When meeting Benni McCarthy for the first time, it is hard not to size him up. Firstly, he is larger than life and says what is on his mind. Secondly, his size has been open to cruel national debate.
Benni McCarthy’s weight has been the staple of comedians, talk shows and Monday morning office gossip along the lines of Benni in a cafeteria rather than the 18-yard area.
“I am now finding it easy to stay in shape,” he says. “The weight issue really came up when I was living and playing in Europe and experimenting with all kinds of food that was new to me. Most of it clearly didn’t agree with my metabolic system, which resulted in me packing on the pounds, but now I know what works and that is how I’m keeping the excess weight off,” he continues.
By now it has become clear that McCarthy lives his life as an open book. I had expected the weight question to go down like a triple cheeseburger—which it didn’t, and next he was taking us on a tour of his Parkwood mansion and making jokes about his current team’s coach and ruminating about his future.
“I think that I am fitting in well at Orlando Pirates. For me, coming back home was not necessarily because I had no other options—it was mostly for the purpose of giving back to the community that made me the international star that I became,” he says of his 14-year spell in international soccer.
“I am finding the level of discipline with the players to be of a lower quality here than at the clubs in Europe, though, and most times you find that a lot of players aren’t as dedicated or as excited to be on the field representing the country’s biggest teams. But the pace of the game and all the other technical elements are up there with the best worldwide,” he says.
McCarthy is the only South African football player to ever win the UEFA Champion’s League. His former team, FC Porto, won in 2004, thanks to his 20 goals in 23 matches, plus a golden hat-trick in the final. McCarthy had a strange career at Porto. He scored in 11 matches for FC Porto in 2002 and left them only because the club could no longer afford him. They bought him back for €8 million ($10.5 million) a year later and McCarthy went on to win the UEFA Golden Boot.
Besides his uncanny ability to find the back of the net, McCarthy’s list of achievements would make even the most jaded critic realize that he is the real deal. He was the first soccer player in the world to feature on the cover of TIME magazine; he still holds the record of international goals by a South African and is Bafana Bafana’s all-time top scorer with 31 goals for his country.
McCarthy’s time spent in Europe wasn’t all roses. As he reminisces, he tells a chilling tale of rabid racism among Spanish supporters.
“For quite a while, my skin color became the bane of my existence. There were times when some fans would throw banana peels onto the stadium as I went in, and I still remember very vividly how they used to also make monkey sounds when I walked onto the pitch,” says McCarthy.
After enduring the hatred for months, McCarthy came up with a technique to block out all the hatred.
“Whenever I would encounter racism off the field, I would always take out a wad of cash and either burn it or tear it up right in front of the perpetrators. That was my way of rubbing it into their faces: you hate me, yet you still come to my games, effectively making me richer,” McCarthy quips.
McCarthy does have money to burn. His home drips with it.
“Growing up in Hanover Park in the Cape Flats of Cape Town, I never knew that it was possible that I could achieve so much, and make the kind of money that I made just by kicking a ball around. I know what it is to be poor, and the fact that I do not want to return to that has made me very wise in the way I handle my finances,” explains McCarthy.
“There are too many stories about ex-footballers going back home and becoming dead broke. I understand the reason behind why that happens: you go overseas as a teenager, get access to more money than you ever thought possible in a very short time and it gets to your head. It also becomes very hard to resist the lure of the football star’s lifestyle, which famously entails hard partying, bling and lots of beautiful women with expensive tastes. Add to that the bad friends that surround you and the fact that there isn’t much financial education that was given to you before you found yourself in that position,” he says.
McCarthy maintains that his family, which consists of his mother, three daughters, a steady girlfriend from Scotland and a baby on the way, have kept him focused on making financial decisions that will ensure that everyone gets to keep the lifestyle that he has worked for.
“I have six properties in Europe, a couple of houses in Cape Town and Johannesburg, and I am in the process of starting a business as a property developer—focusing on building luxury apartments for the growing middle class,” he says.
The Maserati and Bentley parked in the front drive shows McCarthy isn’t always parsimonious.
“You know how it is with us guys and how we love our toys… I do admit that I have a serious weakness for sports cars, and I am a keen collector of top-of-the-range watches… so basically, I collect houses, sports cars and Rolexes,” he gushes.
If the rumor that he earns around R500,000 ($64,000) a month at Orlando Pirates is true, then McCarthy doesn’t have much to worry about.
“I hope to play for one or two more seasons, then retire from football for good. I have been very fortunate in that my career hasn’t been marred by injury or anything that I can’t handle, so I look forward to one day being on the level of my all-time icon, Jomo Sono,” he says.
Benni McCarthy may have come a long way from his roots in the Cape Flats, but he has not forgotten his roots or the ball artistry of one of his illustrious predecessors. Legend has it that Jomo Sono left his wedding reception to take the field for Pirates, who were losing, to score goals for victory. Surely, McCarthy would have done the same.

I Rubbed Money In The Face Of Racist Hate

As I’m sure you can imagine, right now I am a very proud man. To see the Zambian players lift the Africa Cup of Nations trophy in Gabon was a truly incredible moment for me, as I’m sure it was for every Zambian.
There are no short cuts when it comes to winning a major tournament like this. If you’re an underdog, sooner or later you will come up against the big teams and if you want to succeed, you have to be able to beat anyone. And that is exactly what we did.
This success has been the result of many years of planning, going back to Zambia’s failure to qualify for the 2006 World Cup. It was then that we went back to the drawing board and set out four points for the next five years:
<ul>
<li>To take Zambian football into a new dawn, both on and off the field; nationally, continentally and globally.</li>
<li>To galvanise the nation by re-igniting the passion of each and every Zambian for their national teams and clubs.</li>
<li>To strive to attain the highest standard of football through sustained development, key partnerships and international exposure.</li>
<li>For Zambian football to become a continental powerhouse and reclaim its rightful place in African football once again.</li>
</ul>
<div id="attachment_697" style="width: 520px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-697" class="size-full wp-image-697" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/RTR2XK1S.jpg" alt="" width="510" height="322" />Zambia&#8217;s soccer team players pay homage to victims of the Zambian Air Force Buffalo DHC-5D plane crash, along the Atlantic Ocean in Gabon&#8217;s capital Libreville, February 9, 2012. The specially arranged Air Force Buffalo carrying Zambia&#8217;s national football team ditched into the Atlantic Ocean about 500 metres offshore from Libreville on April 27, 1993, killing all 25 passengers and five crew members. Zambia will play Ivory Coast in the final match of the African Cup of Nations football tournament at the Stade De L&#8217;Amitie Stadium on February 12. REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya (GABON &#8211; Tags: SPORT SOCCER DISASTER)</div>
This dream was well documented and one that we followed for six years. We put various structures in place, we stuck to our beliefs and I am so happy to look back now and see all that hard work has paid off. Our vision has been achieved; now we have to work even harder to maintain and to improve.
Our biggest asset is our team spirit. The Cup of Nations winning squad isn’t full of superstars playing for top European clubs; it is a predominantly African-based group of players. Five of the squad are based at home in Zambia; eight in South Africa; and five with the DR Congo giants, TP Mazembe, while midfielder Jonas Sakuwaha is with Al-Merreikh in Sudan. Captain Chris Katongo and James Chamanga play in China and the young midfielder, Chisamba Lungu, is in the Russian second flight with Ural Sverdlovsk. Only the centre-forward, Emmanuel Mayuka, plays for a top-flight European club, Swiss side Young Boys.
But they are a very tight-knit team. The players all know one another’s strengths and weaknesses, and that comes from having been developed as a unit over the past few years. We have generated a new crop of players, who are young and determined. As I said, we may not have big names, but we have a team unit, and teamwork is vital for success. You can list all the superstar players you like but if they can’t play together as a team, they won’t win anything. Our togetherness has been our defining strength at the Cup of Nations.
We are also blessed with a fantastic coach in Hervé Renard. He is very popular and respected among the players, but he is also not afraid to impose discipline. And perhaps most importantly, the players believed in and embraced his philosophy and tactics.
Hervé ensured the players were prepared for everything and anything. We rode our luck at times, but slowly the boys started to believe in themselves. We believed in the system we played, we believed in the tactical approach, we believed in the substitutions that were made at key points in games.
Before the competition, we told the players that we had one opportunity and that all we could do was give it our best shot. And as the competition progressed, the more they believed in themselves, the better they played.
Of course, it is particularly poignant that we were crowned champions just a few kilometres away from the exact location where my team-mates perished after their plane went down some 19 years ago. I thought it was important, before the tournament started, to tell the players that if we got to Libreville, it would be emotional because not a day goes past without us thinking about what happened in 1993. When we went to the Sabelir Beach in Libreville to lay wreaths in remembrance of the team that perished there, something truly magical happened. The loud single clap of thunder when we arrived, the curiously warm Atlantic Ocean water and the way in which the waves came up and took the wreaths straight back into the sea were all small, unexplained and enchanting signs that something special was happening.
Since that fateful day in 1993, there have been many highs and lows. But to finally be crowned champions of Africa is the ultimate tribute to those we lost that day. If they were still with us, they would be very proud of this team. Their dreams are our dreams, and the dream to become African champions has come true. For me personally, after reaching the AFCON final in 1994 as captain, with a brand new squad, and narrowly losing to Nigeria, to finally raise the trophy in Libreville at this year’s final is nothing short of the stuff dreams are made of.
We went to the Cup of Nations with humility and soulful inspiration; our boys were incredibly motivated and had great aspirations. Before the competition started, no one would have given us a chance. Now Chipolopolo have made history. Never underestimate the heart of a champion.

