Annual meetings of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Africa’s premier financial institution, are no longer what they used to be. While Africa remains the world’s poorest continent, the narrative and attention it receives has changed in the past decade. And nowhere is this more visible than in the conversations at the annual meetings of the AfDB, rated AAA by all the major rating agencies—Standard &amp; Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch. 
In Marrakesh, Morocco, this year, a record 3,000 delegates showed up, ranging from the owners of the bank—the finance ministers of the 53 African countries—to non-governmental organizations and the ubiquitous consultants from around the world. Africa’s newest country, South Sudan, is not yet a member. 
The mood was buoyant, as befitting a continent that is growing faster than any other. The bank forecasts economic expansion across Africa will average 4.8% this year and climb to 5.3% next year. If you exclude South Africa, the continent’s largest economy, the advance tops 7% at a time when most of Europe is in recession, the United States is battling anemic growth at around 2% and the Chinese locomotive is slowing. 
“Now is the time. After 10 years of improved stability, sound macroeconomic policies and blossoming trade links, growth has made African nations freer than ever to choose their own development paths and implement active policies for economic transformation,” says the bank’s vice president and chief economist Mthuli Ncube. 
This is a far cry from the doom and gloom of the two decades ending in the 1990s, when the London-based Economist published its now infamous `Hopeless Continent’ cover, which to be fair, was recanted years later. 
According to the International Monetary Fund, seven of the 10 fastest-growing economies are African—Mozambique, Zambia, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Ghana, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Tanzania. Growth has been broad-based, with 27 of the region’s 30 largest economies expanding since 2000. Mckinsey &amp; Co. notes that Africa already has a bigger middle class than India. 
While some suggest this is due to China’s resurgence, there is little doubt that painful economic and political reforms carried out in the 1990s and Africa’s new leaders are responsible. 
The private sector believes in the reforms and sustainability of the continent’s new growth path and is, in many instances, outpacing government initiatives through investments on the ground. Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man, is pouring $7.5 billion in his businesses in the next four years. 
Acha Leke, a director at Mckinsey &amp; Co. in Johannesburg, says that Africa has gone from battling to generate growth, to the challenge of how to improve the quality of jobs and ensure that the rising tide carries all boats. 
This was reflected at this year’s meeting, the theme of which was Africa’s Structural Transformation; it aimed to ensure that future growth is equitable and sustainable. While economic expansion has lifted some people out of poverty, the majority of Africans remain desperately poor, according to AfDB. 
“Structural transformation is about improving the quality of African growth by diversifying the sources of that growth, and expanding economic opportunities for all. In many ways it is about turning natural wealth into created wealth,” says AfDB president Donald Kaberuka. 
The governors, economists and other delegates addressed how to use wisely the continent’s vast natural resources; how Africa’s cities of the future might look and strategies to take advantage of the world’s youngest population. 
To ensure the current economic growth is sustained, the AfDB approved a 10-year strategy, built on infrastructure development, regional economic integration, private sector development, skills, technology and improved governance and accountability. 
“The strategy reaffirms the bank’s strategic choices around infrastructure, economic integration and the private sector. It charts the way towards inclusive growth that spans age, gender and geography,” says Kaberuka, who is in his second and final term. 
The 2013 meetings were also notable for the launch of the bank’s Africa50 fund. It will address Africa’s infrastructure funding gap, which is estimated at more than $50 billion annually. 
Africa’s positive economic outlook is set to further improve, especially with new mineral discoveries. But some warn that Africa must guard itself against the Dutch disease, a conflict fuelled by the fight for resources, which would set it back and dash both Kaberuka and Ncube’s dreams of making Africa the new workshop of the world.

hopeless no more

The house in Mbalenhle Avenue, Secunda, in Mpumalanga, is a monument to May Mahlangu’s maternal grandmother, Joanna. She brought up the football star and his younger brother, Bafana, after they were orphaned.
“It was a tough time, and it builds your character. There is no one to look up to—no mother or father to advise you. My grandmother was there to inspire us. She told us that nothing comes easy. You have to work very hard to be successful,” says Mahlangu.
Mahlangu built the house for his grandmother after glory at the Africa Cup of Nations in January.
In this tournament, Mahlangu grew into one of Africa’s most exciting attacking midfielders since Steven Pienaar. His equalizer against Morocco ensured his country safe passage to the quarter-finals.
“I dedicated that goal to her and I am happy she saw me scoring that goal. She raised me from an early age and I would not be here if it were not for her. She also allowed me to join Remember FC in Secunda, at age 12, and Stars of Africa Football Academy at 15. I owe her my life as a professional soccer player,” says Mahlangu.
Teko Modise was another pivotal figure in Mahlangu’s life; he inspired Mahlangu to pursue football professionally.
“I always watched him, while he played for Orlando Pirates, Sundowns and Bafana. He was my childhood hero,” says Mahlangu.
For the past two seasons, Mahlangu, a Bafana Bafana midfielder, has been linked with several top European clubs, but his Swedish side Helsingborg IF has managed to hold on to him. The 2011 Swedish Player of the Year has been a revelation for South Africa during the past six months.
Gavin Hunt, former coach of SuperSport United, considers him and Dean Furman to be the best midfield-combination for the national team.
Boebie Solomons—a former Bafana Bafana under 20 coach and current assistant coach at Bloemfontein Celtic—agrees.
“May and Dean have been the biggest difference between the current Bafana Bafana team and the national group under its predecessor Pitso Mosimane. Take those two players away, and we are back at square one.”
David Nyathi, current under 19 coach at Ajax Cape Town and former Bafana Bafana stalwart, adds  Reneilwe Letsholonyane to the mix, calling the three midfielders: “a pleasing triangle”.
Farouk Khan, director of the Stars of Africa Football Academy, says Furman plays the defensive role as midfielder, while Mahlangu is the offensive spark, with Letsholonyane excelling as distributor and organizer.
Khan saw Mahlangu evolve at the academy, when the young 15-year-old player joined. Mahlangu’s speed and endurance made him the best amongst the academy’s intake at the time.
“His bleep test [or 20 meter shuttle run test to estimate an athlete’s maximum oxygen intake] was a 16 or 17,” says Khan.
Solomons says Mahlangu’s awareness and vision separate him from the rest.
“He has the ability to determine, almost immediately, when he receives the ball, whether to counterattack and initiate a speedy build-up with turn over possession to release the strikers, or not. He can keep the ball glued to his feet while looking up, almost like a Zinedine Zidane. May is a three-in-one player: an initiator, a participator and a finisher,” he says.
Mahlangu must still improve his final pass, according to Hunt.
Lucas Radebe, former Bafana Bafana captain, says that Mahlangu is not a total player until he improves the defensive side of the game.
No player becomes a part of the elite without pain and some luck. Mahlangu has to survive setbacks and injuries for years if he is to become one of the greats.
“What impressed me about May, is his character. He is a born leader, with no fear of failure, with self-belief, confidence and a coachable spirit. He is the epitome of a complete modern-day footballer,” says Khan.
Mahlangu has already overcome tragedy and poverty—surely he can take anything life throws at him.

