference on girls’ education in South Africa (SA) as part of her research. While in SA, she realized girls with learning disabilities were discriminated against and not getting access to the best education in the country.
Patterson’s epiphany led to the Girls Education Initiative Of Ghana (GEIG) that she founded in Ghana with a mission to provide academic support for girls with special needs so they accessed higher education and benefitted from better professional opportunities. In just over a year and a half since inception, her organization supported 13 girls in the greater Accra and Ashanti regions by providing 90-100% academic scholarships with support all year round.
After overcoming the initial challenge of bureaucracy to set up GEIG, fundraising is a hurdle the organization is still battling with. Most of its start-up capital was raised predominantly through Patterson’s personal savings and support from friends and family abroad.
She is determined to keep pushing for the cause no matter the roadblocks.
At Ghana’s prestigious Vlisco Women’s Month Awards, which celebrate exceptional women in Africa, Patterson was crowned winner last year (below). She strongly believes Africa needs to develop its youth.
“I believe that right now, about 40 per cent of the African population is the youth between 18 and 35. We are vibrant, we are entrepreneurial and I believe we need to harness that to help the youth of Africa and Ghana advance.”
The youth in her country only need turn to Patterson for advice – and inspiration.

Robert-Bernstein

From Trauma To Triumph

We arrive at the studios of Ashes To Ashes around lunchtime; the busy set of one of Africa’s popular soap operas is quieter than expected. We are told to wait for Nambitha Mpumlwana, South Africa’s award-winning actress, as she is applying make-up; 15 minutes and we’re ushered in.
The woman herself is in black tights and a matching flowing chiffon blouse with slippers like she is watching TV instead of appearing on it.
This set is indeed a home from home for Mpumlwana, who spends most of her life here portraying the owner of a funeral parlor and the matriarch of the Namanes, the family around which this TV drama revolves. She offers a tour; every inch means a lot to her.
We make our way to her comfortable dressing room. She points to a wall full of notes.
“This is very important to me. I put up my schedule for month, week and day so that I know what I’m doing. I also put up directors’ notes,” she says.
I am curious about why this dressing room is so important to her. She alludes to her difficult past when black leads were few.
“For Nambitha to say where is my dressing room? They had to say how badly do we want her? Then somebody said, you want her? Build her a dressing room. However, if I was a white lead, I would not have to have that conversation, because it’s expected that I would want my privacy,” she says.
This was one of the many skirmishes when she arrived home from Canada and a lifetime of political exile. Mpumlwana was in politics by the age of 12 and in exile, in Lesotho, at 13.
“Somebody decided I should go to Lesotho. It was the most traumatic time of life. For the first time in my life, I discovered that there are black people who don’t speak Xhosa and I discovered that there was a language called Sesotho. I was shocked,” she says.
<div id="attachment_31652" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31652" class="wp-image-31652 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Nambitha-049-1024x681.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="681" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Nambitha-049.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Nambitha-049-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Nambitha-049-600x399.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Nambitha-049-768x511.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Mpumlwana on the sets of Ashes to Ashes in Johannesburg</div>
“I am in boarding school and I learned Sesotho within a few months; I’m 13 years old and I’m trying to figure out everything. Easter holidays people go home and I didn’t have anywhere else to go and that was it. I’m in exile and didn’t know what that meant until I had nowhere else to go.”
At the age of 15, she flew to Canada to live with a mother she didn’t know.
“I’ve never lived with her before, I’ve met her a few times,” she says with a deep belly laugh.
“I am 15 now, she’s going to live with a teenager she doesn’t know?&#8230;I was the elder child living with the siblings that I had never lived with and didn’t know, with a mother I wasn’t familiar with, she wasn’t a very available parent especially to a teenager, it’s a recipe for disaster.”
Her mother was a full-time psychology student who worked full-time. Mpumlwana was in high school and working.
“I started working by the time I was 16 years and haven’t stopped since. I was working as a babysitter to put food on the table. I don’t think there was ever a time when I knew that I could do this professionally. I think when I saw my first play I was four years old and I noticed the power of the stage and what they were communicating and how they made me feel sitting in the audience.”
“I remember getting up on stage in King Williams Town when I was about 10 or 12, somebody was supposed to perform but they didn’t pitch and somebody said well she can sing and they got me on stage to sing. As soon as I started performing, they were still, when I became aware of that I froze and I forgot the rest of the song. I flew off the stage,” she says through a chuckle.
She never stopped entertaining, from Ndlamo (Zulu) dancing in the streets of King Williams Town to marching with drum majorettes. Another watershed moment came in exile, in 1985, when she visited Moscow and saw jazz musician Jonas Gwangwa’s Amandla – the globe-trotting anti-apartheid musical.
“I saw the way they transformed on stage, I saw the magic.”
Mpumlwana wanted to run away to join the show, but instead started a dance school in Canada. Her career took off when she returned to South Africa in the first flush of democracy, in 1994, to take a job as a TV presenter.
“I got advice that if you want the audience to know you, you have to be on television, that’s how South African audiences work, they don’t go to theatre, they don’t read reviews. So I took a job as a continuity presenter on SABC3…before I worked at television, they didn’t look at my resume, which was really strange.”
It wasn’t easy, but it worked. Mpumlwana has played numerous lead roles on television over the years: Justice for All, Saints, Sinners and Settlers, and award-winning Yizo Yizo and 7de Laan. Her role as Pearl Luthuli in The Lab won her Best Actress at the SAFTAs in 2007. For years, she played Mawande, a hardcore business woman in South Africa’s longest-running soap opera Generations; this despite a vow never to act in soap operas.
“I turned Generations down about five times then I said ‘okay God, what are you trying to say to me?’
I only turn down roles if I feel that the story is not genuine, I don’t expect everything to be in perfect condition but I expect growth where I go.”
On the big screen, she acted in the Oscar-winning film Tsotsi and alongside Hilary Swank and Chiwetel Ejiofor in the award-winning Red Dust – a South African tale of the healing of its painful past.
“I remember being on a set and doing a read-through and Hilary Swank walked in and said, ‘hi I’m Hilary, I’m so sorry, I’m running late’. It was about…I acknowledge who I am, I’m not going to impose who I am on you. There’s a very big difference between the two. You are my colleague and that’s all there is to it.”
She danced with Mandela, played by Morgan Freeman, in the film Invictus, which also starred Matt Damon. Then with Angelina Jolie in Beyond Borders. The latter film taught Mpumlwana to stand up for her rights. The story goes she had left her son behind for the shoot, only to find a fellow actress had been allowed to bring hers.
She plucked up courage and asked her producer for equal treatment. The producer agreed, then a family tragedy struck.
“Half-way through [the shoot], my father was quite ill and he passed away. When I went to bury my father in Port Elizabeth, they flew me down, rented me a car, looked after me basically from beginning to end. When I flew back, they flew my son back with me, and when I came back, they had hired a nanny who was going to educate him during the day. My trailer had all the amenities we needed and he had a home…I came back, then I was a problem, again, because I said ‘wait a minute’; I wasn’t wrong.”
<div id="attachment_31650" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31650" class="wp-image-31650 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Nambitha-135-1024x681.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="681" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Nambitha-135.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Nambitha-135-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Nambitha-135-600x399.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Nambitha-135-768x511.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Mpumlwana on the sets of Ashes to Ashes in Johannesburg</div>
A problem was how she was often seen. Mpumlwana fought for make-up on set to suit black skin. She clashed with directors when she questioned why they insisted black actors put energy in their lines yet not ask the same of white actors.
Mpumlwana also refused lines she felt weren’t realistic.
“People have gone around calling me diva and prima donna. Then I say… you do know that the prima donna is the first lady, don’t you? You know that diva is a woman of destiny? So thank you.”
“Then I embrace that, I teach that, and this platform gives spread, more ears to reach and more hearts to reach, more souls to free, it might be stifling in some way but I think I’m preaching the gospel of significance, so I don’t regret it.”
Diva or prima donna, clearly one of the few to see life beyond the greasepaint.

