The stadium was chanting his name. People were everywhere—in the aisles, hanging on the railings—all pushing for a glimpse of the game. The match was sold out and the crowd was moving constantly. Every person was shouting out one name. 
“Madiba! Madiba!” 
Nelson Mandela was out on the field wearing the captain’s jersey of Neil Tovey—a carbon copy of his appearance at the South African rugby triumph the year before. 
It was the Africa Cup of Nations final at FNB stadium, in Johannesburg, on February 2, 1996. 
Bafana Bafana or ‘Boys Boys’ were playing Tunisia. En route to the final, South Africa had beaten giants Cameroon in the group stages and Ghana in the semi-final.
<div id="attachment_506" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-506" class="size-large wp-image-506" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Par6857705-1024x682.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="316" />Zambia national football team players celebrate their victory at the end of the African Cup of Nations final football match between Ivory Coast and Zambia at the Stade de l&#8217;Amitie in Libreville, on February 12, 2012. AFP PHOTO / PIUS UTOMI EKPEI</div>
The nation was behind them and 80,000 people crammed into the stadium as Bafana Bafana lifted the cup as the undisputed kings of African football; confirmation that South Africa—after years of exile because of apartheid—was the vibrant and emerging power in African football. 
Sixteen years later and the national team is an embarrassment. As small nations from Botswana to Gabon vied for the 2012 Africa Cup of Nations in recent weeks, the South African team could only watch on TV. It was even more embarrassing because one of the reasons South Africa failed to qualify is that no-one had bothered to read the rule book. 
Playing the final game of the qualifiers, Bafana played at home against Sierra Leone in Nelspruit. The team and the coaches believed they only needed a draw to progress to the continental tournament on goal difference. They played to a 0-0 draw, and at the final whistle the crowd erupted as the home team danced on the pitch in celebration. 
Minutes later, the team was informed that they had better stop celebrating because they had not made it. Rule 14.1 clearly states the team with the “greater number of points obtained in the matches between the concerned teams” will go through. 
In short, only an outright win by Bafana in Nelspruit would have guaranteed them qualification. 
The South African Football Association (SAFA), in a knee-jerk reaction, launched an appeal to the Confederation of African Football (CAF). 
SAFA president, Kirsten Nematandani, infamously told TV news station eNews: “Those rules are wrong.” 
When it became abundantly clear that the rules were not wrong and South Africa had not, in fact, been victimized and cheated, SAFA admitted to misreading the rule book. 
Many were quick to call for the head of national coach Pitso Mosimane, and while he should share some of the responsibility, his job is on the pitch. 
The coach always has to fight to get players released from the local clubs when they are called up for national duty and SAFA does not always help. It’s quite simple; to get players released, international fixtures have to be scheduled on FIFA-sanctioned dates as clubs are then required to allow players the national call-up. 
But this is seldom the case, and clubs then have the right to refuse players. It means Mosimane will rarely have the luxury of calling on a first choice team. Then, when the team underperforms, he is the one to feel the criticism. 
Matters came to a head in January, when Mosimane was forced to pick what was effectively classed a ‘third team’, for matches against big guns Zambia and Ghana. 
SAFA downgraded the fixtures from international friendlies to ‘practice matches’, fearing South Africa would plummet down the rankings with this side. As it turned out, Mosimane’s charges were able to draw both matches, which was particularly impressive against Ghana—one of the favorites for the Africa Cup of Nations. 
After the Ghana match, Mosimane—with the pressure seemingly getting to him—launched a verbal tirade against the media. 
“How many times have you written my obituary?” were his first words in the post-match press conference. 
The rift between Mosimane and SAFA is clear for all to see, but the mighty association of football in the rainbow nation does not seem overly concerned. 
Another problem the national team has, and it is not a new one, is that the best South African players head overseas and do not see the honor in representing their national team. 
A prime example is Benni McCarthy. He is South Africa’s all-time leading top goal scorer and in his prime snubbed Bafana. 
After making his debut for the team in 1997 as a 19-year-old, he soon rose to superstar status and was the joint top scorer at the 1998 Africa Cup of Nations. 
Then, after his second FIFA World Cup in 2002 where the team failed to make it through to the knockout stages, he announced his retirement from international football at the age of 25, when he would have been just reaching his prime. 
He came out of retirement after two years, but South Africa did not qualify for the 2006 FIFA World Cup and effectively ended his world cup career. 
The reason, one can only surmise, is that a national contract would not be able to offer him anything close to what he would get at his club side, where he was just starting out at Portuguese side Porto. 
His story is typical of the situation in which South Africa finds itself: players who are world-class leave, never to return. The national side is made up of a collection of decent club performers, but will never be a team that can compete with the best in the world. 
SAFA needs to start being proactive—year after year, they make the same promises and the media and the public are tiring. 
Bafana Bafana should not be seen as the ugly step-child that nobody wants, and SAFA needs to stop making simple problems complicated. The national team have to be allowed the best possible team whenever they play and SAFA must realize that in a football-mad country, the beautiful game can help unify a nation as it did all those years ago.

Cry, The  Beloved Country

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.

Could The Next Tiger Woods Be From Africa?

Reflecting on the day’s golf during the 40-minute drive back to the hotel, on the outskirts of George, to me it looked like young Branden Grace had blown his chance of making history. He had managed to turn a four-shot advantage into a share of the lead, after the third round of the Volvo Golf Champions, giving the big names a golden opportunity to thwart him.
The taxi driver interrupted this reflection: “Do you think anyone will catch Branden tomorrow?”
I had to try and politely tell the driver I thought young Grace, who was a member of the nearby George Country Club, had no chance in the final round.
The driver, who later told me he went to school with Grace, picked up on the little faith I had in the 23-year-old, who was at the top of the leader board in the first fully sanctioned European tour event to be held in South Africa.
“I’m telling you, Branden wants it more than any of those other guys. Since he started playing in standard four, he’s been mad about this game,” said the driver with conviction.
<div id="attachment_499" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-499" class="size-large wp-image-499" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/137543593-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="316" />Branden Grace poses with the trophy after winning the playoff during the final round of the Volvo Golf Champions at The Links at Fancourt</div>
The other guys the driver spoke of were: Masters champion Charl Schwartzel; double US Open champion Retief Goosen; 2010 Open Championship winner Louis Oosthuizen and three-time Major winner Ernie Els.
Grace, whose parents owned a small restaurant in George, grew up among his heroes in a childhood which revolved around the golf course. He was part of the Ernie Els Foundation, set up by the Big Easy to identify new talent in South African golf, and his cousin is Sunshine Tour veteran Michiel Bothma. Grace enjoyed a remarkable amateur career, including a victory in the South African Amateur Stroke Play Championship in 2006 against a very strong international field. With the win, he was invited to the SA Open where he won the silver medal, finishing as the top amateur.
“Towards the end of school he hardly came to all the classes, he was always out on the course playing. Then when he did come to school, he’d pass the exams. The dude is talented,” said the driver.
I had just come from Grace’s press conference, where he fielded all the questions posed to him, but I noticed he had a resigned look about him, no doubt thinking that he had already let the tournament slip from his grasp.
Halfway through the final round, my prediction was coming true. Els was leading on 11 under par and Grace had fallen almost completely out of contention, playing the first four holes in three over par. Schwartzel and Goosen were also challenging.
Grace, who had only earned his European tour card through the gruelling European Tour Qualifying School barely a month prior in December, had finally come unstuck.
His victory at the Johannesburg Open a week before came on the very different Royal Johannesburg Country Club, and the Links at Fancourt, in the Western Cape, was also a different beast.
Nobody seemed to tell the man dubbed ‘Amazing Grace’, though, as he launched a birdie assault coming home.
Standing on the 18th tee, he was tied with Goosen and Els, who had already finished on 12 under.
The 18th is a reachable par five and a long hitter like Grace would be expected to birdie.
He did the hard work, reached the green in two and putted up to a couple of feet with his third shot. All that was left was to nudge home the four-footer for the win.
That was when disaster struck.
Grace missed.
He was now in a playoff with his childhood heroes, Goosen and Els.
Grace looked visibly sick after he threw away the chance to win outright.
The trio went back to the 18th tee for sudden death.
Els found trouble with his drive, while Goosen and Grace found the fairway.
Grace, like moments earlier, found the green with his approach and putted marginally closer than in regulation play.
The veterans weren’t able to birdie, and this time Grace was able to slam home the winning putt and let the world take notice.
With his second victory in as many weeks, Grace became the second-youngest player in European tour history to win back-to-back events. He also became the third Qualifying School graduate to win twice in the year after graduation.
Grace finally spoke about the nerves afterwards.
“I was lying in bed last night reading a couple of articles, and there were 14 Majors [winners] behind me chasing me… just standing on the tee with Ernie and Retief was unbelievable in the playoff. There was a calm about me, the whole playoff hole actually. I think I was more nervous and more pumped up going down the last hole when I walked up the fairway.”
“Knowing I’ve beaten Ernie and Retief in a playoff, I know that I can do it again.”
With Grace’s two wins, he leads the European Tour’s moneylist—The Race to Dubai—with earnings of 570,000 euros ($748,000) after four events and rising from 258 in the world rankings to inside the top 100. The boy from George has thrust himself into his rightful position among the world’s golfing elite.
The fresh face of golf is likely to be smiling all the way to the bank for many years to come.