Enchanting Signs That  Something Special Is Happening

On March 18, football fans in green and white T-shirts flocked to Kenya’s Nyayo National Stadium to watch the country’s two major clubs playing. But 25 minutes from the end of the game, the referee stopped the match between Gor Mahia and AFC Leopards after fans threw plastic bottles onto the field in protest against one of his decisions.
While condemning the incident, a radio presenter had this to say: “We did not wish them to be unruly, but at least we have fans inside the stadium. That’s a good sign.” The match was sold out.
For the last decade, the country’s sport has been in chaos. Rival federations each ran their own leagues; football chiefs were corrupt, inefficient and ranked high on the list of people Kenyans hated most. A crowd of 100 at a match was considered an achievement. At one point, FIFA banned Kenya from international football after the minister of sports disbanded the Kenya Football Federation (KFF). The body was then charged with running the sport. In 2007, Kenya’s football hit rock bottom as the country’s FIFA ranking fell to 115.
Players in most clubs went for months without pay, resorting to manual work to pay their bills. Pessimism filtered into the national team, which did not qualify for the African Cup of Nations. This was hard to bear for a country that loves football so much that a fan committed suicide after Arsenal’s 2009 Champions League defeat.
But the last few years have seen a football revival. The rivalry between KFF and Football Kenya Limited (FKL) ended when FIFA gave FKL the mandate to run the sport. Recently elections ushered in a team under the banner of Football Kenya Federation (FKF). Then 16 clubs broke away from the squabbling factions to form the Kenya Premier League Limited, which runs the local league. It is owned by the clubs, the federation and representatives of other football stakeholders.
It’s the best decision the clubs could have made. Companies are pouring money into the sport, fans are flocking to the stadiums and footballers are competing for attention with hip-hop artists in the gossip columns.
The sport is also attracting new investors. SuperSport, the South Africa headquartered pay channel has paid $12 million to air KPL matches in a deal expected to run until 2015. SuperSport’s head of Africa, Gary Rathbone, says they spend close to $43,000 a match to air more than 100 games on the channel each season.
“Kenyans love football, so when management got its act together, it was natural for us to partner with them,” says Rathbone. The station has trained more than 20 Kenyans to work in the production department.
Danish investors have also moved in for a piece of the pie. In March last year, they invested $93,000 in futaa.com, a football website that had recorded 1.6 million hits by the end of March this year.
“Our investment in football was because of the opportunity that presented itself. There was no credible site to provide information on players and other important data,” says chief editor at futaa.com, Patrick Korir.
Local business is getting involved too. East African Breweries has forked out $1.3 million to sponsor the national team. This is in addition to the amount it spends on Tusker, its KPL club and top of the league last year. It follows Mumias Sugar, Tuzo and East African Portland Cement, which have spent a total of over a million dollars to sponsor teams at KPL.
The rise of football has also encouraged entrepreneurs. Congolese millionaire Elly Kalekwa has invested millions in Sofapaka, a team that won the league in its debut in 2009. Nkaari Martin, a businessman in his early 20s, won funding to expand Ticket Masters, a firm that had the monopoly to sell match tickets last season.
“In 2007, I attended a league game that had 37 spectators. More than 100,000 tickets were sold last year,” says Korir.
And, players are now being paid for their efforts. Internationals like MacDonald Mariga and Dennis Oliech have inspired local footballers with their flashy rides and bevvies of beauties. Others like Allan Wanga have taken the game a notch higher. Wanga launched a book in March this year at an event attended by Prime Minister Raila Odinga.
Despite these gains, hurdles remain. Rathbone says stadiums need to be improved to meet international standards. Only two are qualified to host international matches and one of them is under repair.
“Our football is still mainly political, so our fortunes will remain scant until the day we hit equilibrium between business and politics. Then, business sense will take over,” says Martin.
“And we need to develop our structures, like a young under-19 team,” says Korir. Fans hope the national team, which has not won a major trophy in seven years, can replicate the success at club level.
Though there is still disagreement, this much those on opposing sides recognize: Kenya’s football is no longer scoring an own goal. That is a good start.

Kenya’s Football Revolution

On May 2, it will be exactly half a century since a bunch of highly talented African footballers led Portuguese giants Benfica in the thrashing of Real Madrid 5-3 to retain the European Cup.
It was a dynamic team with an African heart. The captain was from Angola, the goalkeeper, midfield general and striker were all from Mozambique. Arguably, the most talented of all, nicknamed The Sacred Monster, was a midfield genius who had fought his way up from the streets of Maputo. Another of the players rejoiced in the name, The Black Panther. A dream for an advertising copywriter or a public relations executive, surely?
In June, it will be two years since the FIFA World Cup kicked off in South Africa. Since then, there has been a lot of talk about how Africa could sell itself, its football and folklore. After all, the football fans of the continent appear to buy enthusiastically into the plastic razzmatazz around European football, with its endless programs and promos on satellite TV. At football grounds across Europe, there are statues and pictures of the famed players of the past, many of whom may not have even made it into the Benfica team that mauled Real Madrid in 1962.
<div id="attachment_690" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-690" class="size-large wp-image-690" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/DSC00350-1024x768.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="356" />Captain José Águas and Mário Coluna celebrate beating Barcelona in 1962</div>
The question is: why doesn’t Africa celebrate its heroes and rich history with such vigor?
Now, any advertising wizard worth their salt, with a yen to market African football, could do a lot worse than start with the story of the four African musketeers of Benfica in 1962. What a quartet they were: José Águas, the captain, was born and bred in Luanda; goalkeeper Alberto da Costa Pereira was born in the tiny Mozambique port of Nacala and learned his football at Ferroviario in Maputo; Eusébio—The Black Panther—dribbled his way through the dust of the streets of Maputo to an international career with Portugal, scoring 733 goals in 745 competitive games.
Last, but certainly not least, the tough and intelligent midfield schemer, Mário Coluna. Like Eusébio, Coluna learned to fake, dribble, trap and pass on a patch of sand in the Maputo township of Mafalala—a piece of ground that survives until this day and is still full of barefoot youngsters kicking a ball. I can almost hear an advertising executive thinking about this one.
A Portuguese sports journalist dubbed Coluna ‘O Monstro Sagrado’—The Sacred Monster—because he said the player was both terrifying and beautiful. Surely, only a Latin romantic, a journalist to boot, could have come up with a name as evocative.
Coluna, who had the sleek and robust physique of a light-heavyweight boxer, scored one and laid on another on the night Benfica trounced Real Madrid in Amsterdam. He outwitted Real, who had legends Puskás and Di Stéfano in their side. The year before, Coluna had scored with a blinding long-range volley as Benfica beat Barcelona 3-2, in Bern, to win the cup for the first time. Coluna celebrated, stripped to his waist, with trophy in hand, alongside his captain and fellow African, Águas. It is a picture that hangs in pride of place on the wall of his Maputo home to this day.
In the prime of his career, Coluna went on to lead the famous Magricios, considered to be one of Portugal’s finest teams, to the 1966 World Cup in England. In that famous team were two more men from Mozambique, Vicente and Hilário. In those days, colonial Portugal saw Mozambique and Angola as its overseas provinces and players from these countries were considered Portuguese. All were African right down to their boots.
Eusébio was top scorer in the tournament, with nine goals. Arguably, Portugal should have won the World Cup for the first time in their history in 1966. The team suffered through a touch of home town favoritism from the organizers. The semi-final against England was supposed to have been played in Liverpool, but was switched by the English organizers to Wembley in London at the last minute—despite the fact that it had been agreed it was unfair to allow the home country to play all of its games at the national stadium. It meant Portugal had to travel down by train overnight.
“We didn’t get any sleep on the train. We were so tired when we got to London, we could hardly play,” Coluna once told me in the suburbs of Maputo.
Despite this, England won by a 2-1 whisker, with Eusébio scoring a penalty in reply.  Just imagine the indignation and weeks of headlines if a similar trick had been pulled in 2010.
Which brings me back to my point; when I read the other week that Eusébio had been ill in hospital in Lisbon, it occurred to me how little we hear of these former legends, while the television in the corner prattles on about other players not fit to lace their boots.
All of the Africans mentioned above made it when football was a game for men-of-men—hard men-of-men, for that matter. Coluna, who played 677 times for Benfica, showed me a huge, ugly scar below his right knee, a souvenir of a night in Rome in 1968 when an Italian defender crushed his ligaments. The referee didn’t even caution the defender, such was the violence of the game in those days.
“The doctor said I would never play again, but I knew better,” Coluna told me.
On top of that, most of these African soccer heroes lived lives steeped in the game. Coluna used to pinch his dad’s socks to make a ball to kick around the Maputo streets. His father, shopkeeper José Mário Esteves Coluna, was a goalkeeper and founder of Coluna’s team, Desportivo de Maputo. He died, from a heart attack, while watching his beloved club in 1959.
Coluna came back to Mozambique in 1975 and coached a small town club, Textafrica in Chimoio, for the country’s first ever championship in the newly independent nation. He served with distinction as a parliamentarian and football administrator. Benfica still sends him a pension in euros.
My point is that African footballers like these should be celebrated by the continent as a way to market the game and encourage the youth of the continent to excel in it. Their names and deeds should be used in advertisements, splashed over posters and plastered on the sides of buses.  Statues should be built and their names known the length and breadth of the continent.
When you have a compelling human interest story attached to a name like The Sacred Monster or Black Panther, who needs an advertising copywriter to write a catchy slogan to market the game?