Nambitha-199

The Struggles Of A Screen Queen

Do you want to be an employer or do you want to be an employee?” Fifteen words that changed Ipeleng Mkhari’s life.
We meet Mkhari, one of the founders and CEO of Motseng Investment Holdings, at her offices in Sandton, Johannesburg. She walks in and fills the room. Mkhari has bravura, elegance and a firm handshake.
Born in Umlazi, KwaZulu-Natal, along the east coast of South Africa, Mkhari completed her studies in Industrial Psychology and Sociology at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in 1996.
She had a good start in life; her mother was a doctor, her father an attorney. In 1986, her parents divorced. Mkhari describes it as a tragic and painful time.
At the end of 1996, her mother died.
“It was the darkest moment in my life, losing everything at that time was extremely hard for me and my siblings,” says Mkhari.
In the holidays, Mkhari worked for Eskom’s marketing department at its headquarters in Megawatt Park just down the road from where she now works. This gave her a taste of the world of business.
Fresh out of university, she landed a job as marketing director at Phosa Iso CCTV &#8211; an electronic security system company.
“When I met the owners of the company, the power question the gentleman asked me was ‘Do you want to be an employer or do you want to be an employee?’ I said I want to be an employer,” she recalls.
“It was a great experience for me; I didn’t know anything about electronic security. I became a black economic empowerment partner, because the business needed to transform but white businesses were not prepared to sell equity for their businesses to transform but created joint ventures outside the businesses to see how it works.”
A year later, seeing a gap in the market for black businesses, she started her own CCTV business.
In September 1998, she teamed up with former schoolmate and friend, Sandile Nomvete, to found Motseng Investment Holdings that proved to be her fortune.
The 41-year-old has been through some pretty tough times.
“When I got a CCTV contract with Kunene Brothers and with no money to buy equipment, I had to get bridging finance. I approached one of the banks and said ‘Here I am, with a business plan and a contract.’ The contract was what secured the finance. I had to pay the money back within a month, I had made sure that I delivered on time and installed on time with no snags.”
“As an entrepreneur you have to remember there is no success without struggle.”
At 23, Mkhari attended meetings where she was the only black woman, but took it head on.
According to Mkhari, it takes a special breed of human being to be an entrepreneur.
“In business you lose, you win, but you lose more than you win, but you’re satisfied with that because you’re learning.”
The self-made millionaire believes it’s important to heed these lessons of failure.
“Success is a terrible teacher,” she says, quoting Bill Gate’s powerful words.
Her biggest inspiration was her parents and two late grandmothers.
Today, she owns 70% of the shares in a solely black-owned property management company that has operational expertise.
Mkhari believes in grooming up-and-coming women entrepreneurs.
“I am passionate about women in business, I strive to see them grow and shine in the industry.”
She highlights the importance of affirmation.
“Affirmation and confidence are two peas in a pod. If you are an affirmed individual, by those who loves you, it boosts your confidence and tells you that you are good at something. One of the most fundamental ingredients in life is confidence. When I started my business I was confident enough to walk into scary situations, but I would open my mouth, set about presenting the story of my life and why I needed their business. No schooling system can teach you that but you need that affirmation at home, from people who believe in you.”
She has been an entrepreneur for two decades and won accolades: Cosmopolitan’s Mover of the Year Award in 2006; CEO Magazine’s Most Influential Women in Business in 2008; and FORBES WOMAN AFRICA’s Pioneer Woman of the Year Award in 2015.
Mkhari has seen a transformation in entrepreneurship in the last decade.
“Today, the narrative and support for women in business is massive.”
Things weren’t easy in the last two years.
“The person I have started business with, we decided to part ways. The biggest challenge has been actually making sure that the business continues to be sustainable.” Mkhari’s advice to aspiring entrepreneurs?
“Change your entire lifestyle, be prepared to roll up your sleeves, walk past that handbag.”
“I get people who say they want to be like me, but you weren’t there when I had no money, when I couldn’t replace my car tyres because they were so flat. You don’t know that story. What you see on magazines is the end of 17 years,” says Mkhari.
She is not just a hardcore businesswoman, but wife to entrepreneur Given Mkhari and mother to four daughters.
From the only black woman in boardrooms, to fixing flat tyres, Mkhari has come a long way. She is the kind of person who makes you wonder where she’ll go next.

Ipeleng-025

‘Roll Up  Your Sleeves, Walk Past That Handbag’

There is not much to do in the quiet village of Simon’s Town, Cape Town, best known as where South Africa’s naval fleet lies. It is the sort of home where you go fishing, walking on the beach, or else watching the penguins waddle onshore. It’s the sort of place where a news headline is a handful of break-ins over Christmas.
That’s just the way journalist Claire Robertson, 2014 Sunday Times Fiction Prize and a South African Literary Award author of The Spiral House and The Magistrate of Gower, likes it.
“It feels like you are hiding away from life here, but then you write a book and you get dragged back into life,” she says.
“It shocked me rigid with all the attention&#8230; I thought I am not selling my writing to anyone anymore. I am writing for myself. I started doing that in my journalism, instead of writing the news story.
“A news story is Nelson Mandela made his long-awaited return to Robben Island yesterday, this time surrounded by a company of international news media. The real story is we trailed him around the island, and when we got to the quarry that had damaged his eyesight, where he worked for so many years breaking stones and the reporters yelled out ‘dance for us’. You saw him sigh and sink slightly and then he started his shuffle into this expected shosholoza dance. That is actually what happened. When you get old enough you start writing it.”
<div id="attachment_31636" style="width: 693px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31636" class="wp-image-31636 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/IMG_5522-683x1024.jpg" alt="" width="683" height="1024" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_5522.jpg 683w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_5522-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_5522-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_5522-200x300.jpg 200w" sizes="(max-width: 683px) 100vw, 683px" />Claire and her chair</div>
Meeting Robertson at her home, on the slopes of Jackson Road, is a real treat. We sit under the shade of a grape vine with sunbirds flitting through the leaves to the sounds of dustbin men at work.
For the 54-year-old, standing at the edge of the gentle lapping shoreline of Waters Edge Beach, a few hundred meters downhill from here, was the defining moment that led her to abandon the stressful urban streets of Melville, Johannesburg, five years ago.
“[Melville] was getting tough to go walk around at any time of the day or night, which is what I like to do. It was getting less and less safe. You know that feeling when your freedom is being curtailed in South Africa. Certainly everyone has a bloody minded moment and you can’t bear being hemmed in. I thought I wanted to find a place that I can walk at any time of the day, and it was here.”
The quiet life here is a world away from the height of Robertson’s career as a hard news political journalist in the 1980s.
“To be a reporter during the height of the dying days of apartheid in South Africa was the greatest privilege in my personal profession. There was nothing like it. Every story mattered,” she says.
Some stories where harder to write than others, one of them being the reclassification of races which under The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act and the Immorality Act, had denied families living together.
“Already as a young person you are trembling at the injustices of the world. Meanwhile you are working in a society where this is just being thrown at you all the time. Following that through to watching a country talk about how it is going to shape itself,” she says.
“Then you are reporting something like the Dutch Reformed Church not allowing black people to join in a service. They would open the [priest’s] garage for the services and shove the old tyres aside as a Christian duty.”
Other stories send a chill down Robertson’s spine on this hot Simon’s Town morning.
“I remember meeting with the commandant in the Pretoria Central prison and hearing this unearthly singing. And he said ‘oh, that it was condemned men singing on the night before they are due to be hanged’. I remember shaking.”
Robertson lived the reshaping of South Africa; she cradled her firstborn daughter the day Nelson Mandela walked out of prison; she also covered the negotiations at Kempton Park which led to South Africa’s Constitution.
These days, it’s the calm of Simon’s Town. Robertson, the novelist, has just come back from a walk on the beach with her Scottish terrier, Henry, and a family breakfast. Her mind is more focused on her third book. The Magistrate of Gower (2015) – a prisoner of war in the South African War, disgraced in an illicit affair, who is now forced to confront his past as a magistrate 30 years later – is sold out and is now in its second edition.
“It’s about the rise of nationalism and what is the response when you see it rearing its head again. It’s very seductive. It takes the good that people have, in this instance the noble suffering during the Boer War and heroes of the Great Trek, it takes part of that and twists it into something else, which is what happened in Afrikaner Nationalism.”
It is rare to find an award-winning author who doesn’t punt their novel with pride. But Robertson’s pride is a small wooden chair in her lounge, finished by her own hand.
“It’’s quite comfortable actually and it’s made from some very cheap wood. I wanted to test out the design before I made one from oak. I am quite happy to say that no one has broken it yet either.”
She points to a wall of saws and power tools, glinting in the skylight, where the chair, two book shelves and a wardrobe were crafted by her from lumps of wood; a hobby she picked up at her parents’ knee.
Included in this home of self-made furniture is a portable writing board; filled with scribbles and doodles, one reading ‘push towards the problem’, and a sticker of a porcupine.
“It’s something prickly, that’s low slung who is just determinately going about on his way.”
Only a journalist would feel the need to say they write their stories longhand, like it’s a bad habit picked up after years of writing shorthand.
“I get lovely notebooks and sit down and write it in longhand. If you start by typing it out you are going to keep correcting yourself, you lose all your momentum and you have no record of your ideas. Things have to be aesthetically pleasing.”
“What I do is start with an idea. With The Spiral House, what was it like on a South Africa slave plantation when these two ideas of science and enlightenment are clashing. It was told through a French naturalist in my head, but what it became was a young female freed slave, whose voice spoke out.”
Robertson has always gone for the road less traveled. She was one of the first South Africans to go to Soviet Russia on a South African passport in 1988. The trip came after one of Robertson’s stories published in The Washington Post. She asked American teenagers what they thought Russia looked like, and Russian teens, in Moscow, what they thought America looked like. The newspaper liked the story so much they nominated it for a Pulitzer.
“You could see the world was changing. You could see that the ANC was starting to talk to people in South Africa. We thought lets just try it.”
“One thing that stuck, was in Leningrad, on one of the big roads, there was a department store. There in this glass case, enfolded in red satin, was a single disposible razor. It loooked like it had been carved out of a lump of Bakelite.
<div id="attachment_31637" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31637" class="wp-image-31637 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/IMG_5547-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="683" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_5547.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_5547-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_5547-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_5547-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />&#8221;it shocked me rigid with all the attention&#8230; I thought I am not selling my writing to anyone anymore. I am writing for myself&#8221;</div>
“They could build space rockets, and amazing awful armaments, but they could not bring a milk Glut and the cereal Glut to the market at the same time. Everything was just screwed up. It was that kind of economy. People wanted consumerist stuff so badly they would spend a fortune on American jeans and sneakers.”
Her journey through the Siberian tundra also foreshadowed where she would end up.
“I found recently an old diary from the late 80s. I said what do I want to do? I want to live by the sea, sub-edit and then write. I had completely forgotten about that. Having got down, unpacked my books to discover I wrote this blissful thing. Clearly I was working this through my system.”
Working on her first novel, through the night at her brother’s home overlooking the sea in Kalk Bay was also an existential moment.
“I remember the book going so well and being so wrapped up in the book. It was suddenly four in the morning. I was working furiously away at my laptop and I heard this guguguggugug, it was the fishing boats heading out before dawn. When you have made a big change in life, and things are uncertain, and you don’t know how things go, it feels like you are getting some form of confirmation. If you are working and the fishermen are working.”
It has been a long journey to a favorite chair in Simon’s Town, from the raging streets of Africa, to walking with Mandela, to a razor in Leningrad.