The Fresh Grace Of Golf

Russell Loubser rose from humble beginnings to take over the sleepy Johannesburg Stock Exchange, turning it into one of the world’s top 20 bourses and the best regulated exchange on the on the planet.
Loubser grew up in a small town near Mafikeng in South Africa’s North West province, a million miles from the rapid international trades of the JSE.
“No-one in those days, black or white, ever mentioned stock exchange or shares,” he says.
Loubser was the youngest of four boys and admits life was not easy. Both his parents were uneducated and struggled to bring them up. His father was a boiler maker in a cement factory and they never owned a share or property in their lives.
“They were good, hard-working people and smart, despite not being educated,” he says.
The way up, Loubser, decided was to pursue what he calls “hard degrees” that is, qualifications with practical use. He was good at mathematics so he enrolled for a Masters in Statistics at the University of Pretoria. After completion, his rugby friends convinced him to train as a chartered accountant.
Following a successful career in investment banking, where he was highly critical of the JSE, he was approached by the exchange and offered a five-year contract. Five years turned into 15 and Loubser oversaw the transformation of the JSE into a modern exchange.
Loubser is concerned about South Africa’s high youth unemployment rate and warns of the consequences.
“This country is  good at talking and researching, but does too little implementing,” he says.
Solutions? Firstly, he believes South Africa has enough leaders but those leaders need to be placed in the right roles. Secondly, he recommends, a better education system which can produce graduates with his so called “hard degrees”. He adds getting graduates work-ready and trained should be left to employers. Lastly, he points out that instead of jobs, the focus of governments should be on creating a conducive environment in which entrepreneurs and business can thrive.
Following his retirement from the JSE, on December 31, this respected executive is keeping himself busy with three non-governmental organizations and three boards that he sits on. We have not seen the last of this battle-hardened executive from Mafikeng.

Pearls Of Wisdom  Born Of Struggle

You know times are tough when a star player exits the game. Those who play stocks agree that a move like this is not a good omen.
So when Centum, a listed investment company, announced in November last year that it had reduced its holdings at the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE), everyone stopped to listen.
In March 2011, Centum Investments, which invests in both listed and unlisted companies in the East African region, cut its exposure at the NSE from 23.6% to 9.1% of its total portfolio of $170 million and expanded its property investments by $11.8 million.
The move was to cushion its $170 million asset base as the stock market suffers from the jitters over a gloomy economic outlook in East Africa’s biggest economy and fears of political instability ahead of a general election later this year.
Centum’s investments at the NSE were punished with a 6.6% drop in half-year net profit for the six months, ending September 2011. In January this year, British American Investment Company began reallocating its assets to real estate to cut its reliance on the NSE.
2011 was a bad year for stock investors in Kenya, with the NSE dropping 31.4% by end of December, sending both institutional and retail investors scampering for safety. High inflation—which peaked at 19.72% in November but eased to 18.3% in January—along with severe drought, a weak shilling and turmoil in Western economies, resulted in the panic selling of stocks, which depressed the market.
Prices have remained low for the most part, while some have fallen to historic lows. The NSE was rated the second worst stock exchange performer in 2011, second only to the Egyptian bourse, which was down 47.2% due to political upheaval that toppled Hosni Mubarak.
“Institutional shareholders have been trashed in the bond market. The spike in the inflation rate, the excessive volatility of the Kenya shilling and a behind-the-curve Central Bank [of Kenya] have impaired the bourse,” says Aly Khan Satchu, CEO of Rich Management, an investment company based in Nairobi.
Kenyan billionaires in shilling terms, with huge stakes in the stock market, have seen their fortunes mauled by the bears. Investors lost an estimated $4.5 billion in the 12 months to December 31, 2011, as market capitalization shrank from $14.5 billion on January 1, 2011, to $10.1 billion at the end of the year.
But the six months between February and August suffered the deepest dip. Within the period, Chris Kirubi, one of the top investors at the NSE with 26.8% of Centum, lost about $7.7 million on the counter after the firm’s share fell 20% in the six months to August. Equity Bank CEO James Mwangi lost $20 million in the six months that saw the bank’s stock shrink by 30%.
Naushad Merali, the chairman of Sameer Group of Companies and ranked one of the wealthiest at the NSE, lost $6.2 million from his three listed companies—Sameer Africa, Sasini and Eveready East Africa—which fell 24%, 5% and 25% respectively, during the six months.
Most investors are shifting to less risky and now lucrative Treasury bills and bonds, as government increases borrowing to finance its budget. A sharp rise in interest rates, after the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) raised its policy lending rate to an unprecedented 18% to tame inflation and buoy the weak shilling, is also squeezing money out of investors and limiting cash flow to the stock market.
Commercial banks have raised lending rates to above 22% in recent weeks, while CBK has steadily raised the coupon rates on Treasury bill and bond issues to attract investors. The coupon rate on the two-year bond, for instance, jumped to 22.8% in November from 16.5% in October, as investors bid for higher returns to hedge against rising inflation that touched a new high of 19.7% in November.
If the impact of two new listings at the NSE in the third quarter—Transcentury Limited and British American Insurance Kenya Limited (BRITAK)—is any guide, the chill at the Nairobi Stock Exchange is deep-seated. The BRITAK initial public offering (IPO) attracted a subscription of 60%. Analysts say this is an indication that investors are still skittish about stocks. Both Transcentury and BRITAK closed the year down 50% and 67.2% lower than their offer prices.
With an election year in 2012, there’s every reason for investors to be pessimistic. Most investment analysts project a sustained market recovery in 2013 after the elections.