Selling The Sacred Monster And Black Panther Should Be Easy

There’s something solid about Lucas Radebe. Something calm and sturdy—a kind of steadfastness that gives you the idea you are safe with him. He is late for this interview because he was picking up his children.
“Being a single father has taught me a lot. Mostly, it has taught me how to be at two places at once, as well to be two people in one,” he says.
There are two sides to the Lucas Radebe story—glory and pain. He hit professional heights by playing at Leeds United and scoring at a World Cup. The painful side of his life was the tragic death of his young wife, who succumbed to bowel cancer in 2008, when their youngest was just two years old.
“My wife’s death has been the one event in my life that humbled me beyond words. It was the sort of thing that I never thought would happen to me at that point in my life, but I believe that everything happens for a reason,” he says of the tragedy that led his family home.
“Even after I had retired from active football, it never seemed likely that we would return to South Africa to live here permanently again.  Leeds United—which I had captained for more than 12 years—had offered me a job and named a stand in their home stadium after me—I was deeply entrenched in the community and had many projects and initiatives that I had set up there,” he explains.
Radebe looks sad for a moment. Then the trademark toothpaste smile returns gently as he talks of the old days and the game he loves.
“In 1987, my parents decided to take me out of Soweto because of all the racial violence that was happening there due to political unrest. I found myself in Bophuthatswana—in a rural area called Lehurutse. Having been a boy from a fast-paced township, I found that the only thing that was there to keep me occupied was soccer.
“Sooner than anyone knew it, I was starting to excel at the game—to the point where I was now playing for the Bopson League and even for the Bophuthatswana national team,” he says.
Radebe returned home when Bophuthatswana played the South African national team. He was a goalkeeper in those early days, before a kick in the face persuaded him to give up the gloves to become a central defender.
“Even though my parents were not really keen on it, it was pretty obvious that I was going professional when after that match, Kaizer Chiefs offered me a contract which I signed during the first week of trials,” recalls Radebe.
After two years at Kaizer Chiefs, Radebe shifted his focus towards Europe when Leeds United called him for a trial.
“At that point, I was convinced that it wasn’t going to happen for me. I was 25 years old, which is considered ‘late’ in the football world, and most of my teammates—Phil Masinga, Sean Bartlett and many others—had already gone and had been properly settled,” he relates.
Soon after arriving in Leeds, Radebe regretted it.
“The weather was bad, the homesickness was awful and worst of all, I was the only other black person in the town of Leeds, and the community were not sparing in the way they treated me like an alien,” says Radebe.
“The racism came as a serious shock to me. It was almost like jumping from the frying pan into the fire—except in my home country, things were beginning to settle down with the release of Nelson Mandela from prison.”
Radebe recalls that the racial hatred became so bad that one time when he was sent off for a foul, the crowds struck up a sickening racial chant.
“I remember I was being escorted off the field. When I heard what they were saying, I stopped and asked the officials on either side of me if they were hearing what I was hearing. They carried on straight-faced. I guess they just didn’t know what to say,” Radebe says.
The officials may have been tongue-tied, but Radebe wasn’t going to be.
“I decided to start two programs—one was called ‘Kick Racism out of Football’, and the other was called ‘Learning with Lucas’. The latter was designed to teach kids in the community about the different races and the different cultures that exist in the world, while the former was an initiative that was designed to be implemented in actual soccer teams where racial intolerance was rife,” he explains.
As Radebe’s community work helped him find his space, Leeds United management also discovered that Radebe could be a rock for the team as well. In one famous Premier League game against Manchester United at Old Trafford in 1996, Radebe had to take up the goalkeeping gloves once again. The Leeds goalkeeper, Mark Beeney, had been sent off and the team didn’t have a substitute goalkeeper on the bench. Apparently the manager, George Graham, could never see the point.
“As I walked towards the goal I looked across to my South African teammate Phil Masinga and he just put his head in his hands,” recalled Radebe in a radio interview years later.
Radebe distinguished himself in front of 48,000 people, saving blinding shots from Brian McClair and Ryan Giggs, before Eric Cantona put one past him to win the game 1-0.
“My game was really starting to flourish. I had also been in the Bafana Bafana team that won the Africa Cup of Nations, and Manchester United came knocking looking for my signature. After much deliberation, I turned them down because I viewed Leeds United as a club where I could really make a lasting impact. I was now very loyal to them,” he says.
His loyalty was repaid. Leeds United matched Manchester United’s offer, and made Radebe captain. Radebe’s star rose even higher when Nelson Mandela visited Leeds for the official opening of a park named after him. He requested that Radebe introduce him to the crowd and said the footballer was one of his heroes.
“How the nation rated me got a definite boost from that point on. It even became hard to leave the team even when they had been relegated to the second division,” says Radebe.
Then there was the glory of scoring for his country against the mighty Spain in the 2002 World Cup in South Korea. Many South Africans remember where they were when Radebe’s powerful header hit the net. It was an equalizer that could have sent South Africa through to the knock out stages, but Raul scored three minutes later to deny them on goal difference.
When Radebe retired from Leeds in 2005, 37,886 fans turned up at Elland Road for his testimonial. Most of the Leeds fans have taken him into their hearts and called him “Rhoo” or “the Chief” out of respect for his former club in South Africa. When a Leeds brewery asked for suggestions for the name of a new beer, the most popular suggestion was “Radebeer”.
It was then that he returned home to recast himself as an entrepreneur and nurture the family that had lost its mother. He didn’t want to end up broke like many of his fellow players.
“I started preparing for my retirement from soccer four years before it actually happened. I set up trusts and my own management company that would look after all my interests. Right now, I have an endorsement deal with toothpaste brand Aquafresh and FNB,” he says.
Even though Radebe is gearing up to become an entrepreneur, he still cannot—and does not—want to rule out football.
“Retiring was the hardest thing I have ever had to do. Soccer is still very close to my heart, and if I am not given the opportunity to coach the national team, I will look into starting a development program where we get to train footballers from a young age, because I believe that is where we are getting it wrong in terms of soccer at our national level,” he concludes.
Maybe one day Radebe will rise through the ranks of South African football to do something about it.