IMG_5560

Claire And Her Chair

How words can hurt.
Four years into her graduate course studying property law at Kingston University London, Cheryl Ankrah-Newton was tritely told, to her utter dismay, that she may have to give up her dream.
“I am not sure this is the route for you,” said her personal tutor at their final career-planning meeting.
“It is not the type of industry that is suited to a woman.”
The lecturer’s words, though hurtful, were not entirely misplaced. Ankrah-Newton was one of only five females in a class of over 100.
Fast forward a few years, and Ankrah-Newton is glad those words didn’t dissuade her from her chosen path.
She now owns a property consulting firm and has played a role in recognizing the importance of – and helping bring – big brands, like international clothing giant ZARA, to South Africa.
“I was quite naïve in the beginning. I did not realize the challenges that come with this industry is that it is a very male-dominated industry, especially a white male-dominated industry,” says Ankrah-Newton. There was no way she was going to give up.
The eldest of three children, she had to set an example for her siblings. Born in Britain to a mother of East Indian heritage from Trinidad and Tobago, and a father from Ghana, Ankrah-Newton spent 10 of her formative years in Trinidad and Tobago and visited Ghana at least twice a year from the age of 16.
Africa was always on her mind – even though she says in passing she was once crowned Miss Trinidad and Tobago.
Her parents told her no matter what she chose to do, she must do it to the best of her ability.
“My uncle was the one who gave me the advice to be a surveyor. So I looked at the top schools for property law. Kingston was number one for surveying and they also had a decent law school. So I thought that if I go there and do surveying and I don’t like it, after a year I will just switch to law.”
Ankrah-Newton enjoyed the course so much she decided to do it full justice. She studied management, tenant law, land law, investment and development. She landed her first internship with Jones Lang LaSalle, a leading commercial real estate development and investment services company.
“I went in very fearful because of what the lecturer had said to me, but when they hired me it gave me confidence because everyone wanted to work for them. It was an amazing experience because it made me realize that the property industry could be fun.”
But Ankrah-Newton’s lecturer was right; the industry was patriarchal. She secured her next position with Land Securities, Britain’s largest commercial property company, to help develop one of Britain’s largest shopping malls.
“The funny thing was the tutor who told me I couldn’t do it, taught me shopping center development but had never worked for such a prestigious company,” says Ankrah-Newton.
She also soon gained experience at another top real estate firm, Hammerson, before deciding to shake things up. She had an interest in retail development, where she developed a passion for being creative, and yearned to be part of something bigger.
“Even though I had worked with such prestigious organizations, I could not really say I built this building in Birmingham, because I was really a small part in such a big engine,” she says.
Her husband, who at the time was moving to South Africa for his new role with Google, helped her decide on making the move to Africa. She took this as an opportunity to explore her entrepreneurial side. She had realized she had it in her when organizing events in Britain to earn extra money.
It led to her starting her own property consultancy firm, Illuminate Africa Group.
“Consumers are still not given enough choice when in Africa. I believed we needed an infusion of some competition and the best way to do that was to bring some international brands into the mix because the African consumer is ready for change and diversity,” she says.
Although South Africa has a market for luxury retail, she says it lacks properties to house formal retail trade. She believes international brands will no doubt provide more choice for high-end shoppers, but she also understands the limitations of this model.
“You will still get the ones who will fly off to London to shop and unfortunately we won’t be able to bring those shops here yet, but there is scope to bring the big international brands, once we get the basics right.”
And where better to build on this hope than in Sandton, Africa’s richest square mile?
Ankrah-Newton currently works with Liberty, the owners of Sandton City, one of the largest shopping centers in sub-Saharan Africa. She was also a part of the mall’s Diamond Walk project, featuring exclusive, high-end stores.
Ankrah-Newton is determined to claim her rightful position in an industry she was told she did not belong in.

Cheryl-etch

All Things Big  And Mall

Thousands walked along the rain-soaked road. Their faces covered in dirt, some in blood. Their eyes cried for safety. Thousands more added to the 1.6 million of displaced people in South Sudan – desperately fleeing some of the worst violence in Africa’s newest nation.
In December 2013, South Sudan’s then vice president, Riek Machar, fled to the bush amid accusations from President Salva Kiir of trying to stage a coup. The truth of what actually happened is still unclear.
Nevertheless, Machar did not go alone. An experienced military leader, he took with him an army of rebels.  An inter-tribal civil war has ravaged the newly-formed country ever since.
South Sudan is one of the world’s least developed countries; born out of Africa’s longest running civil war. In 2005, a peace deal ended the war and six years later, the country gained independence. The oil-rich region of Unity State saw a lot of commercial investment during this time and offered the country hope of prosperity. At the outbreak of war, this area would become a fiercely contested prize.
Six months into the conflict, I investigated what was happening in the region, the extent of the conflict, and whether it was safe for aid workers to carry out their vital work.
North of Bentiu, the capital of Unity State, government forces positioned themselves to retaliate against the rebel soldiers who had occupied a small village for the previous three days. Locals had spent 72 hours living in a shared nightmare. Machar’s rebels arrived under the cover of darkness, announcing their presence with automatic gunfire aimed indiscriminately at men, women and children.
Nothing remains more vivid in my mind, from my time investigating the conflict, than hearing the horror of the survivors describing the violence. They claimed that children had been raped and hanged. Entire families were burned alive in their thatched huts. Only a handful managed to escape the massacre.
The recapture of the village did not end the horror for the survivors. Those who could not flee would be victims to the next group of occupying war fighters.
It was a story shared by civilians throughout South Sudan. The United Nations has accused both sides of ethnic cleansing and widespread forced displacement. Looting, sexual assault and torture was also said to be rampant.
The use of child soldiers has been widespread. Often as young as 10, these children are used for frontline and support roles, sometimes for sexual purposes. Unicef estimates 12,000 children are currently being used by the armed forces and are “increasingly vulnerable to violence and to sexual abuse and exploitation”.
Nearly two years later, more than 2.2 million people have fled their homes. The conflict has affected neighbors on all sides, with refugees seeking a safer and better quality of life. Multiple peace treaties have been broken by Machar and Kiir. A country which has so much to offer, culturally and commercially, is slipping ever further into chaos.
With the latest accusations of both sides breaking the August 2015 peace treaty, it’s yet to be seen what the future holds for South Sudan. Hopefully there will be a mutual commitment to peace so the millions of displaced people can finally return to their homes.
&#8211; Daniel Wheeler

