It stands like a giant anthill in the city. In its shadow thousands of commuters swarm around street vendors under yellow and blue canvas to the hoots of hundreds of taxis that crawl through the streets like beetles. On level 50, you can see for miles on a crisp day, so long as the smog isn’t too thick.
The 223-meter-tall Carlton Centre, in the heart of Johannesburg, has stood for 42 years.
An army of construction workers built it and for years it was the tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere. One of them was Englishman Eddy Warehan, a contracted steel fixer for Roberts Contraction (now Murray &amp; Roberts) from Southampton, who arrived with tools in hand in 1967. This year, he made his first trip back to South Africa in 47 years.
“Health and safety was quite different then. It was interesting. If you got caught without a hardhat on, you were in trouble. You couldn’t tread on a nail without a hardhat on… There were a few accidents but you don’t take any notice of it. We were more interested in getting the job done,” he says.
Danger lurked around every corner.
“The first work we did on the site was a spiral staircase. It went four or five floors underground in darkness. You had towers and a lift shaft going up, but they were open. If they put a gate over the entrance somebody would move it and take the scaffolding away for somewhere else. An African gentleman one day wanted to go to the toilet, stepped into this dark corner and went down 10 floors.”
Another time, a crane was the killer.
“A crane was lifting a corner strong back shutter. They were swinging it around and there were two African gentlemen on the next corner and they got swept off. They got caught in the safety net but they didn’t survive.”
With the bad memories came good. Warehan recalls climbing to the 30th floor to see Pretoria 67 kilometers away.  Unafraid, he would pause for photos hanging over the steel bars at a giddy height.
Warehan, a former Royal Marine, came to Africa on the cruise ship the S.A. Vaal, sailing from Southampton to Durban, as a utility steward. Like many Europeans, he came to Africa by chance.
“If someone falls sick you do [their job]. You can do anything. I was a jack of all trades and a master of none. After the fifth trip we were going back [to England] and there were three gentlemen who had been working in Johannesburg and were passengers. We met in the bar, having a talk and they asked what I did before. I was a Royal Marine and before that I was a steel fixer. They said they were looking for steel fixers at the Carlton Centre, and I said where the hell is that? He said in Johannesburg. He told me what the wages were and I said that sounds crazy,” says Warehan.
Working in Johannesburg was a far cry from working in England.
“It was like adding a nought onto your money. I was earning £25 a week now it was £250. I gave it a try. The first week’s money I sent home was £300. My wife said you can’t get £300 from £250. I said they made a mistake it was actually £350.”
It took seven years to build the Carlton Centre. In 1973, it became the $7.92-million mecca for African socialites. Down the years, the Carlton Hotel opened its doors to the likes of Henry Kissinger, Francois Mitterrand, Hillary Clinton, Margaret Thatcher, Whitney Houston and Mick Jagger.
“It was quite a city. I was impressed. We stayed in Harley Street. Just out of Hillbrow; near the freeway and a park. My first accommodation was in a digs, under the careful watch of an Afrikaans woman named Marsh. We were mostly construction workers from the Carlton.”
“We would go to a bar across the road at the end of the day, the Casa Mia. It was on the way back to the digs. That way you could get halfway back from where you wanted to spend the night before you have too many to get lost. Most of us drank Lion Lager.”
“My wife couldn’t believe it when she came over to Johannesburg. The prices were half the cost you would pay in the UK and you were doubling your money. The cost of living in Africa was cheap.”
“A gold Omega watch I bought in Johannesburg cost £250 at that time. Six years ago, I sent it back to get it serviced; its current value was £7,000.”
These days, the aging skyscraper is more a museum than a mecca. Where thousands of shoppers once walked are the shells of dusty stores, epitomized by the Sky Rink, the building’s abandoned ice rink. The 50th floor of the Carlton Centre, called the Top of Africa, still offers a panorama of the city and beyond, provided the windows are clean and you can find the lift in the basement.
The building is showing signs of coming back to life, claims the City of Johannesburg. The basement shopping center has come back from being almost empty to 93% capacity. They say that the Carlton Centre is again a bustling shopping precinct with shops like Soviet, Aca Joe, Totalsports, Levison and Pick n Pay.
Maybe, like Warehan’s gold Omega, it will appreciate in value.

I Built  The Top  Of Africa

Edgar Maculo spent the night at Primrose police station in the east of Johannesburg. He feared for the life of his wife and their 10-month-old baby. He is miles away from his home in Mozambique. Should anything happen to him, his relatives would be forced to transport his remains back home, just like his compatriot, Ernesto Nhamuave, the man who was burned to death in 2008 in the same East Rand region.
He fights back tears when I ask him if the recent events remind him of 2008. Fear is the only thing preventing him from returning to Mozambique, even though South Africa is a place he now calls home.
After the xenophobic attacks almost seven years ago, Africa’s most industrialized economy is yet again battling to exorcize the demon of violence against foreign nationals.
Zulu monarch, King Goodwill Zwelithini, and President Jacob Zuma’s son, Edward, have been blamed for fueling attacks on foreigners with their statements.
“We are requesting those who come from outside to please go back to their countries,” said Zwelithini.
“South Africa was too accommodative to foreign nationals unnecessarily,” said Zuma.
Following Zwelithini’s comments, at least five foreigners were killed as South Africans hunted foreigners, looted shops and vandalized property.
The attacks which started in Durban spread to Johannesburg. Police patrolled the streets during a series of standoffs between foreign store owners and attackers.
There are fears this could degenerate into ugly scenes seen in 2010 when images of a Mozambican in flames went all over the world.
Zwelithini blames foreigners for dirty streets and crime.
“There are unsightly goods hanging all over our shops. They dirty our streets. We cannot even recognize which shop is which. They are all blocked by foreigners,” Zwelithini is reported to have said at a meeting in Pongola, northern KwaZulu Natal, at the end of March.
Zwelithini’s comments have been criticized by human rights groups, religious leaders and political activists.
Thousands gathered in Durban to participate in a ‘peace march’ on April 16 in a bid to stop the violence.
Independent human rights organization, Lawyers for Human Rights, condemned the intolerance and blatant disregard for the rights of foreigners in South Africa.
“Most concerning is the use of aggressive measures, including rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannons, by police to disperse the roughly 300 foreign nationals who defied the revocation of their permission to protest against recent xenophobic attacks in the area,” the organization said in a statement.
“Unfortunately, foreign nationals are not given a platform to voice their fears and concerns.”
The rest of Africa has decried the violence.
Nigerians have rebuked South Africa with hashtags on social media and placards at the South African Embassy in Lagos.
“The on-going activity in South Africa is shocking. It is unfortunate that some South Africans are oblivious to the economic contribution foreigners have made to the country over the years,” says Victor Teriba, a lecturer in Lagos.
“These terrible acts have sent shockwaves through the continent and indeed, the rest of the world. To think that foreigners are being maltreated is rather depressing,” says Zainab Maisani, an Abuja resident.
“A lot of South Africans are mortified by the actions of our countrymen towards foreigners and they should be brought to order immediately,” says Xolani Mabaso, a South African living in Nigeria.
Worried Kenyans persistently called friends and family in South Africa to check on them. Many also took to social media to condemn the violence, others simply to vent. The foreign affairs office in Nairobi announced Kenya was ready to evacuate its citizens from South Africa.
Malawi and Somalia started repatriating its countrymen.
President Zuma also condemned the attacks.
“We cannot continue killing one another as Africans who belong to the same continent. What is happening in our country is not acceptable.”
While economists and political analysts say that the xenophobic violence is a symptom of unemployment and inequality in South Africa, some government officials disagreed.
Home Affairs Minister, Malusi Gigaba, blamed a ‘third force’. He claims there are people in the shadows that are bent on destroying South Africa’s image.
“There are people who are behind this and their main aim is to destroy the image of and embarrass South Africa internationally. These people buy the youth drugs and arm them to go on a looting frenzy,” Gigaba said in an interview with radio station Ukhozi FM.
Tens of thousands of foreigners, mostly from other African states and Asia, have moved to South Africa since white-minority rule ended in 1994.
It is estimated that about 4% of the world’s population comprises of diaspora communities, a reality that South Africans should start embracing.

