It’s 6:30 on an early winter morning. Eighty-year-old Josiah Mmutlwatse, watches a heavy police and army contingent roaming near his home. In Bekkersdal, a township south west of Johannesburg, the foggy air is filled with the smell of the previous night’s charred remains. It is election day in South Africa and the mood is tense.
On the eve of elections, the unrest in Bekkersdal resumed; with three polling stations torched by angry residents. The spontaneous violence began months before. This turbulent township, near the gold mines of the West Rand, has seen a string of unabated service delivery protests. As the elections drew closer, protests intensified with threats to disrupt the polls.
But none of this could deter pensioner Mmutlwatse, who at the crack of dawn was the first in the queue at his polling station. He has never missed an opportunity to cast his vote since the first democratic elections in 1994.
The former bus driver patiently waits for the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) personnel to erect a marquee to be used as a polling station. Thirty minutes later, he is pleased to have exercised his democratic right to elect his government.
Although his allegiance still lies with the ruling African National Congress (ANC), Mmutlwatse hopes these polls will bring some much-needed change.
“I voted for the liberation party as always – ANC. It set us free from apartheid. It is hope for our children. Since we have voted, we want the elected people, even president (Jacob) Zuma, to listen to our cries. Our votes should not be blank cheques.”
Last year, Nomvula Mokonyane, the premier of Gauteng, raised the ire of Bekkersdal residents when she said the ANC does not need the residents’ dirty votes. Mokonyane was responding to threats that they would boycott the elections if service delivery was not improved.
“I am hurt by the unrest the dissenting youth brought, some people are not appreciative of our hard-earned freedom to vote. The government has a big task ahead. It must be explained to them that our democracy did not come on a silver platter. People died for it. It is not for sale.”
Mmutlwatse has lived in the township for more than fifty years, coming from the nearby farms. He rented a backyard room for a year before he could secure a four-room home in 1950, where he still lives with his three daughters. Out of his seven children, they are the only ones still alive.
“It was the first time I felt I had some dignity. If you have a house of your own, where your children could call home, no matter the size, it is freedom.”
A lack of housing and the high rate of unemployment are challenges that the youth in the area must face, says Mmutlwatse. The majority are shack dwellers.
Though Mmutlwatse owned a house for many years, he says the ANC-led government made him feel it was really his own when he received the title deed a decade ago. But he acknowledges that Bekkersdal is a far cry from a functional area.
He knows the community inside out and in the past used his old minibus to transport people, sometimes for free. He was like a godfather to the younger generation.
“Education should be the priority here. We understand the youth is not up in arms for no reason, they are frustrated by the government’s empty promises. I watch them roaming streets. They are not at school and many are unemployed,” he says.
While Mmutlwatse remains optimistic, his community still needs some convincing.
Twenty six kilometres away in Soweto, Happy Phiri, a reformed convict turned entrepreneur, is satisfied with the progress the government has made so far.
“I could not miss this one because I value voting. It’s something many South Africans were denied for many years. I spent 14 years in prison and the time spent there robbed me of certain things, including voting,” says Phiri.
Phiri, a 48-year-old father of three, was up at 3AM, two hours earlier than usual to make sure he didn’t miss casting his vote before he went to his workshop where he manufactures candles. On this day, he had an order for a hundred candles for a Mother’s Day event at a local church.
Phiri turned his life around when he joined the non-governmental organization NICRO while incarcerated. He left Mangaung Prison in 2010, trained as a candle maker.
With three years in business, Phiri has employed three people and bought a delivery van and equipment worth almost R100,000 ($9,600).
Bekkersdal’s very own Arab Spring will not die as the elections end; a politician just has to take a stroll through the run-down streets to realize this.
<h4>Red Berets And Tears</h4>
It was a record turnout for a South African election. More than 18 million voted in a poll on May 7 that threw up more than a few surprises.
It was one of those rare elections where the big story was not how much the ruling party gained, but how much it lost. The result was never in doubt, neither was the protest vote that hundreds of thousands of disgruntled South Africans cast.
In the end, the African National Congress (ANC) stormed home losing a lot less support than many of their supporters feared. It leaves the ruling party short of the two thirds majority, which gives it greater parliamentary powers, but it virtually assures control of South Africa until at least 2019, maybe beyond. It also assures that economic policy is likely to remain with few radical measures required to recover disgruntled supporters. The word among party insiders at the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) in Pretoria – the election nerve center – was that, if anything, government policy is likely to move more in favor of the free market as the money men around the world appear to have said all bets are off if there is a threat of socialism and nationalization.
Both are flaunted, like battle flags, by the young turks of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). In many ways, the EFF was the story of this election. The party was formed in October, when red bereted leader, Julius Malema, a disgruntled and belligerent former ANC loyalist, decided to give his old employers one in the eye. The idea was to take the high moral ground of socialism and power to the people that helped sweep the ANC to power in the first elections 20 years ago. It appears to have worked for the EFF, who, from a standing start gathered more than a million votes. It means Malema and 24 red bereted new menbers will sit in Parliament in Cape Town this year. It may spice up proceedings.
But the EFF may take heed of a cautionary tale from another opposition party, COPE. In 2009, COPE, also peopled by disgruntled former ANC members, garnered a stunning 1.3 million votes in its first tilt at the polls. This year, COPE got a mere 100,000 votes, less than 1%. Will EFF be able to cope in 2019?
“This isn’t the end of COPE,” says spokesman Johann Abrie. Really?
Agang – the party founded by Mamphela Ramphele and promising a new tomorrow – may rue its decision to fight the polls. It was humbled and ended up with two lousy seats.
The Democratic Alliance, taking years to shrug off its image as a white middle-class party, made more solid gains.
“We gain 3% every time around, then we cry for five years and try again,” says a DA loyalist.
That means maybe our grandchildren will witness the inauguration of the first DA president of South Africa. In a decade, or two, of power the DA too could be criticized by voters for being an out-of-touch incumbent that thinks it owns the country. Maybe?
The path of democracy was far from smooth in South Africa. There were threats and arrests in Alexandra, in Johannesburg, after fighting between rival parties. Voters in the tiny farming town of Tzaneen, in Limpopo, stormed  a voting station and damaged it. Two people were shot, one dead, in KwaZulu Natal.
Elsewhere, a ballot box was found dumped on a roadside and a school storing ballot papers was broken into. These will be investigated by the IEC as it prepares for the 2019 election.
“These remain isolated incidents that we are taking very seriously. We can all agree the process is going well and we can be proud of our nation and our democracy,” says Pansy Tlakula, the head of the IEC.