Haunting Memories Of A Massacre

As Tokyo Sexwale jets around the world seeking support for his bid to become Fifa president, his most significant trip will have been to the US grand jury in December.
A fleeting visit to New York remains shrouded in mystery with the US Attorney General’s offices refusing to comment and Sexwale’s camp saying only: “He did appear before a grand jury. The FBI said he needed to appear and he went as a potential witness.”
But it is almost certainly related to the bribery and corruption allegations in which South African officials are accused and, even if he is not directly implicated, will cast a dark shadow over Sexwale’s bid to become the first African to head world football’s governing body.
The election of a new leader of world football will come at an extraordinary congress in Zurich on February 26 with Sexwale among the five candidates in a distinctly underwhelming field with no clear favorite and the potential for an upset.
Sexwale could have offered a gravitas missing among the candidates, with his impeccable anti-apartheid credentials, his time spent in prison on Robben Island alongside Nelson Mandela and his role in the governing of a post-apartheid South Africa when he served as the first premier of the Gauteng province.
But, as a member of the South African bid committee that successfully campaigned for the country to host the 2010 World Cup, his candidacy is now clouded by the possibility of vote buying, notably to Jack Warner from Trinidad and Tobago, the former Fifa vice president and powerful leader of the Caribbean bloc who delivered vital support.
Two high ranking South Africans have been fingered in the United States (US) indictment against a bevy of former Fifa officials, with allegations they handed over a suitcase of cash dollars in a Paris hotel room to one of Warner’s sons and that a $10-million ‘donation’ from South Africa to Caribbean football was nothing more than a bribe.
The pair have not been named but their identities will eventually become public once the court cases in the US get underway.
It leaves Sexwale out on the fringes of the race when he might have been able to offer himself as an alternative to what looks increasingly like a straight tussle between the Asian and European blocs.
Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim al-Khalifa of Bahrain is the president of the Asian Football Confederation and, according to most pundits, the frontrunner, albeit narrowly ahead of Gianni Infantino, the Swiss attorney who is the Uefa general secretary and was supposed to be a proxy candidate but has since been pushed to the front since the banning of Uefa president Michel Platini.
Sexwale, who has made a large personal fortune in mining and other business, has tenuous football credentials and no apparent reason for wanting to become Fifa president other than it would be a good lark. The 62-year-old does not lack money, profile or international reputation.
His previous involvement with football has been to sit on a few Fifa committees at the invitation of Sepp Blatter, who was impressed by his jocularity and competence at the time of South Africa’s hosting of the World Cup. Sexwale was initially a member on Fifa’s anti-racism committee, then one that dealt with media matters and now serves as a mediator in fractious relationship between Israeli and Palestinian football.
Sexwale has had no involvement in South African football and, unlike many of his former cabinet colleagues, is rarely seen at games either. The name ‘Tokyo’ comes from a nickname given to him as a kid for his passion for karate, rather than the round ball game, when he was growing up. He was baptized Mosima Gabriel.
His manifesto did him no favors either, with its strongest point being a bizarre promise to allow national teams to display sponsorship on their jerseys so football associations could make more money.
At a time when greater issues have to be dealt with at Fifa, and the world of football is crying out for someone to offer a road map to a credible and clean future, Sexwale’s points seemed disappointingly trivial.
In December, at a rare forum in front of the press, his strongest argument for being president was his Africaness.
“The score is 111 to zero against Africa. For 111 years, Fifa has not had an African,” he said in Johannesburg. “I’m not here to keep quiet like a slave and pretend that these things are not happening.”
This will likely have little appeal in the hardened forum of sports politics, where arguments over race and religion have long since dissolved, with Africans having headed both world athletics and swimming in the past.
In the insular world of football politics, Sexwale is an outsider and his bid to get an endorsement from his own continent failed when the Confederation of African Football received him in Cairo in November and listened to his presentation but pointedly did not move to back him, even though he is the only African in the race.
Sexwale has missed a trick in failing to concentrate his message on ways to fix the crisis at Fifa – to change its statutes and structures and to devise methods for accountability that would help restore commercial and consumer confidence.
In the past, candidates for the Fifa presidency have made the mainstay of their electoral promise how much more money they could assure the voting member associations but, at this time, priorities are much changed.
Sexwale flashes a radiant smile; his barrel-chested voice commands instant attention and his charm is legendary. But he entered the race for the Fifa presidency with naivety, poor advice and, barring a comeback miracle, will exit with little more than a damaged reputation.

‘For 111 Years Fifa Has Not Had An African’

South Africa needs a solid plan to deal with the more than $245 billion of backlogged infrastructure that is curbing industrial growth and social development.
A toxic cocktail of events and cruel circumstances continues to damage a hitherto world class industry that is vital for any planned economic revival.
The construction industry is suffering like never before. It is still shrinking from its 2008/9 peak, shedding several hundred thousand jobs, margins plunging to around 2% and little sign of relief.
The reality is that, despite political hot air, very little of the backlog of crucial infrastructure, needed to attract foreign and domestic industrial development, is being dealt with. As inaction continues, the capacity to deliver this crucial infrastructure is being destroyed, potentially leaving South Africa at the mercy of foreign influence.
The political influence that black business has in demanding an end to perceived white dominance of the sector, as well as the ratcheting of transformation demands and targets for black empowerment and black industrialization, drives a relentless, but necessary, agenda at a difficult time of negative growth.
In addition, many of the local construction groups have suffered reputational damage and have been heavily financially penalized by government for reported competition infringements.
The industry has suffered massive losses on major projects in South Africa, Africa and Australia, many of which are public sector projects which were poorly engineered and badly managed by both government and contractor.
Share prices have plummeted in recent years and skilled people have been eagerly sucked up by banks, consulting firms, mining and industrial companies.
The public view is negative, and notwithstanding the understandable loss of trust, the government has paid little attention to the damage to the South African economic revival that we all hope for.
The localization of the nuclear program and the infrastructure embedded in the National Development Plan are wishful thinking.
There is a new group of transformational CEOs appointed into many of the large construction groups. We realized a massive wake-up was required. The old guard had gone and we had to deal with the fallout and culture change required to root out historic anti-competitive behaviors and racist tendencies. We found we were not close enough to government and black business and we were not listening to the messages nor understood the outrage directed at the industry.
A few of us traveled a lonely journey trying to facilitate a new beginning and open dialogue between a diverse and relatively untransformed industry peer group leadership and the fragmented approach from four ministries that purported to have control or influence over the industry.
It was not until the chasm between traditional business and government claimed its first victims, through the heavy fines imposed by the Competition Commission and the threat of further action, that the attitudes of some of the diehard leadership among the peer group changed.
They had finally realized it could not be business as usual. Their anger was misplaced. Government and black business action was not about a perceived vendetta, it was fueled by the perceived exclusion of black business and broken trust in the construction leadership’s apparent lack of commitment to transformation and clean business.
After five years, the unproven remnants of the competition matter remains disputed. The Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB), the industry’s regulatory body, continues to threaten to impose blacklisting sanctions and state-owned corporations charged with implementing the major infrastructure works remain short of capacity and technical skills to be able to manage the projected infrastructure projects worth R4 trillion ($245 billion).
Yet the economy is screaming for the infrastructure to be built to attract regional and international trade and investment.
Construction leaders have fast tracked the inclusion of black business interests, cleaned house and retained capacity at great cost to support the national infrastructure agenda. Yet government remains distant and unengaged, while some black business structures continue to bark demands with self interest in mind.
It is suspected that tenders for much needed infrastructure are being withheld pending a resolution of the trust and empowerment issues. It also appears that cabinet is unsure of which politically acceptable route to follow. This is very worrying and is preventing the country’s progress.