Demons On The  Streets Of Hate

It was the moment a golden-haired young fan fought his way through the crowd to touch a genius. One of the few moments, frozen in time, that captures the short and ill-fated career in African football of George Best.
The career of the 1968 European Footballer of the Year was on the slide when Johannesburg team Jewish Guild was looking for stars. In 1974, Jewish Guild, now defunct, had been promoted to the top flight of the then segregated South African game and approached Best with a handful of pounds hoping to secure at least a handful of games.
<div id="attachment_4820" style="width: 273px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-4820" class="size-medium wp-image-4820" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GettyImages-79020026-263x300.jpg" alt="" width="263" height="300" />Football, 1970+s, Manchester United+s George Best jumps up for the ball (Photo by Bob Thomas/Getty Images)</div>
“In the seventies, British players were not making a lot of money, so some came to South Africa in their club’s off seasons to play a few games for the local clubs. This had its advantages for the National Football League, the stadiums were filled up and the game improved,” says Mark Gleeson, a prolific South African football writer and television commentator.
On the day Best was to make his debut in Johannesburg, 14-year-old Herby Opland, a Manchester United fan, woke early determined to meet the star he had merely read of in the newspapers. As young as he was, Opland hitchhiked from Hillbrow, a suburb in Johannesburg, to the Johannesburger Hotel, in Joubert Park, where Best was staying.
“It was late morning, I remember walking into the lobby of the hotel, people being rebuffed because they were keeping George Best away from the press. I remember being very excited when the doorman showed sympathy to me; he offered me a place next to him on the bench,” says Opland.
Apparently, Best had invited the doorman to the Jewish Guild bench. The doorman told Opland he should come to the Rand Stadium, in western Johannesburg, for the game in the afternoon.
“I loved every minute. Best was not highly active that day but every time he touched the ball it was like magic. I remember one moment he made an incredible move on the touchline, he chipped the ball straight over a guy and he went around him and headed towards the goals,” remembers Opland.
“I pretty much watched the game from the stand but, minutes before it ended, I jumped over the fence and went up to him, I patted him on the shoulder and walked away. He was not really interested in the fans and media, I think at the time he was doing it for money, his career was in a bit of a dead end.”
A few days after a chance encounter, Opland was surprised to find his picture with Best on the sports pages of The Star newspaper in Johannesburg.
“The photo was my Facebook profile for a long time. I first saw it in the newspaper and because I was such a fan of his, I phoned the newspaper office to say and I would love to have it and the photographer gave me the Kodak photograph,” says Opland, a sub-editor at a Johannesburg television station.
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While Best brought excitement to South African football, the Jewish Guild officials were not impressed by missed training sessions. He drank his way out of the club after a mere five games and one goal.
Gleeson asserts Best was at the zenith of his game and refutes allegations Jewish Guild was unhappy with Best’s conduct. It was normal for the export starts to last a few weeks before returning home. Most British footballers did play only a handful games before flying back home.
Best died in November 2005 in London after a lifetime of alcoholism. He was mourned by many fans around the world, including Opland.
“George Best was always a hero, to this day he is still probably my favorite footballer. When it comes to skill, there was no greater genius or

The Best  Of Times  In Africa

It was a rainy summer day in Kyalami, Johannesburg. As we drove, the whiff of the horse dung was unmistakable. A pungent reminder nature plays a big role in this animal loving neighborhood; more so in Carmen Nottingham’s backyard.
Nottingham has her own Garden of Eden – it is also big business.
Climate change is a threat to the business of food. Agricultural entrepreneurs need to innovate and feed 8.5 billion mouths by 2030, according to the United Nations.
“Climate change is a big problem today. We need to look for new ways to counter it and feed ourselves and permaculture is a very reasonable solution,” says Nottingham.
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Permaculture advocates for care of the earth in search of greater yields. Nottingham has been doing it for 23 years.
“It is about using our resources, harnessing all the rainwater that we can from everywhere like the roof and the road. I don’t allow any water to go out of my property. I use all my grey water from the sinks and the bathrooms on my crops too. We don’t farm crops but the soil. We need to make sure it is always healthy,” she says.
Nottingham has turned her rubbish dump to a backyard dam for irrigation.
“We don’t want water run offs, you should harvest it from the roads and build counters to make sure the water stays in the property. This means no water is wasted and most importantly the birds come and drink from it and also dispose on my yard. A healthy soil also provides an environment for microorganisms to thrive, which in turn will help your plants to flourish.”
“In a continent like ours, water is scarce and we have evaporation rates. We need deeper and narrower water sources and as many trees around them as possible,” she says
Nottingham diverts bathroom and kitchen pipes to a mini-wetland, and makes smelly kitchen and toilet water clean enough for her vegetable garden, using the waste to fertilize the soil.
“Nothing is waste. We can use all these natural things back on the soil.”
Nurturing earthworms is her greatest hobby and earner.
“They produce microorganisms that are the life of the soil. They eat any dead or decaying matter and regenerate that into life.”
She says permaculture increases her yields by 40%, especially when combined with bee pollination.
Permaculture is all about the design and using the earth’s resources to our advantage, says agriculture entrepreneur and permaculture expert Edward Gaybba.
“Everything that has once lived can live again in permaculture if you allow it to. The problem with modern day farming is we stop that from happening. We kill everything that we can with chemicals. We try to keep away what we consider pests but in the process we kill the important things as well,” he says.
Gaybba says the goal is to use ethics and principles to transform from a dependent consumer to a responsible producer.
“Our forefathers couldn’t read or write but they were smart. We need to go back to the roots and follows some of the tricks they used in agriculture. We should use such techniques like growing potatoes in tyres to maximize space,” he says.
Permaculture supporters say it is not against technology, but rather it favors the appropriate use of technology.
“Modern agriculture requires costly input resources so as to maximize yield, permaculture centers around using the natural resources at your disposal. Although your yield will not be as high, your ROI will be significantly greater as your input costs are much lower. Using what resources you have available around you is infinitely cheaper than importing resources at great cost. Nature wastes nothing. Why should we?” says Gaybba.
AgriSA agricultural economist, Wandile Sihlobo, says new farming methods and technologies are needed and welcome.
“We have a lot of problems in the sector, so the more food that is available the better. We should also note that things like permaculture and other forms of farming may pose challenges when we try to apply them in a large scale. For grains, for example, in South Africa it would be 2.6 million hectares of land which may be a challenge. Things like crop rotation work well on a large scale,” he says.
Undeterred permaculture fanatics have found a way of making money and they’re not going to stop.