Hail To The Chief

Shortly after his controversial re-election in late 2011, president of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Joseph Kabila, promulgated a new agricultural law, which stipulates that farmland must be majority-owned by a national or a company whose majority shareholding is owned by the state or a Congolese entity.
Nationalization is also a hot topic in the DRC’s mining sector. In February, during the Mining Indaba in Cape Town, South Africa, the Congolese minister for mining, Martin Kabwelulu Labilo, made his disappointment clear: the investor-friendly mining code had not delivered the intended changes. Designed with the support of the World Bank in 2002, the mining code will be 10 years old this year and is likely to be reviewed. In 2011, Gécamines, the main public mining company in the DRC, announced a review of all its joint ventures.
These talks are the direct consequence of growing investor interest in land and mineral resources in Africa. National control is at the center of debates in countries like Gabon, South Africa, Zambia and Chad. And Africa is not alone—in Brazil, foreign-controlled companies cannot own more than 250,000 hectares and raw materials diplomacy is becoming official policy in Europe. In the DRC, the new agricultural law and the likely mining code review are serious sources of concern for business.
In the 1970s, to end Belgian domination of the economy, former president, Mobutu Sese Seko, made full Congolese ownership a mandatory requirement for every business in the country. The DRC’s nationalization policy lasted only three years, from 1973 to 1976. Without capital and expertise, this policy led to an economic disaster. Foreign owners and businesspeople disengaged from the country, and the new Congolese owners were unable to run the businesses. In 1976, foreign investors were allowed to own 60% of their business. Since then, joint ventures are the norm and land belongs to the state.
State intervention in the mining sector has left bad memories in business circles. The mining contracts review (2007-2009) was intended to correct the imbalances of former president Laurent Desiré Kabila’s mining deals, to increase state shareholding and to revive the mining pillar of the nation, Gécamines. Unfortunately, the opaque review process put an end to these hopes. Under the supervision of the late Katumba Mwanke, special advisor in the presidency, the contracts review turned into a money-making scheme for state rulers. The review made mining investors bitter and the DRC is now considered a risky place to invest.
Given this historical background and the presence of Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe at Kabila’s inauguration, the return of the nationalization policy just after the president’s re-election is making investors nervous. The minister for agriculture failed to reassure foreign donors during a meeting in Kinshasa, despite arguing that only new investments in agriculture will be affected by this law. Some foreign investors are preparing for a legal battle, while others are ringing the alarm bell, even though no-one knows how seriously the law will affect agriculture. But beyond the logical preservation of their interests, this quick reaction is very important for African governments.
In itself, the claim for national ownership is not illegitimate. This is official policy in Saudi Arabia, Dubai and Qatar. In times of aggressive investment policy, the anti-colonial rhetoric of nationalization may be appealing to African governments, but the practices are questionable. Real wealth redistribution is the objective of nationalization, but it is often used as a pretext for the ruling elite to capture resources, turning foreign plundering into domestic plundering.

Resource Capture  In The DRC

With six months to go before South Africa’s governing party, the African National Congress (ANC), goes to its elective conference, incumbent president Jacob Zuma looks set to get another term. And with that, a renewed focus on continental politics, for which his critics have chided him.
Zuma’s opponent, Julius Malema, the party’s rebellious youth league president, is not contesting the ANC presidency but is the spokesperson of a disparate group united in wanting the 70-year-old former political prisoner and intelligence operative removed from power. Their campaign though, has been dealt a huge blow.
Malema is facing several disciplinary charges and the party’s internal disciplinary committee has found him guilty on some, meaning that whatever the outcome, the young man looks set for the political rubbish dump. Unless a worthy challenger emerges between now and the December conference and goes on to defeat Zuma, he is set to remain at the helm of the 100-year-old political party and the head of Africa’s most powerful economy.
Among Malema’s most stinging criticisms of Zuma’s reign was that he had failed spectacularly where his predecessor Thabo Mbeki had done extremely well—in pursuing the African agenda. It was a criticism, and a comparison, that hurt Zuma and one that he has since looked eager to correct.
So, on March 20, when Zuma walked into the Sandton studios of pan-African television channel CNBC Africa for a live hour-long interview, with some of the continent’s CEOs and board chairpersons in the audience, he knew he had a mission to accomplish, or as his aides would have probably preferred to put it, he had a myth or two to debunk.
Sitting opposite CNBC Africa’s chief editor Godfrey Mutizwa, and occasionally fielding questions during crossings to CEOs in countries like Nigeria and Kenya, Zuma showed composure for someone who has countenanced perhaps harsher criticism than any post-apartheid president.
While some of the condemnation prior to his election had a lot to do with his indiscretions, which in turn led to sexual assault charges against him, others were in subtle ways questioning whether a man with only a primary-school education, would be able to fill the shoes of his Sussex-educated predecessor and intellectual, Mbeki. Was he best suited to preside over an ambitious country that not only likes to punch above its weight, and which likes to be loved, but is also the most sophisticated African economy?
The more Zuma sold his optimistic disposition of the continent to the CNBC viewers and the studio audience, the more friends he seemed to be making among the attendant captains of industry, many of whom wasted no time in praising him for his “insightful comments” and for “answering questions”.
One of the continent’s biggest “strides”, he said, was the formation of the African Union. “For the first time, we could define ourselves as one, as Africans and not as former British, Belgian, French colonies.”
The AU has been credited with bringing about continental political stability through promoting the culture of democratic elections as well as the principle of non-recognition of people who grab political power through coups d’état.
Zuma shared with his audience how the AU had advanced in getting member states to commit to investor friendliness, infrastructure development, better and responsible management of natural resources, environmental sustainability, education, and had now started talks about the integration of the continent’s five regional economic blocks. Asked to give timelines for the “practical implication” of the integration process, he replied: “It took two world wars before Europe could come together. Africa should be given a chance.”
A welcome sign of confidence in Africa’s future, Zuma added, was the inclusion of South Africa in BRICS, the increasingly influential group of emerging economies: Brazil, Russia, India and China. “Africa is now part of countries that are going to determine (the world’s economic) direction,” he said.
“I don’t see a crisis. I see prosperity in Africa,” he told the audience, and with a great deal of satisfaction, not to mention his trademark coy chuckle that usually signals cynicism. “Other people speak positively about Africa. Sometimes it’s Africans themselves who are negative; who feel Africa is in trouble.”