Inaction And Ineptitude

Private equity firms are becoming increasingly important in investing in thriving businesses and contributing to the development of African consumer markets. Numerous industry analysts are predicting that 2016 will see significant growth in this industry throughout sub-Saharan Africa as investors seek alternative asset classes to generate robust returns.
The private equity industry in South Africa has seen steady growth over the past decade and has attracted the cream of the crop of the banking sector, including investment bankers, merger and acquisition executives, management consultants and asset managers to name a few. Over the years, the number of these individuals who’ve elected to join private equity firms has increased. The audacious among them have opted to set up their own private equity funds to have autonomy over their investment strategies. The growing demand to recruit these executives, coupled with the increase in new private equity start-ups, indicates growth prospects for the industry at large. It also helps that the industry offers attractive remuneration packages and prestige that will elevate their career profile.
The Southern African Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (SAVCA) contends that although “&#8230;private equity is still under-represented in sub-Saharan Africa, the asset class presents an opportunity for investors to invest in a region that is experiencing strong economic growth and which is generating robust returns.” Some surveys have gone as far as predicting that around 80% of investors expect African private equity to outperform the African listed equity market in the next decade. This is a bold prediction, but one which cannot be dismissed.
Recent stats of the South African private equity industry are compelling. SAVCA reported in their latest RisCura-SAVCA South African Private Equity Performance Report that, “by mid-year 2015, the South African private equity industry delivered a ten-year internal rate of return (IRR) of 21.7%, up from 20.5% in March 2015. This performance compares with the 17.1% return from the FTSE/JSE All Share Total Return Index (ALSI) over the equivalent ten-year period.”
The reality of the matter is that the fast-growing African region presents countless opportunities for businesses and investors alike. When economies experience tangible growth they enable other industries and sectors to expand via the multiplier effect. For instance, Africa presently requires extensive investments in infrastructural development, energy, entrepreneurial support, skills development, research and development, and numerous others to drive economic growth.
Take a look at the need to improve transport infrastructure throughout Africa for instance. The construction of road networks, together with the upgrading of ports and airport facilities, will be done by engineering and construction firms. Some of these firms will be based in Africa and will require private equity partners that can provide the necessary financial and human capital support. Through this support, firms will have the backing and potential to grow exponentially.
The South African private equity market amounts to R170 billion ($10 billion) in assets under management, and although this may not typically appear large when contrasted with other asset classes, it is significant in the context of a niche asset class. SAVCA believes that the industry is maturing and this is demonstrated by the emergence of specialist private equity funds which are dedicated to focused industries or sectors depending on the scale of the fund. In addition, South African-managed funds have broadened their focus by exploring investments outside the country, indicating that the South African private equity market has developed over the years.
In the past, the private equity industry was largely concentrated in the developed markets in the United States and Europe. However, a number of emerging markets, such as South Africa, have seen significant growth over the past decade and, if future projections are anything to go by, the trend seems likely to continue.
Africa is teeming with opportunities for businesses to expand and private equity firms are the formidable partners that can bring this to fruition. Watch the space.

Watch this space

After years of sliding down the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business index, Kenya finally managed to turn things around and pull itself up to a ranking of 108 out of 189 economies. It is a rise of 28 positions from the previous year. Through wide ranging reforms, the country halted a downward trend since 2011, when it slipped to the position of 109 from 98 a year earlier, 121 in 2012 and 137 in 2013.
The latest ranking is ahead of the average sub-Saharan African ranking of 143. Much of the change is down to the government’s attitude towards economic reforms. The increased focus in the crucial areas of the access to credit; electricity; and business and property registration has yielded positive results.
For instance, the passing of legislation that allowed the sharing of both positive and negative credit information has seen the introduction of three Credit Reference Bureaus (CRBs) in the past four years. Consequently, CRB coverage of adults in the country climbed to 14%, up from 5% in 2014, a development which will simplify aid lending decisions in the country. Furthermore, sound collateral laws helped push the country to 28th position, up from 118 the previous year, and are expected to improve the ratio of private sector credit to GDP in the coming years. The average in sub-Saharan Africa on this indicator stands at 118.
On the issue of electricity supply, the reduction of procedures has cut the time it takes to connect to the grid from 158 days to 100 days. This has led to the total number of users connected to electricity, from March 2013 to date, spiking by 41%. It has also resulted in a 37% jump in the national electrification rate. In all, the initiative helped push the country to position 127, up from 141 in the previous year. Of course, much more needs to be done especially around the areas of reliability and affordability. With this in mind, the recent deal agreed with China to build the country’s first nuclear power station by 2025, with a capacity of 1,000MW, is a step in the right direction. Moreover, plans to expand installed capacity to about 6,700MW by 2017, from the current 2,500MW, should see the country climbing future rankings.
Minor improvements were seen areas such as: resolving insolvency (ranked 144, up from 145), dealing with construction permits (ranked 140, up from 152) and the registration of property (ranked 115, up from 121). The latter, through the automation of land records, has contributed to the rise is the registration of property. Areas that saw a drop in performance include: starting a business (ranked 151, down from 148), paying of taxes (101, down from 99) and the protection of minority investors (ranked 115, down from 114). Areas where performance remained flat are: trading across borders (ranked at 131) and the enforcement of contracts (ranked at 102).
In all, Kenya is on the right path and it’s resulting in reform-driven legislation. Despite the many challenges the country faces, the ongoing reforms herald good tidings for Kenya’s ease of doing business. The Business Registration Services Act, legislation that was recently enacted and not included in the report, should improve the country’s standing even further. The law, by changing the process of business registration, aims to streamline the incorporation of companies, partnerships and firms.
For policy makers, knowing where the economy stands with regards to the ease of doing business is useful. However, it might be more useful knowing the distance to frontier (DTF) scores which are indicated in the same report. DTF scores benchmark economies with respect to regulatory practice, showing the absolute distance to the best performance in each indicator. Kenya’s DTF score stands at 58.24, behind Namibia (60.17), Botswana (64.98) Rwanda (68.12) and Mauritius (75.05).
Be that as it may, Kenya has come a long way and deserves credit. Given the progress so far, aspirations to rise to 50th on the index by 2020 are valid.