Making Money In  The Garden Of Eden

Rising 54 stories above Johannesburg’s bedrock is the concrete cylinder of the Ponte building. It’s a statement on the skyline, it’s also the tale of the rise and fall and rise again of the city’s most neglected suburb.
In its 2014 incarnation, Ponte is testament to calculated risk, follow-through and good timing.
Owned by the Kempston Group, the building is an asset that’s beginning to make economic sense after more than 15 years of being a write-off.
Ponte started life in 1975 as one of the Johannesburg flatlands’ most sought after locations. It remains the tallest residential building in Africa. The views from the Hillbrow ridge were resplendent and the curves that architect Manfred Hermer could coax out of concrete were irresistible.
In the 1960s, Hillbrow—an inner-city residential neighborhood housed foreign white professionals lured by the apartheid government. These migrants from Europe and Britain sought the lock and go life of apartment living and the convenience of central Hillbrow. They gave Hillbrow its bohemian twist and helped make it a suburb that thumbed its nose at apartheid’s segregationist laws.
Bumpy times lay ahead though. One year after Ponte opened its doors, the 1976 Soweto uprising changed South Africa forever. The economic boom years had also peaked. A subsequent mass white exodus to the suburbs skewed the supply and demand in the Hillbrow real estate market. By the mid-1990s, Ponte itself had shifted from rundown to outright slum.
Sultan Ndabagobetse is a Burundi immigrant who arrived in South Africa in 1996 and has lived in Ponte on and off since 1999.
“Those early days were really bad; they could rob you inside your flat. Ponte was dirty and not safe,” he says.
Hillbrow became a forbidden zone for polite, white, middle-class South Africa. It became part myth, part true horror of crime, drug dens, prostitutes and urban decay. For thousands though, especially a new wave of African migrants who had arrived since 1994, these Johannesburg flatlands represented cheap accommodation in the city’s economic heart.
Ndabagobetse left Ponte in 2001 but returned in 2004.
“I have lived there ever since; even through the renovations. It is more expensive now, but I work hard so I can live there. There aren’t other places that are that safe in Hillbrow. I have three children today and for now I can say Ponte is good for us,” says Ndabagobetse, who owns a car dealership in the city center.
Hillbrow is no stranger to ephemeralness, or to making room for those prepared to try again. Ponte was in the right place.
The years of 2006 and 2007 marked the ‘New Ponte’ era. New Ponte developers struck a deal with Kempston; a reported R200 million ($18.6 million) would be sunk into transforming the tattered building into upmarket units. The ambitious plans tanked. The building, stripped in anticipation of fresh development, stood vulnerable to opportunistic plunderers.
Jason Kruger, the financial manager at Kempston, says by 2009 it was decision time.
“We had a broken building. We could either offload it in its current state, knowing we’d get nothing for it, or we could fix it and build on its value as a building with visual prominence and legacy,” he says.
Kruger won’t disclose the exact amount spent on the building but says it was a bold gamble and took tens of millions and just under two years to complete the initial renovation phase.
“We have built about two to three specs higher for this rental range and a lot of money was spent on new lifts and security,” he says.
They also decided on in-house building management. It was key to tightening up control. Ponte’s manager Ria Breedt, who lives in the building with co-manager and husband Jaap, says Ponte hits the mark by shoring up the basics of security, cleaning and collective buy-in on rights and responsibilities.
Strict tenant rules apply. There are random flat inspections and the biometric security system can seem heavy.
“Tenants understand these measures are important for their safety and to make sure things run properly,” says Breedt.
The next step for Kempston is further development of the commercial floor. There are anchors like a laundry, supermarket and internet café with plans for doctors’ rooms, a day-care center and a restaurant.
The 484 apartments are rental-only, for better control, says Kruger. There’s a mix of single bedroom apartments through to luxury three-bedroom suites in the upper levels. The starting rental price, which includes a deposit, is R4,000 ($372) and goes up to around R9,600 ($890) a month. There is almost full occupancy.
South African Ndanga Phalamdwa, who was born in the country’s northern province of Limpopo, has lived in Ponte since 2009. He saw it as a place to stay, since he arrived in Johannesburg in 2003.
“The structure of the building attracts you, you see Ponte wherever you are in the city,” he says.
Most remarkable for Ponte is that in the last few years it has been able to attract white tenants. It’s significant because the racial demographic of inner-city Joburg, has for decades, resembled the old days of statutory segregation.
Ponte also timed its revival well and is riding the current ‘hipster’ wave. The rise of this young, multi-racial, relatively moneyed aspiring professional class represents a powerful new consumer force. Part of their preference is for crisp, cool and clever alternatives to suburban life.
Ponte has seen it all &#8211; the whims, wishful thinking and real wonder &#8211; and it has stood firm. Ndabagobetse calls Ponte a reference point; sometimes he sends postcards to his sister who fled Burundi to settle in France. The photo on the front is usuallyJohannesburg’s skyline. And there, dead center, stands the cylindrical certainty of Ponte.