MAY TALENT TRIUMPH

Borussia Dortmund and FC Bayern Munich—these two German Bundesliga clubs surprised many by making it an all-German final at the UEFA Champions League at Wembley in May.
Bayern has reached the final three times in four years. On the other side of the coin, Dortmund embodies the change in Germany that is making this footballing nation great again.
With a little help from the directors of Dortmund’s youth team, manager Jürgen Klopp has hand-crafted a great team. Dortmund have shown that with the right people in place, sustainable success is possible. Klopp has nurtured rising talent, showing that spending lots of money is not the be-all and end-all of professional football.
The youth academy of FC Barcelona, La Masia, has more than 300 young players. It has been praised, since it opened in 2002, for being one of the best in the world. La Masia has been cited as a factor, not only in FC Barcelona’s European success, but also in Spain winning the FIFA World Cup in 2010. It trained all three finalists for the Ballon d’Or award in the same year: Andrés Iniesta; Lionel Messi and Xavi Hernández. The club scouted Messi in Argentina and signed him when he was 13.
The question of how clubs in Africa can do the same is a complex one. African players are sought-after. Every year, they sign for clubs in England, Spain, Italy and Germany.
African players are prized for their flair and physical attributes, but have been criticized in the past, in a broad generalization, that they do not possess the technique of players from Europe. That is something that can be taught, but the general feeling is that it should be done from an early age.
It is for that reason that many European clubs now have some sort of academy set-up in Africa; be it their own facility, or in partnership with an African club. This allows them to uncover gems from the age of six and nurture them through their teens with a view to transfer them to a European academy at the age of 16.
It is a long-term investment that bears little fruit. Only one in 10 players end up in Europe—a number that varies from country to country. This process has received both praise and criticism. The praise is for the opportunities it gives young footballers through professional careers in Europe. The criticism: it is seen as a depletion of Africa’s scarce resources in return for little.
The reality is that these academies do not come cheap. Most clubs in Africa cannot afford a truly professional academy set-up, with world-class training facilities and coaches, without the patronage of a team in Europe. Any amount of money and expertize is good for the African game.
The success of African clubs, in setting up their own structures, has been limited; it has come more by fluke than design.
Perhaps the greatest example is the Asec Abidjan Academy in Cote d’Ivoire that produced a golden generation of stars. The academy is known as the crown jewel of African football. It was founded by Roger Ouégnin and Frenchman Jean-Marc Guillou 20 years ago.
The two saw enormous natural talent among the club’s youngsters, but little tuition outside of football. The students at the academy are given a football education, and are also taught maths, history, geography, physics, French, English and Spanish.
The students live in dorms during the week and have two training sessions a day, while getting top-notch medical care. Graduates include Bonaventure Kalou; Didier Zokora; Emmanuel Eboué; Gervinho Kouassi; Salomon Kalou, Koffi N’dri, known as Romaric, Didier Ya Konan, and the Touré brothers, Yaya and Kolo.
It has been an enormous success and continues to develop top players with a simple recipe—bring structure and organization to the lives of these youngsters, then let their natural talent shine.
The question of why there are not many more such successful set-ups around the continent probably comes down, largely, to money. There certainly is a fair share of fantastic institutions, but financial issues aside, it is also a matter of the desire from club owners and consistency in what you are trying to achieve.
You cannot have a top program for two years, then let standards slip. It is also a question of expertise in some parts of the continent; football is a universal language that can be taught easily.
Running a professional academy is a huge undertaking and requires skills that go far beyond the football pitch. These are not always readily available—certainly at a cost that makes them affordable—and as with any business, an academy will live or die by virtue of the people running it. There is no quick route to success, you have to be in it for the long haul.
If you look at Ajax Amsterdam’s association with Ajax Cape Town in South Africa, that is now 14 years old, it has unearthed only two players—Steven Pienaar and Thulani Serero. Despite this, Ajax remains committed, for the moment, because there is always the promise of another Pienaar. It is this long-term thinking that needs to apply.
With Zambia, whenever the Chipolopolo camp is in Johannesburg, they always play practice games against a South African Youth Academy called Africa Sport that is run by former Bafana player Harold Legodi. He is doing a great job and has gathered real talent.
It’s always encouraging to see players being groomed. Chipolopolo have played with them four or five times and it is heartening to see skill that surely should lead to a bright future.
If you open an academy tomorrow and start with players at under-7 level, it may take you a decade before you get your first professional player. It is a long-term investment for which few have the patience.
We need more academies on the continent but we need good ones. That will be the key to growing the game in Africa.

Wanted: Entrepreneurs With Deep Pockets And Patience

When gold is poured it doesn’t glitter. It drips out in thick globs of orange. If a small amount splashes you, it will burn a hole right through your hand. Yet, the moment it is out of the furnace, you can feel your hand drawn toward it. This is the allure of gold: the most sought after commodity in the world.
In the sooty recesses of the 93-year-old Rand Refinery, to the east of Johannesburg, South Africa, almost 50,000 tons, a third of the world’s gold, has been melted by craftsman clad in singed overalls. In a place that never sees the light of day, where the churning of machinery can deafen you and the light and gas from furnaces can blind you if you don’t wear safety glasses; no one leaves without a full-body x-ray.
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It takes 15 minutes to pour 10 bars, each worth R5.7 million ($570,000). By the time it’s cooled, the rising price of gold makes it worth a million more.
“In this industry no day is the same as the previous day, especially right now when gold is so volatile,” says Howard Craig, CEO of Rand Refinery.
The refinery turns raw gold, flown in from the mines by a fleet of heavily armed helicopters and trucks, into bullion. In churning out the wealth of nations, these men are able to do what machines cannot; pour molten metals into casts to a perfect weight of 12.6kg. The refinery makes its money by this smelting and refining of the metals.
In October, things were cooking when gold was selling at $1,790 an ounce. Since then, the gold industry has hit a downward spiral of fluctuating prices, ending $300 lower at around $1,400.
“I’m still very bullish about gold and a lot of people panic when they see the gold price drop by $150, like it did in the last couple of weeks. But for me what was really encouraging was [when] people came into the market and we have seen such massive purchasing and demand as a result of the price going down. I think, as a leader at a gold refinery, you have to believe in it. But I think there are some good fundamentals that underpin that belief,” says Craig.
Adrian Saville, an investment analyst from Cannon Asset Managers, believes that, this year, gold’s role as a buffer against economic uncertainty has waned.
“First, the US has a much firmer footing in its economic recovery. Second, through 2012 there was a huge question mark over the survivorship of the euro, especially surrounding Greece and the so-called Grexit [Greece’s possible exit of the Eurozone]. Today, some of this anxiety has been taken off the table and the euro appears to be on firmer ground. Third, in early 2013, investors have been encouraged by Japan’s massive liquidity boost, which has helped reflate the Nikkei and restore some lost confidence,” says Saville.
The analyst says that, as the price has decreased, the historical relationship with other precious metals has revived.
“At first glance gold has no inherent investment value. Gold has no real industrial application; it is a lump that people want or desire. In this way, the gold price is largely sentiment driven, which is hardly the basis for successful investing. But, at the same time, when countries are wildly printing money, gold offers people a stable store of wealth and that makes it very appealing. In 2000, two million Zimbabwean dollars would have bought you a wheelbarrow of gold. In 2008, you would have had a wheelbarrow full of paper,” says Saville.
They say, get too close to a fire, or molten gold, and you will get burned. It seems, for the moment, the allure of the shiny yellow metal is worth the risk. The trick is, getting out before you get a hole in your hand.

Is The Golden Bubble About To Burst?

When you talk to Ben Magara, the fifth child in a family of nine children from rural Zimbabwe, you can’t help but think that the open and friendly person smiling at you may be just too nice to be taking on a tough and thankless job.
Magara takes up the role as CEO of the world’s third-largest platinum miner, Lonmin, on July 1, and a rocky road lies ahead.
Worker relations at Lonmin and across the South African platinum sector are a bubbling cauldron. On June 3, a National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) official working at Lonmin’s Western Platinum operation, 120km north west of Johannesburg was shot dead. It led to talk of a peacekeeping force for the mines, which would have been unthinkable just two years ago.
It is a sign of troubled times. There was mistrust even before the Marikana tragedy in August. Between August 11 and 16, clashes between police and striking workers led to the deaths of 44 miners. More than 70 people were injured and around 250 people were arrested.
A public inquiry into the deaths and the reasons why the strike had been so violent will continue this month. It will also ascertain why police, security guards and miners, who did not strike, were killed. The hearings are slow and findings may only emerge next year.
What seems clear from the inquiry, so far, is that a breakdown in NUM leadership and failure by unions to direct their members, may have contributed to the massacre. Government, police and mining companies are also likely to shoulder the blame.
Since August, the unpredictable South African mining industry has been plagued by wildcat strikes. At Lonmin, the majority of the unionized workforce belongs to the Associated Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), around 70%, according to management. AMCU has been around for some time, but last year came to the fore as a rival to NUM, which is accused of being out of touch with its members. At the platinum sectors two other major employers, Impala Platinum and Anglo American Platinum (Amplats), AMCU members also make up the majority of unionized employees, leaving NUM on the back foot.
This has made South Africa’s platinum mines a political battleground as NUM struggles to regain its power base. There is much on the line for both unions and the ANC. To a degree, the platinum sector wage talks that will be held in July will be as much about the politics of the country as they will be about miners looking for wage increases.
In May, Lonmin caught  up on lost production after last year’s violence, but lost even more production as infighting between NUM and AMCU supporters led to strikes. The company’s share price has fallen 33% year-on-year on the London Stock Exchange, where the company has its main listing.
“We have to make sure the assets are working optimally. We will be rising from a low base and need to keep the cash flow running,” says Magara.
Forty-six-year-old Magara is just as imposing now as when he was elevated to CEO of Anglo Coal South Africa seven years ago. He rises at 4AM to go to the gym and appears to have lost none of his verve and enthusiasm.
We meet at the Melrose Arch hotel, in Johannesburg. Magara is keen to talk about his hopes for Lonmin and the South African mining industry.
Magara says that the mining industry has to work together in communities around mines. And referring to a long running area of contention between miners and companies, he says the industry cannot merely apologize for silicosis. The debilitating lung disease can cause premature deaths. It is caused by crystalline silica dust inhaled by miners with inadequate protection. Today, the protection has improved and many of those suffering from the disease contracted it years ago. South African mining companies have been shying away from paying decent compensation to miners who contracted the disease.
“We have to deal with it,” he says.
Magara, who has a mining engineering degree from the University of Zimbabwe, acknowledges he will have his work cut out at Lonmin. His last job was executive head of engineering and capital projects at Amplats. He clearly knows the platinum business; while his job at Amplats was an executive one, at Lonmin the buck will stop with him.
Heads of resources companies in the 21st century need broad skills, it is no longer just about getting the ounces out of the ground, it also requires political poise.
“Everyone wants to have skin in the game,” says Magara.
He is a good communicator and as the quote above suggests he gives the impression that he is unlikely to be an immoveable object when it comes to negotiations. He knows his ability to communicate is a key attribute. Asked why he was selected as the person for the Lonmin job, he says much of his work at Amplats involved community relations. He had to help the company secure mining licenses.
At Amplats’ Mogalakwena mine, near Polokwane, two communities had to be relocated, often an uneasy task. When Magara took up his position with the company, the people were refusing to move. He went to the communities each week, meeting with 17 sub-committees to discuss their grievances.
“In six months we had the licence,” he says.
It is Magara’s view that on occasions mining companies may be too quick to revert to the law.
“Actually, it is about building relationships. It’s about respect,” he says.
Magara has always been close to the ground and early to rise. Back home, in Bikita, Masvingo, he would rise at 4AM to tend vegetables with his siblings and father, before heading off to school. In those days, Magara dreamed of being a bus driver.
Now as head of Lonmin, Magara steers a company with a market capitalization of $1.97 billion, albeit carrying significant debt, where he has to unite the divided. Already, as part of the South African Chamber of Mines collective bargaining process for wage talks in the gold and coal sector, NUM has tabled a demand of 60% for entry-level workers, with the overall demand about a 15% increase. Taking into account that unions aim high in wage negotiations, even an agreement to a fraction of these demands could prove ruinous. Wages make up half of mining costs.
Magara knows what he has to do with the operations at Lonmin.
“It’s all about efficiency… Lonmin has an excellent resource base,” he says.
That is just one aspect of what might be called the Lonmin success equation. If Magara steers the Lonmin bus onto the clear highway, he will have to have all the parties with “skin in the game” on board. Before he can settle into the driver’s seat, he will have to pull off quite a feat; an entente with labor that should lead to increased productivity and efficiencies.
Given the country’s history, NUM’s loss of footing and rivalry with AMCU, the trauma mining communities have suffered in the last year, it is a job that could drive an angel to drink.
Magara, though, as an African with significant experience in South Africa and Zimbabwe, some believe, is better equipped to negotiate this rough tough job than most.