Bourse Black Hole

Money sent home by citizens living abroad is a major source of foreign exchange for Rwanda, with an estimated $104.25 million received in 2011, a 42.8% increase compared to the previous year.
With this rise in remittances, Rwanda’s government is now focused on getting Rwandans living abroad to help drive investment to sustain the country’s rapid economic growth.
The government wants to issue a diaspora bond to soak up spare cash from 100,000 Rwandans living overseas through the National Bank of Rwanda. The Bank, according to Governor Claver Gatete, is currently studying the models of other countries that have issued similar diaspora bonds.
“We had to send people on the ground; they are now studying the models of other countries. We want to make sure that this year it is launched. There is no doubt about it. We are targeting diaspora because we want to give them an alternative to invest. This is the best and the easiest way to make an investment without leaving your desk,” says Gatete.
Rwanda joins the growing list of other African countries such as Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda and Tanzania that have backed the World Bank’s call for issuance of diaspora bonds to woo their citizens abroad to invest in their own countries. The Bank urges African economies to tap into an estimated $40 billion a year.
Countries such as Ghana and Kenya have already launched their bonds while Nigeria will join Rwanda in launching their bonds this year. A caveat is that Kenya’s infrastructure bond, issued last year, failed to attract the required amount because of weak local currency shilling.
The African Development Bank, which also supports the issuance of such bonds, has hinted on helping African nations market their financial instruments.
Raising investment capital through diaspora bonds is not a new idea. Israel and India have thrived on them. Diaspora bonds operate like any other government bonds and are highly secure for investment, especially when the issuers are creditworthy.
Rwanda is rated credit worthy because of its sound economy, sustainable debt and increasing levels of domestic revenue and exports. In 2010, the economy expanded by 7.5% while in 2011, it was expected to rise by 8.8%. This year, the central bank expects growth to slow to 7.6%, owing to uncertainties in the global economy. Inflation, which closed the year at 8.3%, is expected to slow to 7.5% this year—all favorable signals to investors.
Rwanda is one of a few highly attractive African investment destinations because of low corruption, investor-friendly policies and its geographical location in the heart of East and Central Africa—combined local and foreign private investments reached $626 million last year, from $350 million in 2010.
Gatete says that the bond will be issued in the local currency—the Rwandan franc (RwF) to avoid dollarization of the economy. Its proceeds could be used for monetary policy implementation since it will be issued by the National Bank. This means that it could be injected into the money markets.
“It’s not government borrowing, but we could use the bond for different ways to give chances to the diaspora to invest,” says Governor Gatete, adding that the value, maturity period and coupon of the bond will be announced when it is ready for the market.
The current Rwandan government, led by President Paul Kagame, has adopted strong measures to include the diaspora in the nation’s development. This has helped the diaspora come together to form a global network—the Rwanda Diaspora Global Network (RDGN), which has a permanent office in Rwanda and brings together Rwandans across the world.
The network has between 25,000 and 30,000 members in Canada and the United States, more than 40,000 in Belgium, which has the single largest population of Rwandan diaspora, and just over 1,000 members in Australia.
Sending money to Rwanda remains expensive, but with the fund in place the cost would go down, appealing to low-income earners overseas.

Investment Begins At Home

Forty-six-year-old Dean Simon is a simple man. Wearing a printed t-shirt, jeans and black shoes, his house appears as normal as any family home. Well, at least until you turn into the dining area and see three giant Wurlitzer jukeboxes shining brightly at you in their green, red and yellow colours. If you take a closer look inside, you’ll see stacks of vinyl loaded with songs dating back to the blues of the 1950s. You can pick a track, push a button and watch as the selected record slides out and the needle glides on top, playing the tune, indeed a rare sight these days.
<div id="attachment_478" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-478" class="wp-image-478 size-medium" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/317-6_1-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />Artist Dean Simon at his home in Johannesburg; 19 January 2012 &#8211; Photo by Brett Eloff</div>
For an artist who has sold out his work before the opening of an exhibition and has clients in Africa, the Middle East and the United States, Simon shies away from the limelight. He has no website, no Twitter account or Facebook page. He says he tries his best not to associate himself with projects that require hype or media attention.
“Stay under the radar and let your work speak for itself,” he says.
Simon has done this so well that even those in the Johannesburg art world claim not to know him.
His work is confusing; one of his works on Mandela has hung for years, without drawing much comment, on the walls of the plush Saxon Boutique Hotel in Johannesburg.
By contrast, another of his works on Mandela drew fire from the media and art world. The work for a private client, called The Last Supper, depicts Mandela in the place of Jesus, with Ghandi to his right and Martin Luther King Junior to his left.
“It’s always been word of mouth and low key. I find that it is more peaceful not to stick your head out,” he says.
“The gallery scene is based on hype and ego and I’m not interested. By the time you are done with a gallery, they have taken a chunk of your salary. People come to me to buy my work.”
This explains why most of Simon’s clients are private collectors, so most of his best work is kept away from public eyes.
“It’s a double-edged sword, though, because collectors keep their stuff private, but for me it is about building a reputation with the people who are going to buy my stuff.”
Would that explain, to an extent, why he may not be a household name in his own country? Whether it does or not, Simon’s work has managed to land him an exhibition in a museum in Los Angeles in April. It is called From Hurt to Hope, a series of works he had initially compiled into a calendar. It is now to be exhibited at the Museum of Tolerance, a museum aimed at educating people about inequality and injustice.
“My theme is people who had a bad upbringing or hard backgrounds but despite that, not getting bitter, but becoming icons. It’s also based on racism; if these people had been murdered or assassinated, the world wouldn’t be the same,” says Simon.
The aim is to educate the world about people who are not necessarily famous, but who have had an impact on the way the world is today—people such as holocaust survivor Felix Zandman.
“He survived the war; he lived underground for 17 months with his uncle, who taught him maths to keep him from going mad. It’s not stuff people know about.”
Two of his subjects are genocide survivors.
The first is Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew who survived the holocaust. He coined the term genocide (derived from the Greek word genos; meaning tribe or race, and the Latin word cide; meaning killing) in order to make such mass killings a crime against humanity. Lemkin died in 1959, aged 59.
Another of Simon’s subjects is Rwandan genocide survivor, Imaculee IIibagiza. Her entire family was wiped out during the war by the time she was 23, while she hid crammed in a church bathroom for 91 days. Since then, she has spread the message of reconciliation and forgiveness among victims and perpetrators, working for the United Nations, writing books and speaking on public platforms.
<div id="attachment_480" style="width: 221px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-480" class="wp-image-480 size-medium" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Army-camo-Dean-Simon-211x300.jpg" alt="" width="211" height="300" />Camouflage</div>
“Had they been terminated, the world wouldn’t be the same. The exhibition says these people came from nothing and did something selfless that changed the world,” says Simon.
The amount of research and preparation for each work is crucial; the small details can make or break an image.
Talent without preparation is wasted, according to Simon; just doing research on a piece can take him anything from three to four months, excluding the actual time spent drawing. That, on its own, can take a month or more, with 13- to 16-hour days spent working on completing the image.
“You have to make sure the detail is really accurate; it’s like starting a jigsaw puzzle [in your head]. The work is very tiring, though.”
His arched back tells the tale of his labors on the floor of his office.
“I wish I had a more conventional mind, it would make life easier.”
Simon realised during his years at the School of Art and Design in Johannesburg that he could visualise three-dimensionality. Soon after graduating from school, he was conscripted into the army, as were most young white males in pre-democratic South Africa. This is where he realised he could make a comfortable living off his talent.
While being your own boss is something most people aspire to, he admits that it does not come easily.
“Working for yourself involves long hours because if you’re disciplined, it means you never take time off. You work seven days a week. My work starts at three in the morning and never ends before eight or eight thirty in the evening.”
The private client who commissioned him to do The Last Supper (and requested to remain anonymous) says he chose Simon after seeing his work in the Saxon. The original copy received a $2 million offer from a banker.
“Dean is very passionate. It’s what makes him different; he changes his topics. He always does all his work on topics he believes in. He’s a good man, but people were like, ‘How could he have done that?’ [But] when Madiba saw it for the first time, he said, ‘What a brilliant idea’, that it was important for people to learn about these people [in the picture].”
The message behind Simon’s most controversial piece to date was to highlight the good that has come out of Africa, and not to dwell on the ‘dark continent’ stereotype.
“The Last Supper was solely for the client, no one was meant to see it except [them]. We wanted to make a statement about Africa; the people [in it] represent tolerance and principles of peace. There are people in that drawing whom I don’t like. It is not about my own personal feelings, it’s about ideals, it was not meant to be blasphemous. I’m not making any apologies for it.”
<div id="attachment_481" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-481" class="size-large wp-image-481" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Final-RW-1024x696.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="322" />Imaculee Rwanda Lady</div>
His latest project, he says, is set to cause even more controversy than The Last Supper.
“I’m not looking forward to it. Next lifetime I’m coming back as an accountant.”
Surely, most people will look forward to it.