Hope Dawns After  A Night Of Flames

A hasty expansion to South Africa’s most popular tourist destination brought about some of the early business challenges entrepreneur Sola Owoloja had to face. After a successful launch of a concierge business, West Chauffeurs, in Johannesburg in 2008, opportunities for expansion to various cities in South Africa soon presented themselves to the company.
West Chauffeurs, based in Johannesburg’s swanky suburb of Sandton, was ready for business in Cape Town. In 2009, it secured the highly sought after travel desk contract to provide full concierge services to the African Pride 15 On Orange Hotel and African Pride Crystal Towers Hotel and Spa. It would offer concierge services from booking spur of the moment transportation, dinner reservations, impossible to book theater tickets, finding presents in a hurry and doing deliveries among many other things to guests of the prestigious hotels.
But it was a hasty expansion and move to South Africa’s international tourist city of Cape Town that turned Owoloja’s world upside down, ushering in his worst day.
“The Cape Town operations were not profitable and we didn’t see the possibility of that trend changing for the better,” says Owoloja.
Nigerian-born Owoloja, started his entrepreneurial endeavours in his early twenties in Lagos. It was here that he learned that there is no structure in doing business, even having a 20-hour working day becomes the norm.
He moved to South Africa with the hope of receiving a contract to run an oil services company, but that did not go well. He moved back home, but later returned to South Africa to complete his studies in business administration.
During his studies, Owoloja established the concierge business with little entrepreneurial experience.
It started off with only two luxury vehicles in May 2009, but soon added another five through financial assistance from the National Empowerment Fund. West Chauffeurs was doing well, servicing clients through a global luxury lifestyle company, Quintessentially. They’re known to have very high net worth clients who travel around the world and often stay at the best hotels. And they trusted West Chauffeurs with their clients, Owoloja says.
The empowerment fund and the vehicles West Chauffeurs had purchased bore fruit which helped the business make more than R1 million ($96,000) after only two years in the concierge industry.
They bought new cars for the expansion and even got into lease agreements to finance the rest of the cars to meet the requirements of their contracts in Cape Town.
“We hoped that the expansion to Cape Town would afford us the opportunity to scale the business and as a result be able to increase revenue and profits,” Owoloja says.
But they had entered into unfamiliar territory, an international tourist city that already had well established hotels and services. West Chauffeurs struggled to find its place in the market, and because it relied heavily on the hotel’s guests for business, the company experienced relatively low sales as the hotels were new and in the process of growing their own client base.
“For a small company, expansion should be managed very carefully. We were profitable in our first year, but we did not think that move carefully. We expanded very quickly without the structures to manage the expansion in terms of cash flow, record keeping, etc,” says Owoloja.
The revenue from the Cape Town branch was very low in comparison to the cost of running it. At the end of every month, West Chauffeurs was short by about 65% which they had to source from the profit made during the previous year.
“It dried up very quickly. We tried to get overdrafts to pay salaries, but it was quite difficult. We picked up heavy losses in Cape Town, but those are lessons learned. They were painful,” he adds with a chuckle reminiscent of the tough times.
“It was a very difficult time for me and as a matter of fact, all of us, including employees. I reckon it is so much more difficult to run a business that doesn’t make profits than one that is profitable.”
West Chauffeurs lost millions. Their biggest mistake, Owoloja says, was for the company to go without management accounts and financial statements for nearly a year.
“With the benefit of hindsight, negotiating better terms with our clients could have saved us the considerable losses we incurred in Cape Town,” he says.
But that’s all in the past now. In early 2011, West Chauffeurs packed up office in Cape Town after 16 loss-making months to focus on the business in Johannesburg.
“We decided to focus on our Johannesburg operations which were profitable. It remains profitable and we plan to make it more effective and hopefully be able to make a little more money without additional investments,” he says.
They relocated from Sandton to the affluent suburb of Melrose Arch to run African Pride Melrose Arch Hotel’s travel desk. It is one of Johannesburg’s trendiest hotels. The guests of the hotel are typically discerning travelers who are accustomed to world class services and that became an opportunity for the company to recover from the Cape Town setbacks and also further its growth prospects.
From then onwards, things started to look up.
“We went from nothing to quite a bit. There’s this very nice feeling that comes with making things work,” says Owoloja.
West Chauffeurs currently has 17 employees including drivers and consultants.
Their client base includes companies who use their services for visiting dignitaries. They include Commonwealth Bank of Australia, First Bank of Nigeria, Liberty Life, Musa Capital, Openwave, Union Bank, clients from Barclays and many other private patrons.
Now that Nigeria has bragging rights as Africa’s largest economy, after overtaking South Africa following the West African country’s rebasing of the gross domestic product data after 24 years, West Chauffeurs’ expansion plans can be accelerated.
“Many doors have been opened especially in the hospitality industry as a spin-off from our hard work and dedicated approach to tasks we were entrusted with. In the not too distant future, we will be partnering with an international hotel group on their expansion efforts into Africa, starting with Nigeria,” says Owoloja.
This time, he’ll be armed with the lessons learned from Cape Town.

The City Of Leisure That Brought No Pleasure

With the range of investment options available for the individual investor, it can be difficult to determine which investment is right for you. With stock markets up one day and down the next, many investors face the dilemma of whether to invest directly in stocks or to use mutual funds as their investment tool. In order to decide which approach best meets your needs, it is important to consider the pros and cons of each.
The solution will vary from person to person, depending on how much risk you are comfortable with, how much money you have to invest, how knowledgeable you are about financial matters and how much time and effort you are willing and able to devote to this task.
Do you have the knowledge, time or inclination to build your portfolio and monitor your investments yourself? Mutual funds are managed by experienced professionals who are well acquainted with the risks and opportunities that come with investing; they will make the day-to-day, buy and sell decisions about which stocks, bonds, or other securities to invest in, thus relieving the investor of that responsibility. As with all investments, mutual funds will not perform to expectations all the time. To have the best chance of success, it is important to select a fund manager with a quality management team and a good track record, but even then, only a few funds will consistently outperform the market.
If you decide to buy stocks on your own, you will have more control over your investing. It is important to make a realistic assessment of your ability to handle that responsibility as you will also have to devote more time and attention to your investments.
You should have a sense of how to analyze a company to be able to arrive at your own independent judgment of its value and how that compares to its current market price. You should certainly be prepared to spend time reviewing your portfolio periodically. The alternative is to manage your own portfolio of individual stocks and bonds. If you do not have the knowledge, experience or inclination then this is may not be a good idea.
Do you have enough money to be able to create a diversified portfolio? How much do you have to invest? Mutual funds offer a clear opportunity for smaller investors who do not have a lot of money to invest.
Mutual funds can reach a wider diversification than can be reached by individual stocks. Dividing up your funds among a few stocks isn’t usually enough to cushion you against a severe market downturn but by pooling several stocks as an equity fund does, the risk of loss in investing is reduced. If one company or sector performs badly, it tends to be balanced by other companies that may be recording better performance.
There are different types of mutual funds to choose from including money market funds, bond funds and equity funds to suit different objectives. It is important to note however, that individual stocks tend to have a greater potential upside than most mutual funds; as with all investing, you trade some risk for greater potential reward.
Mutual funds are considered to be among the most liquid investments. As shares in a mutual fund can be bought and sold any business day, it is easy for investors to have access to their money, as the fund is always available to buy its own shares. When you invest in individual stocks, you have to wait for a broker to find a buyer for your shares; this could take several days or longer particularly if the stock is not widely traded.
The overarching consideration must be to adopt a long-term investment strategy and to ensure that a diversified portfolio is built with clear financial goals and objectives in mind.