A Rough Tough Job

The appointment of Ben Magara as CEO of Lonmin is the best decision made by the Lonmin board since they got rid of former CEO Brad Mills in September 2008. 
Mills, a self-confessed mechanization zealot, whose attempts to mechanize Lonmin’s mining operations were unsuccessful, stepped down by mutual consent and was soon followed by his chairman, John Craven, who retired in January 2009. 
Prior to this, Craven had famously declared Mills had the full support of himself and the Lonmin board for his policies. 
Mills was replaced by former chief financial officer Ian Farmer, who made major changes. He was making good headway when he resigned last year because of ill-health at precisely the same time the labor mayhem erupted at the group’s Marikana mine. 
Forty-six-year-old Magara is a highly-experienced mining engineer and, up until now, an Anglo American Corporation ‘lifer’. He worked for the group for 22 years, starting on the Wankie Colliery, now known as Hwange, in Zimbabwe, before coming to South Africa in 1994. 
He has occupied a string of top positions in Anglo’s coal division and is currently head of engineering and capital projects at Anglo American Platinum (Amplats). Magara will assume his position at Lonmin on July 1. 
The obvious question is: why is Magara leaving Anglo? You don’t have to look too far for the obvious answer. Sources indicate he was overlooked for the top position at Amplats, where last year Chris Griffith was appointed to replace former CEO Neville Nicolau. 
That’s the second time Magara has been overlooked for a top spot at Anglo, after being shifted into Amplats during a group management reshuffle in 2009, from his previous position as CEO of Anglo’s South African coal operations. 
Magara ticks all the boxes for the top position at Lonmin starting with his profession, because a criticism frequently voiced by analysts over mining company CEOs with a financial background, is that they don’t have the technical background to stop their mine managers pulling the wool over their eyes. 
But he also comes with plenty of experience in the areas that have been increasingly crucial to running a mining group in South Africa—black economic empowerment (BEE), safety and health issues and, arguably most important of all, dealing with politicians. 
In his position at Amplats Magara was responsible for bringing the group’s Unki platinum mine in Zimbabwe on stream. It was developed successfully and with little confrontation with the Zimbabwe government over indigenization. 
At Anglo Coal, Magara made his name running the New Denmark Colliery, where he introduced a new and highly successful safety program dubbed “Smarty”—an acronym for ‘safety must always relate to yourself’. He was also closely involved with the creation of Anglo Inyosi Coal—a BEE joint venture setting up a major domestic coal company, which holds the contract to supply the new Kusile power station being built by Eskom—South Africa’s national power supplier. 
Magara is also no stranger to crisis management, having been appointed head of the working group created to deal with the coal supply crisis early in 2008, when Eskom’s mismanagement of its coal stockpiles triggered a temporary shutdown of the South African power grid. 
He pulled no punches at the time declaring in an interview that: “Had Eskom placed orders for extra coal sooner, we could have done something about it sooner.” 
I singled out Magara in the 2010 edition of Rainmakers and Pot Stirrers: Your Guide to the 100 Most Influential People in SA’s Mining Industry as a man destined for bigger things. 
So I am not surprised to see him moving to the top slot at the world’s third largest platinum producer. He faces some huge challenges but I have no doubt he’s going to crack it

Ben on the button

In an allusion to the disruptive impact of the internet on business, former American senator John Sununu said: “Not since the steam engine has any invention disrupted business models like the internet.” 
The internet has spawned new industries and has changed the nature of human interaction. Digital marketing pervades the internet; all of its users are potential targets of online marketing campaigns. It offers more return on investment on marketing spend, with positive implications for corporate profitability and growth. 
Since the dotcom bubble, firms provide marketing services online, with email marketing and search engine optimization constituting the earliest forms of digital marketing. With time, these services have come to include: affiliate marketing; display advertising; search marketing; and social media platforms. 
In the United States, companies allocate sizeable portions of their marketing budgets to digital marketing activities. Technology research firm Gartner, reports in its 2013 US Digital Market Spending Report that $25 million was spent on digital marketing for every $1 billion in revenue. It claims that mobile marketing, commerce experiences, social marketing and content creation are top priority digital marketing investments for large companies in 2013. 
In Nigeria, digital marketing is on the rise. Companies seek to take advantage of the growing online population, which is estimated at more than 45 million, according to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). Events in the Nigerian online space reflect this growth, while pointing to prospects for online marketing and the way companies carry out business. 
The vast number of internet users means that companies can leverage the intenet to execute more effective marketing campaigns that reach larger audiences than conventional mediums. Social marketing—such as Facebook and Twitter—allows for targeted marketing to demographics whose population sizes are known or can be determined. More Nigerian companies are placing advertisements online, especially on heavy traffic websites. 
Advertising firms are establishing digital marketing units, alongside specialized digital marketing agencies. One such agency is House of Kaizen, created by a merger between US-based Net X and UK-based Web Liquid. The firm’s managing director, Dayo Elegbe, previously worked with companies such as Ericsson and News International, in the United Kingdom, to execute digital marketing strategies. He observes that the growth in digital marketing in Nigeria has been impressive. 
“Quarter one last year, when you looked at the mobile internet traffic off Inmobia’s ad network, we [Nigeria] were on something like 1.6 billion impressions, while South Africa was doing 2.1 billion impressions. By the third quarter, we were on 4 billion impressions and we are still growing. So, we went from being, literally, the second largest mobile advertising internet market in Africa, to the largest in two quarters, and we are still growing.” 
Elegbe adds that the potential for further growth is underscored by consumers’ attraction to digital technologies. 
“The thing that really stands out for me is the excitement that people still have about digital. I’m not just talking about practitioners here; I’m talking about people in general. The excitement that people display when they see new forms of advertising online—and we know this based on the comments that they give or the level that they interact with it—I still think it’s way above anywhere else in the world that I have experienced. That, to me, is good because it means our population is still highly engaged and responsive [to] the medium.” 
Similarly, the marketing manager of OLX Nigeria, Adeyemi Okanlawon, notes that digital marketing can measure the effectiveness of campaigns, unlike traditional marketing approaches. 
“Businesses, especially SMEs, have found that digital marketing works because you can track leads and monitor campaigns with tools that are available online. With traditional marketing, you can’t track as much; especially in a country where data is very hard to find, this is invaluable for smaller companies, some of which don’t have marketing budgets.” 
Consequently, there are positive implications for the growth of local businesses as a result of digital marketing. As more Nigerian companies embrace digital and subsequently allocate more resources to online marketing, to the detriment of traditional methods, a new vista of opportunities will be created as the industry takes shape.