The Secret Artist

Who would have thought that a New York removal man would help turn a budding young artist into a history maker? Well, that’s exactly what happened to South African Conor McCreedy.
A helping hand moving a carpet up to his apartment helped land McCreedy his first solo exhibition, at the National Arts Club jsut down the road—the youngest artist to do so.
“I bought an old third-hand carpet from Iran at an old vintage store and I needed someone to help me move it. So we went to my studio, a four-flight walk up the stairs, and he comes up and sees all this art that I’m working on, adorned on my walls, and he’s like: ‘Holy shit, man, this stuff is crazy! You know what? You’ve got to meet someone.’”
McCreedy moved to New York knowing no one, and having spent most of his youth between a secluded boarding school in KwaZulu-Natal and his home in the gated Melrose suburb of Johannesburg. The last thing the 2005 Hilton College alumnus, with a distinction in art, thought was that this removal man would introduce him to the president of New York’s historic NAC.
The art club, located in the Tilden Mansion in Gramercy Park New York, was founded in 1898. It has an exclusive invitation-only membership, which included three former United States presidents:  Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Dwight D. Eisenhower. It also included some of the country’s most important artists and art patrons, such as Andy Warhol.
“I went to boarding school. I know you should never assume, but I did assume. I thought someone who is a mover is not really going to help someone in the art world. I was at a young, tender age and was a bit ignorant.
“He said: ‘You need to go to the NAC—the president of the club is waiting for you.’ So I was like, ‘What is that?’ and he said, ‘Yo, you big dummy, it’s across the street from you—it’s the most historic club in America.’”
It led to an introduction with Alden Jones Junior, NAC president. This meeting saw a solo exhibition for McCreedy, titled Outliers, in 2010.
“That really opened up doors for me; it kind of put me on the map and allowed the world to know who I was and what I was doing. It really helped a lot.”
McCreedy has moved away from styles that made his name, painting abstract animals and portraits, to creating more abstract images with his own style, painting in blues on fine linen.
“You don’t have to paint zebras and giraffes to paint Africa. South African art in New York is quite a niche market. It’s still African art, although some is being created here and some in New York. It is where I feel my proper outlet is now. You finally find your niche; mine is now in blues. Big giant pigments on Belgian linen, French linen and the finest linen you can find, and it’s this big explosion of an ocean. We live in a volatile world, so when you create these oceans, people get lost in this beautiful array of blues. And they like that because it’s kind of like what the ocean does to you.”
His change in style is not only tied to his artistic growth, but also his African roots. With an awareness of the continent’s image among many in the Western world, McCreedy wants his work to change perceptions about Africa and African art.
“I’m trying to get the Western world to understand that Africa is not as bad or poverty stricken as the world sees it. India is way worse, and the poverty in India is so bad, yet they have better investments and the right type of investments going into India, which we do not have.
“We have Bill Gates, who is sending all these mosquito nets into, let us say Malawi, for instance, which is great. But it is not the right investment because what he is doing is putting the guy in Malawi, who is making the mosquito nets right out of business, because you can’t beat something that is for free.
“And we have these advertisements; you see them all over [the world], like ‘Incredible India’—you never see ‘Astonishing Africa’ or ‘Amazing Africa’, you don’t see that.”
Conor McCreedy hopes to change all of this with his blue brush strokes.

Restyling Africa’s Image  One Brush Stroke At A Time

Nyasha Matonhodze was born on July 31, 1994, in Zimbabwe. Her mother was just 18 years old, so she was looked after by her grandmother and grew up bathing outside in the sun and falling asleep in the sand in the rural areas around the capital, Harare.
At the age of eight, she went to join her mother in England, who was working in the small midland town of Northampton. It was here where Nyasha became aware of herself and her dreams.
“I was never a girly girl, but I did really like make up and watching America’s Next Top Model,” she once told Fashion TV.
It was the show that drew her interest in modeling. She decided at 14 that it was something she’d try out. Her parents took her to an open call at Elite, after which she won the Elite Model Look competition in the United Kingdom. Two years later, at the tender age of 16, she walked her first runway. “It really teaches you how to present yourself; what elegant, sexy, fierce is really about,” she says about her job.
It’s extremely hard to pin her down for a chat because of the breakneck speed of her new life.  She went from shooting in London to castings for New York Fashion Week and was later on her way to Milan. You could almost say that the model is elusive and there are very few interviews with her in existence.
Nyasha—whose name means mercy in her mother tongue—is now at the mercy of a tough business while she is still a teenager. Modeling is not for the fainthearted. The rewards may be high, but the risks are great. You have to miss sleep for months on end shuttling from one capital to the next. Your face can fall and your fortunes can fall with it. Often, your name can be on everyone’s lips one minute; the next, you are in obscurity.
Despite Nyasha’s tender years, she appears to have her head screwed on with a healthy grasp of the misfortunes that can haunt her chosen career.
“You never know what’s next. One minute you’re good and the next is a bit of a… I’m just making the most of the time that I’ve got,” she smiles.
For now, she is most definitely a rising star. She has walked in more than 90 shows since her debut, with more than 80 in the last year. She has been on the cover of two magazines and is represented by Elite Model Management in London, Milan and Paris, and the by Marilyn Agency in New York.
Her career highlight must be her earning a spot in the Louis Vuitton advertising campaign. It’s made sure that anyone who hadn’t heard of Nyasha Matonhodze won’t forget her anytime soon.
After the announcement, she told the Daily Telegraph in London that tears had welled up in her eyes.
“I thought ‘Lord you are lucky!’ It didn’t actually hit me until I was in a Rolls Royce sitting eye-to-eye with (renowned fashion photographer, Steven) Meisel.”
She’s also done advertising for Topshop.
She has a pleasing disposition, carries herself with elegance and still maintains that childlike sparkle in her eyes and playfulness.
The cut-throat world of beauty leaves most to think that there’s little room for friends, with plenty of young hopefuls being discovered—and vying for the same jobs. Matonhodze’s warmth has allowed her to find a best friend in Ajak Deng—who is number eight on our list.
“I love what I do,” she says.
The question which remains is how long will this dream run last? In the meantime, you can be sure this potential future-Iman or Naomi Campbell—who has traveled a long journey from the Zimbabwean bush to the heights of sophistication—will enjoy every last minute of it. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-465" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/nyashamatonhodze_327439_original_resp.jpg" alt="" width="768" height="995" />

Elegant, Sexy And Fierce

<h4> FORBES AFRICA (FA): How is Samsung’s partnership with the Africa Cup of Nations boosting the development of football in Africa and what was the company’s strategy behind its involvement in the tournament?</h4>
KK Park (KKP): Football is a passion we share with our customers in Africa, and Samsung is thrilled to play a part in this celebration of African football. As an official sponsor of the Africa Cup of Nations since 2008, Samsung has provided many programmes for fans to engage both inside and outside the football stadiums. For example, we have sponsored the ‘Samsung Fair Player Award’ for each game, contributing to the spirit of good sportsmanship in football. Our Africa Cup of Nations sponsorship forms just a part of our commitment to sport on the continent.
Our commitment to football in Africa is also part of our broader strategy of constantly looking for opportunities to engage with our consumers and to help them do the things they love. Just two weeks ago, Samsung and Chelsea FC hosted a Youth Football Camp in Ghana and Ivory Coast to improve the skills of children, aged between nine and 13. We also sponsor the Nigerian national football team.
By supporting sports and recreation initiatives at local, regional and international levels, we believe we can make a tangible difference in the lives of young people and our customers across the continent.
<h4>FA: How important is the African continent to Samsung’s bottom line? What is your growth target for the next five years and how do you tailor your products for the continent?</h4>
KKP: Our belief is that Africa is an incredibly important market for a variety of reasons. The growth of the market is tremendous, and so is the opportunity to develop new lines of business and even new products. For us, Africa is blazing a new path, and Samsung plans to be part of that. One of the ways in which we’re supporting African consumers is our Built for Africa product line. ‘Built for Africa’ was born from our legacy of constant innovation. Our specific insight was to take our products and to look for ways of making them even better. Often this means improving a product to help our consumers navigate their local environment. For example power surges often damage electronic products in Africa. Therefore we created products such as our SurgeSafe TVs, Triple Protector Air Conditioners, and Duracool Fridges—ll with built-in surge protection. This initiative has already seen enormous success, and we are very excited about the next generation of Built for Africa products that we will be unveiling at our Africa Forum 2012, this March in Cape Town.
<h3>FA: How does Built for Africa fit into your overall strategy for the continent?</h3>
KKP: The key to our engagement with Africa is our belief that we need to contribute to African society not only through localized products, but also by supporting the development of talent in the region. This means that Samsung is deeply committed to growing capacity in Africa. You can see this reflected in our Hope for Children program, which consists of three initiatives meant to help ensure the education of the next generation of Africans. First, we are opening our Samsung Electronics Engineering Academies, which support the development of African engineers and then help graduating students find jobs within Samsung. Our current goal is to develop 10,000 electronics engineers across the continent by 2015. Second we have developed unique Schools, Solar Powered Internet  portable schools aimed at increasing accessibility to education and connectivity in remote rural areas with limited or no access to electricity. Finally, we have our Mobile Education program, which involves working with universities and content developers in different African countries to customize mobile apps and educational content for Africa.