Mutual Funds Or Stocks?

South African designer Gavin Rajah was studying law at the University of Cape Town, with an interest in medical law, when he felt the need to keep busy and earn some extra money. His father owned a clothing store, so he began selling clothes to his friends and classmates. This led to restyling students’ formal dresses and eventually finding someone nearby to manufacture his own designs.
Rajah found law too depressing and chose to ditch it so he could find something more creative. Fashion seemed like the natural step forward, but his father had one piece of advice: ‘Fashion is a very difficult business and you don’t want to get into this business’.
Instead of pursuing his dream, Rajah’s second act, a marketing degree, served him well. With his keen sense of business, he started an events company that did so well it caught the attention of South African-based and listed Naspers, a multinational media company. Naspers bought 60% of the business in 2005 but the relationship went sour, leaving Rajah no choice but to leave the business and take his name with him. His old clients followed.
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With fashion in his blood, Rajah soon made his way back, with an arsenal of business and marketing knowledge. He describes his business expansion plan as conservative, owed to the fact that it has all been self-funded. Not coming from a strictly creative background, Rajah sees things from a more objective perspective. He feels that artists often get lost on the creative side, that creativity gives way to commerciality.
Rajah was the first African to receive an invite to participate at Mercedes Benz Fashion Week Paris. Other fashion houses were calling him for invites to the show. He had to face the stereotypes that people had about Africa. They were expecting garments made from shweshwe &#8211; a sotho print &#8211; and porcupine quills. Rajah has nothing against the use of African prints, but feels that they can be made contemporary by sending them to a graphic designer and having them reinterpreted.
The designer is also the founder of the Cape Town and Durban fashion weeks, as well as the Cape Town Flower Show.
Taking on a role as a mentor, Rajah raised money and worked with Precious Moloi-Motsepe’s Africa Fashion International (AFI) business to take four designers &#8211; Thula Sindi, Craig Native, Thabani Mavundla and David Tlale &#8211; to showcase overseas, in 2007. Rajah felt that black designers in South Africa were not getting international exposure. Understanding the boundaries involved in breaking into the international scene, he wanted the showcase to give them that exposure. People told him he was throwing the designers to the wolves but he wanted to prove them wrong. Rajah says there is a high level of mutual respect in the international fashion industry. Sindi and Native still call him for business advice.
Rajah believes that AFI and Moloi-Motsepe are great, giving designers an amazing platform. He also believes the designers themselves hold the key to success.
His inspiration comes from books, music, theater and traveling. Each season is different. Rajah’s Mercedes Benz Fashion Week Africa collection in October was inspired by a visit to the Tower of London and books on the legend of King Arthur. Each collection takes around two months to complete, this has improved with time and experience since he no longer doubts himself.
When the ideas come in, he makes quick sketches, refines them and, once he’s done, he involves the rest of the team. A lot of changes happen when they have completed the mock designs, and even more once the collection is complete. Rajah does not ignore the need to pay attention to trends, without necessarily following every single one.
According to him, fashion is about creating a brand and that takes a lot of money. Your brand needs to evolve, meaning you need to make sure it’s marketable, relevant and contemporary. Rajah uses the same approach in his events company that he uses in his designs, designing everything from the lighting and sound to table clothes and food.
He feels that since the events industry, like fashion, is not regulated, you have to work harder to entrench your name in people’s minds and prove yourself. His strategy is to be conceptual, innovative, understand his market and exceed expectations.
Last year was good for Rajah. He was named as one of the 150 designers to watch around the world in the January issue of the Italian edition of Vogue, he was also named South African Tourism designer of the year.
“We chose him for his role as a strong champion of South African design. He’s established himself as an entrepreneur in the world of fashion and has been instrumental in profiling South African designs. His work has helped establish South Africa globally as a fantastic lifestyle, culture and heritage destination,” says the chief executive officer of South African Tourism, Thulani Nzima.
“People don’t understand the work that designers do. An architect might build one house a year, or two. A designer puts six to eight collections out every year and every one has to be commercially successful,” says Rajah.
According to Rajah, South Africa is behind when it comes to recognizing the fashion business, particularly financial institutions.
Rajah’s fashion business is entirely supported by international clients. Celebrities like Naomi Campbell, Beyoncé and Cameron Diaz have worn his creations, while Gavin Rajah Concept (GRC) clients range from brides looking to make their wedding day unforgettable, to corporates like Nike, Jaguar and Sun International.
“You can’t believe your own hype. The minute you start believing it, it’s a problem. The minute you don’t start selling clothes, it’s a problem.”
Last year, GRC won the Event Producer of the Year award at the Event Solutions Spotlight Awards. It was also nominated for the Corporate Event Planner of the Year, Event Company of the Year and Creative Director of the Year awards. The team was also nominated for three more awards this year in Las Vegas, in the United States, and won Event Producer of the Year at the end of March.
Being named a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in 2007 is undoubtedly Rajah’s career highlight, as he is very passionate about championing people who don’t have a voice. He often wakes up at night shocked by all he has created and the number of people dependent on him. He is blessed enough to love what he does. Now that he is older, it’s about running a business and he is at the stage where he can take small risks.
At this year’s Design Indaba, the Gavin Rajah exhibit was a bathroom setting. It was his interpretation of the dirtiness of the fashion industry.
“It’s a dirty business and we’ve got to learn to change it.”
Rajah says things like drugs and sex happen in bathrooms. The mirrored perspex he used in his exhibition was hinting at the narcissism prevalent in the fashion world.
“Fashion has become so obsessive, so decadent, so hyped up and people behave so badly.”
His pebble dress from the Spring/Summer 2013 couture collection was made from foiled leather pieces molded into pebble shapes and won him the Design Indaba’s Most Beautiful Object In South Africa competition.
The king of glamorous couture also partnered with retail chain Legit, under the Edcon Group, to design a ready-to-wear collection for the mainstream market.
Rajah has not looked back since opting to sell beautiful clothes. He creates dreams rather than false hope.