HOW THE INTERNET CAN MAKE YOU MONEY

Firms like to talk about investing in Africa. But what they are really looking at is a jumble of 54 sovereign countries, with their own laws, regulations, cultures and languages. Only a few people are knowledgeable about all the countries. Among them is Riaan Manser.
Forty-year-old Manser grew up in Richard’s Bay, on South Africa’s east coast, where he spent most of his childhood roaming the outdoors. He studied human resources because he wanted to work with people. Manser took a job with private healthcare provider Prime Cure in Cape Town, selling insurance.
“One Sunday afternoon, I realized I wasn’t completely happy. I did my job just to make money. I decided my life was going to be much more than that. I made the decision to change my life,” he says.
A year later, in 2003, Manser mounted his bicycle and went on a 26-month ride across Africa, peddling 37,000 kilometers through 34 countries. He got to know Africa and its people slowly, learning important lessons in life.
“When I left South Africa, I wasn’t very organized. I had zero visas in my passport. I had to negotiate everywhere I went. I would have to remain calm and negotiate in extremely stressful situations, when I was freaking out inside,” he says.
With every country he explored, Manser came to understand different cultures and dynamics, over time he  developed exceptional people skills. He gained wisdom that can only come with experience and, as he firmly believes, trial and error.
“I want people to understand that success comes from failure. We like to learn from other people’s mistakes very much, but the problem is that you normally don’t learn as astutely as you would if you learnt on your own. You’re generally most successful if you are willing to take a calculated risk.”
His insights have attracted the attention of numerous major multi-nationals from the mining, retail and financial services sectors, which Manser—who meanwhile also paddled 5,000 kilometers around politically unstable Madagascar and circumnavigated Iceland—now consults on how to expand into remote parts of Africa. Among them are mining giant Anglo American Platinum, heavy machinery manufacturer Bell Equipment, South African supermarket chain Shoprite and Zurich Bank International.
“I speak to CEOs but also to staff, who will be deployed to African countries, telling them what they can expect on the ground—be it regarding infrastructure, cultural issues, bribing or how to make business decisions in a foreign cultural context,” he says.
Manser, who remarkably never paid a single bribe during his adventures, says integrity, morality and patience are the keys to unlocking Africa’s potential.
“You must make [it] clear upfront that there is no room for negotiation about bribes. The most important thing is not to seem desperate. Desperation can be smelled a mile away. Even when I was panicking inside, I didn’t show one ounce of desperation,” he says.
Instead of paying kickbacks to smooth the rocky road of expansion, companies, especially those exploring natural resources, should focus on building good relationships with both national governments and local communities, suggests Manser.
“It’s vital that companies stop regarding Africa as a place where you can just take out resources. There has to be some giving… a generator for a village, digging a well. Communities don’t want to hear promises of better infrastructure five years down the line. They want to see improvements to their lives right away,” he says.
Manser knows how customs officials must be approached in Ghana compared to Angola, how to deal with government departments in Nigeria and how to open negotiations in Mauritania. Although his advice often seems almost obvious, at least in hindsight, it’s based on insights that can only be gained from having been there and having done it.
Patience, however, is key to commercial success in almost all African countries, says Manser.
“Don’t rush people. Don’t try to bulldoze them. The humility that comes through patience will lead to trust and ultimately to respect for each other. It’s the basis for building good relationships,” he says.
But the decision to be patient can’t be made in a boardroom. It’s something managers have to learn in a foreign context, on a day-to-day basis, says Manser.
Another key requirement for successful expansion is selecting the right people to do the job, Manser believes. In the small island nation of Madagascar, that has been experiencing years of political turmoil after a coup d’état in 2009, consolidation is seen as much more important than expansion.
“People just want stability. They want short discussions with firm results. So whoever negotiates on behalf of your company needs to know that,” he says.
In the end, it all comes down to good leadership: a lesson—and probably the most difficult one—Manser learnt when his travel partner Dan Skinstad, who has mild cerebral palsy, fell out of the boat when they circumnavigated Iceland in a two-man kayak, and almost drowned in the icy waters.
“You need clarity of thought in difficult situations. If there is a crisis, you have to make a decision with clarity, not in a panic. You take stock of what you promised, of what you want to achieve and then implement what is necessary to get you there,” says Manser.
Good leaders acknowledge other leaders. When Manser returned from Africa, former president Nelson Mandela was so impressed with his feat, he requested a meeting with him, saying Manser was an inspiration to the continent. Manser has made that his goal.

Two Wheels Two Years  34 Countries 37,000km

It was a surreal night of luxury, to the clink of expensive glasses and the strains of jazz, high on Northcliff Hill overlooking Johannesburg. The valley below spreads out like a carpet of twinkling lights, cooled by a cutting wind from the west. On this night the news on the television is grave; it speaks of hungrier times, strikes and inflation.
At the top of the hill, these fears are far from the thoughts of the diners, who each paid $3,000 to sip on the finest and most expensive wines in the world. Around the table, millionaires chat of bouquet and burgundy. Hands, adorned with sparkling diamond rings, swirl balloons of wine. This is The White Club.
<div id="attachment_1941" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1941" class="size-medium wp-image-1941" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/586-5-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />The White Club, Northcliff, Johannesburg; 23 May 2013 &#8211; Photo by Brett Eloff</div>
It took inspiration from the London-based Whites, a club created by Francesco Bianco in 1693. It was at his house, which was later painted white, that members indulged in chocolate and bought tickets to the King’s and Royal Drury Lane Theaters. In 1773, The White Club became a place where wealthy men conversed over cigars and fine wine.
In 2009, René Dehn, founder of Gratis Denmark, stepped down as CEO, and took the idea on the road. Now, the Dane travels around the globe, accompanying his well-aged companions. Among them: a 1959 Dom Pérignon Rosé and a 1959 Château Lafite. The uncorking of the bottles always poses a challenge.
“It’s the only little part of the job that I don’t like. You’re a little bit excited but at the same time you are nervous… I’ve gotten over the fact that it feels like I am killing the bottle.”
It’s not easy moving vintage wine around the world. The bottles must be packaged in temperature-controlled cases that are shock absorbent to prevent damage.
For those who wish to join, there is only one way in.
<div id="attachment_1942" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1942" class="size-medium wp-image-1942" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/586-61-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />The White Club, Northcliff, Johannesburg; 23 May 2013 &#8211; Photo by Brett Eloff</div>
“You cannot buy your way into the club; it’s strictly by invite only. You have to attend one of the smaller dinners around the world in order to be considered for member status,” he says.
The qualities that make for the perfect White Club member include: the ability to be a good dinner partner, who is comfortable and easy going and, above all, willing to share. It’s about creating a sense of community, based on one common bond: the love of expensive wine.
“There was a South African member who missed a dinner in Switzerland. He sent a bottle from his private collection to the people around the table, for them to enjoy… that is the mindset and thinking of sharing that gives me a high.”
In May, The White Club made its third visit to the African continent, bringing along some of the most sought-after and rarest wines in the world. The star of the night was a $24,000 bottle of Château Pétrus, from 1947.
Two teams, each consisting of a wine sommelier and a renowned chef, competed for the best wine-dish pairing.
“I’ve done a springbok fillet, which is wrapped in slightly smoked springbok, served on a bed of butternut rösti… I’m serving it with a piece of foie gras, so it’s going to be something very classic, something very French,” says Coco Reinharz, a French chef from Sel et Poivre restaurant, in Sandton.
<div id="attachment_1946" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1946" class="size-medium wp-image-1946" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/586-129-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />The White Club, Northcliff, Johannesburg; 23 May 2013 &#8211; Photo by Brett Eloff</div>
Dehn believes that everyone wants to belong to an elite social club and that Africa is the right place, right now.
“It happens in countries where you have a new merging culture of being wealthy, where people have an idea of things they want to spend on.”
In this world of recession, how do White Club members keep to their luxurious pastime?
“In the level that we are doing it, recession doesn’t mean anything. There is always a percentage of people that are above the recession,” says Dehn.
On this night, hard times were far from the minds of the people who had the money to dine like kings and queens on the top of a hill, in the middle of Johannesburg.