An African Landmark Broken No More

To say Nicky Oppenheimer is understated is an understatement in itself. It is tantamount to saying his family – the third richest in Africa – is well off; or that Winston Churchill, another famous Old Harrovian, was a fair public speaker.
It must be tough suffering the stare and glare that goes with being the scion of a powerful world famous family, but Oppenheimer wears his eminence lightly as he sits opposite me for this rare interview. This Johannesburg office may be dressed lavishly, but the man himself, in a blue open-necked shirt, is not. He is measured, calm and guarded as he chats about everything from entrepreneurs and corruption to government and business. There is a glint of pride in the eye when he mentions, fleetingly at the end of the interview, his son’s first class cricket career as an Oxford Blue. Jonathan Oppenheimer bowled for Combined Universities against one of the world’s finest batsmen, West Indian Brian Lara.
“He bowled the first three and moved them away and then brought one back into the pad. Lara LBW Oppenheimer 0,” chuckles the proud father.
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The laidback calm belies a busy few years for the Oppenheimers and the two corporate giants that the family took generations to build: Anglo American and De Beers. In the next few years, the family will invest billions into Africa and her entrepreneurs with straightforward business philosophy.
“You have to learn to get on with people, you have to learn to determine the bullshit from the serious stuff, and then you have to have a good common sense and a vision of where you want to get to,” says Oppenheimer.
This no nonsense approach is driving the family forward in the business of private equity. The investment drive came after the wrench of selling out from De Beers, the largest diamond producer in the world. Along with Anglo American, De Beers may have survived political upheaval and two world wars, but the recession of 2008 proved a turning point.
“From a De Beers perspective, it came at a bad time. De Beers had just being opening new mines so we had to borrow money to pay for the mines – you don’t get a return very quickly – so we had to renegotiate our debt conversance with the bank, that environment wasn’t easy. We managed, we had to turn to our shareholders and get more money from them; this was post privatization. So both Anglo and the family put up more money, which was brave on both our parts,” says Oppenheimer.
“In my father’s lifetime, he talked about the great depression, where the situation was far more dramatic than anything I ever had to face, and you knew that people wanted to have diamonds, there was never any lessening of desire just that they didn’t have the income to do it. So you had to cut your cloth to suit that and wait for the times to improve… It never occurred to me that the business wouldn’t recover, there were times where you have somewhat sleepless nights.”
The emotional decision came in 2011. After 85 years, the Oppenheimers voted to sell their 40% stake in De Beers, the business that built the family fortune, for an estimated $5.1 billion. For the first time in decades, the family had no stake in any listed company.
“Not quite a difficult decision, the fact that there were three shareholders in De Beers, the family, Anglo and the Botswana Government was always in my view an unstable arrangement and I knew something was going to happen at some stage. Either Anglo would say it was not a business for them or they would say they really want to be in it in a much more serious way than we are at the moment and they came out on that side and made us a very fair and reasonable offer. And then of course I was in a difficult position because I had to deal with a business I had been in all my life on the one hand, and then the requirements of the family, my sister, her children, my children. We ended up in a situation where my heart made me say ‘look we should stay with De Beers’ but my head knew absolutely clear that this was the right deal to do.”
Analysts in Johannesburg will say Mary Slack, Oppenheimer’s sister, was a strong voice in the decision to sell.
“She (my sister) was not in the day to day running of the business… We all ended up wanting to sell,” replies Oppenheimer.
The parting broke a link with De Beers that dates back to Nicky’s grandfather, who led the family’s charge into Africa.
A London trading company posted 21-year-old EO Oppenheimer, the son of a German cigar merchant, to South Africa to buy diamonds. He took to the diamond trade like a duck to water and his knowledge of the stones was unparalleled; legend has it that Oppenheimer used to carry a note book around him to write down any useful business information. By the time he was 30, Oppenheimer was the mayor of the diamond town of Kimberly – no mean feat in an age when grey hair ruled the roost.
“I always remember him as a very quiet guy, I remember him as the sort of guy that if you bumped into him you rebounded,” says Oppenheimer.
The formidable Harry Oppenheimer was the next generation – a strident man who made his mark both in business and politics, as well as guiding his son in the art of business.
“No, I don’t think he was a tough man in business, he had a very good view of the right way to get to a point, to how to negotiate his way there. I would have thought my grandfather was a tougher business man,” says Oppenheimer.
“I always knew that my father was there and I could discuss business matters with him, and that gave you a head start, it never got you to the finishing line, so that was whether you could deliver or not. He taught me business went on and it was an assessment of risk and to be a successful business man you have to take risks. There is no good being risk adverse, then you go nowhere.”
Nicky Oppenheimer’s air harks back to the gentility of 1950s Britain, where he began his education at prep school at the age of seven. Harrow and Christ Church Oxford followed.
“I am of an age where going to university was the last holiday of your life and I thought that was absolutely fantastic. Politics, philosophy and economics was a good sort of all-round degree. I thought it was fantastic, wonderful life. I didn’t work very hard I got a third-class degree at the end of it all. But I had a lot of fun,” he says.
When Oppenheimer arrived home in South Africa, the army called him for national service.
“The army had a terrible problem with me and that was that I had a degree, and so if you have a degree you did your basics and then became an officer. So, I became an officer and then they had no idea what to do with me. I had no skills that were of any use to them at all. I was sent to a great big parking lot just outside Pretoria and I signed my name every time a vehicle came in and I signed saying the vehicle had four tyres and two headlights. I always say that the army taught me how to sign my name very fast,” he smiles.
Then, Oppenheimer took his seat on the board, which he was to occupy for 37 years.
“It is what I saw myself doing; I had a particular love within the Anglo business, the diamond business. I was lucky enough to achieve what any diamond person’s primary ambition would be and that’s become chairman of De Beers. I’ve been extraordinarily lucky,” he says.
Not too soon after the De Beers exit in 2011, the family set up its investment arm Tana Africa Capital with the investment company E. Oppenheimer &amp; Son and Temasek, a sovereign wealth fund from Singapore. The partners put up $150 million each and sources say the family is also ready to invest the billions from the De Beers deal. The investment company will look at agriculture and consumer businesses. It will also consider deals in media, healthcare and education up to $50 million.
“We are Africans and we would like to invest in Africa. So we are busy looking for things to do, we have some investments but we are constantly on the lookout,” says Oppenheimer.
Tana Africa Capital has already invested in Promasidor Group, a company founded in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1979, that sells everything from powdered milk to tea in 30 African countries. Regina is Egypt’s second largest pasta manufacturer and owns the country’s only durum wheat flour mill. It has an expanding export business into Africa and the Middle East.
Oppenheimer has faith in African entrepreneurs.
“People are pretty entrepreneurial in Africa and growing so and that is very encouraging, a constraint in Africa is bureaucracy,” he says.
“The problem rests on the fact that, so many African economies are mineral based. The thing with minerals is that you can’t pick them up and take them anywhere and that allows government, wherever they are, to be bureaucratic, which is not business friendly, because a business can’t simply say I don’t like you I’m going to go somewhere else, you’ve got to deal with it. As a continent we’ve got to learn that you’ve got to be business friendly and find ways to create an environment for business to flourish and that means a bit of a mind change. The important thing is they (governments) have a huge role to play in controlling the environment. The less they have to do with the actual business, in my view, the better.”
I venture that, in the words of Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is to keep government out of business.
“What one has to realize and what governments have to understand is, they are missing an opportunity. The penny will fall and then they must do much more than you talked about. They have to create the environment, they have to set the rules and regulations and tax rates but actually running of business is something short term that government is really bad at.”
And corruption?
“You have to stand up for what is right, corruption is an extremely insidious and dangerous thing and very difficult to eradicate once it starts… I often ask people once you’ve become a corrupt society, how do you stop being a corrupt society? And you don’t get very satisfactory answers. I think you have to demonstrate that you can be successful and contribute to society while being ethically sound, and it will be a long and slow process.”
More legislation, I venture.
“I always worry about legislation and what is does. When legislation comes forward, it is designed to catch the crooks. To my mind the crooks are always too clever to be caught. What is does is make honest people’s lives intolerable. So there has to be legislation but there has to be a drive to get people to believe in business ethics and doing the right thing.”
Then there is the struggling mining industry, which Oppenheimer spent more than half of his life working in. South Africa was shaken by a costly four-month strike in the platinum mines, followed by sapping and unprecedented power cuts. The Energy Intensive User Group that represents 32 of the country’s biggest energy consumers – including the smelters and mines – says 97% of its members are cutting back on capital projects because of a fear of power cuts.
“I think [mining] has a huge contribution to make. People talk about it like it’s a curse, which it certainly isn’t. Minerals have a future, if you’re blessed with minerals that’s a fantastically good start – you’ve got to use them. I think what happened in Botswana is a good example of a country that has taken its diamond revenues and put it to a good cause. You’ve got to find a way of encouraging mining, and mining is more long term than almost anything else. So you’ve got to create an environment where somebody is going to invest billions of dollars with a view that the first return will be seven to ten years away and the confidence to believe that the deal you have and environment you’re dealing in will still be there in seven to ten years. Then you will find people who will invest and companies and businesses will do… It is going to depend on the mining legislation, which is a bit up in the air at the moment. If you want to invest in a mine, you have to say ‘am I confident that the environment that the government creates for me will stand the seven to ten year test.’”
Oppenheimer concedes that the battered image of mining, in the land of his birth, has made foreign investors think twice.
“I think that people are looking at South Africa and waiting to see – that’s a bad situation. You want them not to be in wait mode, you want them to be in invest mode. The key thing in South Africa seems to be the creation of jobs. The government task I think should be to do everything in its power to create jobs so that the huge number of unemployed youth we have in the country can get jobs, get wages, fair proper wages and that needs to color every decision they make,”
says Oppenheimer.
As for the man himself, he is throwing himself into a number of philanthropic projects including the effort to save the endangered pangolin. Apparently, the long-tailed, scaly mammal is prone to electric security fences in the bush and is dying out.
If the pangolin survives and corruption dies, surely anything is possible in Africa.