David Attacks Goliath

Presidential Poise Under Pressure

One of the greatest contemporary ceramicists to emerge from London’s Royal College of Art since Elizabeth Fritsch is Kenyan-born Magdalene Namakhiya Anyango Odundo. The strange thing is, though she is well-known abroad, she is only now being acknowledged in the country of her birth.
Odundo lives, breathes and talks art. Currently, she is a professor of ceramics at the University of Creative Arts in Farnham, England.
Odundo’s handmade ceramic pieces can be found in museums and public and private collections in Europe, North America and Africa. Phillips de Pury recently auctioned one of her earlier works for £30,000—a tidy sum for a contemporary ceramic piece.
<div id="attachment_675" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-675" class="size-large wp-image-675" src="/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/ODUNDO-20032004-1024x696.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="322" />Ceramic vessels made between 2003 and 2004. These are exhibited at Crafts Study Centre, University for the Creative Arts, Farnham, Surrey UK</div>
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“Pottery is a human art that has significance as material culture in all societies. It plays an important role in all aspects of the study of human sciences. Ceramics has been valued for its artistic as well as its utilitarian use. There is hardly any society that does not use or handle pottery in some form. It is just fantastic!” says Odundo as she explains the significance of her work.
Odundo was born in Nairobi and grew up in Mombasa. After high school, she worked as an apprentice with the SH Benson advertising agency (later acquired by Ogilvy &amp; Mather). In the early 1970s Odundo left for England, where she continued her studies in commercial art. But she soon grew disenchanted working on commercial projects.
“I began looking for other creative avenues and applying to art colleges. In 1973, I accepted a place at West Surrey College of Art and Design in Farnham, for me one of the best liberal arts colleges in the UK. I spent the next three years in the three-dimensional design department focusing on ceramics, printmaking and photography.” Odundo graduated in 1976 with a first-class honors degree.
During her undergraduate studies, Odundo became interested in the anthropological relationship between ceramics and material culture. She wanted to compare African with other world cultures and returned to Kenya to research the relationship between ceramics and rites of passage among the Abaluhya people living around Lake Nyanza (Lake Victoria).
But Odundo’s approach to her ceramics goes beyond field studies. She believes experience is gained through theory and practice. “That is why libraries and museums have played such an important part in my research.”
As a student at Farnham, Odundo took every opportunity to visit collections like the British Museum. Through one of her influential lecturers, John Donne, she discovered the Petrie Museum of Egyptology, University College London, which remains one of her favorites.
“I have a passion for knowledge. If you have a passion for something, you are inclined to study it in depth. Knowledge is a vehicle that enables me to understand myself, my profession and allows me to continue to be creative.”
Ceramics is philosophical and spiritual and a part of everyday life. For her, art is life and life is art.
“Being an artist requires discipline—it’s hard work!” Odundo says. “You need to immerse yourself in the making while continuing to reflect on ideas. I spend much time thinking about what I am going to make.”
Odundo begins with a concept. Then she draws the shapes she imagines. “The thinking and drawing is where you get all the blocks and interruptions. But once the concepts have been formalized and sieved, I can begin handling the clay.” All of Odundo’s pieces have spent a lot of time in her hands. She takes the clay through a ritual of kneading, mixing and kneading again until it becomes elastic. “I don’t use the wheel. I use a method that combines sculpting, coiling, curving and forming.”
Her method evolves from traditional ways of potting practised in non-industrialized societies like Kenya and other African countries, as well as Asia and South America. “Europeans and American anthropologists have referred to these techniques as being primitive, but these technologies have evolved over more than 2,000 years of hand-building. These methods are highly skilful and technical, and knowledge and experience are required for their mastery. I love working with my hands because of the personal contact with the material. At this point, the analytical process becomes secondary; the making becomes less visceral and more tactile.”
Odundo works on several pieces simultaneously. A single piece can take six to eight weeks to complete and that’s not counting the firing process. Generally her exhibitions, which take 18 to 24 months to prepare, are made up of between 10 and 12 ceramic pieces. “The hardest part is reaching perfection—achieving what you had envisioned.”
And then, the demands of teaching make it difficult to be prolific. In the first 15 years of her career, Odundo held an exhibition annually. Now it’s every two years. Being a renowned artist comes with obligations to serve on advisory boards, work on collaborative projects and lecture. These commitments impact on an artist’s time.
In the last two years, Odundo has been working in other media. She recently participated in a printmaking workshop in Belfast. Metamorphosis and Transformation, an installation in glass, is currently on show at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington—it’s the culmination of an artist-in-residency there last year.
Odundo is reluctant to attach prices to her pieces. “I feel the value of a work is intrinsic and perhaps better assessed in terms of its longevity and repute.”
I asked Odundo if there were any pieces which were given special attention or created specifically for commissions. She says that all her work demands equal attention, but acknowledges that at an exhibition there will always be some pieces that are more distinctive than others. These pieces will be immediately snapped up by museums or big collectors. “My favorite pieces include the vessel loaned to the Murumbi Permanent Collection here at the National Archives in Nairobi. To be honest, all the pieces that are in both public and private collections are special to me.  They are all my favorites. They are all my creation. They are my children.”
Most artists will tell you they are possessive of their creations. At the same time, artists create work that matures with time and they are able to let go of the pieces into the possession of others for equal appreciation. “My work is about me, but it is also hopefully made to enhance the material culture of our society. A successful piece of work for me is one that moves an individual in a personal manner.”
Odundo’s vessels are not utilitarian—they are not fired to vitrifying temperatures, so they’re porous to retain the organic quality of the clay.
When Odundo had her first exhibition at the African Heritage House, she remembers her relatives being astonished at the refinement of her work. To her, this was the greatest accolade she could have hoped for. “I realized that my choice of working in clay had been justified and that clay had this wonderful, universal language with no barriers to appreciation or understanding.”
What do Odundo’s pieces represent? “Spirit, movement, ideas—I capture negative and positive spaces, solids, voids. I try to express the human spirit in my work; the qualities of being; and I try to reflect some of the rituals and rites of passage which concern us all. I attempt to move, to dance and to arrest moments of stillness crucial to my existence.”
As a master ceramicist, Odundo is glad to be part of making history through art. I asked her how she sees the future of pottery in Africa. “There is a wonderful tradition of ceramics in Africa that will continue to inspire generations of young ceramicists and potters. Introducing subjects like the science and art of ceramics into our education curriculum is the greatest challenge we face in this generation.”

The Human Spirit In Clay

Sri Lanka is a tropical island steeped in history—boasting multiple ethnicities and beliefs. It is a melting pot of Sinhala, Tamil and Indian people, as well as the ancestors of Dutch, British and Portuguese colonialists. The country’s diverse landscape offers visitors a multitude of activities and experiences; Sir Arthur C. Clarke called Sri Lanka “the island jewel of the Indian Ocean”, and he had seen the universe.
Swift reconstruction efforts, after the 2004 tsunami, have been funded by NGOs and returning tourists who have recognized its potential as a leading tourist destination. It is now possible to rent a fully furnished villa with personnel attending to your every desire. Perhaps a private island, previously owned by a count, takes your fancy? Comparable are the luxurious resorts that spoil residents with palm-tree-fringed private beaches where falling coconuts are the highlight of the day. Visitors are beckoned to book themselves into a spa, participate in a yoga retreat or take a course on meditation.
At dinner—after a day of scuba diving and snorkeling—you can fantasize about tomorrow’s whale watching cruise. Satiate your adrenalin cravings with numerous water sports or challenge the waves the following day. Ascending the country’s highest peaks; rock climbing and abseiling have also proved popular among tourists.
<div id="attachment_667" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-667" class="size-large wp-image-667" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/DSC_6188-1024x680.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="315" />Galle fortress on the Southern Coast of Sri Lanka</div>
With its fortifications perched on a rocky outcrop on the south-western peninsula of Sri Lanka, the city of Galle is one of Sri Lanka’s top tourist hotspots. The Unesco World Heritage Site remains the largest European-built fort in Asia and is best viewed while sipping champagne in a hot air balloon. Its cobbled streets are dotted with Dutch colonial buildings, which have been rejuvenated as museums, boutique hotels and elegant restaurants. The latter provide ideal respite after a sightseeing tour in Marco Polo’s footsteps.
Food is abundant in Sri Lanka. If you need something quick and easy, most bakeries sell vegetable curry-filled rotis and carefully wrapped samoosas. For something more elaborate, handpick a lobster or crayfish from a local fisherman and have a beachside restaurant prepare it for you while you watch a live fire-throwing performance. Indian and colonial influences have infused Sri Lankan food with unique flavors which include an abundance of coconut milk and bouquets of spices.
Being chauffeured northwards, in the comfort of your privately hired car, allows you to observe the majestic landscape. The small hilltop town of Nuwara Eliya is especially charming. It is brewed in nostalgia, with local traditions adopted from the British colonialists. Here, you can join a white-clad gentleman on the golf course or place bets on horse races. The cool atmospheric conditions—it’s located 1,860m above sea level—are ideal for tea cultivation. Take the time to visit the privately-owned plantations. Look through bakery windows and you’ll find English scones being served for breakfast alongside a pot of Ceylon tea. After all, the island was called Ceylon until 1972.
<div id="attachment_666" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-666" class="size-large wp-image-666" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/DSC_5717-1024x680.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="315" />Nuwara Eliya tea plantations</div>
Kandy, which recollects childhood fantasies due to its name, is a cultural haven and home to the Buddha tooth relic temple and the burial grounds of kings gone by. Further along, you will encounter Sigiriya, meaning ‘Lion’s Rock’ in Sinhalese. This hardened magma plug of an extinct volcano rises sharply 370m above the plains. Age-old rock paintings suggest that its caves have been inhabited since prehistoric times. According to local folklore, it was the royal playground of King Kassapa I. Since its re-discovery in 1831, it has been declared a ‘pre-1900 creation’ and the eighth wonder of the world. Palace pools and ruins lie atop its flat peak, which offers magnificent panoramic views.
The ancient city of Anuradhapura was Sri Lanka’s capital city for 1,000 years. The assortment of dagobas (Buddhist shrines); high-rise temples; ponds and ancient palaces are vestiges of its cultural, religious and architectural importance in Sri Lanka’s history. Unesco has classified it as one of the oldest continually inhabited cities: the new city center arises at the foot of the ruins. The Ruwanweliseya dagoba, which is synonymous with Anuradhapura, is revered for its architectural splendor. It is one of the world’s largest brick monuments built before the 20th century.
Although the majority of Sri Lankans are Buddhist; Hindu, Christian and Islamic influences are also visible. The birthplace of Buddhism in Sri Lanka can be traced back to Mihintale. I accompanied barefooted, white saris on a short pilgrimage, up 1,840 stairs to the meditating Buddha statue.
Sri Lanka is overflowing with local cultures, traditions and a fascinating history. The smiling locals are fully inclusive.
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www.srilankatourism.org should set you on the right path. According to icanholidays, you should budget at least $500 a day to live in the lap of luxury.