Wine At $6,000 A Glass

He was living the London dream—dining in the best restaurants and wearing Armani suits, while he worked as an investment portfolio manager at the London Stock Exchange, without any qualifications. He gave it all up to become a small-town brewer in the sugar cane fields 115km outside of Durban, South Africa.
This is the life of Richard Chennells, a journey that began and ended in Eshowe, a small town of 14,000 people in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. His father’s hotel business was struggling, after he graduated, Chennells helped build a backpackers lodge behind the hotel to revive the business, and then introduced tours to attract tourists.
Chennells got on well with the backpackers who came to the hotel, and they sparked his interest in travel. One day, he took R1,000 ($100) from his father’s till and headed to London. After converting his cash at Heathrow Airport, he headed to a friend’s house.
“After I got to my friend’s place from the airport in a taxi, I had £40 ($61) in my pocket,” says Chennells.
To make money, he waitered at a restaurant and then, when two of the chefs resigned, he became a reluctant chef working in the kitchen. After a while, he dropped his day shifts and took on work at accounting firms. Then, he got a lucky break and took a job at the London Stock Exchange’s finance and accounting department for a few months.
This started his career in banking and for the next four years he worked at various investment banks. For most of his banking career, he dealt mainly with payments and trades. He says they paid good money but he found everything a bit of a bore.
“You are just another number in a cubicle. I was matching trades, authorizing massive payments and doing a few… currency exchanges, looking after big clients, nothing too special. I didn’t have a clue about banking but I learnt as I went. I was doing relatively well, money was not a problem. It was all fun and games, but it didn’t make me tick,” says Chennells.
His search for adventure and purpose saw him take off the Armani suit after work and get his hands dirty at a brewery in London. He spent his weekends visiting pubs and breweries to learn more about beer.
“My friends thought I was crazy. They were climbing the corporate ladder, but I was doing a complete U-turn,” he says.
And then he took a bold step. He gave up his job to go to the United States to study at the American Brewers Guild in California. He planned to further his studies in Germany—the beer capital—but had to return home because his mother had been diagnosed with cancer. He initially thought that he would stay by her side through a few weeks’ course of chemotherapy, but she passed away suddenly.
A few weeks became a few years and saw the creation of a brewery that is as unusual as the career of the man who runs it. It is housed in the premises of the old Zululand Stock Exchange and is also the smallest brewery in South Africa. It produces 3,000 liters of beer a month, from six canisters—two for fermentation and four for storage.
Chennells says the idea behind the brewery was to get people to visit Eshowe and to encourage them to drink at the George Hotel. He says he never thought the idea would take off. Then, somebody took notice.
Chennells was on holiday with his family when his phone rang. It was an events manager from the United Kingdom, asking if he would be one of the guest brewers at the 2010 JD Wetherspoons Real Ale Festival. It is one of the giants of brewing in the United Kingdom, with 833 branches.
Chennells says the phone call was surreal and his family didn’t believe him. But he accepted, and at the festival, his beer sold faster than he could pull a pint. His Zulu Blonde beer was crowned the ‘Nkosi’ (king) beer of the festival. Within three hours, at three different JD Wetherspoons pubs, the beer sold out.
“I wanted to get some mates to have my beer with me. We went to the first place, and it was sold out, and at the second, and the third. Eventually I called a guy at another pub where they had a keg available but he hadn’t put it on tap. He kept it for me so I could drink my beer with my friends,” Chennells says.
After the festival, he returned home thinking he could rest on his laurels. Little did the brewmaster know that he would take center stage when the 2010 FIFA World Cup came to South Africa.
While the footballers were heading to Africa, he flew out to London. He had been invited to brew a further 120,000 pints of Zulu Blonde at Everards Brewery, in Leicester, to supply JD Wetherspoons’ 833 pubs, with an African beer during the FIFA World Cup. In 2012, he went back to the JD Wetherspoons Real Ale Festival, where he brewed 100,000 pints at the Caledonian Brewery in Edinburgh. To this day, Zulu Blonde is drunk and talked about throughout the United Kingdom.
When the dust settled after the FIFA World Cup, Chennells balanced his books. He had made a turnover of R10 million ($1 million) in less than eight weeks.
“After that, we started getting orders from Australia, Canada and Portugal. They were ordering 40 containers a month but there was no beer. This is when I started to realize that something is going on here. They hadn’t tasted it before but they wanted it. I realized that this is bigger than me. How do I make it work?” he says.
When demand exceeded supply, Chennells spoke to a few Russians who had connections with a brewery in the Czech Republic, another brewing nation. But the deal stalled when the brewery in the Czech Republic was sold, putting an end to the possibility of brewing and selling his highly sought-after beer in Eastern Europe. Chennells lost an anticipated monthly income of R4.8 million ($480,000).
This was not Chennells’ only disappointment. He once staged a beer festival in Eshowe, featuring every beer brewed in South Africa. The Great Zululand Beer Festival cost him R50,000 ($5,000) and only 400 people turned up for the weekend. In 2007, he put together a television show, which was aimed at promoting locally brewed beer. The 12-part series, titled the Wandering Keg, also went flat.
“The idea was to get the message of beer across South Africa—trying to get people to try other beer brands instead of what is in the mainstream market. The entire thing of the television gig cost me around R250,000 [$25,000] from my own pocket. The show never saw the light of day because I didn’t have producers,” he says.
Setbacks have failed to kill his entrepreneurial spirit, they date back to the days of the Armani suit. One of his biggest mistakes, as a portfolio manager, fortunately came with a bit of luck.
“I remember buying £150,000 ($230,000) the one day and selling euros, instead of buying €150,000 and selling pounds. Luckily, the market moved in my favor and I made the desk £9,000 ($13,562) in a few hours instead of losing&#8230; Also, once by mistake, I made a payment of about $180 million a day late that cost the company about £24,000 ($36,165) worth of interest. I got into big trouble for that one,” says Chennells.
Chennells has resilience. He used to take his Land Rover loaded with beer barrels and a tap installed between the tail lights, to golf days in Johannesburg, where the golfers would queue, club in hand, for a drink. This exercise brought golf days to Eshowe, where Chennells offered unlimited volumes of beer for the weekend. His beer is also being packaged in the United Kingdom for distribution abroad. And in September, Chennells plans to open a bar in the buttoned-up business district of Sandton, near Johannesburg.
The Chennells family is trying to give back some of the fortune made from the hops. They have donated funds to help build more than 3,000 classrooms near Eshowe. In 2008, Chennells and 15 of his friends raised around R1 million ($100, 000) for Rotary International, where his father served as president, by cycling from Eshowe to Cape Town.
Chennells’ dream does not end at beer. He plans to start producing Brazilian rum called Cachaça, which is made from the sugar cane that grows around his brewery. A distillery and cane sugar crusher will be delivered in September.
He lives by this motto: “Your fortune is on your door step.”
He says he has learned from other people’s mistakes—especially that of his grandfather who was a farmer in Canada and sold his farm for pittance, only to find out later that underneath it was an oil field.
“He was the first Chennells to make that mistake and it won’t happen again,” he says.

How To Brew $1 Million  In Eight Weeks

They grew up in different worlds: he in a Nigerian palace; she in Accra. Together, through their media group, this multicultural couple proves that inter-African relations are lucrative. An $8,000 investment has multiplied into millions in profits. Now, they have set their sights beyond Ghana.
Theresa and Iyiola Ayoade met in Accra, the Ghanaian capital, 17 years ago. Those were tough times—politically and economically in West Africa—with most of the sub-region under military rule or boiling with civil strife. Today, West Africa is an emerging economic bloc and the Ghanaian-Nigerian couple has found favor, fame and fortune in the land of Ashantes.
Theresa and Iyiola’s alliance began with friendly chit-chat, lunching and discussing business ideas, politics and football; they fell in love and got married. Today, these seasoned entrepreneurs exemplify the geo-political dynamics of their respective homelands.
“I saw a big potential in him. I liked his sense of discipline, his approach to work, the way he applied himself. I saw a lot of promise. Doing business with him was actually a gamble because we were just friends. I don’t think it was just because of love that I got involved with him,” says Theresa.
They make a succesful team.
“She is not a shareholder in the business because she is my wife. I tell you, even if we were not married we would still have been in business together. She made a cash investment and that obviously made me take her more seriously,” he says.
Iyiola left Nigeria for Accra in the early 1990s. He started his business with $8,000, years later. His lucky break came via two companies—Coscharis Automobiles Ghana, the Ghanaian subsidiary of the Nigerian-owned Coscharis Group, and the Agricultural Development Bank of Ghana (ADB).
“I had delved into management consultancy along the way and Coscharis had asked me to give them a market penetration strategy. They liked my plan, and I organized the first auto fair in Ghana in 1997.”
It was while organizing the auto fair that he met Theresa, who was then a marketer at Joy FM radio station, in Accra.
The ADB opportunity, in 1999, required him to present audio-visual content for a campaign. He delivered the winning concept—a television game show, the first of its kind in Ghana—within two days. Soon after, he opened Charterhouse Productions, a television production company and launched the Ghana Music Awards. His staff payroll grew from six to 18. Theresa quit Joy FM in 2000 to join him.
By all accounts, Iyiola, Theresa and their Ghanaian business partner Philip Ayensu, have done well. They have created jobs promoted cross-border business ties and built a multi-million dollar business that straddles the marketing, advertising, entertainment and media sectors in Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Liberia.
The trio own Multiple Concepts Group—it includes Multiple Concepts, a marketing company; Charterhouse, an events management and audio-visual production firm founded in 1999; MediaEdge-gsm, a mobile content provider founded in 2006; and GhOne, a television channel launched in 2011.
Their story is one of risk, resilience and taking advantage of opportunities. Their reputation and bank balance are healthy.
“Those guys are involved in almost every event happening in Accra,” says Ben Arthur, a Ghanaian business journalist.
“We do about GHS15 million [$743,000] in revenue per annum averagely, I believe this is large for our industry,” Iyiola says.
The group employed around 120 people by December, and opened another office in Cape Verde earlier this year.
Iyiola was born and raised in Ife, in south western Nigeria.
“I grew up in the palace. My mum was the ninth born of the late king, the Ooni of Ife, Oba Adesoji Aderemi. I had over 500 cousins, so many role models to choose from,” he says.
Among his cousins were lawyers, bankers, accountants, doctors, lecturers, thespians and intellectuals. He studied economics and statistics at the University of Benin, in Nigeria, and worked as an investment and financial analyst in Lagos.
“I came to Ghana with almost nothing. But, at least, I knew I was not going to fail. I had my brains and I was lucky that a few people I’d met in Accra, during my early years in the city, believed in my ideas, my work ethic and my judgment,” he says.
He credits his success to strategic decision making, clients’ goodwill and Ghana’s tranquil environment.
“One thing, I think, I did very well is that I didn’t paint this business green-white-green. A lot of businesses come here from Nigeria and they are so Nigerian. There is market resistance, however subtle, to that kind of thing, but then again, Nigerians are not very easy people to deal with also. The average Ghanaian is somewhat reserved. They are generally peaceful people and it is that peace that gives us the security that we enjoy here.”
He is bullish about Ghana-Nigeria trade and the subject of Africans investing in Africa.
“We have a 250 million market in West Africa and the market is open to everybody, not just Nigerians and Ghanaians. In fact, I really don’t get it when people talk about Nigerian companies coming to Ghana to take away business from the Ghanaians. Then I ask, ‘Excuse me, is Standard Chartered bank a Nigerian company? Is Barclays bank Nigerian? Is Ashante Goldfields Nigerian? Is Goldfields Nigerian?’”
He says that while Ghanaians accept foreign companies doing business in their country, they resist Nigerians.
“Meanwhile, they stand to gain more from Nigerians because we are one of you, our cultural and geographical affinity should be a plus. There is plenty of opportunity for us all to grow and try to unify the West African market. We need to do more [business] between ourselves. That’s the only way we will develop and grow the region.”
Sometimes success comes when you look beyond your borders and team up with your African neighbors.