Built For Africa

It all began in the 1920s, when Kishin Chand Chellaram stepped off a boat and onto the shores of Lagos. He had heard from a family friend that there was money to be made in Nigeria and had journeyed for months across the sea to find out if this was true.
Chellaram was a small textile business owner in his hometown of Hyderabad. In 1923, he joined other Sindhis who were venturing into Nigeria’s growing economy. After two weeks of exploring his options, he sent for the first consignment of goods.
In the late 1940s the Chellarams, who are Hindu, were forced to leave their home after East and West Pakistan were formed as a Muslim state. The Chellarams sold all their assets, exchanging them for coupons in Bombay, and set up shop permanently in Lagos.
The name Chellaram became known in Nigeria for retail, operating 17 department stores across the country selling groceries, cosmetics, textiles, luxury items and electronics from the early 1950s up until 1992, when economic and political conditions in the country slowed down its operations. The family business survived as Chellarams Plc. and is one of the largest conglomerates in Nigeria, with a business portfolio consisting of fast-moving consumer goods, chemicals distribution, a bicycle manufacturing division, a food packaging unit contracted to Nestlé Nigeria, an industrial goods sales and service subsidiary, a textiles manufacturing unit, a plastic film manufacturing unit,  quick service restaurants, a travel agency and a retail operations business.
This mixed bag of companies is now run by Kishin Chand’s great-grandson, Suresh, his wife Kavita and his two children, Aditya and Amisha. Although the company listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange in 1978, 75% of the business is still held by the family; 20% belongs to shareholders and the remaining 5% is in the name of a Nigerian charity.
“My great-grandfather was the first Indian member in Nigeria’s prestigious Ikoyi Club and the first Indian to live in Ikoyi,” says Aditya proudly.
Amisha was behind the first foray of South African retail giant Woolworths into Nigeria. She started as a franchisee in 2002, but operations halted in 2005 due to an importation ban on garments and footwear. In November 2011, the deal was reopened as a joint venture business that will see three stores running in major shopping centers in the country this year. The company also made headlines in Nigeria when it entered into a joint venture with RJCorp of India and Yum! Restaurants International as the sole operator of the KFC brand in Nigeria. Today, 15 stores operate in Nigeria, with plans to open another 15 stores this year.
Chellarams has also partnered with big international names like American Express travel services, Oldenburger and Real (dairy products), as well as chemical companies like Shell and Bayer, and other international consumer durables and electronics companies. The company’s biggest trading line is chemicals for the foam mattress industry and 70% of their chemicals sold go into this.
“Nigerians are very savvy and well traveled, so they are exposed to international brands. They are looking for brands and these brands are looking for Nigeria now. With the recession in Europe and America, everyone is looking to Nigeria now and Chellarams is positioning itself to be a partner for these guys—not just an investment partner but a strategic partner that can provide services and that has the local knowledge. We will keep finding ways to leverage these partnerships to grow our other businesses,” says Aditya.
The Chellarams family is a picture of success in Nigeria, but it has not been easy. As any Nigerian business owner can tell you, manoeuvering the political and socio-economic environment in the country is an uphill battle. Nigeria has had a turbulent past, which has resulted in a tough business climate.
“A difficult period was the early to mid-’90s with the major devaluation and the ’94 election saga,” Aditya reminisces.
“International credit lines were given to Nigerian banks and they were crawling on repaying these loans. They began to aggressively try and cease advantage and take over our house. Real estate really saved us then and we have had to sell some iconic real estate that we owned, including warehouses, retail stores and an office tower.”
Remarkably, the family was not derailed by the oil boom of the ’60s when many companies were rushing to get a piece of Nigeria’s black gold.
“We are not running after a rainbow. It is a high investment business and we were small boys. It’s a game that is not for Indians or foreigners but a game for the indigenes. Our aim is to supply products that benefit these businesses which, Chellarams believes, is a better business model anyway.”
Africa hosts more than 150 Indian businesses today, many of whom are trying to penetrate Nigeria’s market. The company claims that it is not threatened by the increasing number of similar businesses entering the space it has occupied for the last 88 years. Rather, Chellarams is more worried about competition from Nigerian companies that are able to operate with lower overheads and have more focused product lines, geography and customer base within Nigeria. These businesses import their products and sell them at much lower prices.
The family is trying to invest in Nigeria’s power sector and capitalize on the government’s plan to reform and deregulate the sector. Chellarams had already formed a company called Solar Power Generation Ltd, which has already commissioned two gas-powered generators and has attained permission to sell power to their neighbors in the industrial areas of Lagos. This project has the capacity to hold up to 50 megawatts. Currently, Nigeria is the only country in which the family operates, but its next step is West African expansion in both the Anglophone and Francophone parts of the continent. Chellarams Plc. is already looking into sponsoring activities in Chad, Cameroon and Niger, where the plan is to create the pull effect for their goods into these three nations. Chellarams also has its eye on a full-time operation in Ghana.
To finance its growth objectives, the company issued a N1.5 billion ($9 million) BBB-bond in December 2010 and a second tranche of N3.5 billion ($22 million) in December 2011.
“For now, we are just holding back and looking, but we expect partnerships to be a big part of the brand. This is the business model that is prime for a region that everyone is trying to come into at once.”
The family says it will continue Kishin Chand’s Nigerian dream in the 21st century. When people ask where they come from, the family says: “We are Sindhi refugees but Nigeria has been a warm welcome.”