‘Corruption  Is An Extremely Insidious And Dangerous Thing’

Who says being a caddie lacks romance?
Two Zimbabweans, both alike in dignity, in the United States where we lay our scene: one a professional golfer, the other a hairdresser.
Ryan Cairns, a former number-one golfer in Zimbabwe, was in the United States when he came across Tammy Birkett’s profile on Facebook. He liked what he saw and thought he had met her before but when he made contact, it turned out they were complete strangers.
“The only reason I accepted [his friend request] was because we had 120 mutual friends,” says Birkett.
Their conversations became more frequent and, as fate would have it, on an auspicious day they were booked on the same flight from New York to Zimbabwe. They checked in together and after 16 hours there was love in the air. After the two began dating, Cairns popped the question: will you caddie for me?
Their first game together was at the Sunshine Big Easy Tour in 2012. Cairns played well, perhaps he was trying to impress Birkett, and landed his first professional win. It was also a first for Birkett as a caddie. She learnt that there was more to it than knowing the yardage, pin placements and which club to use.
“At the time I had run out of money and instead of me paying, she paid for herself. She sponsored her own trip down to South Africa from Harare… [We] ended up winning the tournament and my career turned around. She took a chance on me and that made a huge difference,” says Cairns.
Like any relationship the bond between caddie and player is developed through trials and successes on the green. When Cairns is struggling, Birkett knows just what to do.
“One thing that I always say is, ‘Imagine yourself in a couple of hours when we are watching a movie, chilling, and you’re not even going to have this bad feeling that you have right now, so there is no point in holding onto that.’”
Birkett, who is now in her second year as a caddie, says that her biggest problem—besides being one of the few female caddies—is getting in line with the pedantic.
“When I first started, there were so many rules around the green like walking on your lines… you can’t talk, whisper at certain times and moving the bag was such an issue.”
Across the Beitbridge border, in South Africa, another caddie shares his secret of success.
It was the summer of 1998 at the Nedbank Golf Challenge, also known as the million-dollar golf challenge. As the tournament came to a close Tiger Woods seemed the likely winner. But with a then course record of 24 under par, Nick Price walked away with the trophy. A few steps behind him, carrying his bag, stood Tiger Lekhulene.
“We had beaten Tiger Woods. How many people can say that they beat Tiger Woods?” says Lekhulene.
Beating his namesake was the end of a very long road for Lekhulene. At the age of 14, he began his career as a caddie at Randpark Golf Club in Johannesburg, to pay for his school fees. He matriculated and became a fulltime caddie for top players, including Ian Palmer, Sally Little and Des Terblanche. Of all the players he has carried for, none of them have won as many tournaments as Price. For the past 33 years, Lekhulene has carried for him and is proud to call him a friend.
“I met Nicky by chance. He came to practice at Randpark and asked me to pick up balls for him. After his practice he asked me to caddie for him… he won the first professional game I caddied for him [Asseng TV Challenge Series], in 1979.”
Although caddies advise the player on what club to use and how to play the shot, at the end of the day they know not to overstep.
“You can discuss how to hit a shot but the final decision is up to him, he is the one who is going to hit the ball. You can’t force him to play a shot that he doesn’t want to play,” says Lekhulene.
Although Lekhulene enjoys his career, he says that his biggest issue is in the politics of the game.
“Golfers are not giving professional caddies a fair chance as they used to. I feel white people no longer feel like they should be giving black people so much money. They would rather have their cousins, fathers or family members caddie for them and give them the money. This is placing our careers as professionally-trained caddies at risk,” says Lekhulene.
Both Lekhulene and Birkett agree that there are perks. You get to see the world, make a good living and on top of your pay you often get a very good commission. According to the Sunshine Tour in South Africa, caddies’ salaries differ from caddie to caddie, as it is an agreement between the caddie and the golfer.
Although Lekhulene and Birkett have taken different paths, they both became caddies to top golfers in Africa, proving that there is no set way to become a caddie. Sometimes it takes hard work; sometimes it’s a meeting on the green; and sometimes it’s a romance on a social networking site.

Will You Caddie For Me, Dear?

Sola Owoloja has been working in the business for five years; he understands how to please. He had to transport a comb from New York to Johannesburg. It must have been a very special comb. He naturally said: “Yes”. You have to.
The patron staying at a Johannesburg hotel had left the comb, given to her by her dying mother, in a hair salon in New York. West Chauffeurs got in touch with the New York hotel and within 48 hours the comb was hand delivered to the patron.
Running around, chauffeuring, catering to and cajoling the rich is what makes concierge services pay. On another occasion, a patron asked to deliver an elephant across the Atlantic to the United States as a gift to his daughter. Luckily, the request was not followed through, again Owoloja would have said: “Yes”.
“Integrity is very important. If you make a promise to your guest, you have to keep that promise. We made a promise to our guests. We will bend, we’re flexible. We’ll do anything to keep them satisfied,” says Owoloja.
In 2008, Owoloja and Kagiso Dumasi saw a gap in the market for a concierge company in South Africa that would cater for the needs of wealthy travelers. Owoloja oversees the operational, financial and recruitment side of the business, while Dumasi looks after the marketing.
West Chauffeurs can make dinner reservations; find scarce theater tickets and presents in a hurry, as well as deliver combs.
Nigerian-born Owoloja learnt early on at home, in Lagos, that you have to do business however you can.
In Lagos, while in his twenties, he dabbled in the supermarket business with a friend. He moved to South Africa with the hope of running an oil services company, but failed. He moved back home but later returned to South Africa to start a business with the little entrepreneurial experience under his belt.
“When the chips are down, in the face of adversity and massive challenges, you need to still inspire people to get them to see beyond the challenges of the day,” says Owoloja.
Their Johannesburg business prospered through a link to Quintessentially, a global luxury lifestyle company, known for its high net-worth clients.
With a little help from the National Empowerment Fund, West Chauffeurs increased its fleet from two cars to eight, after making more than R1 million ($108,800) in its second year.
They relocated from the central business district of Sandton to another affluent suburb, Melrose Arch. This opened up the business meetings market. The company had to swear its drivers to secrecy as many deals were struck on the road.
Towards the end of that year, an opportunity came to run the travel desk for two new five-star hotels in Cape Town but it all went downhill from there. The two found that they had expanded too quickly.
They had entered into unfamiliar territory, in an international tourist city that has well-established hotels. West Chauffeurs found itself exposed, a small business that relied too much on the hotels for guests for business. The two new hotels were unable to fill up enough rooms to secure business for West Chauffeurs. The Johannesburg office had to keep Cape Town afloat.
“For a small company, expansion should be managed very carefully. We were profitable in our first year, but we did not think through that move carefully. We expanded very quickly without the structures to manage the expansion in terms of cash flow, record keeping,” says Owoloja.
At the end of each month the business was short of around 65% of their costs, which they had to source from the profit made during the previous year.
“It dried up very quickly. We tried to get overdrafts, personal funds to pay salaries but it was quite difficult. We picked up heavy losses in Cape Town but yes those are lessons learnt. They were painful,” he adds with a chuckle.
Owoloja says a big mistake was for the company to go without a management account and financial statements for nearly a year.
But that’s all in the past now. In early 2011, West Chauffeurs packed up office in Cape Town and focused on business at its headquarters in Johannesburg, where the company was doing well.
They signed a contract to run the travel desk for the five-star African Pride’s Melrose Arch Hotel located in the trendy precinct. Again, they struggled with being too small and having to run a high occupancy hotel with demanding clients. The hotels patrons were skeptical about making use of their services because they were much smaller than established car rental companies.
Through it all, things started to look up. The company now turns over nearly $800,000 annually.
“We went from nothing to quite a bit. There’s this very nice feeling that comes with making things work,” says Owoloja.
West Chauffeurs currently has twelve cars and employs 17 drivers and consultants. They drive clients from First Bank of Nigeria, Liberty Life and Barclays, to mention but a few.
One of their biggest achievements was beating more established companies to drive members traveling with the British Lions during their rugby tour to South Africa in 2009.
The softly spoken Owoloja says they are wary of leaping without looking, the scars of the Cape Town run deep. For now, their plans are to grow other services within the West Chauffeur brand in Johannesburg and capture the leisure market.
Surely, when the time is right, the answer will be: “Yes”.