Love And Business  Across The Divide

He calls himself an African optimist; in the coming days, he faces a test of this comforting belief.
Iqbal Survé has made millions investing in the continent, turning himself, in less than a decade, from a medical doctor into one of South Africa’s top entrepreneurs. Now, he faces controversy and opposition around his newest deal to buy a clutch of Africa’s most powerful newspapers.
At the same time, he will promote the continent in the global economy, as a member of the recently launched BRICS business council. South Africa came late to the party. It joined the group of significant emerging economies in April 2010, turning BRIC into BRICS, nine years after its inception. Today, the southern African nation plays an important role within the forum. It acts as a gateway to the continent for China, Brazil, India and Russia; as a catalyst for African integration. BRICS launched a business council in March, which consists of five key business leaders from each nation.
“The council is an important development to foster intra-BRICS economic ties. It will not only focus on trade, but also on technology transfer, skills development, banking, manufacturing and industrialization,” says Survé.
He will direct South Africa’s role within the BRICS council together with mining magnate Patrice Motsepe, Business Unity SA CEO Nomaxabiso Majokweni, Zungu Investment Company executive chair Sandile Zungu and Transnet CEO Brian Molefe.
“The members of the business council are people who understand the nexus between business, politics and economic growth,” says Survé, who serves as an economic advisor to South African president, Jacob Zuma.
The business council will work to boost trade, encourage entrepreneurs in member countries to pool capital and form joint ventures; while the five governments will usher in market access by easing visas, registration of companies and exchange controls.
“Our purpose is to create the smoothest possible interaction between companies,” says Survé.
Already, trade between BRICS and Africa has increased tenfold since 2002, with an estimated current value of $340 billion.
But there’s more to it. South Africa wants to use the BRICS business council to advance, not only, its own agenda but also that of the continent. Part of this will be moving trade relations with China, India, Brazil and Russia away from the narrow focus of commodity exports.
Africa’s progress is something close to Survé’s heart. The former ‘struggle doctor’ cared for political prisoners and victims of detention and torture during apartheid, including former South African President Nelson Mandela. He left medicine, in 1997, to launch investment holding company Sekunjalo Group, which is known for purchasing controlling stakes in firms to empower black workers.
Sekunjalo has investments in more than 170 companies and is South Africa’s top-rated black empowerment company. It comes as little surprise that Survé, from a poor family in Cape Town, has made a fortune from investing in oil in Africa and is regarded as an entrepreneur who is shaping the continent’s future.
“At Sekunjalo, we pay serious attention to skills development, corporate social investment, enterprise development and transformation. It’s a gentler form of capitalism that puts people before profits,” he says.
The newest acquisition by Sekunjalo could prove a test of these words. A consortium, led by Sekunjalo, bought the South African arm of Irish Independent News and Media for $200 million.
The deal means that Sekunjalo will acquire newspapers such as The Star, Pretoria News, Sunday Independent, Cape Times, Cape Argus, Mercury, Daily News, which employ around 1,400 people. There has been an uproar about the failure to disclose the identity of the other funders. Survé was sworn to secrecy by the Irish media house but revealed the funders in late June after a general meeting of the sellers, when it emerged that the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and some of its affiliates comprise a major portion of Sekunjalo Independent Media’s (SIM) shareholding and that employees of Independent News and Media South Africa (INMSA), would get 10% of shares in the company. It has been reported that if the sale goes through, banks could write off €100 million ($133 million) of the group’s debt. Sekunjalo Independent Media, will claim 75% ownership, while the remaining stake is reported to be held by the Government Employees Pension Fund. But Survé has refuted this statement. Staff at the media group—who formed a trust to acquire the remaining 25%—say it is being bought by a newly formed company with no records, turnover or assets.
Away from acquisitions, Survé believes BRICS presents an opportunity for Africa to attract more foreign direct investment (FDI).
“FDI is key for development. Our continent is on the threshold of dramatic change. For the first time, we are at a point where all people might be able to access capital,” the black empowerment pioneer and philanthropist reckons.
This economic growth is closely tied to the continent’s fortunes, Survé stresses: “BRICS is not a South African exercise. It’s good for the whole of Africa and will lead to stronger bridges between South Africa and its African counterparts, too,” he says.
If all goes to plan, Africa could emulate the Asian tigers.
“Some African countries, like Mozambique and Ethiopia, do it already. Thirty years ago, China was in exactly the same place where Africa is today. It has seen enormous development from not being among the top 100 of the gross domestic products in the world to being the world’s second largest economy,” he says.
A key role of the BRICS business council, which will convene twice a year, is to examine business models.
“The idea is to learn the lessons of how some of the countries, such as Brazil and China, have achieved their phenomenal economic growth. How do they support the private sector? What policies and capital initiatives were put into place? What are the lessons in terms of infrastructure development?”
Survé stresses the fact that the formation of the BRICS business council does not mean trade relationships with western countries will be put on the back burner.
“From our perspective, we need the African economy to grow. For that to happen we need to do business with multilateral partners, whether they come from BRICS, North America or Europe.”
With his foray into newspapers, Survé may need nerve as well as optimism.