ON THe RIGHT PATH

If history wasn’t your strongest subject at school, don’t try to analyze Audi’s journey through the automotive world. As a crib note, all you need to know is that a fellow by the name of August Horch founded a string of companies using his surname in the early 1900s.
The problem was Horch fell out with his fellow directors and started yet another company under his name. In an ironic twist, he was sued for trademark infringement and the German Reichsgericht (Supreme Court) in Leipzig found that the Horch brand belonged to his former group.
So, he set up a meeting with a few business associates to find a new name.
The old timers were getting nowhere until one of their sons piped up with a logical suggestion. Because “horch” means hark or hear in German, why not call the new outfit Audi – the singular imperative form of audire, to listen, in Latin.
Thus, on April 25, 1910, the Audi Automobilwerke GmbH Zwickau was born. But there have been around a dozen name and organizational changes along the way.
Twenty years later, the rift with August was forgotten. Horch and Audi merged, along with two other German manufacturers, DKW and Wanderer. And the new Auto Union was represented by the now famous four rings.
Yes it is close to the Olympic logo and don’t think the legal beagles of the IOC didn’t notice. They sued Audi in 1995 for copying their trademark&#8230; and got counted out in that fight.
So we’ve got a name and a logo – time to talk cars and money.
To say that there have been some rocky roads on Audi’s journey would be like saying that Stephen Hawking overcame a few challenges.
When World War II broke out, the Auto Union plants were switched to military production. As a distinct target for Allied bombing, they were badly damaged. The entire assets of the company, down to the last spanner, were appropriated without compensation and the name of Auto Union was deleted from the commercial register.
A slight setback to be sure. The flickering flame was kept alight by the former Audi factory in Zwickau starting production of pre-war models in 1949 and a new Auto Union was launched in Ingolstadt with hefty loans from the Bavarian state government.
Today, a new war has broken out. Audi, BMW and Mercedes Benz are battling over sales. But it seems that logic may be flying out of the electric window, with profits being the casualty.
The clash for clients is on three fronts. Develop enviable technology, build a string of new factories and put as many new models on showroom floors.
Audi’s armory for this all-out war may surprise you. Going by last year’s production figures, BMW led the way with 1.81 million cars and Audi were only 70,000 behind, with Mercedes only managing the bronze medal. In fact, Audi led the way in worldwide sales for the first two months of this year and have already sold in excess of 1.3 million vehicles up to September.
Even a motoring hack can tell the difference between sales and profits. Audi has earmarked 26 billion euros for expansion, including new factories in Mexico and Brazil, and is preparing to extend its range to 60 models by 2020.
Audi’s chief bean counter, Axel Strotbek, put a delicate spin on it at a news conference.
“The profit development will continue to reflect our company’s extensive expenditure for the future. We are shouldering massive upfront investments.”
In the heat of battle, the Teutonic trio are boosting sales volumes by building smaller, more affordable cars. But some analysts say that it doesn’t boost the bottom line with Audi’s pre-tax profit running at about $500 per car less than Mercedes Benz.
Yet this is all small potatoes compared to the rise of Audi over the past two decades.
The early eighties brought some catastrophic setbacks, like the raft of reported incidents of so-called sudden unintended acceleration linked to the Audi 5000 models in the United States.
Although the distinction between a manufacturing fault and driver error was never definitively proven, sales fell dramatically to a pathetic 12,283 units amid the recalls and modifications.
Resale values plummeted, reliability and service levels were ridiculed and the future of Audi looked bleak.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-4371" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Yauhen_D-Shutterstock.com-02-232x300.jpg" alt="" width="232" height="300" />
Audi, however, reinvented itself. New technologies and features, along with engine upgrades and aluminum construction, helped turn the tide. Extended warrantees and service plans brushed the cobwebs from the order books.
Worldwide sales almost doubled in the first decade of the new millennium. Africa, along with the Middle East, Eastern Europe and China, spearheaded the revolution. Audi was on its way to becoming the profit engine of Europe’s biggest carmaker – Volkswagen.
Now the aim is to overtake BMW as the top seller in the German luxury car market.
Going small may be the focus of the crusade for sales, but the latest offering is at the other end of the scale! Enter the all new Audi Q7, which was first launched at the Frankfurt Motor Show a decade ago.
I tested the Audi Q7 3.0 TDI Quattro Tiptronic – a hefty description of a hefty seven-seater SUV – although it has slimmed down by 300 kilograms thanks to the aluminum suspension and weight-saving in almost every department.
Stylish may be an extravagant term in the brutish SUV market, but that massive Audi grille makes a statement and the interior is elegant and contemporary in its simplicity. It’s all about functionality and every control seems to be right at your fingertips.
What is impressive is how smoothly and quietly the new Q7 rolls over South African terrain, which seems to be laced with more potholes and speed humps by the day. You will struggle to find a more comfortable SUV.
The rumbling power belies the quoted 0-100km/h acceleration of 6.9 seconds and this is not a vehicle that wants to take on all-comers at the lights. But then you wouldn’t be buying a SUV of this size if you were still a boy racer.
What you are getting is the very latest technology – from the much less thirsty and more efficient diesel engine to refined driving aids and safety features.
The list of safety aids is endless. Emergency braking for cars, bikes or pedestrians you may not have seen, warnings if you open a door and there is an oncoming vehicle, and even self-steering when reversing with a trailer.
This Q7 could make you feel overconfident as it keeps in the correct lane and plays follow the leader with the car in front.
“Audi is currently the leader in autonomous driving research on a global scale,” says Audi South Africa’s PR Manager, Sameerah Bhabha.
“Matrix LED headlights is another highlight unique to the market,” says Bhabha. They shine around oncoming cars.
While some Audi models are in the late stages of their lifecycle, 2016 promises to be a bumper year with the launch of the all-new Audi A4 in February followed by the exhilarating R8 Coupe and a facelifted A3 range towards the end of the year.
And it’s not all about South Africa.
“We view the sub-Saharan market as a major growth opportunity and intend increasing the Audi footprint to key areas where we are currently not represented.”
The gloves are certainly off for the pretenders to the luxury car market throne. In the process, this trio will probably bring about the biggest changes in the most dangerous thing we do every day… open the car door.
August Horch would be proud.

Let’s Hear It For Audi

Poor access to food and malnutrition remain widespread and deep-seated in Africa’s second largest economy. The South African National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey shows 25% of South Africans – 13 million people – are hungry. Another 28% of the population is at risk of being hungry. Put simply: more than half of the Rainbow Nation’s population has to worry about where their next meal comes from.
The hallways at Alpine Primary School in Mitchell’s Plain, a township 35 kilometers from Cape Town, are filled with shrieks and bursts of laughter as the boys and girls make their way to the exit. Sixty to eighty youngsters will remain behind for another two to three hours, to participate in the aftercare program organized by Run4Schools. Founded 10 years ago by Dutch athlete Leslie Pangemanan, the organization provides a safe space for children at four primary schools in Mitchell’s Plain. Gang violence is common here, and children often get caught in the crossfire.
“Criminals are constantly trying to recruit kids as drug dealers and new gang members,” says general manager Frank Steyn, a past beneficiary of Run4Schools.
Run4Schools wants to prevent this by offering better alternatives: sports and food.
“We give the kids a sandwich, some juice, and a piece of fruit,” Steyn explains. “&#8230;For many of them, this is the last thing they will eat until they return to school the next day. The other schools we work with have feeding schemes. Many children rely on those school meals. We want to give them something extra. Some will go for a second helping, to give to a sibling at home. Hunger is a fact of life in Mitchell’s Plain, because of poverty.”
The most recent Child Gauge, released in 2014 by the University of Cape Town’s Children’s Institute, estimates that 2.5 million South African children (aged 0 – 17) live in households where hunger is part of day to day life. Child hunger is most problematic in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal provinces, where respectively 20% and 16% of children are living in households where there is not enough food.
Chronic hunger can have severe and potentially fatal implications. One of them is stunting, where a child is too short for their age.
“Over 25 percent of South African children under the age of three are stunted. This is a direct result of undernourishment in terms of energy and micronutrient intake,” says David Sanders, founding director of the School of Public Health at the University of the Western Cape.
Stunting is not just a matter of height. According to the United Nations Fund for Children (UNICEF), it is associated with an under-developed brain, which can have long-lasting harmful consequences. These include a diminished mental ability and learning capacity, poor school performance in childhood, and increased risks of nutrition related chronic diseases, such as diabetes, hypertension, and obesity.
Vitamin A and iron deficiencies are some of the most common nutritional shortcomings in South Africa.
“Data suggests that 44% of children under five years old are vitamin A deficient. This compromises their immune systems, and makes them extra susceptible to potentially fatal infections,” says Sanders.
The most alarming statistic, says Sanders, is that 64% of deaths of children under the age of five in South Africa can be attributed to malnutrition.
The situation is not a result of inadequate food production.
“South Africa can feed itself with what it produces… The main problems here are inadequate distribution, affordability, and access to good food. A large section of South Africa’s poor has to survive on cheap, unhealthy diets which largely consist of refined starches, refined carbohydrates, a lot of sugar, very little good protein, very little dairy, and very few micronutrients. Some of the poor can’t even afford that,” says Sanders.
The promotion of unhealthy foods, such as fast food and sugary beverages, is not helping. Sanders is concerned about the aggressive marketing of soft drinks.
“Township businesses are often offered a Coca-Cola sign with their shop’s name on it. When you visit any given township in South Africa, you will see those red and white signs everywhere,” he says. “The data we have shows us that South Africans consume three times the global average intake of Coca-Cola. It is often cheaper than milk.”
A stone’s throw from Cape Town International Airport and stuck in between highways, runways, a cemetery, and Coca-Cola signs in surrounding townships, lies Freedom Farm. Like most informal settlements in South Africa, this place – home to 600 families – is anything but what the name suggests.
Clean water, adequate sanitation, and social services such as healthcare and waste management are nothing but a pipe dream. In the meantime, hunger and malnutrition are ripping though this community like a knife through table cloth.
Every first Sunday of the month, a temporary faint light appears at the end of the tunnel. That is when Stephanie Benjamin and her soup kitchen team, known as Ladles of Love, pull in.
“We feed between 300 and 500 people that day. Children eat first,” she says. “I would like to do more but I am largely financing this out of my own pocket. Luckily, a local supermarket is helping me out. They give me food that is edible, but can’t be sold. Bread that has been pressed too hard, for instance, which would have been thrown away.”
Throwing away edible food seems surreal in a country where half the population doesn’t have the security of regular meals. It is however a harsh reality.
“We rescue 400,000 tons of food per year worth R100 million ($7.1 million) from partner retailers and wholesalers,” says Andy Du Plessis, Managing Director of Foodbank SA.
“This food, after it’s been checked and made sure it is fit for human consumption, is distributed among 450 community organizations across South Africa. They in turn pass it on to 110,000 beneficiaries. The food we rescue, translates into 12.7 million meals per year.”
These staggering figures are the tip of South Africa’s food waste iceberg.
“It is estimated that we landfill R60 billion ($4.2 billion) worth of food every year,” says Du Plessis.
Based on this figure and the Foodbank SA’s stats, one can conclude that South Africa throws away 7.62 billion meals per year, or 20.82 million meals per day. This is enough to provide each of the 13 million hungry South Africans a meal and a half per day for an entire year.
“These are alarming statistics, but what makes it even more alarming is that this situation can be avoided, as a large portion of this food is dumped before it even reaches the stores,” Du Plessis says, pointing fingers at supply chain issues such as overproduction, incorrect labelling, and damaged packaging.
Another way to alleviate South Africa’s levels of food insecurity is to change the country’s food security and agriculture policies; for instance, enabling South Africans to grow their own food and assisting small farmers, says Sanders.
According to the UN, only 2% of South African households are involved in agriculture for their personal use. In Malawi and Zambia, this is respectively 90% and 60%.
“Generally speaking, South Africans purchase most of the food they consume. In many other African countries, however, people tend to survive on what they produce on the land,” Sanders says. “I would say that many of those counties, at least those I know, have more programmes in place to support small farmers. In South Africa, there is very little of that. Here, small farmers are completely neglected. An added problem is that government has done inadequately in terms of land reform.”
As the food wastes away, so do the frames of the country’s hungry.