Sri Lanka: The Pristine Island

Formula One is arguably one of the most technologically demanding sports on the planet. Obscene amounts of money are poured into vehicles that are the pinnacle of design and performance engineering; vehicles piloted by drivers whose talents seem superhuman. Even to the most ardent enthusiast, the complexities of these vehicles is mind-numbing.
A Formula One car is broken down into the following components: the nose, front wing, push/pull rod suspension, sidepods, rear end, exhaust system and rear wing. The grotesque-looking nose channels airflow and serves as a safety mechanism. According to 2012 regulations, the nose must sit 550mm above the base of the car to prevent major trauma to drivers in cases where the side of a vehicle is hit. Configuring airflow over most of the vehicle is the job of the front wing. It creates the aerodynamic down force needed to keep the car in contact with the track—essential when traveling at close to 400km/h. Airflow is a major consideration in the design of Formula One cars, and the suspension is of particular concern as these are areas of great turbulence. The push/pull rods allow for increased suspension geometry and decreased air resistance.
The sidepods of a Formula One car house many of the crucial components such as the GPS locator, oil-cooling radiators, batteries and clutch disengage systems (which marshals can use in emergencies). As they can be obtrusive, many manufacturers use deep undercuts to assist with airflow. The rear end ensures optimal airflow at the back of the car. Tighter paneling and smaller gearboxes are naturally advantageous.
Last year, teams made use of engine mapping that allowed engines to blow “off throttle” which created extra down force in corners. However, this year, the use of “blown diffusers” has been banned. Teams are looking at alternatives, with some directing their exhaust gasses over the rear beam wing (which has proven to be less effective).
Drivers are able to control the amount of drag using the Drag Reduction System (DRS), which in turn equates to greater or less speed, as required. In practice and qualifying, DRS can be used at any time. Mid-competition though, a car must be less than a second behind another vehicle to be activated (the system shuts down when the driver brakes).
Formula One cars are capable of changing gears in only 0.05 seconds. During a race season, each team is allowed up to 30 pairs of gear ratios, but these must be openly declared to the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile). Tolerances within the Formula One engine are in the realm of mere microns (i.e. thousandths of a millimeter) and most engines are normally aspirated 2.4-liter V8s.
Formula One cars use the Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems technology we are now seeing in production vehicles. It harnesses heat energy produced by normal braking, which is stored and used to boost acceleration. Lap times can be decreased by anything from 0.1 to 0.4 seconds.
Typically, a Formula One car weighs just 550kg and is 85% carbon fiber. It can speed up from zero to 160km/h and back down to zero in only four seconds. Drivers can be subjected to as much as 5Gs (G-force); that means their bodies weigh five times more than normal. Some drivers have even said that under extreme braking, their tear ducts squirt water onto their visors!
Formula One is a spectacularly expensive sport to engage in, either as a host country or as a constructor team (constructor countries comprise the United States, Italy, India, Spain, Great Britain, Russia, Germany, Austria and Switzerland). Countries hosting circuits are Australia, Malaysia, China, Bahrain, Spain, Monte Carlo, Canada, Great Britain, Germany, Hungary, Belgium, Italy, Singapore, Japan, Korea, Dubai, the United States and Brazil. In 2010, Austin-based company Full Throttle Productions submitted data that helped secure a track in Texas. They claimed that a race weekend would have a direct economic impact of $300 million for that area and produce $26.6 million in new tax revenue for the state.
But such profits would come at a cost. Full Throttle Productions needed $25 million for the next decade, in the form of state financial support—not an easy task for most African states to pull off. The GDPs of countries that host Formula One circuits are in the trillions of dollars, with the exception of Hungary, which raked in a paltry $147 billion last year. Selecting an African country, Uganda say, we can determine from their GDP—$42 billion—that such an investment would be ludicrous when so many other vital aspects demand the state’s attention.
South Africa held the National Formula One Championship series from 1960 to 1975. The death knell was sounded due to spiraling costs and objections to the country’s apartheid policy. Still, there have been two races since—one in 1992 and one in 1993 (won by Alain Prost in his Williams).
If South Africa entered the fray, it would be the only country on the continent to do so—other nations being too poor or embroiled in political turmoil. Rallying has traditionally been more successful here (the Safari, Ivory Coast and Paris-Dakar races). There was some racing undertaken in North Africa where French and Italian influences were felt, and most of these were held in city streets. There was the Tripoli Grand Prix, the Moroccan Grand Prix and the Algerian Grand Prix—the latter cut short by an uprising in 1954. Racing featured in Portuguese-influenced territories in the 1960s, such as Mozambique and Angola. Excessive heat sometimes saw the majority of cars simply failing.
There is talk however, that F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone will be bringing the sport to South Africa. A proposed location for a Monaco-styled course has been suggested along Mouille Point in Cape Town. But, says Francois Pretorius, CEO of Motorsport South Africa: “We have not received any confirmation in this regard.” Despite Ecclestone alluding to the proposal being close to conclusion, environmental impact studies would still need to be done, and the substantial costs would need to be offset against any potential benefits. Hopefully, South Africa will be able to champion the cause for its brothers.

Gearing Up For An African F1

Nostalgia is a thing of the future as far as one of the newest old radio stations in Africa is concerned. The breezy sound of LM Radio in Mozambique is back with a vengeance, with plans to broadcast across the whole of Southern Africa.
LM Radio was about the dream as much as the sound. Hopeful songs of love and laughter from LM, Lourenco Marques—as Maputo was known in those days—the city of palm trees, prawns, piri piri, sunshine and sand. The Monte Carlo of Southern Africa where smart yellow taxis ferried holidaymakers through the wide pristine streets of the city to the aroma of ground coffee and fresh bread.
This was the Mozambique of the 1960s and 70s where LM Radio made its name. There is a generation of boardroom executives in Southern Africa who grew up listening to LM Radio, under the bed sheets or in a boarding school dormitory. LM Radio had that allure of the underground as it played records the national broadcasters of neighboring countries refused to touch. Out of the African night came the sound of the Beatles—banned in South Africa after John Lennon said they were bigger than Jesus—The Who, Herman’s Hermits, Pink Floyd with a sprinkling of home-grown pop. Many who were youngsters in that era can’t remember exactly what the national broadcasters were playing, but recall it was difficult to dance to.
<div id="attachment_656" style="width: 228px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-656" class="wp-image-656 size-medium" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Gerry-Wilmot-in-Office-during-seige-218x300.jpg" alt="" width="218" height="300" />Gerry Wilmot with a shrivelled orange in the wake of the seige</div>
It was this frustration with the establishment that led to the birth of LM Radio in 1936. Advertising man, GJ McHarry, from Durban in South Africa, wanted to hear jazz on the radio. The South African Broadcasting Corporation refused to touch it, so McHarry headed north to set up a station at Radio Clube de Moçambique.
The new station hosted big band music and variety shows before studio audiences. It brought the sparkle of tinsel town, with Latin dash, into the dowdy farms, barrack rooms and mining camps of Southern Africa. It prospered in the 1950s and became hip in the 1960s and 70s. Heavens, even young Cliff Richard paid a visit to the station that played his records. By 1969, it was estimated nearly nine million people, in South Africa alone, were tuning in.
A symbol of its success was that, in 1972, the SABC bought LM Radio for a massive R60 million—a fortune back then. The National Party government was twitchy about independent radio stations broadcasting from outside South Africa’s borders. The station struggled on through the turmoil of Mozambique’s painful independence before it closed on October 12, 1975 with a simple announcement on air saying: “For us it has been 39 happy years.”  The new government in Mozambique took over the station to air educational broadcasts.
Fast forward to September 21, 2010 and radio engineer, Chris Turner, and his team were putting the finishing touches to a radio transmitter fixed to the top of a 10-story concrete block in Maputo, ahead of the first full broadcast of the revived LM Radio.
The tiny studio was also in the tower block, but has since moved to small offices in the basement of Hotel Cardoso.
“The lifts in the tower block didn’t work very well,” says Turner.
LM Radio is Turner’s dream and radio is his life. He grew up in Cape Town with one ear fixed to the radio and was an avid fan of LM Radio.
“They played Elvis, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Rolling Stones and you didn’t hear it anywhere else. Everyone in my age group has a memory,” he says.
Turner started a pirate radio station from his bedroom by the time he was 12. The police came to his home and closed down the station three times, but that didn’t deter Turner who grew up to train as a radio engineer.
To follow his dream, Turner and his wife sold property to raise the $3 million capital to open the station. It wasn’t easy; there were hours spent poring over Mozambique’s often pedantic bureaucracy.
The reward was that LM Radio is expected to break even in its first year, ahead of forecasts. The target is to achieve R12 million ($1.5 million) turnover in five years. It is taking advertising from South African supermarket chains to corner shops.
“We are about quarter of the way there,” smiles Turner.
LM Radio is banking on a large English-speaking population in Mozambique, largely South Africans; plus it broadcasts on medium wave in Lesotho, the Free State and in Johannesburg through community station Radio 2000. The station claims between 55,000 and 75,000 listeners a week, with a target of 125,000. Turner plans to apply to broadcast in Zimbabwe and Zambia, followed by the rest of Southern Africa where he thinks there is an even bigger pool of people who want to listen to Elton John and Abba.
“I think there is something in the music of the 1970s. It is feel good music, happy music. A lot of people write and tell us that our music lifts them up,” says Turner.
When LM Radio was reborn, in keeping with the theme of the station, there were blasts from the past. DJs, who were veterans of the original station, went back on air as if it where yesterday, rather than the last century, that they signed off. Reg de Beer, a veteran presenter who died in January, came back as did Nick Megens, a Dutch national, who had got into broadcasting at Radio Clube while working at his father’s company in Maputo.
Megens, who lives in Johannesburg, survived one of the most fraught chapters in the LM Radio story. It all began one spring morning with a frantic phone call from station manager, Gerry Wilmot, telling him to come into Radio Clube as soon as possible.
Megens was living on Catembe Island, just off the coast, and took the ferry over to Maputo. As he jumped into a taxi he knew this was no ordinary day as thousands of people running in panic through the streets of the capital buffeted the vehicle. This was September 7, 1974. I Shot the Sheriff by Eric Clapton was number one on the day Portugal signed the Lusaka Accord handing the liberation movement, FRELIMO, control of Mozambique within a year. It was a shock to many of the white Portuguese after more than four centuries of colonial rule.
“People were giving away the keys of their houses on the streets and later that day I saw people at the airport, holding one suitcase, weeping,” says Megens.
When Megens got to Radio Clube he found it bristling with guns. Armed white militia had taken over the radio station because they feared the Portuguese, or FRELIMO, may use it for propaganda. The show went on; for 10 days Megens broadcast with a couple of gun-toting militia men at his back.
“All I could think of was, ‘what happens if one of these guys goes to sleep and his gun goes off, the bullets are going to fly around the room?’”
The militia brought in supplies to their prisoners on air. The only problem was that it was just oranges and cigarettes and Megens didn’t smoke. His stomach rumbled while cartons of cigarettes piled up against his wall. Station manager, Wilmot, demanded the newspaper photograph him holding a shriveled orange in protest.
When the Portuguese Army ended the occupation by storming the radio station they lobbed in a couple of hand grenades.
“It is not a nice sound,” says Megens.
Nearly 40 years on, LM Radio is a nice sound and that is maybe why it has overcome closure, political chaos, civil war and scores of desperate men with guns.