Activist Doctor  Turned Capitalist

On a snowy April day, Nelson Mandela was sipping tea in London, surrounded by his political entourage. This was minutes before he was to climb onto the stage for a concert to be broadcast to 600 million people in 67 countries: the biggest audience for a music concert. Just 54 days before, he had been a prisoner.
Mandela was still a marked man. British security forces feared a sniper would shoot him while he was on stage. Everywhere he went, police locked and unlocked behind him to make sure a gunman could not sneak a shot.
As Mandela climbed the narrow staircase to the stage, with the crowds chanting his name, alongside promoter Tony Hollingsworth, he asked to turn back to use the toilet. When Mandela and Hollingsworth had washed their hands, they found out, to their horror, that the police had, unwittingly, locked them in.
“They’ve taken all the entourage and Trevor [Huddleston] onto stage highly secured, and left me and Mandela, I thought ‘oh shit’. It’s a locked room and my bloody headset wasn’t on. So I couldn’t talk to anyone,” says Hollingsworth.
There was no time to waste. Hollingsworth went to bang on the glass.
“I could see into another room, which was where they were counting all the money. I patted in the door until somebody recognized me. They came and unlocked the door. We walked through the money room to a public area, down a public staircase in the stadium, into the backstage area, onto stage. And the security forces didn’t even know we had gone. They were all watching the audience,” he says.
Minutes later, Mandela strolled on stage as if nothing had happened.
“Thank you that you chose to care,” Mandela told the world.
“When Mandela came on stage, the audience erupted. What then ensued was this almost eight minute game, of this crowd cheering at him as he moved around waving his arms. The problem was that because he was unused to the power of the microphone. In his mind, he had to wait for people to be quiet before he spoke,” says Hollingsworth.
Mandela’s speech lasted 45 minutes, ridiculously long according to Hollingsworth. He paid an American consultant—to trail Mandela after his release—to teach him how to speak on television. The consultant didn’t get anywhere and gave up.
Hollingsworth sits across the table, in a Johannesburg hotel, lost in the memory of that day. The man sports a shock of grey hair. It was 25 years ago, to the day, that as a 30-year-old he produced the first of two concerts, both of which would go down in history.
Hollingsworth came from a musical family. He began his career building ejector-seats for jet airplanes, but quit after three months to study theories of ideology at the Open University. His cousin was the orgainzer of the world famous Glastonbury Festival and during a visit one summer Hollingsworth cut his teeth promoting a traveling Moroccan band.
He whet his appetite by staging concerts for the Greater London Council called ‘Jobs for Change’. His speciality became selling ‘issues’ on stage and when musician Jerry Dammers, the writer of the song Free Nelson Mandela, put forward the idea of an anti-apartheid concert, he was in.
Hollingsworth approached Archbishop Trevor Huddleston and Mike Terry, both anti-apartheid activists. It took some convincing.
“Fifty percent of the newspapers at that time reported Mandela as a black terrorist leader, that’s the label he had been given,” he says.
Hollingsworth went to conservative broadcasters with an idea of a concert for Mandela’s 70th birthday.
This was a time when Margaret Thatcher, prime minister of Britain, was calling the African National Congress (ANC) terrorists. The atmosphere was so charged that many of the performing artists asked for a clause in the contract to ensure that the money raised would not be used to buy guns. At that time, the ANC was embroiled in an armed struggle.
“The broadcasters asked, ‘Is it for the ANC?’ and I would say, ‘No.’ ‘The anti-apartheid movement?’ ‘No. I am doing it for Nelson Mandela’s birthday.’ Half of those people winked back. I had given them the legal solution… the other half went along in innocence.”
The media lapped it up. Especially once Dire Straits, the largest selling act in the world in 1988, signed up. In just four months the word terrorist disappeared from the news, says Hollingsworth, once broadcasters accepted that they were to air an 11-hour show about Mandela.
Then, came the crossfire.
“The ANC were furious that I was putting this event on without calling for sanctions or resistance. There was an intense, difficult time running up to it. Because they weren’t to know,” he says.
It all led up to June 1988 and a packed Wembley Stadium, where Mark Knopfler took the stage with his band Dire Straits. South Africa had banned Knopfler in 1979, after he channeled his profits from South African sales to Amnesty International.
“He was a very shy man… Mark had played a few numbers, and said to the audience, ‘Our records were banned in 1979. I am very pleased to say, this is for the man in question, this is the best birthday party we have ever been to, thanks for having us. This is the guy who launched it all for us,” says Hollingsworth.
Among the musicians on the night, was a lone, unknown, American with a guitar—Tracy Chapman.
“The song that she sang for the event, that worked completely. She sang Talkin’ Bout A Revolution. That’s what the event was like. All of the run up to it, to this trojan horse policy, to a man, that was the whisper,” says Hollingsworth.
Chapman played two sets on the night, the second by sheer luck.
The production manager ran up to Hollingsworth and shouted in his ear: “Stevie Wonder cannot go on. The equipment is gone.”
Hollingsworth didn’t even know what he was talking about. Wonder walked off the stage into the parking lot in tears because his music harddrive was lost. Hollingsworth was left with 23 minutes to fill.
“The only person who could go on stage, with no equipment was Tracy Chapman. I grabbed her manager Elliot Roberts, who discovered artists like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, and shouted in his ear, ‘Tracy must go back on.’ He was delighted.”
Roberts grabbed Chapman with one hand and her guitar in the other and walked her on stage without telling her what was going on. Chapman sold two million albums in the next two weeks.
“Tracy blew my mind. About 90% of people will remember her. When she came on and sang, it was like wow. She really captured the feeling in her songs. She was unforgettable,” recalls Nicholas Wolpe, who was 20 at the time.
Wolpe, the son of anti-apartheid activist Harold Wolpe, was given a ticket by the ANC.
Stevie Wonder did come back to play, without his harddrive, to a roaring crowd. He sang I Just Called To Say I Love You.
“I recall the people sitting next to me were not necessarily there for Nelson, but for the music. The principal was to highlight Nelson’s birthday, rather than imprisonment. But it achieved that. As more and more people came out on the stage to talk about Nelson, there was this gradual shift. I think people were swept up with the euphoria. It became an incredibly emotive day,” says Wolpe
Mandela was elected South Africa’s first black president in 1994. Hollingsworth, the man with whom he was locked in a toilet, produced more concerts around the world, including the 850th anniversary of Moscow’s Red Square, in 1997.
You can argue that these were merely two among the millions of lives changed by June 11, 1988.

Talkin’ Bout A Revolution…  It Sounds Like A Whisper

“It’s time to let him go”, ran the front page headline of South Africa’s largest selling Sunday newspaper last month. This, a day after Nelson Mandela—struggle icon and South Africa’s first post-apartheid president—was re-admitted to hospital following a recurring lung infection. The Sunday Times was quoting Mandela’s long-time friend and comrade, Andrew Mokete Mlangeni, who had said: “The family must release him so that God may have his own way. They must release him spiritually and put their faith in the hands of God. Once the family releases him, the people of South Africa will follow.”
This from a man of few words. He is the least recognized of Nelson Mandela’s Rivonia Trial comrades. But, when 87-year-old Mlangeni does speak, he seldom minces his words; just like he didn’t mince his words more than a year ago, in our last interview. When asked to make assessment of the state of the African National Congress (ANC), specifically why South Africa’s governing party was so riddled with infighting, and was increasingly earning a reputation as being corrupt, Mlangeni retorted: “My heart bleeds when I see what is happening today. People are fighting to improve their own selves. The trouble is greed today. Everybody wants to be in the leadership. Everybody wants to be the president, the minister, earn more money, drive beautiful cars, have security around you. We are forgetting the people who have elected us into government.”
He continued: “Look at the corruption—everywhere corruption, corruption, corruption—is this what we were fighting for? Is this what people died for? We were accusing the Nationalist party government of corruption, and this is what we are doing today? My heart bleeds.”
Mlangeni’s candidness is nothing new. In court, 50 years ago, anticipating an adverse ruling by the presiding judge, Mlangeni would not cooperate with the court but instead read a terse statement: “The court can now see that some of the evidence given against me is true and some false. I have chosen not to give evidence, my Lord, because first of all, I do not want to be cross-examined about people I have worked with and places I have visited, in case I might give these people away. Also, my Lord, I have frankly admitted that I have assisted Umkhonto we Sizwe. I want to say that I joined the ANC in 1954. I did it because I want to work for my people. I did this because of the treatment my people have received from the rulers of this country. In the ANC, I found a political home, where I was free to talk against the government.”
“South Africa, my Lord, is a very rich country. The resources could be exploited for the benefit of all the people who live in it. This government and the previous governments have exploited not the earth but the people of various racial groups, whose color is not white. But the government, daily, makes suppressive laws in its white Parliament, [whose] laws are aimed at suppressing the political aspirations of the majority of the people, who have no say. I know that you, my Lord, have to administer the law, but when you do so, I ask you to remember what we, the Africans and non-white people, have had to suffer. That is all I have to say except, to add, that what I did was not for myself but for my people&#8230;”
No sooner had he said those words, Mlangeni was sentenced to life imprisonment alongside seven of his comrades—Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Ahmed Kathrada, Raymond Mhlaba, Govan Mbeki, Denis Goldberg and Elias Motsoaledi. Two of their fellow trialists, Lionel “Rusty” Bernstein and James Kantor, were acquitted. The state withdrew charges against the eleventh accused, Bob Hepple, after he agreed to testify for the prosecution.
Mlangeni would serve 26 years, many of them in an isolated cell, on Robben Island and later at Pollsmoor Prison. In his mind, he replayed his upbringing as well as the events and circumstances that led to his incarceration—from his birth on May 6, 1926 in Prospect township, in Soweto, Johannesburg as the ninth of 14 children; to starting school at 10; having to drop out two years later to find work, after his father died; working as a golf caddy; and later becoming a factory worker and bus driver.
In 1951, young Mlangeni joined the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) and, three years later, the ANC.
Following the ANC’s decision to move beyond passive resistance and embrace an armed struggle against the country’s colonial rulers, Mlangeni enlisted for Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK)—the ANC’s armed wing. Between 1961 and 1963 he was among the first six guerillas to undergo military training in China.
Upon the completion of their initial training—by this time he was a member of the High Command, MK’s highest decision-making body—they returned from the land of Mao Tse-tung to begin their ambitious program of insurrection. The MK’s High Command and operatives would meet secretly, every Monday, at Liliesleaf Farm. It was at this small holding, north of Johannesburg, that they plotted their operations.
Little did Mlangeni know—on a chilly Monday evening on June 24, 1963, while returning from their meeting, with assignment in hand—that state security agents were looking for him. This encounter would change his life forever.
The following morning Mlangeni was due to go to Krugersdorp, less than an hour from Johannesburg, to collect weapons to take them to a safe house.
“I arrived home at about half past eleven in the evening. My wife was asleep,” he says.
A short while later, police stormed his house, in Duke, Soweto and he was arrested. In the police car, waiting for him outside, was one of his comrades, Motsoaledi. Upon their arrival at the Pretoria Central Prison they found more of their comrades, who had already been detained.
“I was hurt, the police said the ANC is finished,” says Mlangeni.
On November 26, 1963, South Africa’s most famous political trial would begin, ending on June 12, the following year. International pressure, Mlangeni reckons, is what saved them from the death penalty.
“Strangely, we didn’t think we would die in prison. I had read a bit about the struggles of other people… [I] had seen how the Chinese struggled for their freedom; how the China Communist Party fought against emperors, against foreign occupiers of China, and how they ultimately drove all of them out,” he says.
Indeed, the Rivonia trialists would not die in prison. Mlangeni used this time to study for his Bachelor of Arts and honors degrees.
One day in 1986, while at Pollsmoor Prison, the anti-apartheid prisoners got an offer from their captors, through Mandela, affectionately known as Madiba—his clan name.
Mlangeni recalls: “Madiba was taken to hospital, where he was approached by Kobie Coetzee, who was minister of prisons at the time. Coetzee said they wanted to release the rest of us first, but keep Mandela. But would keep Mandela in a place where it would be easy for his family to come in at any time. Winnie and the kids would come see him anytime. Madiba thought it was a good idea. The comrades could go join the [anti-apartheid] forces outside.”
Upon Mandela’s return from hospital, “the four of us [Mlangeni, Sisulu, Mhlaba and Kathrada] were taken to an office where Madiba told us of this offer from government. We didn’t accept. We said: ‘What will people say? They will think we are sell outs.’”
Mlangeni says Mandela didn’t mind staying behind and thought his comrades should agree to be released, so they could strengthen the forces of freedom. What made the decision difficult was the regime’s stated logic, that if they released Mandela the country would go up in flames. The state also insisted that the activists denounce violence.
“So we rejected the offer.”
A couple of months went by.
“One day on October 1989, on the 10th, a warder came and said: ‘Guys, I want you to put on your best clothes.’ We said: ‘Why?’ He said: ‘I don’t know, you are probably going to see a minister.’”
The four were taken to Victor Verster Prison, where Mandela was now staying.
“Madiba said things had changed. He said the government was no longer singing the song of renouncing violence. They are saying they can release you and months later me. We accepted the offer. We said: ‘Okay, go and tell them that we’re prepared to take up their offer.’”
When their meeting was over, Mandela’s comrades were told they could not go back to Pollsmoor, as there was a large media contingent camping outside Victor Verster Prison.
“They were telling a lie,” chuckles Mlangeni as he recalls the sequence of events. “At eight o’clock, it was news time on TV and they had organized a TV for us. First item, the government has decided to release so and so from prison… our names… and that Madiba would be released soon. After the news they said: ‘Well chaps, the media is gone now. We can take you back to your cells.’”
“We were no longer addressed by our first names, but as Mr Mlangeni, Mr Mandela… We said we were hungry. They asked us what we wanted to eat. We said steak and chips. We hadn’t had that in a while.”
On October 15, 1989 Mlangeni, Sisulu, Mhlaba and Kathrada walked out of jail. And on February 11, 1990, Mandela followed.
Four years later, Mandela would become post-apartheid South Africa’s first democratically-elected president. Mlangeni, together with Sisulu and Mbeki, would be members of Parliament. Mhlaba would be the premier of the Eastern Cape.
Nineteen years on, Mlangeni has retired from politics, yet he remains a veteran member of the ANC. He divides his time between playing golf, very competently—he learnt as a caddy—his foundation and advising the ANC. He was a member of the electoral commission, during the last elective conference. Now, he chairs the party’s recently established Integrity Committee; it investigates allegations of corruption against party members.
The ANC has a lot of battles, Mlangeni concedes, but is adamant about its resilience.
“I know the ANC can always regroup, when things go wrong. We can always come back together.”
As for the government the ANC leads, Mlangeni says they are doing their best.
“We can’t meet the demands of our people in the few years. [Nineteen years] is too little to meet the demands of our people. It took [colonialists] more than 300 years to do what they’ve done to suppress us, to exploit us.”
Does he have any regrets?
“None whatsoever.”
What he missed a great deal though was seeing his children grow up. His wife Johanna, who died in 2001, singlehandedly brought up their four children. Mlangeni’s children were teenagers when he was arrested in 1963; the youngest was 14.
“Other things were also important… but not seeing my kids…”
Twenty six years of imprisonment didn’t change Mlangeni’s unyielding support of the fight for freedom, but when he speaks of his children, his voice trembles.