Hunger Yet $4.2 Billion In The Bin

He’s slowing down now, but with Paul Harris you can tell; time is money. He doesn’t look much like a multimillionaire, but on this Thursday morning the banker, with piercing blue eyes and a hint of power behind a firm handshake, is one of the brains of Africa, who wears his eminence and his fortune of around $200 million lightly.
“I suppose I stumbled into it. I went to Stellenbosch University and my interest was in sport. I had a sports bursary for cricket and rugby. I ended up becoming intrigued in studying and ended up coming out with a Master’s degree in Commerce.”
These were the first steps, in the right place at the right time, for Paul Harris, the unassuming man who built fortune on banking and bright ideas. He, along with two other millionaires, his university friend GT Ferreira and colleague Laurie Dippenaar, took $10,000 and forged the $2.1 billion FirstRand empire, the largest bank in South Africa, by market value, according to Reuters.
You could say Harris is: the father of FirstRand; the grandfather of Rand Merchant Bank Holdings (RMBH); and the great grandfather of First National Bank (FNB), OUTsurance and Discovery Health –all pillars of South African business.
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“A lot of tech in Africa has been quite far behind the developing world. But the new wave of the world, the internet and mobile, has enabled Africa to leapfrog. The opportunities lie in using technology in creating different business models. The African can go into industries that have been doing something from the 1980s and in one shot update them into [the 21st century],” says Harris.
Harris has grown a thick skin in 37 years of business; he had to. He battled through the 2008 financial crisis, cricket scandals – which really hurt – and a public spat with an Australian pen pal named Jeff. On this bright bustling spring morning, amid the affluent sparkling skyscrapers of Sandton, he held forth with a masterclass for young entrepreneurs.
“Young people should know something about everything and everything about something. You must find areas you are obsessed about and must become the world expert in that particular field,” he says.
Harris takes his cellphone in his left hand.
“This thing put the man on the moon. There is so much space for African entrepreneurs to re-engineer business.”
It’s hard to believe that this man, in a plain blue collared shirt and black pants, who calls himself an unemployed former investment banker, is a multimillionaire and one of the most influential minds in Africa.
It’s a journey that began way back in 1977. It was a time when people went to discos to listen to Rod Stewart’s Tonight’s The Night; Star Wars was in the cinemas and the force was with the rand, which was worth a dollar. In this year: Dippenaar, Ferreira and Pat Goss left their safe banking jobs to set up Rand Consolidated Investments (RCI), with $10,000 and a secretary.
Eight months later, Harris, who worked with Dippenaar at the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), a South African government institution that bankrolls industrialization, was a last minute substitution; called on when Goss left the company.
“When you start as a new business the thing you need to do is get the next deal done, you have to pay your bills, you have to work really hard at surviving; exploiting the opportunities that come your way,” he says.
Opportunity knocked after four hard years in the trenches. RCI grew from $10,000 capital to profit, after tax, of $48,000 (R657,000).
“Everything we really did was start-up, and then we acquired some companies. It was always a new way of doing things. It was always a new approach. We grew from being a very small group of guys to become huge.”
In 1983, six years into the business, billionaire Johann Rupert, the fourth richest man in Africa, whose family is worth $6.3 billion according to FORBES, approached the group of guys to sell his bank, Rand Merchant Bank (RMB). Rupert was going back to the family business, Rembrandt Group, that sold everything from luxury watches to cigars; he needed to offload.
The opportunity was too good to miss. RCI sold into RMB and got a controlling stake of the company, which they named RMBH; RMB remained a subsidiary. The deal gave Harris and the guys a banking license. By 1988, RMBH was making profits of $964,000 (R13.5 million) a year.
Harris set off for Sydney to set up another subsidiary, Australian Gilt Securities, now RMB Australia. By the time he returned to African shores, in 1991, he had a burning desire to implement lessons learned abroad.
In 1992, the company bought Momentum Life, a life insurance company that formed Discovery Health, now the largest private healthcare company in South Africa. In 1998, it added Southern Life and First National Bank (FNB), bought from Anglo American.
RMBH needed to raise $370 million (R5 billion) in new capital in order to seal the Southern Life deal. Harris and his crew did it in two days.
“Funnily enough I don’t think about that too often. It was quite a compelling proposition and it made a lot of sense. I don’t remember that as being hugely stressful,” says Harris.
Stress or not, FirstRand was born.
“It’s only after you have got some more stability that you start looking at bigger things. Once we got into that mode, we started to get people around us as partners. The opportunities were painted on a bigger canvas,” says Harris.
The 1998 merger with FNB promised greater things. Harris didn’t just want to own banks, he also wanted to change the way people used them. Along came the means, the internet.
“There was no doubt that we were pioneers… It was the early 1980s when I first heard about [the internet] from a chap we did business with in Chicago. One of the guys that was very involved in our option trading. I didn’t understand it for about five years. He used to talk about these network computers that you can access. I didn’t get it at all.”
“In the nineties, you would go to a board meeting; people would say ‘what’s the internet?’. I then went and registered this proposal called Cyberbank. We put together a small team. They used the internet in the business under the name Origin. It eventually became RMB Private Bank. Right from that stage we were into the internet.”
“I still don’t fully understand [the internet]. It really helped that I hooked up early on with Michael Jordaan. I mean he was my PA. He is an incredibly sharp guy. We liked this concept of using the internet, using mobile phones.”
Jordaan is a success in his own right. A venture capitalist and wine enthusiast who started his life as an officer in the South African navy, went on to build Montegray Capital. He also was the Chairman of social media platform Mxit; the CEO of FNB; and is an Executive Committee Member of FirstRand.
“[Harris is] always the lateral thinker who comes up with a range of new and unconventional ideas. At first this could be very frustrating if you interpret them as instructions; as would be the case in an autocratic environment. Over time you learn that his ideas as not orders but the start of a rigorous debate about what is possible and practical. If you engage properly the outcome was inevitably better than the conventional resolution. But it took guts to debate with Paul,” says Jordaan.
Jordaan first crossed paths with Harris in an interview for the self-starter workshop Class Of spearheaded by Harris in the 1990s.
“I had researched the bank so well that I could even quote Paul in some of the questions that were asked. Nevertheless I felt completely unprepared. RMB had an open bar on Fridays after work. Paul would work the crowd and I was mildly terrified of whatever questions he would ask of me. So I had a strategy of always having some questions prepared for him should he join our group,” says Jordaan.
“One day in a passage, in the old RMB building, he asked if I would become his Executive Assistant. I was bowled over and could not say no. It ended up as a hugely valuable part of my career, learning how a bank was run by being in close contact with one of the founders,” says Jordaan.
Harris’ vast office in Sandton speaks of the man. His desk is surrounded by paintings and sculptures from African artists, his bookcase lined with cricket books and photographs of him shaking hands with the strong and powerful. It is a world away from the simple farm home in Greytown, in the KwaZulu-Natal province, where he grew up on peanut butter and bread. He left home at the age of eight to go to Maritzburg College, 77 kilometers away in Pietermaritzburg, coming home at weekends.