‘It’s A Dirty Business And  We’ve Got To Learn To Change It’

When it comes to an Aston Martin you immediately think of noble British heritage, breathtaking design, stellar racing pedigree, unparalleled beauty and, of course, James Bond.
The Aston Martin Rapide S ticks the boxes for all of these categories. It is one of the most provocative cars I’ve ever laid eyes on. It is modern yet proudly asserts its heritage. It’s bold but not obnoxious; commanding but not dictatorial; and proud but not arrogant. It turns heads and causes hearts to flutter.
The Rapide S is almost entirely handcrafted. Every stitch in the seats and every inch of the dashboard, steering wheel and door inlays have been tirelessly and carefully sewn by human hands. Some of the aluminum body panels have been molded in the same way. The engine, similar to that of the Mercedes AMG, has been entirely put together by one person. The leather on the sumptuous seats is from the famous Bridge Of Weir leather company. They farm their herds of cattle in a location in Scotland where the conditions are so perfect that the cows are blemish-free.
The interior spec options include every type of trim – from bamboo, mahogany or walnut woods to carbon fiber woven panels. The Aston Martin key fob is topped by a Swarovski crystal, within which is embedded the Aston Martin logo. The badges that carry the same logo and sit gracefully on the boot and bonnet are made by an old and trusted jewelry company. They too, are entirely crafted by hand.
The fairy tale continues when you learn of the Q division – derived from the James Bond movies. This division is where the real magic of craftsmanship happens. Q division offers owners a unique personalization service, where an owner can design the car they have always dreamt about. Obviously the basic mechanical design and architecture of the car won’t change but everything else can. Q by Aston Martin is defined by detail, individuality and design statements. Bronze control rotaries, uniquely crafted carbon fiber fasciae and painted front splitter blades are just some of the options available to create a car that is as unique as its owner.
Amid global pressure to reduce emissions, Aston Martin is adamant that they can lessen their impact on the environment with the use of naturally aspirated motors. In the engine bay of the new Rapide S sits another work of art in the form of a white Aston Martin 6.0 Liter V12 handcrafted engine. It’s the same engine inside the DB9 and Vanquish models, albeit with slightly different outputs. Push the crystal key start button in the middle of the center stack and the car bursts into life like a beast that has just been awakened. The sound is glorious.
Controlling the transmission is done via buttons on the center stack as well. They have graced Aston Martins for some years but they haven’t lost their beauty and add a touch of class to the fairly complex control panel.
In Normal driving mode, the car is exceptionally comfortable; more than you’d expect from a GT car with a V12 engine and intentions of immense performance. The ride is soft and smooth, befitting of a luxury four-door saloon. But the Rapide S is not a saloon; it’s a sportscar that happens to have four doors and four individual seats. When you bury your foot into the floor, the true excellence of that V12 engine is evident. The delivery of power is smooth yet the gathering of pace befuddles the eyes. Again, the soundtrack is spectacular especially as the active bypass valves open in the stainless steel exhausts.
The car will reach speeds close to 306 kilometers per hour, the claimed top speed. It’s a car that involves the driver entirely. You need to rev this car hard in order to truly capitalize on its talents. At times, it feels slower to respond than you’d expect, until you eye the speedometer and realize you’re gathering immense speed. That’s just how the V12 works. 0-100km/h is claimed to take 4.9 seconds.
Switching the adaptive dampers to Sport mode changes the suspension characteristics significantly and the comfort I mentioned before is thrown out the window to make room for an expectedly harder ride and sportier suspension. In Track mode this is even more evident and the car can be thrown around bends with gusto; enough to make you forget that this car is a two-ton machine. It is not as sharp as a Porsche Panamera but it’s certainly in sports car territory. On turn in, you can feel the weight playing against you a little and in hard corners it feels slightly uncomfortable. It’s a car more at home playing the GT game, out on the open road eating up the miles.
The Rapide S costs over $302,000 but one has to wonder if the car really needs to be measured in numbers. Possibly not. It plays in a league that is as much about engineering as it is about romance.
It does have some flaws though. The rear is very cramped and there are also varying levels of quality on the central console. There are some beautifully crafted buttons that sit in the middle of material that is on the opposite end of the quality scale.
The Aston Martin Rapide S is a car that has a sense of occasion; a car that is more about leaving and arriving, a car full of magnificence that leaves you in awe. It should be described as a classy choice; a car that you know is better without any logical explanation; the car you buy with your heart rather than your head.

A Car For Your Heart,  Not Your Head

Calling the american dream

Most children start their first business ventures in their back garden. Their bright minds look for ways to make money by any means, whether it’s washing cars, baking muffins, making lemonade or charging their parents to eat plastic food.
At the age of six, Ettiene Pretorius made his first buck by selling beer on his parents’ farm in White River, in the Mpumalanga province of South Africa.
“The people who worked on the farm had to walk to town, 15 kilometers there and 15 kilometers back, to buy two or three Black Label quarts… I felt sorry for them. I said, ‘Mom can I borrow R2,000? I need to go buy some alcohol so I can sell it on the farm.’”
This was Pretorius’ first taste of success. Years later, while studying risk management at the University of Potchefstroom, he noticed that students were paying far too much money for clothing. He found cheap suppliers and started a business that supplied athletic and business wear to students, undercutting everyone else because he sold the stock from
his room.
In his third year, he saw the great demand for student housing and ventured into the real estate industry. He got his first sectional title scheme that consisted of seven units. By the age of 27, Pretorius had completed many more sectional title schemes, collectively worth more than R35 million ($3.3 million).
Now, at 31, Pretorius hopes his latest project will revolutionize the real estate industry. He is creating an app that will make it easier for people to sell property. The app does away with the broker-rich firms so the individual can start their own business and do sales without splitting their commission with the agencies.
“We’re cutting out the middle man,” he says.
Pretorius’ job ventures have seen him rub shoulders with the rich and famous. In March, he took a trip to the Richard Branson-owned Necker Island, part of the British Virgin Islands, where he spent a few days with people from around the world discussing ideas on how to save the world, the eco-friendly way.
Pretorius describes the 74-acre island that comes with phenomenal service, zipliners, tennis courts, helipads, walk paths, skiing and magnificent views of the clear-blue ocean, as paradise.
“You know that Peter Pan movie with Robin Williams? It almost looks something like that,” he says.
Pretorius speaks of Branson with high regard. He describes him as a laid back intellectual who never says no.
“You see them as these celebrities on TV or in magazines but, you know, they portray them as these action figures in life. But, once you get to know them, they are just human.”
During the five-day stay on the island, the group took a trip to Mosquito Island, Branson’s other island in the Caribbean. They were set to travel by boat or canoe but as a joke someone suggested that Pretorius swim. And so he did.
“I had been swimming and swimming for what felt like hours. I asked some how far I was and they said I was only half way… By the time I reached the island, everyone had had lunch and they had completed the first session of the day.”
Pretorius, who at the time was training for Ironman, a long-distance triathlon, says that there is a connection between great businessmen and sport.
“Most of the people I’ve met, who are at a very high level of business, are all very fit. They push their mental strength… there is always a challenge that they are setting up for themselves.”
When it comes to success, Pretorius says it’s all about how you move from one step to the next.
“Picture 10 circles in your mind. The objective is to get into every circle but you can’t get into the next circle unless you have certain expertise, values, a product, a service, a skill or a connection that you can add… You can never go to the next circle if you want to take something, you can only get to the next circle if you give something.”
As Pretorius speaks of his success, the lessons learnt and the kind of person he wants to be, he recalls a conversation he had with George Ross, Donald Trump’s lawyer. Ross mentioned that someone had paid $18,000 for a one-hour lunch with him just to gain some of his knowledge. Ross donated the money to charity.
“I want to be at that level where people want to speak to me and pay $18,000 for lunch. It’s not about the money but about the value of the message that people have,” says Pretorius.
Pretorius looks back on all his ventures and says that he was never driven by money. His motivation was to make things easier and affordable for other people.
“Business is a game I play, people are my passion and money is just a tool that I use to get from point A to point B,” he says.
So far, Pretorius seems to be playing the game very well.