Corruption.  Is This What We Fought For?

On a winter’s afternoon in July two men—born in the same country and infused with the same revolutionary fervor—will shake hands at the spot that changed their lives, to bury a 50-year-old grudge.
The men were among those arrested in the raid on Rivonia on July 11, 1963. Armed police with dogs used a delivery van, as a Trojan horse, to sneak into Liliesleaf Farm, in Rivonia; they arrested the entire leadership of the underground movement. The raid dealt a body blow to the South African liberation movement, not long after it had launched an armed struggle. In the resultant Rivonia Trial, Nelson Mandela, who had been in prison since his arrest in August 1962, was sentenced to life, along with his comrades.
The arrest at Liliesleaf was to send the lives of comrades Bob Hepple and Denis Goldberg spinning in opposite directions.
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Eighty-year-old Denis Goldberg—the bomb maker—who had returned from a trip to procure hand grenades, was arrested as he sat reading in the lounge. All were chained in a circle outside the thatched cottage, while the police encouraged their dogs to snap at them. He spent 22 years in prison after the judge handed him four life sentences.
“They gave me a 75% discount and I served only one,” laughs Goldberg, who often salves pain with humor.
It was a hard time in prison for Goldberg, who nursed the leader of his defense counsel, Bram Fischer, through his final days as he died of cancer. After the Rivonia Trial, Fischer had been charged with conspiracy to overthrow the state and sentenced to nine years.
In the other direction: Hepple suffered under interrogation; agreed to turn state witness; had charges withdrawn; skipped South Africa, via Botswana and Tanzania, for London; enrolled at Cambridge University, where he became a professor and a knight of the British realm.
Back in 1963, Hepple, the son of a former Johannesburg member of Parliament who was a meat wholesaler, Alex Hepple, was an underground activist, who had the misfortune of being at Liliesleaf on the day of the raid. Police had also caught the entire leadership of the underground as they held a meeting in a thatched cottage at the back of Liliesleaf: Govan Mbeki; Ahmed Kathrada; Andrew Mlangeni and Walter Sisulu. Behind bars, all were interrogated. The severity of the situation dawned on Hepple.
“The prosecutor told me all of us could expect to be sentenced to death,” says Hepple.
“This was not the reason for my decision. I never intended to give evidence for the state, but saw the prosecution’s offer to release me as an opportunity to escape. I discussed this possibility beforehand with Mandela, who said I had to take a personal decision, but if I could get the prosecution to release me: ‘That would be excellent.’ Had they not released me, I would have refused to testify against the other defendants, when called to the witness box.”
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-1921" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/34.15-Bob-Hepple-245x300.jpg" alt="" width="245" height="300" />
In the cells, the other defendants were not so comfortable, especially Goldberg.
“At the time it was very distressing, because he might give information about us. His father told him that the minister of police, B.J. Vorster, had said they have enough evidence to hang Bob. And that if he wanted to get out he had to give evidence. I’m very relieved that he left the country and did not give evidence. At the time, it was hard to swallow. Now that I look back over the years, it’s a long time ago and I know, from my own experience, that people can be broken under pressure. And I had to draw the distinction between those who were broken and gave evidence and those who simply stopped and did not give evidence. Bob didn’t give evidence in court anyway.”
Nearly half a century on, Hepple, accused number 11, recalls the moment he walked free from the Palace of Justice in Pretoria.
“As I left the dock, Mlangeni said: ‘I am glad you are getting out of this,’” he says.
A sour taste lingered. Years later, Goldberg says that Hepple sent him a birthday card to the Pretoria prison. Goldberg remembers this with a smile.
“I told my wife that I never want to hear from him ever again,” he says.
Goldberg, who is now retired in Hout Bay, near Cape Town, was released in 1985 and escorted onto a plane to Israel, where his daughter was living. He spent the rest of his struggle days organizing for the ANC in London.
In the early days of freedom, Goldberg went to a party in London where Hepple was also a guest. The host said he didn’t want any trouble and Goldberg assured him there would be none.
“I saw Bob at the party, I held out my hand, but he walked straight past me,” says Goldberg.
Hepple remembers it differently.
“I admire and respect Denis and the other trialists and am always happy to meet them. Denis may have forgotten that we shook hands at a party in London, sometime after his release.”
Hepple thrived in the United Kingdom and enjoyed a distinguished legal career culminating in becoming a Professor of Law at Cambridge University between 1995 and 2001. He was knighted by Prince Charles, who was deputizing for the Queen, in 2004. The irony of a former wild-eyed terrorist being knighted by one of the heads of the British establishment, surely could not have escaped him as he knelt with the sword on his shoulder.
“I honestly can’t remember what was going through my mind. I may have been remembering Mandela’s parting words to me that I will not be judged by the past, but rather how I conduct myself in the future,” says Hepple.
Goldberg could have heeded the same words. He travels the world speaking and raising money for health and education and is at peace with the past.
“It is fifty years ago, I don’t have any anger about it anymore and too many people did too many worse things of betraying us, killing our own people and yet they were accepted back into society. So I have no bitterness against Bob at all. I believe he says we did shake hands, but I don’t remember,” he says.
When the two men shake hands on July 8, at Liliesleaf, near the spot where they were arrested, at a ceremony to commemorate 50 years since the raid; it will be a fitting place to close a circle born of struggle and strife.

Tag: July 2013

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