“We grew up fairly modestly. I think the first time I was ever on a train was when I was chosen to play for Natal in rugby as a school boy. It was the first time I was ever out of Natal,” he says
“I went to Stellenbosch speaking only English and came out speaking Afrikaans fully.”
It led to a life of gadgets, golf and art, a far cry from peanut butter.
The ideas that changed African banking came in offices like this. It took eight years to convince hundreds of millions of Africans to use their phones rather than a bank teller.
“We said we needed to have a land grab&#8230; Very early on we saw [banking] was going to go mobile. We always said banking was going to be electronic and on the internet. People don’t realize this but when was the first iPad sold? In 2010. The iPad is only five years old. It’s a phenomenal story. We always said internet banking was going to be a big thing. That’s why we had Cyberbank and made a big push for it. Mobility only came in in the last five or six years,” he says.
The crowning glory was eBucks – the loyalty reward system that gives discounts and money to customers every time they swipe.
In the life of an African entrepreneur it’s amazing how often ideas that make millions start at odd times in strange places. In Harris’s case, eBucks hit like a bolt from the blue to the crash of waves in Plettenburg Bay, on South Africa’s east coast, on his Christmas holiday. He was supposed to be resting at the time.
“I clicked. I sat down and then I wrote a strategic document on how this thing could work. I still have the document. And we pretty much still follow it. A team of thinkers built the product and the rest is history.”
“If you are in the business of ideas, you have to accept that to get a good idea you have to have a lot of bad ideas. People have to understand that’s what you are. You aren’t the oracle of all wisdom. But you have to create the idea, but you also have to evolve the idea and take it to the next level.”
In 37 years at the helm, Harris has learned to run with the great and the good taking a few kicks along the way. His hardest kick was the 2008 financial crisis. It hit FirstRand like a hammer destroying R1.4 billion (around $100 million) in overseas earnings.
“If you were to take a plot of any financial index; it was almost impossible to conceive that the drop could be so dramatic. Equity markets went from a factor of a hundred to a factor of ten. Banks that were capitalized at hundreds of billions of dollars were suddenly worth nothing.”
“I woke up and on one specific day and FirstRand had a bigger market cap than Citigroup bank. That was the most terrifying day of my life when I just realized this huge bank had just now become smaller than us. All I could think of was this is going to happen to us. We didn’t have the infrastructure like theirs.”
In 2008, it was happening to anyone who had money. The United States (US), built on the shifting sands of sub-prime mortgage-backed securities on US property price estimates, sank. Banks like Citi, the largest bank in the world at the time, realized they had overextended credit and couldn’t pay the people back.
“The reason there was a crash was because there was a lot of things that slipped into the system that was ill discipline. People were buying things they should’ve been buying. From our perspective we survived it. At our worst, our return on capital was higher than our competitors. It was the worst year that we ever had,” says Harris.
“We were hit, but we weren’t dealt a mortal blow. We had a very good diversification. I’ll never forget the presentation we had to make to our board members. I had to make it. I still have the YouTube clip. And I said ‘big s*** is coming’, we had to take drastic measures.”
Harris took a bearish approach to the markets.
“From our perspective we survived [2008]. At our worst, our return on capital was higher than our competitors. It was the worst year that we ever had… We were seen as being extremely negative. I must say we didn’t get very good press about it. But hindsight says we recognized the problems and we immediately did something about it. That’s why we came out of it much quicker than the others. The others hung around for a while and hoped for the best,” says Harris.
It was a hard lesson to learn.
“It’s like a sportsman. You put on weight and you get a little unfit and one day you get found out. That’s what happened to the financial world.”
And speaking of sports: Harris had to make some more painful decisions for the sake of the game he loves.
He played an important role in exposing a R4.7-million ($671,428) bonus scandal involving Gerald Majola, the CEO of Cricket South Africa (CSA), in the wake of the 2009 Indian Premier League (IPL) in South Africa.
“I was involved in a public thing where effectively I was chairman of the remuneration committee. There were dodgy things going on with the IPL. I was the one that objected and set off this whole process which eventually ended with the CEO being fired,” he says.
Harris, an independent director on the board’s remuneration committee, objected to CSA handing out bonuses to 40 people. The president of CSA, Mtutuzeli Nyoka, ordered an audit of the bonuses but was dismissed by his board through a vote of no confidence. The board also pushed out Harris and Hentie van Wyk, the board’s treasurer.
Nyoka wrote a book on how he fought for three years to see justice. In 2012, after a series of investigations, Majola was suspended.
“It shook the foundations of my life. I was plagued by so many emotions and sentiments, anxieties and fears. It was a significant event in cricket, there was a deep resonance in the rest of society,” says Nyoka.
Battered and bruised, Harris has also locked horns with an Australian pen pal named Jeff. Jeff, who sent Harris a number of articles that put South Africa in a bad light, never expected the response he got; a letter from Harris promoting it.
It read: “I often get e-mails like this from “concerned friends” worried about us, which is sweet of you guys. Of course we are concerned. Some worrying things have happened but we have been through and survived much worse in much more volatile environments. Including the Boer War, two World Wars, apartheid, the financial crisis without a bank bailout, the rinderpest, Ge Korsten and Die Antwoord!”
“…My message is, please don’t stress about us in South Africa. We are fine. We are cool. We know we live in the most beautiful country in the world with warm and vibrant people. There are more people here with smiles on their faces than in any country I have ever been to…”
The letter went viral.
So did Jeff’s response:
“Kids don’t get text books, pregnant women sleep on the floors of ill equipped public hospitals, tenderpreneurs keep the luxury car market buoyant but fail to build the roads they were contracted to&#8230; it’s a farce mate. And I won’t even mention the succession of dodgy police chiefs you’ve suffered. So please Paul, take off those expensive rose tinted specs of yours, smell the raw sewage and stop pretending you have a functioning government&#8230;”
Harris backs what he said in his letter.
“What I wrote is what I feel. It’s all in there. I think South Africa has got a hell of a lot going for it and you mustn’t let that get on top of you,” he says.
The future? Harris has teamed up with his daughter and son to venture into property, asset management, solar technology and sponsoring education projects. You could say Harris has started again. He argues any entrepreneur, young or old, has a mountain to climb for success.
“We worked incredibly hard. Sometimes I look at young entrepreneurs and I think it’s not possible to be one and have a balanced life… forget having a nine to five. The sad thing is a large proportion is going to fail, we know that statistically. The ones that are going to make are the ones that have got resilience, that are prepared to overcome incredible obstacles. And obviously have a good idea and work ethic,” says Harris.
According to Harris, entrepreneurism is even riskier if you don’t understand the market.
“I always say young people should know something about everything and everything about something. You must find an area you are obsessed about and must become the world expert in that particular field. If you just know a little about something and then go into a market and compete, unless you know more about that niche than the next guy, forget about it.”
“Wherever we have gone it’s always been grassroots and a new approach to something. Innovation and change is what we are all about.”
So says the farm boy who grew up in the middle of nowhere, who got somewhere, survived the 2008 financial crisis, and changed the way Africans bank.

Tag: February 2016

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