From Selling Beer To Rubbing Shoulders With Richard Branson

No one could ever accuse songstress Shingai Shoniwa of being dull.
When she hits the stage late on Sunday evening at Ronnie Scott’s legendary Jazz Club in London’s Soho, she is in her third change of outfit, each brighter and more spectacular than the last. Each with an African twist.
Clearly, launching a solo music career is serious business and for Shingai dressing for the occasion is part of the theater.
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Born in South London of Zimbabwean parents in 1981, she has been the lead singer and bassist with Indie pop band The Noisettes for 11 years and has been touring the world, headlining gigs and creating music with fellow Noisette Dan Smith for far longer.
Together, they hit the big time in 2009 with their second album titled Wild Young Hearts, an album packed with catchy melodies and great vocals from Shingai, a singer who is confident and comfortable with her craft.
“Believe it or not, it has been really hard to get people to accept me in the music industry, a brown girl who plays bass and who sings and writes her own material. People want to pigeonhole you into a particular genre, and I don’t fit.”
For years, Shingai has been singing the lyrics to Sometimes a bitter-sweet break-up tune: ‘Sometimes…  we start over&#8230; and go solo’. Now it’s her turn to start over. For the last three months, Shingai has been in Los Angeles recording her debut solo album &#8211; the first time she is recording music without Smith.
For Shingai, the United States (US) has a broader musical canvas.
“In [Britain], radio trends are not daring, not exciting and they are driven by imported music. In the US, pop music has room for a lot of original characters.”
When we were arranging this interview, Shingai texted me from Cuba to tell me: “Cuba is incendiary! It’s a feast for the creative spirit&#8230; I’m recording some wonderful music here with Afro Cuban artists… I’m very inspired.”
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Her Los Angeles life is obviously still evolving, and as they rehearse together in the jazz club’s downstairs dressing room she shows Smith pictures of her newly rented West Hollywood home. Transitioning her life from one continent to another is already well underway. She has sold her old Mercedes in London, and a new vintage model is about to be purchased. Laughing loudly, she says she is now based between Hollywood and Hove, a town on England’s south coast.
Tonight, at Ronnie Scott’s, is the first time she will have performed any of the new material on stage and she admits she is nervous and has butterflies. Some musicians drink to gain some Dutch courage. Not Shingai.
“I won’t drink alcohol because you have to feel the music and drink just kills it.”
She’ll be playing a short set of tunes old and new. But, for her it’s all about the audience’s reaction to the Thomas Mapfumo-inspired Zimtron, which sounds like a mash-up between Mapfumo and the afro-pop of Fela Kuti.  I think this is a big step on from the Indie pop of The Noisettes but true to form Shingai kicks back.
“I don’t think so, it feels like an evolution. Zimbabwean music and Shona culture has always been a big reference point for me.”
Watching Shingai rehearse the set during the soundcheck is a revelation. Doors open and paying guests arrive for song and supper at 6.30PM sharp. Shingai, performing as a guest with the Natalie Williams Soul Family, has 22 minutes to run through four songs which are brand new to the band. Acting as musical director, Shoniwa sings her own part and eases the arrangements up and down, bringing the band and three vocalists in earlier and later as required.
“Most singers just know how to sing. This was a hard night with lots of new songs and she took the pressure off us by doing that,” says the Soul Family bass player afterwards.
Shingai has flown in from Los Angeles for tonight’s London gig and her large family are here in force to see her perform.
“I’ve never been away from them for this long before, and I’ve been missing them so much,” she says.
By coincidence her twin sister, Shorai Shoniwa, a media executive, slips into a seat beside me when I’m settling down to watch Shingai sing.
“Since she was four years old, Shingai has been performing, and we are all so proud of her,” says Shorai.
When I mention that we were all supposed to meet at 4PM and Shingai had turned up at 5PM &#8211; still without her stage dress,which is in Kilburn, west London &#8211; Shorai laughs.
“We call that Shingai-time in the family!”
When Shingai  was 10 years old she went and lived with her grandmother in the savannah plains of Tete in Mozambique for a year. She explains that if not for the colonial boundaries, her Malawian gran would have been from the Chewa tribe.
“That year made a big impression. It just made me appreciate the richness of the colors, the sounds, the fashion, the voices of my African heritage.”
Which explains why Shingai reflects Africa so vividly in her clothes and in her work today.
For Shingai, music was always a part of family life.
“I’ve grown up in an environment where I’ve had a lot of musicians coming in and out of my living room. From the late eighties my mum and uncle used to put on events at the Africa Centre. Someone would ask me: ‘Who’s your favorite singer?’ and I’d say Whitney Houston and they’d say: ‘Well this is how you play it Zimba style!’”
Shingai was born in Brockley, raised in South East London and is quick to emphasize that’s where all the best London art colleges, like Goldsmiths and Ravensbourne, are. She went to the prestigious BRIT school for the Performing Arts and Technology in Croydon and studied theater for two years. Towards the end of her stay, she formed Sonarfly with Smith.
Sonarfly quickly moved from an eclectic repertoire of blues standards and cover songs to writing their own original material. The Noisettes arrived in 2003 and in part had to busk to raise the money to record their first album. They have subsequently recorded two more acclaimed albums and are delighted to have made more of an international impact with their third album Contact.
But, tonight belongs to Shingai, the London singer who is so proud of her Zimbabwean heritage. The audience reception to Zimtron is rapturous and Shingai is thrilled.
So what does the future hold for her?
“We live in the global world where we have access to and can see what everyone else is up to. It’s about reaching everybody. To me, headlining festivals in Zimbabwe and in Malawi, on Freedom Day in Johannesburg and at Belladrum in Scotland is just as important as playing Abbey Road, the O2 and Glastonbury. We’ve done that, enjoyed it, and now for me it’s about reaching out to people internationally.”
So watch out Africa, Shingai Shoniwa is coming!
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Solo In Soho With A Songstress Of Steel