From Refugees To Tycoons

Lord Malloch-Brown has been described as a rare statesman and a public intellectual. He is a man with a passion for Africa and is the former United Nations Deputy Secretary General and World Bank vice chairman, who has also held the office of Minister of State for Africa, Asia and was the British Prime Minister in Gordon Brown’s cabinet.
A former journalist for The Economist, Lord Malloch-Brown’s astute observations concerning international relations, macro-economics and the role of emerging markets were the platform for his keynote address at the Hasso Plattner Ventures Capital Africa Conference 2012, in Stellenbosch, near Cape Town, a conference aimed at matching investment opportunities in Africa with venture capital.
When asked whether the global economy is heading south, Lord Malloch-Brown’s answer painted a realistic picture, with hope for emerging economies.
“Its going to be a year of troubled growth, emerging markets will continue to grow but less than they did last year, with advanced economies growing at 1.5%. The other understanding of the word ‘south’ is that the engine of the global economy is moving inextricably southwards. You see it in the growing share of GDP that emerging economies represent.”
Chinese growth figures in 1990 comprised 2% of global GDP; now it comprises 8% of global GDP, making it the largest economy in the world. In many ways the Chinese economy is the standard bearer for emerging economies.
For emerging economies, according to Lord Malloch-Brown, the future looks bright, especially in the medium to long-term, with a strong trend towards high rates of urbanization, growth in middle-class consumer spending and increased mechanization of agriculture.
But against this buoyant backdrop lies the reality that internally, social instability will remain a problem, with increased inequality and political unrest.
“You will see potential corruption around the controlling of resources, commercial land and also mineral and energy resources. Scarcity of resources will also play a big role, especially around water. These are some of the real challenges that emerging economies will need to face and address head on.”
With investors looking for increased opportunity in emerging markets, the question is, where is the smart money heading?
“Smart money is all over the place at the moment; assets in Asia are overpriced, in Europe prices are overvalued, coupled with economic instability in the Eurozone. Latin America is a strangely overlooked market, and then you have Africa which is a hugely attractive market. But the difficulty in Africa lies in acquisitions. You really need to buy or build a business that is Pan African. With the exception of South Africa and Nigeria, most African markets are not big enough to sustain a major foreign investment.”
Investing in Africa according to Lord Malloch-Brown is all about finding a sound business model that can work across the continent.
So far, investor interest in African assets has leant towards the financial services sector, telecoms and more recently, retail.  When it comes to investing in Africa, the devil is in the detail says Lord Malloch-Brown.
“When investing in Africa you need to ask yourself whether the asset is a well-valued, well-run business in its own market, and whether you can see the business rolling out into the continent more widely. These are the critical points to investing in emerging economies, especially in Africa.”
According to Lord Malloch-Brown, it’s all about operating and opening up capital to bigger African markets.
Lord Malloch-Brown’s career at the helm of some of the world’s leading international organizations, has given him a birds-eye view of development, matched with an  understanding of the challenges of grass roots implementation. He also believes fostering entrepreneurship in Africa is the only way to build the continent.
“I’m a big enthusiast of the continent; I chair a rice-growing and producing business in Ghana called GADCO which has very quickly positioned itself as the major rice producer in Ghana. The business follows a very clear triple bottom line. We make money, we create jobs and aim to be sustainable.”
Africa, according to Malloch-Brown, is an extraordinary growth story. In his current role as chairman of FTI Consulting, an international investment consultancy, Malloch-Brown aims to help channel private equity funds into the continent’s growth industries.
“Fostering entrepreneurship in Africa is not just about inculcating a culture of ‘win’,” states Lord Malloch-Brown. “It’s also important to note cultural differences that play a role in people’s ability and agility to pick up the skill of enterprise and risk taking.”
The prominence of the public sector as a major employer on the continent has had a dampening effect on the spark of entrepreneurship, but what has been an outstanding source of hope for the future of African entrepreneurs, is the quality and level of business school education found on the continent.
“What South Africa has in way of nurturing entrepreneurship are business schools and tertiary institutions that teach students to become enterprising—part entrepreneur, part social activists. That’s the beauty of entrepreneurs in Africa, you can’t be one without having a social conscience, and that’s where the real change for the continent lies.”
On whether one should be investing in Africa, Lord Malloch-Brown’s answer was a resounding yes.
“The short-term choice is financial services and communications, with the massive opportunity of the unbanked. In the medium-term there are going to be two revolutions across the continent, one in agricultural productivity and the other in increased urbanization. These two, will create astonishing medium-term opportunities.”
With strong investment returns, Africa continues to be a continent with immense potential and the smart money in the world appears to be heading south.

Is The World Economy  Heading South?

Trevor Ncube, 49, a Zimbabwean publisher, looks a hard nut to crack. Perhaps he is tough as nails after navigating the murky waters of Zimbabwean politics to set up private papers that have clashed with President Robert Mugabe and given an alternative voice to state-owned media.
It has made Ncube rich, with an estimated fortune running into millions of rand. He prefers to keep this figure under lock and key, the legacy of humble beginnings.
Ncube was born into a poor household in colonial Zimbabwe in the 1960s, when there were few opportunities for black men. His father was an amazing cook, in his words, and his mother, Alima, a domestic servant, later an entrepreneur, who sold clothes to send six children to school.
“Our upbringing was tough&#8230; we struggled quite a lot. There were times when I didn’t have shoes, walked to school barefoot; there are times when I didn’t have a uniform, and friends would borrow me shirts. We would run out of things like Vaseline to oil our body and used margarine instead, so we would look good,” says Ncube.
To raise school fees, Ncube often worked as a gardener at the home of a white family, the Johnsons, where his parents worked, in the suburbs of the country’s second largest city, Bulawayo.
“It is this background that has made me humble,” Ncube said.
His mother gave Ncube a taste for making money, his background the motivation.
“I never wanted to live the kind of life we lived, I wanted my life to be different. The life of lack, the type of hand-to-mouth existence I endured, not because of my parents’ fault or anything. It is a life I said I didn’t want to endure. It’s fear of being poor, the fear of the hand-to-mouth existence,” he said.
Achieving this hasn’t been easy in the rough-and-tumble of Zimbabwean politics. Ncube has been in and out of police cells, starting with his student leader days at the University of Zimbabwe in the 1980s. Once, while detained at a police station in Harare, the former head of intelligence threw a pistol in Ncube’s face in anger over a student demonstration.
When he became a journalist, the cells awaited Ncube yet again, as his newspaper, The Financial Gazette, the country’s business weekly, trod on a few powerful toes.
“The discomfort of being in a room with 14 other suspects, with a toilet close by—the stench was awful. Sending us to prison was a way of showing us they could do anything they wished, that they were in charge. It was uncomfortable, it makes you very angry and think of a way to treat these people in kind for what they are doing to you. It was very frightening. I had never been in prison and I didn’t know what would happen next, given the unexplained disappearances of others in similar circumstances by the state,” says Ncube.
These days, Ncube is merely disappointed with Zimbabwe’s leaders whom, he says, had plenty of opportunities to turn things around since independence, but have little to show for it.
Beneath Ncube’s often acid look, as he narrates a painful past, is, in his own words, “a loving and caring man who fears God”.
Ncube also needed guts to set up a company now running three papers in Zimbabwe: a daily, financial weekly and Sunday paper. This, in addition to publishing South Africa’s second most popular paper, The Mail&amp;Guardian, selling just over 51,000 copies every week. He holds 76% equity in the Mail&amp;Guardian.
“Nothing happens at the M&amp;G when I don’t want it to,” he says.
A climb down from chairperson to deputy chair of the M&amp;G group raised whispers that he was being bought out.
“I’m not a CEO. I provide strategic support, wisdom, oversight. I’m not a manager, I’m terrible at management. I’m a leader, I’m not an entrepreneur. There are much smarter, better managers out there. I thought, ‘Well, let me stick to what I know best… I love making babies, I don’t like taking care of babies, so, well, I like conceiving ideas and projects, and letting them happen’.”
Ncube won the German Africa Award, from the German Africa Foundation, for press freedom, human rights and democracy in Zimbabwe and Southern Africa, a journalistic milestone on the road to riches.
Says Andy Moyse, a journalist who heads Zimbabwe Mass Media Monitoring Project, which scrutinizes news in the country for fair and professional coverage of events: “He (Ncube) is an astute businessman. He has created one of the biggest print media businesses the country has ever witnessed. He has brought his business acumen into the media environment. To be fair, he has created a very dominant single media house. We need this to deal with the repressive media climate.”
Ncube’s career has been eventful and often rocky, to say the least. It all began with a job as assistant editor of The Financial Gazette in 1991. He got fired by the publisher years later for not toeing the editorial line.
“It was a tough time. If you have never been fired, then you have no business being in business. Being fired is a university in itself. It toughens you, it makes you realise how life is like.”
Ncube got fired with a mortgage hanging over him and a family to take care of, despite the fact that he was once nominated Zimbabwe Editor of the Year.
Within months, Ncube had scouted for a financier to set up a private paper, The Zimbabwe Independent. Clive Murphy, a serial entrepreneur, got wind of that; a meeting was set up, and the rest is history. He was initially offered a 2% stake, but increased it to 5%. He paid it off when the business returns looked good.
“I’m scared of debt. When the first dividend of equity came, that was it, I became a capitalist. I never looked back,” Ncube said. After almost a decade, he took over the controlling shareholding of The Zimbabwe Independent.
From The Zimbabwe Independent are two off-shoots: a weekly, The Standard, and a daily, NewsDay, part of a media empire called Alpha Media Holdings.
Ncube smiles at the memory of the next step. When he lost The Financial Gazette job, Ncube applied for a job at South Africa’s Sunday Times and Mail&amp;Guardian. He was turned down by both. The rich irony is that he now owns Mail&amp;Guardian.
This is how it happened: During a trip to Cape Town, Govan Reddy, the previous owner, approached him, having caught wind that Ncube wanted to expand his media business portfolio into the region.
“They wanted someone with a pedigree, who would withstand political pressure but who is also even-handed to both government and opposition,” Ncube said.
Negotiating the deal wasn’t easy. Ncube had to shrug off the challenge from big-hitting potential suitors like Zwelake Sisulu and Anthony Harper. After acquiring it, Ncube says the challenge was to turn it around. The M&amp;G, at the time, was making over R15 million ($1.95 million) in losses every year. “For me, it was the biggest test being in a foreign environment where the players are complete strangers,” he says.
Ncube applied for a New York-based foundation funding loan for media development. It provides seed capital, is run professionally, and they charge interest.
“We have since repaid the loan,” he said.
It’s not an easy job. At the time, the establishment was accusing the M&amp;G of pandering to white interests.
“Naturally, we are bound to irritate the political establishment. That doesn’t worry us, it doesn’t concern us, it happens here in Zimbabwe. That is the nature of the beast. We would worry if the politicians weren’t complaining.”
What bothers the publisher is the politics of South Africa.
“The situation in South Africa is now beginning to approximate what happened here 20 years ago. That’s where South Africa is after 16 years of a new political dispensation—the intolerance around the media, this new secrecy bill. For me, watching South Africa play out is watching Zimbabwe play all over again. I know a lot of South Africans get irritated when you say that. South Africa is Zimbabwe again in slow motion in certain instances,”
says Ncube.
It could be tricky for Ncube, when it comes to speaking out about politics. He is known as a journalist who speaks his mind and has an analytical insight into the political machinations of Zimbabwe and South Africa. On the other hand, he is a man with media interests—which can often be vulnerable—both sides of the Limpopo River. This year, he is likely to field a flurry of questions, about the politics of the land of his birth, as Zimbabwe is expected to hold elections.
Referring to Zimbabwean politics, he says: “It is going to be turbulent. I don’t think the Movement for Democratic Change (under Morgan Tsvangirai) has a clue about governance. But (should it win an election) it will only provide that environment necessary for stability.”
A journalist at Alpha Media Holdings, who declined to be named, said: “His (Ncube’s) commitment to democracy and media freedom in particular is not driven by corporate or business interest. It is an ingrained conviction for him. He has this deep-seated belief that people must be free… his downside is his failure to create a balance between the workers’ interests and enlightened self-interest. He would do well if he became more sensitive to our remunerations; otherwise, he is a great guy.”
<h3>New Randela Notes 
Cause A Stir</h3>
With South Africa’s rand under pressure, word on Friday afternoon that there would be an announcement of national importance on the following day, February 11, caused consternation in the markets.
The rand lost 2.5% of its value as traders got the jitters ahead of the mysterious announcement in Pretoria. The invitation said the South African President, Jacob Zuma, Reserve Bank Governor, Gill Marcus and Finance Minister, Pravin Gordhan were all going to be there—something highly important, surely? Journalists stayed glued to their phones and laptops—maybe exchange controls were about to be abolished. Imagine?
In the end, it was merely an announcement that former President Nelson Mandela was to replace the big five game animals—lion, buffalo, rhino, elephant and leopard—on the front of South Africa’s bank notes.  “It’s the Randela!” joked one journalist.
The announcement was to coincide with the 22nd anniversary of the release of Mandela from Victor Verster Prison, near Cape Town, on February 11, 1990. The notes have improved security marks and  features to help the blind. They will be put into circulation before the end of the year and the  existing notes will remain legal tender.
Marcus apologised for the confusion around the announcement and quipped: “It shows how little we look to good news.”
As for the losses to the rand during the confusion? The CNBC Africa markets team assures FORBES AFRICA that most of the 2.5% loss to the value of the rand was largely down to the economic woes of Greece, rather than the PR clumsiness of the government officials behind the new face on the notes.
<div id="attachment_445" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-445" class="size-large wp-image-445" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/0000155868-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="316" />LVDbank05.jpg</div>