The perils of the “yes” business

Johanna Mukoki  grew up in Apartheid South Africa in the 1970s. Her family struggled to make ends meet—her father was a bus driver and her mother a teacher. To help out with their finances Mukoki spent her weekends selling ice cream, boiled eggs and raw meat on the busy streets of Soweto, Johannesburg. It was on these streets that she honed her entrepreneurial skills. It didn’t matter to her that she occasionally had to walk to school barefoot, when the kids would make fun of her, because it all added fuel to the fire, burning inside her, with the desire to prosper in life.
At home, although money was tight, inspiration was plenty. She was motivated by the books her father encouraged her to read, such as How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Convey. From a young age she learnt that the key to success was not just about having a gift but that it required hard work and determination.
“I told my mom that I was going to work very hard to make sure that we never had to struggle again.”
In high school, Mukoki traded in selling for a successful modeling career. Her protective father accompanied her to every TV shoot and beauty pageant and his support kept her going. With the money she made from modeling Mukoki was able to support her family for an entire month. She recalls a song her mother always sang that went, “The little things you do for me they so
please me.”
The promising entrepreneur completed her B.Com degree at Rhodes University, where she became the first black student to tutor accounting. Life was going well for Mukoki until she hit another crossroads.
In her final year of completing her articles at KPMG, formally known as Aiken &amp; Carter, she was approached by many firms, which wanted to hire her. In those days qualified, black, female accountants were in short supply. Each offer made was better than the previous and Mukoki came to a sudden realization.
“If these people really think that there is value in me then I need to work for me, I need to invest in me.”
Uncertain of which direction she would take, all she knew was that she didn’t want to become a grey auditor for the rest of her life. When Mukoki was introduced to Tibor Zsadanyi and Robert Wilke, her partners in the company, it was a match made in heaven. They all had the same dream and vision for the company. Travel With Flair (TWF) started with three members of staff and one green-striped couch; they have since grown into a leading travel management company on the continent with a staff of 550 people. It has branches in Pretoria, Johannesburg, Cape Town and KwaZulu-Natal. If you visit their Pretoria offices you will find the original green-striped couch at the front reception.
“It’s a good way to remind one of where one came from. Those humbling experiences take you back and help you find your equilibrium,” she says.
For the past three years, TWF has won the ‘Africa’s Leading Business Travel Agency’ Award at the World Travel Awards. The company is worth an estimated R1.8 billion ($205.7 million) and credits much of its success to their ability to be pioneers in the industry. It was the first travel agency in the country to have SMS confirmation, e-confirmation and email boarding passes to passengers.
“Travel is dynamic and forever changing and if we are going to stay at the top we have to move with it.”
The road to creating one of the top travel companies in South Africa did not come without difficulties. Mukoki faced many problems.
“The first three years were a challenge. I would end up going without a salary because we had to pay employees’ salaries first.”
Being a black woman made acquiring finance from the bank difficult and there was also the challenge of finding regular clients. Their breakthrough came after they landed their first account with the University of Venda and business snowballed from there. Mukoki pushed on through the hard times because she believes that anything worth having needs to be worked for.
Mukoki’s hard work has garnered much recognition. Throughout her career she has won many awards including being named South Africa’s most influential women in business and government for the Tourism Sector by CEO Magazine and Top Woman of the Year in Business 2009/2010 at the Impumelelo Awards. She is also the first African to be appointed on the Global Tourism Board of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE), which represents Africa and the Middle East; she is also the youngest person on
the board.
When it comes to managing her team Mukoki tries to lead by example.
“I treat everyone from the cleaners to the senior managers with the same amount of respect. When you do that, people serve with a joyful heart.”
After 16 years of being in the business Mukoki can say that she has achieved what she defines as success.
“Success is something that you are doing daily that makes you [jump out of] bed in the morning and still pays your bills.”
Some of the best fashion advice she received came from author and talk show host, Felicia Mabuza-Suttle.
“Dress for the title you want and not for the job that you are in,”
says Mabuza.
To all aspiring entrepreneurs, Mukoki offers the same advice her father gave to her.
“He always used to say, ‘People are attracted to those that glow.’ That is why I always aim to represent the best version of myself.”

One  Who Glows

When businessman Wandi Nzimande was a Wandi Nzimande student in Johannesburg back in the early 1990s, he and his boyhood best friend, Sechaba ‘Chabi’ Mogale, had to help out at Nzimande’s parents’ second-hand clothing store to earn extra pocket money. The job was pretty uncool, and in a bid to find ways of making this unfashionable chore bearable, they got into the habit of changing and redesigning some of the old rags to better suit their personal style. When more and more fellow varsity students started buying the reworked wares off the two friends’ backs, the duo discovered that they were onto something big.
It was 13 years ago that the brand, Loxion Kulca, was born, and through incredibly trying times—due to the competitive nature of the fashion and leisure industry, the counterfeit trade and their own internal wrangling—Loxion Kulca lives and is sold by over
1,000 retailers across Africa.
“Getting into fashion had actually never crossed my mind,” says Nzimande. “I was at university studying mathematics and preparing for an academic career,” he explains.
It was only when he started spending more time with Mogale that he started developing an interest in black ghetto culture and how fashionably edgy it was. “Chabi had lived most of his childhood in the States as part of a family who had been in exile. Upon his return, he brought with him a wealth of magazines, videos and vivid stories and images of how the culture was where he came from. As a young boy who had never been outside South Africa, I was hugely fascinated, and I shared with him my own ghetto stories from having lived in Soweto all my life,” he says.
After their peers started buying more and more of their brand, they decided they were going to turn this into a business, after all. “We started coming up with fresh designs, as opposed to amending the second-hand stuff from my parents’ store. We took the money we were making and started producing beanies and light-knit jerseys, and those sold as quickly as we could make them. We hired seamstresses and sooner than we knew it, we started becoming inundated with orders as word of mouth about our brand spread like wildfire,” Nzimande remembers.
In 1997, their partnership with popular youth radio station YFM catapulted their popularity to dizzy heights. Hot kwaito artists and anybody who was considered to have any kind of street-cred was sporting their label. “At that point, getting celebrities to endorse our brand was important to us. We were on red carpets, we were in newspapers and on television, but we were clearly missing someone with a long-term strategy who would help us move from being just a fad into a fully fledged fashion empire,” recalls Nzimande.
The duo approached the late Brian Abrahams, the man who was then one of Johannesburg’s most experienced clothing franchisers. Abrahams had been responsible for licensing brands such as Wrangler Jeans and Caterpillar to South Africa in the 1970s. “Abrahams had his doubts about our brand and if it would have longevity, but he put his doubts aside and taught us everything we needed to know about the corporate side of running a fashion business. Chabi and I were the creatives; Abrahams became the third partner and came with an incredible network of contacts,” says Nzimande.
With Abrahams’ vision and support, Loxion Kulca became a national retail operation. They grew their range and from just beanies, T-shirts and jerseys, they ventured into shoes and eyewear. Then in 1999, former fashion house Sales House commissioned them to supply 150 of their chain stores. By 2003, their annual turnover was reported to be around the R80 million mark ($10 million at the time). Then trouble set in. “Abrahams died unexpectedly after being involved in a motorcycle accident and that deeply traumatized us. A legal battle between us and his family over his share of the business ensued, and then Chabi and I began having serious differences regarding how we wanted to move forward with the business,” says Nzimande.
Mogale decided to resign from the business, adding more uncertainty to the future of the fashion label. “The Abrahams family and I reached an understanding out of court, and it was agreed that Abrahams’ son, Gideon, was to take over where his father left off,” says Nzimande. But it would be an uphill battle to restore the label to its former glory. Newer, fresher labels had come up, and the business was not making anything near what it used to generate in its heyday. “We had serious trouble with counterfeiters. Many of our retailers backed out of our contracts because at any point, there would be five or six hawkers outside their shop doors selling fake Loxion Kulca items for a song,” says Nzimande.
Realizing that winning the war against the counterfeit trade was not likely to happen, Nzimande and the younger Abrahams decided on a revamped business model for the brand. “We are now fully a licensing business. We have a global copyright to our brand, so what we basically do is license our brand out, and the ‘licensee’ becomes responsible for the research and development, the design, manufacture and distribution. Once they collect the money made from the merchandise, they then pay us our royalties. We decided on this model as a way of making sure that the brand does not die and that it gets consistently revitalized and energized.
“Right now, our brand is carried in over 1,000 eye-wear stores across the continent and in over 500 clothing and shoe retailers. As Loxion Kulca, we also help develop new fashion enterprises and partner with up-and-coming fashion designers. We have decided to step away from any campaign driven by popular culture as we feel the brand has stood the test of time. That is proving to work as 2011 was our biggest financial year to date,” concludes Nzimande.