The BBC calls him young and charismatic. Uebert Angel is an enigma who has private audiences with heads of state, parliamentarians, philanthropists, billionaires and once with the late world icon, Nelson Mandela.
Business analysts have argued that his unlimited access to world leaders and leading businessmen has given Uebert Angel an unfair advantage over his peers in the real estate business.
Regardless of this, Angel, after close investigation, is one of the thousands of successful entrepreneurs across Africa who are creating million-dollar fortunes. These entrepreneurs do not inherit wealth; they earn it.
The prophet, a former finance lecturer and financier by profession, has two degrees in business finance from the Salford University in Britain. He has business experience and qualifications.
He also obtained a postgraduate degree at Bolton University in Manchester and has a pending Master’s degree in applied philosophy from the University of Wales in Cardiff.
His eye for the finer things in life facilitated his business acumen. In 2005, Angel established Club Millionaire, a concierge establishment providing services to the cash-rich but time-poor individuals around the globe.
Angel timed the launch of his business well. He set up his company long before the concierge boom flooded the industry in 2012 to secure part of his fortune. He then ventured into real estate, starting with residential and then moving into developing commercial properties.
His real estate and construction companies traded under various holdings and trusts in Europe, Africa and Asia. He then forayed into building a noteworthy media empire, with secular and lifestyle television channels and a Christian charitable record label that owns the rights to the music of multi-award winning artists like Sonnie Badu.
Aside from Africa, some of Angel’s companies are registered in Europe and Hong Kong. Hong Kong is favorable due to investments not being taxed in the region. The corporate profits tax rate is 16.5%, there is no capital gains tax and no accumulated earnings taxes on companies that retain earnings rather that distribute them.
Angel is reputed to have such a keen business sense and entrepreneurial skill that he is able to start small companies and grow them. He then sells them and invests the money in real estate and other projects.
In February, he bought Great Hampton Limited in Britain, a company with 30,000 square feet of choice real estate as its chief asset. The structure, which is close to the Birmingham University School of Law, is said to be valued at around $2 million and will be worth more after the renovations and improvements he is putting in place.
The Zimbabwe-born British national, who is also the bestselling author of Healing Is Easy and a sought after conference speaker, was voted the most influential Zimbabwean last year and won the Newsmaker Award in the same year.
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He is also a Peace Ambassadorial Award recipient.
His fame is huge and his contacts, impressive. He has presidents and the rich on speed dial.
There is a lot more to Angel than just business. He is a strong believer in the Giving Pledge initiative, founded by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, which encourages wealthy people to donate at least half of their money to charity.
The Giving Pledge has so far persuaded more than a hundred billionaires to give the majority of their wealth to charities. South African billionaire Patrice Motsepe is on that list.
While Angel is not in their league, he has engaged in philanthropic endeavors which have not gone unnoticed.
Last year, after a donation of $1.4 million was given to him by friends and well-wishers for his birthday, he donated all of it to charity.
Using his own resources, Angel is also building houses for the poor and helping parents pay school fees in what he and his wife, Beverly, the patron of Hand Of Mercy (HOME) have called Adopt A School – Adopt A Child program. Hand of Mercy intends to help at least 100,000 people by 2017, a feat he says is possible if they concentrate on community development rather than individuals.
While Angel has a lot of business interests, there is another side to him that has attracted the world’s attention.
He is a staunch believer in Christ and claims to have the gift of prophecy. Some argue that his businesses and his contacts have grown primarily because of this. Others stress that he is a darling of the masses because he helps the less fortunate. Angel returned to Africa from Britain, while his business empire was at its peak, to help develop the continent.
Such is his influence in Africa that when he moved back to Zimbabwe, the Christian organization he started, Spirit Embassy, grew from 12 to 5,000 people in four weeks and is now approaching the 10,000 mark.
His business adventures have slowed down since the media latched onto his uncanny ability to predict events. He has given accurate prophecies about the deaths of Michael Jackson and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the Kenya Mall massacre among many world events. His predictions include the date and time, even a year before they occur, putting him on the forefront of the prophetic movement in Southern Africa.
Last year, media reports claimed Angel was worth $60 million, a figure he denies. His wife backs him up on this subject.
Beverly, a former finance lecturer, exudes humility. She is intelligent, but an individual of few words. When asked about her husband, she will only talk about their charitable initiatives.
&#8220;Whatever you find or see is already committed to our very own giving pledge initiative, so, come to think of it, what do we really own if it is all for philanthropy? Zero is the answer!&#8221;
Angel’s success is clear but there is still a lot about him that is shrouded in mystery.

The Prophet Of Success

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

An African Landmark Broken No More

It’s curious, and almost incongruous, to see Juste Chisenga, the Grade 1B teacher at the Kasisi Primary School, give a lesson in a neat black suit and checkered tie in the Zambian language of Bemba.
It’s hot and sweaty under a rusted tin ceiling that has been around since 1924. The classroom walls are full of cracks and its light blue paint is peeling. Dozens of curling educational posters hang, yellowed with age.
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The children look as worn out as the building they are in. Some have walked as far as 14 kilometers to get here. Their uniforms are mismatched and layered in red dust.
This is the last place you would expect to see a teacher wearing a suit. Chisenga looks like a man from another time.
It’s also the last place you would expect to see children staring at a slideshow on a solar powered projector instead of a blackboard.
It’s even more bizarre seeing the same seven-year-olds sitting on uneven wooden desks and pulling out several smart tablets from a cardboard box to continue their lesson.
This is the brainchild of entrepreneur Mark Bennett. His idea is to help educate young Zambians by making a tablet part of their school curriculum for their villages.
“We decided to do something about the way teaching is done in Zambia&#8230; These days everyone has access to a cell phone. What’s more, in the rural areas they know how to work it; without being able to read. So we designed something that could be translated into several different languages&#8230; We’ve spent around $6 million developing the software with the help of 250 designers from around the world animating it. So far, we have had 2.3 million words translated into local languages and a quarter of a million sounds,” he says.
Bennett first came to Zambia in 1985 on a two-year contract to work at a computer center at the University of Zambia. He left the job twelve years later after the university figured out he was still on its payroll, he jokes. From there, he spent years bringing the internet to Zambia. He became a household name when he sold his Zambian internet service provider, AfriConnect, to Vodacom in 2005.
Wondering what to do next, Bennett’s idea for iSchool came seven years ago while sitting next to Clare Stead on a plane.
“We started by asking what would we do in education differently in the bush. What would you do to teach better,” says Stead, who is now the E-Learning project director for iSchool.
“The internet is a great learning tool but not for Africa. It’s not contextual. We found that children in rural areas didn’t understand why Elmo from Sesame Street would need to hang washing up between two skyscrapers in Seattle. Our first step was designing an education program suited for the rural people of Africa,” she says.
With overwhelming class numbers of between 60 to 100 children at a time, teachers in Africa are overworked, underpaid and lack organization, says Stead.
“With the ZEduPad, children can engage with the tablet and find answers faster than a teacher asking the same question 60 times over. We were also able to devise a curriculum plan for teachers to help them set goals for the week, for the month and for the whole year.”
It’s not always been smooth sailing. The team has encountered a number of hurdles including the Zambian government that passed a law to allow children to be taught in their mother tongue. It meant Bennett’s team had to write out whole new languages, including the first dictionaries for a number of dialects.
Regardless of the difficulties, Bennett remains resolute. Now in its second year, the project has distributed 7,000 tablets across Zambia.
The tablets are solar charged meaning they can go pretty much anywhere in the county, says Bennett. The children find them fun to use and, thanks to the language changes, easily understood. It makes learning easier than staring at a blackboard and far more interactive, says Stead.
The results according to teacher Chisenga have been amazing. His grin is as wide as the tablet he helps his grade ones complete their basic maths with. A man in a suit that looks as out of place in the classroom as the tablets.