How Fear Can Make You Rich

A few minutes past midnight on March 2, 2006, Paul Melly received a call from one of his senior managers who had news no one wanted to hear and few could believe. The Standard Group head offices, the panting caller said, was being raided by a gang of armed and hooded assailants.
It sounded like a prank call, but April 1 was still 29 days away. If Melly had any doubts, two more phone calls from a senior journalist and a director confirmed that the media house he heads was under attack.
<div id="attachment_439" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-439" class="size-large wp-image-439" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Paul-Melly-3-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="316" />Paul Melly</div>
“It started as a nightmare scenario,” recalls Melly, who was vice chairman and strategy adviser to the company, which owns The Standard newspaper and Kenya Television Network (KTN). “Signs at the hour were that the Communication Commission of Kenya was dismantling our television transmission equipment. But then I told myself, a regulator can’t come at night. A higher hand than the regulator’s was involved and the magnitude of the event suggested a force that had some strong, invisible hand.”
If that was bad news, worse was to come. An hour later, Melly received more reports that another group had invaded Standard Group. This time, it was the newspaper printing press. The gang attacked and kidnapped staff, stopped the presses and was burning newspapers. A news gatherer was making the news, in the midst of a rare crisis. How could anyone handle such a disaster?
It was a world away from the optimism on the day when Melly joined Standard Group in 2004. His job description was clear: transforming a fledgling media house on the verge of losing money and public confidence.
The Standard Group is Kenya’s second largest media house, which runs The Standard newspaper, the country’s first private television station and magazine distribution. The newspaper and television station have won fans because of their independent approach to news. It is the scourge of government and its officials, and it splashes stories that its rivals dare not touch. In an exclusive eight years ago, it revealed President Kibaki had a second wife. A few months later, the Sunday Standard questioned Kibaki’s fitness and suitability to be head of state after speculation over the president’s ill health, following a freak accident on the campaign trail.
It was a tough row to hoe. The Standard, Kenya’s oldest newspaper that was started in 1902, struggled to win over new readers and KTN kept losing viewers to newer and more nimble broadcasters. Operational costs were on the increase, especially newsprint, and the struggle to secure the most talented journalists was draining the coffers of newspapers. At the same time, turnover slackened and profitability plunged.
With no training or experience in journalism, Melly was an unlikely choice for the highest management position in the group. He is a finance man, with a Masters degree in accounting and finance.
“Not being a trained journalist represented a strength in looking at things from a fresh point of view, challenging the status quo and always pursuing the ‘why strategy of asking why can we not do this or that’ without the inhibition of journalism experience,” Melly told FORBES AFRICA at the company’s new headquarters on the outskirts of Nairobi.
The position, he says, required leadership skills, which he had in plenty from the Capital Markets Authority, a government-run industry regulator, where he had worked for a dozen years, 10 of them as chief executive officer. He presided over reforms, including the demobilization of shares, which is the conversion into electronic form, and the automation of the Nairobi Stock Exchange (NSE), now called the Nairobi Securities Exchange.
Since December 2004, when he joined, he says Standard Group’s fortunes have improved. Turnover had grown from Sh1.7 billion ($20 million) to Sh3.1 billion ($36.5 million) by December 2010. Shareholders’ equity has increased fivefold, while profits have tripled, from near loss, to Sh453 million ($5 million).
“Figures speak for themselves,” he says as he takes me through the annual report for 2010. These numbers pale next to those of the rival, Nation Media Group, that turns over twice as much, with triple the profits, but they are big enough to toast with champagne at Standard Group.
Standard Group was far from ready when the hooded gang descended with AK-47s in hand. They stormed into rented head offices in the city center, arresting staff, confiscating computers and dismantling transmission equipment. At the printing works, they burned newspapers as they rolled off the press. Indeed, the events of Wednesday, March 2, 2006, played out like a Hollywood action movie.
“To say it was my worst day is an understatement,” says Melly.
The raid was executed with the precision of a commando operation and its magnitude showed it was not the work of casual criminals.
“Because the raiders were hooded and accompanied government security personnel with people of Caucasian origin, it immediately occurred to me it was sabotage on our operations,” Melly says.
There was speculation that the raid was aimed at pre-empting a negative story on senior people in government.
“It was just intimidation. The headline that day was ‘Champions of KCSE (Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education)’ celebrating the performance of schools. Those who were burning them must have been ashamed because they were burning newspapers with positive content about our children. There was no content found in any of our offices that was being contemplated for publication or published. And if there was, arrests would have been made and people charged. That story was a conspiracy by those behind the raid to justify their actions,” says Melly.
When it comes to dealing with crisis, Melly says he takes one step at a time, avoiding hasty decisions. “You must analyze the situation with a reasonable level of clarity,” he advises. As he did that, he moved to reassure his colleagues and staff that all would be fine and they would prevail.
“I received calls from many people, but I did not make any attempt to call anybody in government or people I know. My desire was to gather more information as necessary rather than spread the panic. We needed to know, for instance, how many were the raiders, how were they dressed, armed, and find out if there were any hallmarks of government support. And given that they used government vehicles, the fact that some of our employees were being taken into police custody was enough to suggest that the operation was instigated by government.”
Standard Group lost advertising revenue in the newspaper, circulation, TV and editorial content in its news repository, crucial data on its magazine distribution division and hundreds of computers, all running into millions of dollars. Operations were crippled and something had to be done, and quickly.
As a leader, Melly had to think on his feet, answer anxious calls and maintain his cool.
By 6am, he says, he had in place a strategy, with key objectives of getting KTN back on air and repairing the printing press to have a paper on the streets the next day.
First, Melly rallied support among journalists, politicians and diplomats in defense of the freedom of the press. He assembled a legal team to assess the issue and free arrested journalists.
The key was to resume operations as fast as possible while assessing the damage.
“We managed the situation within a day. In the evening we were up and running and KTN had resumed operations. We acquired new computers and assembled new software. We managed to repair the damage to our press as we couldn’t get another media house to print for us. The Standard was on the streets the following day.”
Last but not least, what it took is courage. “When you are right, nothing can fail you,” says Melly.
“When I was growing up, my grandparents instilled in me a strong culture of determination and responsibility early in life. Being the first born, I started making contributions to family matters early, managing resources and leading others. More importantly, my grandparents always told me that in life you must go to the destination you have identified no matter the bottlenecks, and you must learn to overcome them the same way a river manages to overcome hills and barriers. However, you must not be reckless. Always be tactful.”
Melly says the team is now better prepared. The company has set up additional electronic surveillance devices allowing the station to be able to beam any future raid live on TV.
Looking back, he admits some failures.
“It took time for us to resume operations. At that moment we did not have an elaborate contingency plan. We took virtually the whole day. We have learnt the lessons.”
So why is he still restless?
“The mystery of it all is that I cannot, as the person leading this business, tell you why the raid was conducted. Because there was no shred of evidence that was provided either directly or indirectly to suggest that there was an illegality being committed or contemplated on our part as a media house or by any of our journalists, and I can only second guess that the overall objective was to dismantle a fierce independent media house in an attempt to cow the entire media in the country.”
If there is a next time, at least he will be prepar
<h3>What did he learn?</h3>
“I would want to characterize it as a defining moment not only in media operations and survival, but also as a major test on me in my professional career… Perseverance keeps you going, even in adversity.”
<h3>What did the government say?</h3>
The Kenya government confirmed it ordered police to raid the offices of The Standard newspaper and its sister TV station. The newspaper had been critical of President Mwai Kibaki’s handling of corruption scandals. The government had repeatedly accused The Standard of fabricating stories. Internal security minister John Michuki said the raids on the Standard Group in Nairobi were designed to protect state security. “If you rattle a snake, you must be prepared to be bitten by it,” 
he said.
A police spokesman said in a statement hours after the raid that authorities conducted the sweep to collect evidence about a plot that threatened national security. Jasper Ombati, the police chief at the time, said the police had evidence that Standard journalists were being paid to incite ethnic hatred and write fabricated articles about the government. He said security officers acted on intelligence information about “an intended act” that would threaten national security. He confirmed that police officers routinely wore masks to hide their identities in sensitive cases such as The Standard raid. Little has been heard from the government since then.