Getting It On With  Edgy Ghetto Styles

Ken Ayere’s moment of lucidity came to him as he was about to write his last story. His head was full of wonderful memories of life reporting on the road, his pocket was empty.
Ayere was at the end of a 14-year-long career working for the News Agency of Nigeria and was the bureau chief in South Africa. He was about to end his contract, when the thought hit him.
“Remuneration from media was just not enough for me. My mind was working on a way forward. I was thinking about how I could change the status quo,” he says.
<div id="attachment_711" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-711" class="size-large wp-image-711" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/352-151-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="316" />Kenn Ayere, Sandton, South Africa; 3 May 2012 &#8211; Photo by Brett Eloff.</div>
The answer was drawn from his experiences of welcoming visitors to South Africa from Nigeria. They all wanted Nigerian food, but there weren’t that many salubrious places in Johannesburg to go to.
Ayere, who also craved Nigerian food, decided to open his own restaurant. The idea was to create a restaurant which served West, East and Central African food where ex-patriates could meet and feel at home. The gimmick was that a Kenyan waiter would serve a Kenyan in his or her mother tongue; a Nigerian would serve a Nigerian, and so on. Ayere already had a name in his head, Homebaze, a place where Africans from across the continent could feel at home.
The trick was to raise money—not always easy when you are in a country far from home. Ayere managed to eke a little money out of the banks; the rest came from his life savings and borrowings from his family.
“I got the capital I needed to bring this dream to fruition,” he says.
In 2003, Homebaze opened its doors in Randburg, Johannesburg, with Mrs Ayere running the kitchen. The dining public of South Africa could sit down to plantain, egusi soup, chapati, pounded yam and moinmoin—a kind of Nigerian bean cake, amongst other delicacies on the Homebaze menu.
Supplies are not easy. You can’t nip down to the supermarket; every recipe and ingredient has to be imported from across Africa—you can’t afford to leave one spice out of a Nigerian dish if you want to satisfy a Nigerian palate. This alone costs at least R100,000 ($ 12.140) a month and Ayere tries to cut down on his costs by getting friends to stash spices in their suitcases.
“While it was a salable concept, it still took a while for things to get off the ground. I had to do a lot of marketing,” says Ayere.
The idea grew and there are now a total of three Homebaze restaurants in Johannesburg and Pretoria, with a fourth being built.
“I am very happy with my brand and I have exciting plans for the future,” he says.
Ayere toyed with the idea of opening a branch back home in Nigeria, but the cost of business and generators outweighed the romance of a triumphant return.
Nine years into his life as a restaurant owner, Ayere had a second epiphany. The power of the pen had never left him and now nagged him to write again. One day, he was sitting in restaurant when he decided to take up, once again, that which is mightier than the sword.
“Once in media, always in media; the bug bit again,” he says.
The result was a newspaper for Nigerians in South Africa, called The Envoy, which aims to tell their story.
“This is to spread information about the good professional Nigerians here and dispel the myth of the negative impact of Nigerians in business,” he says.
In both his business ventures, Ken Ayere has a full plate.

The Tale Of A Pen, A Spoon And An Empty Pocket

Deep in the heart of the hot and dry mining town of Carletonville, west of Johannesburg, is the modest headquarters of a small company trying to move mountains.
Natalie Killassy grew up in Carletonville—the heart of South Africa’s gold mining industry—and knows the often harsh life of mines and miners. Her family have lived there for generations and when she was a child, she often felt the grief of mining accidents. The deep mines of Carletonville burrow down around 4km into the earth and are prone to lethal seismic activity that can bring shafts crashing down.
<div id="attachment_647" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-647" class="size-large wp-image-647" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/CTP2641-1024x632.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="293" />Staff working on the backfill bags in the bag factory</div>
As director of Stitch Wise, Killassy has made a business out of helping to rebuild the shattered lives of injured miners, while at the same time trying to prevent others from suffering the same fate.
Stitch Wise is a safety gear company which makes huge bags that save lives underground. Miners pour backfill—liquid mud created by blasting that solidifies—in the bags. The bags save the cost of transporting waste to the surface, as well as providing a shield against rockfalls underground.
It has taken 16 years to build up Stitch Wise, which sprang from an 18-month study into the world’s deepest gold mines. For the first eight years, the business did not pay dividends as every cent was reinvested.
“We come from humble beginnings where we couldn’t afford forklifts to lift the bags as they surfaced. We only had one sewing machine and today everything is automated,” says Killassy.
Nearly a third of her workers are injured miners who are trained to make the bags and patented safety equipment. The company is 26% owned by its employees through a broad-based black economic empowerment trust.
<div id="attachment_649" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-649" class="size-large wp-image-649" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/CTP2689-680x1024.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="714" />Stitch Wise Director, Natalie Killassy, standing next to her patented bag material</div>
“Businesses are built on people and we need to add value to people’s lives—that helps you build a business. You need to allow them to take ownership, through that you develop pride… Social entrepreneurs are people who do things that touch their hearts,” says the softly spoken Killassy.
The mining companies—AngloGold  Ashanti, Gold Fields and Harmony Gold—have poured money into the idea and Killassy is trying to get companies to spend more on safety.
The company was chosen by Endeavour, an Oppenheimer family funded NGO, and became part of the group in 2004. Endeavour selects promising entrepreneurs, assists them in improving their business models and has so far picked 300 in 25 countries.
“It is quite a rigorous process; they basically panel beat your business and you as an entrepreneur.”
<div id="attachment_650" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-650" class="size-large wp-image-650" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/CTP2724-1024x680.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="315" />Knee and arm pads produced by disabled staff at the safety gear factory</div>
With innovation and experienced mentors backing her, Killassy’s Stitch Wise is setting its sights on the rest of the continent and South America’s Chilean mines.
“Mining is going to be around for a long time and we need to grow with it.”
Killassy grew up in the tough world of mining in Carletonville. She has grown to be as tough in business.