Guns Could Not Silence The  Romantic Voice Of The African Night

The beginning of the new millennium was a perilous time for tech startups. The marketplace teemed with would-be entrepreneurs licking wounds inflicted by the crash and burn of the dot-com bubble. Funding was considerably more difficult than during those heady days when a new breed of internet man—a pioneer, a maverick, and occasionally a fool—could seduce investors in the manner of Scheherazade.
In South Africa, dot-com bubble survivors were numerous and generous with their tales of woe, but another phenomenon was afoot as well: the advent of broadband internet, increasingly becoming more accessible for the man in the street.
Lungisa Matshoba, East London-born and mathematically gifted, was starting a Bachelor of Business Science degree, specializing in computer science and finance, at the University of Cape Town.
“I had decided I would be an entrepreneur by the time I finished my degree,” he says. “I knew the richest people in the world were entrepreneurs and while that motivated me to an extent, over time my drive was less about money and more about wanting to build something.”
The opportunity presented itself in the form of a new technology called Voice over Internet Protocol, or as it’s known by its somewhat sexier acronym, VoIP. Using VoIP, a telephone call is made over the internet as opposed to copper phone lines. It’s considerably cheaper as pricing is not distance dependent. If you are reading this magazine, you’ve probably used Skype—the original VoIP product and still a market leader.
VoIP technology entered the consumer market in 2004, thanks to the introduction of broadband. In South Africa, the cost of communication was depressingly high. Even more so for Matshoba, who was juggling cellphone minutes and beer on a skinny student budget.
The rest, as they say, is history. The company, Yeigo—a Navajo word meaning “with spirit”—was born of the efforts of the five founding members, three of whom remain—Matshoba, Rapelang Rabana and Andrew Snowden.
Matshoba was the brains behind the software, which he developed alongside his team for close to a year, without funding. His ability to keep the remainder of his four-person team, all recent graduates, motivated over that period is testament to the drive of a man who harbors little doubt of the potential success of his idea.
“We got through the year by trusting that by the time the next month came, we would have a working product and be on our way to securing funding.”
In 2006, the company approached a group of angel investors who provided funding on what Matshoba terms “a gut trust” of the people involved and the product.
“Our business plan was raw and unfinished, but we were enthusiastic and I think that counted for a lot.”
The product was released into the market in 2007, aimed at the group’s contemporaries and marketed on a shoe-string budget using social media and Google Adwords. The key appeal for potential customers was that aside from convenience, Yeigo’s product was free.
“We weren’t focused on monetization during the early stages; we were more concerned with gathering critical mass. We used a business model similar to Facebook,” says Matshoba.
Swiss-headquartered telecoms operations Telfree Group Communications, a VoIP operator that services MTN and Vodacom, bought 50% of Yeigo in 2008—just two years after inception.
Telfree re-packaged and re-launched the product into a paying business market. Since then, the nature of the company has changed, focusing on cloud-based telephony services for smaller businesses, which Matshoba says is his way of creating value in the South African market where copper-based telephony remains relatively high.
“A telephony system for a business unit has a flat cost regardless of whether the company employs two or 100 people. Our product basically moves all telephony services into the cloud and customers pay per user and are able to expand gradually as their business grows.”
Matshoba is convinced that the growth of Yeigo, which now employs nine people, is in Africa where he envisions more cloud computing products, aimed at small business, in service sectors broader than telephony.
“We are sitting in a third world environment and not all companies are realizing that we need to adapt first world products and services to suit this market.”