Tablets  that ease the learning headache

Finding your perfect match is never easy. But it’s been made easier now thanks to Chinedu Onyeaso and Emeka Akano. The two Nigerian entrepreneurs are pioneering the way co-founders in business find one another in Africa by bringing global Founder2be’s match-making service to the continent for the first time.
When you sign up on Founder2be’s website, you create a profile including the type of co-founder you’re looking for. In this way, someone interested in working with you will contact you via an anonymous, built-in messaging system that allows you to decide who you share your contact details with. If all goes well online, meeting in person would be the next natural step until the two founders decide whether to work together or not.
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Onyeaso and Akano took the idea further by organizing events. In the case of Nigeria, the online service and the Founder2be events go hand-in-hand, allowing for a lot more entrepreneurs to meet and connect.
“For the Lagos events, besides the networking, we bring in a few notable speakers to share some of their experiences and knowledge with the attendees. So the event also provides people with the opportunity to learn from experienced entrepreneurs and professionals so as to be better equipped to start and run their business,” says Akano.
In August, the first Founder2be Nigeria event was held on Victoria Island. Speakers included entrepreneurs to legal and information technology experts, who were all partial to business creation. Even Tomi Davies, the convener of Lagos Angel Network, an exclusive network for angel investors focused on supporting early stage start-ups in Lagos, was in attendance.
Founder2be provides an environment for people interested in business to learn, connect, share ideas and potentially find partners. These co-founders can come in the form of a business partner, mentor, adviser or investor for a business. It allows individuals with different skills sets to connect and work on ideas to launch start-ups. It’s reportedly the leading co-founder matching community in more than 100 countries.
Asked whether they have come across entrepreneurs who have become co-founders from the Nigerian network, Onyeaso says it’s still early days, but they’ve received positive feedback from some of attendees of the event.
“I met quite a few people I’d never encountered previously within my personal tech network, and I think with a few tweaks and consistency, the event and the community that hopefully emerges from broken ice could lead to many interesting transactions,” says Bankole Oluwafemi, founder of TechCabal, an online technology publication.
The duo became friends while they were university students in Ghana. They relocated to Britain after completing their undergraduate studies to obtain their Master’s in engineering at the University of Nottingham.
After graduating and working in Britain for a short while, they returned to Nigeria. They had been involved in the creation of affordable web design and corporate identity branding services to SMEs in Nigeria where the two identified a gap in the untapped market in the education sector.
Onyeaso and Akano then co-founded Entarado, a web development company empowering small businesses with web and mobile solutions. The business launched WebBlis to help other businesses gain an online presence and now they are working on EasySchool, a platform to help schools better manage their administrative functions, such as sending results to students.
From there, they became Nigerian ambassadors for the Finnish-created Founder2be forum. It is part of a global event which is held in major cities around the world.
Following two successful events last year, the two entrepreneurs hope to host at least one event every three months. The forum is growing so fast that interest has spread to other parts of Nigeria in Abuja and Port Harcourt.
“We understand that having the right founding team is an important step in the right direction for any start-up towards building a successful business. However, we also know that there are a number of things that are needed for someone to build a successful business. Things such as access to funds, mentors, work spaces and support,” says Akano.
Onyeaso adds Founder2be Nigeria is working on partnerships with investor networks, like Lagos Angel Network, accelerators and hubs to be able to help Nigerians get the support they need to start and grow their business once they find the perfect co-founder.
Through Entarado and Founder2be, the pair hopes to provide a platform to help foster entrepreneurship in their community. They believe that everyone knows something, but nobody knows everything and that by sharing ideas and meeting with people of similar interests, they will be able to find partners and get the help needed to start or grow their businesses.
Although they didn’t meet each other on the popular match-making site for co-founders, Onyeaso and Akano believe they have what it takes to spark a revolution in Nigeria’s budding start-up scene.

The Cupids Of Commerce

It wasn’t your ordinary art theft. Whoever stole South African artist Conor Mccreedy’s painting of Nelson Mandela had a strange way of doing it.
Mccreedy was on his way to fetch the painting from a vault in New York. As he entered the vault he noticed a four-foot hole in the ceiling. He thought it was strange considering the ceiling was one meter thick concrete. He guessed that the company must be doing maintenance on the building. He then found a broken lock. What he saw inside stunned him.
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“There in my storage room, in place of my painting, was a pile of original photographs of Yoko Ono, John Lennon and Mick Jagger from the sixties on the Hampton River… It was like a scene out of a movie.”
Mccreedy’s painting of Mandela, along with a sketchbook of 30 drawings, were gone. A few hours later, his storage room was ringed with yellow tape.
“We had the CIA, CSI, FBI and Interpol all there. It was the first time meeting Frank Shea, my private investigator; he literally could have walked out of a movie. Shea had this comb over and perfect hair, with a perfect red tie and a pinstripe suit complete with Mont Blanc pen, like Donnie Brasco or 007. Then I thought to myself this must be a joke,” he says.
It wasn’t. No one could answer the riddle of Lennon and Jagger either. It was June and at the time Mandela was sick. Mccreedy thought the heist had something to do with hate mail, most of it from South Africa, claiming his portrait was merely jumping on the band wagon.
“People were running me down, saying I was a con. It was sad. But every time I get a negative comment my art goes up in value. Why do it if you hate my art? If you hate my childlike blue splash? It took me 27 years to do that blue splash,” he says.
The next day; it got worse. At 6AM, New York time, Mccreedy’s insurance company phoned him. The painting was insured in Africa, not New York. The only thing to do was for Mccreedy to fly back to South Africa, knock on the door of the art collector who bought the painting and buy it back with an envelope containing R100,000 ($9,280).
“It wasn’t even my favorite piece. I did it in Europe in 2008… The painting was in my trademark MccreedyBlue on a A4 canvas board, but that was it,” he says.
The robbery made headlines around the world and the story was just beginning. Interpol, the international criminal police organization, declared the missing artwork was priceless; it gave Mccreedy a claim to be the only living artist to have a painting declared priceless.
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Almost a year later, clues are as elusive as the painting itself. The artist has found a way to recoup the loss. Mccreedy is now selling 46664 replica prints, the same as Mandela’s prison number, for $100 each. Five percent goes to the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory in Johannesburg.
It’s just one of the bizarre stops along the way for Mccreedy, who was born and bred in Johannesburg and making a name for himself in New York. At school he was a talented footballer whose trademark was scoring from corner kicks. There he had a chance meeting with Mandela that changed his life.
“When I was eleven I had the opportunity to meet Mandela personally. Out of a hall filled with 600 school boys he chose to speak to me. I’ll never forget it. He said to me ‘you have powerful eyes, use them’. Mandela and Picasso are my greatest inspirations,” Mccreedy says.
New York didn’t start well for Mccreedy. He was broke and dropped out of Art College when blind chance landed his first solo exhibition.
“I bought an old third-hand Iranian carpet at a store and I needed someone to help me move it. So we went to my studio, a four-flight walk up the stairs, and the man helping me comes up and sees all this art that I’m working on, adorned on my walls, and he’s like: ‘This stuff is crazy! You know what? You’ve got to meet someone.’”
The carpet carrier knew the curator at the National Arts Club, in Manhattan, just down the road. It resulted in Mccreedy’s first ever exhibition sold out two days before the opening. What’s more his former lecturers from art school, who had written him off, came to the opening and were impressed, Mccreedy says.
These days Mccreedy is no longer a struggling artist. His art is selling from Africa to Asia. On the morning of meeting FORBES AFRICA in March, he sold a painting for $33,000.
“Art is an investment and can bring in big business. Art auctions in South Africa sell for R450 million ($42 million) a year, but I’ve seen auctions in New York sell for that in one night. People haven’t realized the opportunities art can bring,” he says.
Clearly Mccreedy has.