Angel of The Underground

When 22-year-old Greg Maloka heard that YFM, a new youth radio station, was to launch in Johannesburg, he rushed to join the thousands of hopefuls vying for a spot on air.
Ever since Maloka was a young boy in the township of Diepkloof in Soweto, South Africa, he dreamed about being a charismatic, robed figure on stage, commanding an audience of thousands. In the early days of this longing, he determined that he was going to achieve this by either becoming a teacher or a priest.
<div id="attachment_528" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-528" class="wp-image-528 size-medium" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/322-259_1-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />Kaya FM&#8217;s Greg Maloka, Johannesburg; 14 February 2012 &#8211; Photo by Brett Eloff</div>
So the young hopeful, then a final year student majoring in typing skills at the former Technikon Northern Transvaal (TNT), took a bus to the auditions. Just as he had expected, the snaking queue held hundreds upon hundreds of eager hopefuls.
“When I saw the very long queue, I immediately realised that there would probably be about 50 other people—if not more—who would be far better than me. Furthermore, I was all too aware that the station would be looking for between 10 to 15 people, maximum,” says Maloka.
That’s when the light-bulb flickered on.
“Realizing that I needed something that was going to make me stand out from the hundreds who had the same ambition, and probably some with more talent, I decided to put pen to paper and to list in bullet form the things that I thought were going to make this new station work.
“As I sat in the queue, I started observing and listening to the conversations of the eight or so guys who were processing the auditions. These guys were clearly earmarked for top positions in the station and luckily for me, I had been part of the TNT Campus Radio Station so I was familiar with the challenges that face a station [targeting] a youth market.”
The moment of truth arrived. Maloka walked into the sound booth for his turn to charm the judges. He paused at the door and handed over the handwritten “business plan” to the then music manager, the late Arabi Mocheke.
“He took those pages and disappeared. The notes on those pages were largely based on my own observations—what I thought they should do with the station; how they should position the brand; what kind of music they should play; and even the kind of DJs they should have on the station,” says Maloka.
Maloka’s audition was soon over. He waited around the station with the other young hopefuls, but he knew fate was on his side when Mocheke, the music manager, pushed through the crowd looking for him.
“He returned with the notes and started questioning me about the stuff that I had written. He asked me how I knew the things mentioned there and proceeded to invite me to a management meeting that was going to be held the next day.
“Needless to say, I was up at the crack of dawn and was on number 28 bus. By the time that fateful management meeting concluded, I was now in charge of auditioning the same people I was queuing with the day before,” he concludes joyfully.
So never stop thinking, or scribbling, if you want to get ahead.
<h3>Who Is Greg Maloka?</h3>
Greg Maloka was among the group that pioneered the launch and establishment of Johannesburg youth radio station YFM, in 1997. The station has been widely credited with bringing about a revolution in youth culture. YFM brought kwaito music to South Africa’s listeners and promoted the rise and infiltration of hip hop music. Most importantly, the station supported young entrepreneurs by giving them a radio and print platform to communicate their services. Maloka has held practically all the important positions within the station, with stints as program manager, music manager, station manager and then eventually, CEO and managing director. He left YFM in 2003 after falling out with the station’s board and went on to be partner in Instant Grass—a trends and insights agency that’s based in Cape Town. Maloka is currently the managing director of Kaya FM, one of the fastest-growing independent radio stations in South Africa.

The Right Notes,  Right On Queue

As we wait at the Johannesburg Country Club on a warm Friday afternoon to meet Thabo Maseko, the youngest qualified PGA golfer, it is hard to know what to expect. Could he be Africa’s Tiger Woods in 10 years, or just another very good weekend golfer?
The Johannesburg Country Club, an oasis of trees and grass amid concrete, is to the north of the city and alive with activity. Some people are hitting balls on the lush green fairways, while others take a late lunch. From behind us a young, polite man arrives and greets us.
<div id="attachment_503" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-503" class="wp-image-503 size-medium" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/IMG_6128-300x197.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="197" />Thabo Maseko at the Johannesburg Country Club</div>
There are no other black golfers in sight. In fact, before 19-year-old Maseko was born, most black golfers weren’t allowed to compete on South Africa’s golf courses, let alone play professionally in tournaments including the Sunshine Tour, a prestigious tournament that Maseko has just qualified to play in this year. In those days, most black people on golf courses were caddies—a million miles away from an aspiring black golf professional like Maseko.
“It’s a dream come true—something I’ve wanted to do pretty much my whole life. It did come a bit early, but I was definitely ready for the change. I’m just relishing the challenge, to be honest. It’s an amazing feeling and I’m looking forward to it,” he says with a big smile on his face.
Maseko, who is ranked 835th in the European golf ranking, is humble and just happy to be doing what he does best—play golf.
“It’s exciting because I’m just playing. I’ve got nothing to lose and I’m young. You know other guys are playing for their lives; it’s like a real job for them. I’m just having fun out there and I’m doing what I love. Instead of going to varsity, I’m playing golf—it’s just awesome,” Maseko says.
Maseko, son of former CEO of the South African Government Communication and Information System (GCIS), Themba Maseko, says he started to like golf after watching his dad play socially. Maseko says he then started hitting balls around when he was about 10 years old, but it wasn’t until he saw Tiger Woods on television that he wanted to be a professional golfer; he started playing, aged 12.
It’s not easy to make it as a professional golfer, and one has to go to tour school to qualify as a professional. Maseko attended The Golf School of Excellence in Observatory, Johannesburg, and had to finish in the top 10 out of his group to qualify as a tour professional.
“That week is an intense one—you play four rounds, you know you can’t mess up; every shot is really important. It really was a difficult week, but I’m glad I came out,” Maseko says.
Mike Taylor of the Sunshine Tour says Maseko is exceptionally good for his age and is a promising talent. “He’s got his head squarely on his shoulders and looks pretty sharp when he’s on the green. He broke 70 on his first day of tour school trials. He played confidently and has really good skills,” says Taylor.
“At the end of the day, I’m working towards a goal; so in the next couple of years, hopefully I can be number one. I guess we’re all practising hard out there—it’s long hours—we just want to be the best we can, really,” Maseko says enthusiastically.
Opportunities are endless to make money in the game and can turn a golfer into a multi-millionaire.
“Put it this way—playing for $460,000 a week in prize money, if you finish in the top 30, you can make around $13,000-$20,000 a week straight,” says Maseko.
Life can be tough without sponsors because golf is an expensive sport.
“We’re also speaking to a few new potential sponsors right now; we’re going to be signing in the next couple of weeks—I can’t say right now who I’m speaking to, but it’s pretty big. They’ll be giving me tons of money a month to go play, and I’m going to Europe as well; they want to support me, especially because there hasn’t been a young black golfer on tour. So people are giving me opportunities and it’s looking good.”
So what does the young golfer hope to achieve in the near future? “I’ve only been professional now for about four weeks, so hopefully as soon as I find my feet, I’ll make a few cuts and make a bit of money. But right now, I’m not thinking about the money. I just want to go and show my talent and pick up the trophies,” Maseko says, smiling confidently.
Tiger Woods must be looking over his shoulder.

Tag: Johannesburg

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