The Day The Sword Proved Mightier Than The Pen

As a multitude of the wealthy and powerful of the mining world rubbed shoulders in Cape Town, the picture emerged of what this year holds for the industry in Africa.
<div id="attachment_434" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-434" class="size-large wp-image-434" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/6830715115_459e9c16cd_o-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="316" />Jonathan Moore, MD of Mining Indaba; Michael Katz, the chairman of ENS (Edward Nathan Sonnenbergs); Martin Kingston, executive deputy chairman of NM Rothschild’s local bank franchise and Trevor Manuel, Minister in the Presidency for the National Planning Commission at the Mining Indaba on Monday, February 6, 2012</div>
Mining represents 50% of total merchant exports in Africa south of the Sahara, says the World Bank.
From the scores of presentations, briefings and conversations it is clear that investors are still jumpy about the world economy and Eurozone contagion; they are nervous about resource nationalism—that is, people wanting a greater share of their country’s mineral wealth—and are wary of new mining regulations. The ruling African National Congress in South Africa proposes new taxes on mineral rights in South Africa, plus a windfall tax for returns over 22%.
Although South Africa’s former Finance Minister and now National Planning Minister, Trevor Manuel, conceded during the Indaba that “in the main the government has failed”, saying “we haven’t managed this process well”, he thinks the new tax proposals that were now being considered were a “sensible taxation” whose proceeds will be invested into broader development as the commodities boom was not poised to last forever.
As for beneficiation, which a lot of people thought would help create and sustain jobs, the minister thought it was a double-edged sword. Often beneficiation needed energy and capital that locals did not have.
“Nationalization is not a smart strategy,” Manual concluded.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-large wp-image-433" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/6830713659_56e40368fb_o-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="316" />
Zambia Chamber of Mines head, Frederick Bantubonse, thought there were lessons other African countries could learn from his country, which nationalized mining for 30 years.
Before nationalization in 1973, Zambia produced over 700,000 tons of copper, says Bantubonse. When it rolled back the nationalization program about 10 years ago, the country was producing a mere 257,000 tons. It has now gone back to the pre-nationalization production levels.
But now indigenous business people are finding it difficult to enter the industry because of the big capital investment needed.
It was small comfort that the investors’ nightmares of nationalization appeared to be put to bed by public utterances by the powerful at the conference.
“This whole nationalization story is going to be difficult to wash off. Investors won’t put another dollar into South Africa, they would sooner invest in gold in Eritrea,” says one disgruntled delegate.
Robert Besseling, senior Africa forecaster for Exclusive Analysis, said: “Gold in SA is over. It is too deep and expensive to get out of the ground and there are higher taxes on the way. Power is also a problem and the national power generator, Eskom, is warning that from April there could be new power cuts.”
“The growth of South African mining is going to be in platinum, coal and manganese, but when you bring up the idea of nationalization… the mid-level investors from Australia and Canada I have spoken to here have extreme worries.”
Rajat Kohli, the global head of mining and metals for Standard Bank, believes the Chinese will be among the main actors in resources in Africa and these worries may pass them by.
“I think they have a long-term view; the Chinese plan 10 to 20 years ahead so they do not share the same sort of short-term fears as western investors,” says Kohli.
Africa will continue to be vulnerable to market volatility, but the continent is poised to ride the storm, says World Bank operations officer, Miria Pigato. Favorable commodity prices were only one reason she felt that way.
“This confidence also comes from governments’ more sensible fiscal policies, more accountability, new ways of doing business, a new breed of younger and energetic leaders,” says Pigato.
Another cause for optimism at this mining gathering was the numbers.  In the dark days of the 2009 recession, a mere 3,200 delegates turned up in Cape Town. In 2010, the numbers improved slightly to 4,400 and this year, there were 7,000 delegates.
The organizers are encouraged enough to take the risk of expanding the Mining Indaba to Asia to take advantage of the growing interest in mining in the region.
Jonathan Moore, the managing director of the Mining Indaba, said around 500 delegates were expected to arrive at the first Asian gathering at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore on October 29.
Asked whether the name Indaba—which is an African word for gathering—will be understood in Asia, Moore says: “People there may not know what the word means, but they will know what the

Tag: March 2012

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

Cry, The Beloved Country