The Case Of  The Missing Mandela

The business of motivational speaking in Africa is in boom. In the last two years the continent has seen an influx of top international speakers such as Richard Branson, Steadman Graham and John Demartini. But in this digital age, where almost everything is available online for free, it’s surprising that many are still willing to pay $1,000 to hear someone speak.
South African business coach, Vusi Thembekwayo, has been in the business for the last 10 years. He says the reason for the sudden interest in Africa is because the American industry is saturated, the European’s are sceptical but South Africa’s fast growing business sector has people wanting to hear from business gurus. Thembekwayo says although there are many professionally trained speakers, there are also people ready to make a quick buck.
“I think that there is a very large proportion of speakers out there who are [scammers]&#8230; There are the guys who go home and read The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey, and then the following morning rate themselves as speakers…”
The industry consists of a variety of businesspeople, sportsmen, psychologists and professionally trained speakers. Some speak loudly with rehearsed PowerPoint presentations while others can be soft-spoken. All speakers will attempt to encourage you and make you feel that you can achieve success and live your dreams. During presentations you can also expect a book promotion and a once in a lifetime opportunity.
“I see the Americans here doing their really big rah-rah conferences. [They’ll say] ‘If you come now we can sell you a package at R10,000 ($960) just run to the back… it’s only going at  [that price] today, if you buy tomorrow it will be R50,000 ($4,800). Buy my package today and I’m going to teach you how to make a million rand through sales,’” says Thembekwayo.
It seems one of the most uncomfortable topics for speakers is money. But, how much do they charge for their words?
Thembekwayo benchmarks himself against some of the industry’s best, such as Jim Collins, Malcolm Gladwell, Adrian Gore and Nonkululeko Nyembezi-Heita. He charges his clients R45,000 ($4,300) for a 45 to 60 minute session, the size of the crowd ranges from 15 to 3,000 people.
“I don’t allow my clients to say it’s too expensive because if you say it’s too expensive then you don’t want what it is that I’m offering you and I’m happy you go elsewhere.”
For sales trainer Barry Mitchell, finding his cost was a matter of trial and error by seeing what the client was willing to pay and how comfortable he felt charging them for his service. The founder of the Uncovering Your Greatness program, Mitchell offers one-day free seminars, private coaching, which costs between R15,000 ($1,400) and R20,000 ($1,900), and 5-day seminars which cost R40,000 ($3,800).
“The better you do, and the more value you add, the more your self-worth grows and the more you could charge. But, I’m very particular about the more I charge the more value I have to add.”
Mitchell says the reason people are willing to pay to hear someone speak has less to do with money and more to do with the value they hope it will add to their lives and businesses.
“[When] I got to chat with Robert Kiricsi it wasn’t anything he told me that made me think, wow that will change my life. It was the value of me just being able to sit and I thought  this guy just thinks a little differently to what I’m used to. If he thinks like that and he’s done so well, then how do I think?”
“Let’s face it, what we teach, is nothing new under the sun. I think, a lot of the time, it’s how we teach it and it’s the connection the speaker makes with other people,” says Mitchell.
At the end of the day, you can attend all the motivational talks in the world and read countless books on how other people became successful. But, ultimately you have to make the decision on whether to act now or spend your life waiting for the right time.

Money Talks In The Business of Motivational Speaking

For days, it had been tense in the cells beneath the Palace of Justice in Pretoria, in an eight-month trial punctuated by fear, loathing and laughter. For Nelson Mandela and his co-defendants, it was to prove a harrowing dance with the death penalty. Mandela was convinced he was going to die, according to his fellow defendants, and had started passing on his wishes to his fellow accused Denis Goldberg.
“He thought he was going to hang,” says Goldberg.
There was a good chance that they were going to hang. All were charged with sabotage against the apartheid regime. It was an accusation so serious that, if the prosecution proved a case to answer, the onus was on the accused to prove innocence—rather than being innocent until proven guilty.
The ambitious prosecutor, Percy Yutar, laid on the evidence with a shovel. He painted Mandela and co as desperate terrorists who had enough explosives to blow up Johannesburg. In giving evidence, Yutar would occasionally turn and smile to the special branch men in the gallery. Goldberg recalls how the special branch men would look at him and draw a finger across their throats in a threat of death. Goldberg gestured back with a jerk of the middle finger.
The antagonism worsened. Yutar ventured to the calm intellectual, Walter Sisulu, that life for the black man in 1960s South Africa was not all that bad.
“I wish you could live for just one day as we are forced to do and you would not make such a remark,” flashed back an angry Sisulu.
There was laughter when Ahmed Kathrada, one of the three survivors of the trial, gave evidence in the witness box. He was asked about a man, clearly him, referred to in evidence merely as ‘K’. He was asked did he know anyone with a name beginning with the initial K?
“Khrushchev,” replied Kathrada, referring mischievously to the Soviet premier of the day to the laughter of his fellow accused.
It all led to one moment that was to transform the public perception of those in the dock from terrorists to freedom fighters—the Benjamin Franklins of Africa in the eyes of the world press, in the words of defence team member George Bizos. To kick off the defence, the accused had opted for a statement from the dock. Mandela led the way with a speech that took six hours and went down in history.
&#8220;I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to see realized. But my Lord, if it needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.&#8221;
The late Arthur Chaskalson, then a young member of the defence team, told me in 2010: “There was a dramatic silence you could almost hear the silence in the court, you could feel it. It was absolutely quiet, not a sound.”
When the accused came up the steps to the court on June 12, 1964, they still thought they were going to hang. What they didn’t know was that a combination of the prosecution’s failure to press the case, diplomatic pressure and reluctance by the authorities to make martyrs out of them, was to save the necks of the Rivonia trialists.
When the judge almost whispered a life sentence, instead of death, the relieved trialists looked at each other and laughed out loud.
“Life and life is wonderful,” Goldberg says to his mother in the gallery.
More than 30 years later, Mandela, in one of his many shining acts of reconciliation, invited Yutar, the man who tried to hang him, to tea.
A few years later, Mandela opened the Constitutional Court in Johannesburg, on February 14, 1995, that was to be led by Chaskalson. The next day, the court was to debate the death penalty and Mandela knew this was a moment for his impeccable timing.
&#8220;The last time I appeared in court was to hear whether or not I was going to be sentenced to death. Fortunately for myself and my colleagues we were not,” says Mandela.
“If he had been executed what would have happened?” asks Chaskalson in 2010.
I dread to think.

Tag: May 2014

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