The Cash-Strapped Entrepreneur  With His Head In The Clouds

At a quarter to noon on a slow Friday in November, Aslam Khan is in a hurry. As he leaves his third floor corner office, he punches buttons on his BlackBerry. “I’ll be there in a flash,” he says in a deep baritone voice that doesn’t appear to fit his body.
Khan is the chairman and co-founder of Aviation Leasing Services (ALS) Ltd, an aircraft rental company based in Nairobi. He knows that when it comes to flying, time is of the essence, and he runs downstairs to the hangar where Captain Nahashon Mutea is waiting for him in a chopper.
The journey to Kisumu, a city 500 kilometres west of Nairobi on the shores of Lake Victoria, lends a rare chance to interview the aviation entrepreneur where he makes his money—up in the air. Khan, a renowned rally driver, has a tough race the following day, but right now that is the least of his worries as the helicopter rattles through headwinds.
“Kenya is such a beautiful country,” he says, peering down at the green tea estates hemmed in by forests that dot the Great Rift Valley.
Flying a chopper on a hot and humid day is a study in the business of running an aviation company. Everywhere you look there are risks—turbulence, fog and the deadly possibility of mechanical failure. As co-founder of ALS Ltd 20 years ago, Khan, along with his late brother Ashraf, has piloted the company from a scrappy outfit, with a single Cessna 150 aircraft, to a thriving company with 25 planes and three subsidiaries.
“The aviation business is not for the faint-hearted,” says Khan, who turned 60 in December. “It’s a very sensitive business.”
It is so sensitive that the recent volatility in the Kenyan shilling forced the company to charge Kenyan clients in dollars to avoid exchange rate losses. Even a small rise in interest rates can ground business, he says, given that regular piles of cash are needed to finance operations.
ALS Ltd leases aircraft to humanitarian organizations like the Red Cross and World Food Program as well as oil companies; it also operates charter flights for businesses. The firm has shareholdings in local airlines Safarilink and Severin Air Safaris and runs Heliservices, a wholly owned helicopter division.
Khan is a former Kenya Airways (KQ) pilot with experience in the Kenyan Air Force. He joined the Air Force in 1970, where he completed his training as a pilot. Six years later, he joined East African Airways, which was later absorbed by Kenya Airways when it was carved from the regional carrier in 1977. He says that if it were not for the Air Force, he would probably be doing something different today as his father could not afford fees for a commercial flying school.
“When I was growing up, I always wanted to be a pilot,” he said back at his office at Wilson Airport, near Nairobi, “but I also dreamed of owning a professionally run business. I had achieved my pilot dream; now it was time to chase the business aspiration.”
While at Kenya Airways, Khan says he started saving up and together with his brother, Ashraf, they bought a small Cessna 150 aircraft worth $7,000 so Ashraf could learn to fly. That was a fortune in an era when flying, let alone owning a plane, was a luxury for government officials and rich businessmen.
“We leased the plane to a flying school and discovered that it was an interesting business,” says Khan.
The lease gave them the business name, Aviation Leasing Services, too. As ALS’s fleet of aircraft rose, so did Khan’s position; he became the Airbus captain for Kenya Airways in 1991.
At the time, Somalia was slipping into anarchy as President Siad Barre was overthrown. Sudan was at war. Humanitarian organizations started trooping into the countries to assist the innocent civilians caught in civil war. This presented an opportunity in the relief business which Khan and his brother seized. Most aircraft serving the countries were foreign, mainly from South Africa.
“We got into relief and grew the business over the years,” he says.
Expansion was a problem—in the 1990s, financing was hard to come by, especially for African-owned businesses.
“We had to depend on leasing aircraft from outside because there was some kind of stigma about Africans. We had to negotiate through leasing until we started owning our own airplanes.”
ALS outgrew the stigma and eventually won the confidence of banks to expand its fleet. Khan had to quit his captain’s job in 1992 to take charge of the business and in the same year, his brother and co-director died in a plane crash. Every opportunity in aviation came with competition and as he discovered to his chagrin, pilots were not only rare and sought after, they were also fickle and open to the highest bidder.
“We do a lot of pilot training, but many move on to other airlines. It’s a reality we have to live with. Retention of pilots is a major problem because people tend to move to better conditions and bigger airplanes. We try to have retention schemes and more opportunities for pilots to grow, but it’s hard to stop it.”
With ALS and three other aviation companies, Khan is still dreaming big. Last year, he relinquished the CEO post to Cornwell Muleya, a professional airlines manager from Zambia, partly as a succession plan and to bring in new ideas. Going forward, ALS plans to work with Kenya School of Flying, which is run by captain Martin Ririani, his former colleague at Kenya Airways, who quit to start training pilots.
“We want to set up an academy for flying,” says Khan. “Kenyans are hard-working and there’s huge potential for pilots, even in the region. The only way to overcome supply and demand is to have enough pilots. We’ve got infrastructure to train and the opportunities. Many people leave Kenya to go to South Africa and the US to train as pilots. Local facilities are inadequate, so we are in negotiation with schools in Europe and South Africa to see if we can partner and set up a high-standard flying academy.”
The larger plan is to make ALS a one-stop shop for aviation services and solutions—from leasing aircraft and training pilots to operating scheduled flights. This is a highly capital-intensive business and the founder is scouting for a management buyout to bring in investors.
The idea of a management buyout is more of a succession plan. The business is very much a family culture, he says, and he is looking to change that by turning it into a corporate business. “This is very important,” says Khan, who was voted the best rally driver for 2011 by the Kenya Motorsports Association.
“To achieve success companies have to be run professionally. Family can be involved in the business, but successful companies are the ones that follow corporate governance.”
He says family-owned companies lose out on the contribution given by professional managers, though they enjoy the virtue of trust—critical for business and hard work. But trust can be extended to employees if you find the right ones. Khan says that in a competitive market, even family members find it hard to resist the allure of better opportunities outside. “My niece started with us as a pilot; now she has joined Kenya Airways.”
Reputation is critical and so the company’s operations constantly undergo audits carried out by its customers and industry regulators. The company invested millions of dollars in meeting security and safety benchmarks, including IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) certification for meeting international aviation safety standards in June 2011. It is the second after KQ in Kenya to get such a certification. In September of the same year, the firm was admitted to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), joining KQ and Precision Air in East Africa.
Khan says this has positioned ALS to partner with major airlines and global aviation firms to expand its market. It can now lease its aircraft to leading airlines and is in talks with national carrier Kenya Airways. It already leases to RwandAir, Southern Star Airlines in South Sudan and an airline in Sierra Leone.
To serve bigger carriers it needs medium-sized planes in the 70 passenger capacity. But that needs more cash, he says, with a single unit going for $10-25 million. “We are looking at Dash 8 models. But then this means we need cash to buy enough parts and staff like crew and engineers etc., and unless it is backed up with a contract, it’s difficult and risky to invest.”
ALS has found itself with idle planes like other airlines—unable to stay afloat due to cash flow problems which ground operations, such as the Southern Star of Juba and an airline based in Sierra Leone, which stopped operations last year.
Piloting and rallying experience has given Khan some of the most important management traits: focus and attention to detail. “Rallying has been very much in the family and when on the rough and at times muddy roads you must focus, just as with managing any business.”
Rallying is an expensive hobby and he has to invest both time and money into it. His best career moment, he says, was when he qualified as a pilot in the Air Force. So does that mean good pilots make good managers?
“Good pilots are not necessarily good managers and good managers are not necessarily good pilots. I’m lucky I got both,” he says philosophically.

From The Cockpit To Corporate Suite

They are fresh-faced, full of ambition and look like they could be on their way to a rock concert—instead, they are on their way to a fortune.
In just 14 months, they’ve managed to beat the odds, and their peers, to amass just over $385 million in assets in a $19-billion property market in South Africa.
Sesfikile Capital, which means “we have arrived” in Xhosa, is a young company in more ways than one. Evan Jankelowitz is the eldest, aged 32, Mohamed Kalla, 29, and Kundayi Munzara, 28.  Together they’ve beaten the benchmark of the property business, the South African Property Index, in times of recession and doubt.
Sesfikile Capital, which opened its doors in December 2010, manages institutional capital on behalf of pension fund clients in domestic and international property listings.
It wasn’t easy. In the first four months of their business, they had zero assets to manage.
“We used to look at our monthly statements and we had an expense statement, not an income statement! April 2011 is when we got our first mandate, which was $1.2 million—not a great deal, but at least that gave us the ability to start,” says Munzara.
If that was a surprise—10 months later came a shock. Sesfikile Capital had set a target of $257 million for the first year; instead they got $385 million. The company has reaped the benefits of property coming into its own as an asset and pension funds also started to pay a lot more attention to listed property.
“It’s by no means a pushover sector and we have sleepless nights when the markets don’t always go our way; but the truth of the matter is we’re so involved and enjoy what we do. It’s a challenge we’re up for,” says Jankelowitz.
“It’s also difficult in this sector because it’s small and relatively illiquid. There’s a lot of competition out there, so you have to work pretty hard to beat the average,” Kalla adds.
South African property economist Professor François Viruly says Sesfikile Capital’s portfolio is a substantial one to be created in such a short time. He says there are significant bargains to be had in the property market in South Africa and the launching of new property funds offers good opportunities.
Sesfikile Capital says making sense of what is happening globally is another issue they face. The constant news flow on the euro zone and other global political issues affect equity markets and is something they’ve come to work prepared for every day.
The South African commercial property market has adjusted from its peak in 2005 and 2006. The focus at present is on maintaining tenants and keeping operating costs under control. But the number of new players entering the South African market reflects the opportunities here and further afield.
“If you think of the big oil countries like Angola, Ghana and Nigeria, for instance, there’s a big shortage of stock there. So at this point, the stock actually has to be built. And the guys who are really doing that are probably the infrastructure and private equity funds; we’re more a second-round investor, where we invest in existing stock that provides rental,” Munzara says.
Viruly says a slowdown in returns should be expected in 2012, reflective of relatively high vacancies in the commercial property market. There is also some pressure on rentals at the moment and the focus of property managers is to ensure that incomes are maintained. The rise in municipal rates and taxes and the rising cost of electricity are also having an impact on returns in the property market.
Sesfikile Capital is ready for rough waters, though.
“The volatility in equity markets has seen pension funds and investors look towards more income-driven assets and both fixed-income and property have actually benefitted from that. And there is very little evidence to suggest that investment in property has actually been hampered by the recession,” Kalla says.
“It reshuffled the whole market and allowed for cheaper entries into property. I’ve personally seen a lot more pension funds looking at this space—there has been more focus on property than there has been in the past,” Jankelowitz adds.
South African property continues to demonstrate relatively strong performance when compared to equities and bonds, according to Viruly. The densification of South African cities continues to offer opportunities, especially in the retail and residential sectors.
Sesfikile Capital has just launched a unit trust, which will focus on the retail market and invest in the listed property sector. The company is launching a global fund as well.
“Our numbers are looking good and there’s no reason to think we can’t continue in this manner,” says Jankelowitz.
The young lions appear ready to roar.

Tag: May 2012

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