The South African hip-hop artist and entrepreneur
experienced a hurricane and a seismic spiritual shift in the city of
Cancun.&nbsp; 



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It has been a journey, a lot to learn and a lot learned,”
says Siyabonga Metane, popularly known on South African hip-hop stages as
‘Slikour’.



The learnings have been in music and business, but the
journeys have been beyond both.



Just two years post South Africa’s democratic elections in
1994, Slikour was part of a rap group named Skwatta Kamp, formed on the streets
of the country’s Gauteng province, with the aim of commercializing the local
hip-hop scene.



The group consisted of seven members and most of them went on to release solo albums. Slikour released two, Ventilation Mix Tape Vol.1 and 2, in 2005 and 2007. Long before that, in 2002, Slikour had turned entrepreneur, co-founding Buttabing Entertainment, a record label and artist management organization.



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&nbsp;Today, he is also the
founder of SlikourOnLife, a prominent urban culture online publication that he
started in 2014 catering to music lovers. 



Returning to the word ‘journey’, it especially sparks
memories of a trip he undertook in 2011 to Cancun, a Mexican city on the
Yucatán Peninsula bordering the Caribbean Sea, known for its beaches, resorts
and nightlife. Slikour was there for a television shoot as part of a group. The
trip still stands out in his mind. 



He was not blown away by the city initially, but as he
visited some of Cancun’s tourism attractions, he began to change his
perception. 



Ultimately, it proved to be what he calls an amazing
rendezvous. 



“The people were pretty much speaking Spanish,” he chuckles, recalling being immersed in the local culture.



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“There are a lot of laborers there and the people are
beautiful and accommodating, but we never really spoke or interacted with the
community.”



Slikour decided to savor the city’s famed nightlife instead
and see for himself what all the hype was about. 



It all began and ended with tequila, a distilled alcoholic
drink and one of Mexico’s most famous exports, made of the blue agave plant
from the city of Tequila in Mexico.&nbsp; 



“Everything you do there is done with tequila. I don’t drink
alcohol, but I had to accept and apply myself because there, they don’t use
tomato sauce, they use tequila; I literally had to get into the tequila swag;
it’s everything there. Tequila started there,” Slikour says.



Mexico is known for its recurring hurricanes too, which
Slikour also got a taste of while there.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;




“After a few days of getting there, we were warned of a
hurricane, and asked to close our doors and windows, and because these things
happen regularly, there’s a drill to follow. The hurricane wasn’t a major one
but I was excited because I wanted to see it. I had to look through the
window,” he says. 



The hurricanes are so frequent in Mexico that he likens the
precautions taken to lighting a candle during South Africa’s frequent power
cuts.&nbsp;&nbsp; 



Despite this exhilarating encounter with nature, the real earth-shaking experience for him, however, happened deep inside a cave in the city of Cancun – and also deep inside him. 



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“My spiritual [epiphany] was when I went into those caves.
You go in there with your self-assurance, claiming you understand everything.
Thereon, they tell you where everything comes from and all of a sudden, you
become this very small thing in this big ecosystem. It just shows how
everything affects everything,” Slikour says.



The tour guides explained how everything inside the cave
came from rain, elaborating how it was connected to the core of the earth; which
is where they were at the time.



Slikour was in Cancun for two weeks, and also visited the
pyramids. 



“The Mexicans didn’t have all the mathematics that we have
now but the pyramids were built to perfection. It just showed you how
forward-thinking they were and how behind we are in as much as we think we are
forward; we just have technology. We don’t think the way historic societies
used to think,” says Slikour, in deep reflection.



Mexico is a place he would return to, anyday, in a
heartbeat.

Slikour

Executive Travel: Slikour’s Mexico

A new generation of African entrepreneurs and businesses is emerging. They are challenging the old way of doing business and driving cross-border growth.
Kenya’s ICT companies are investing in Rwanda and are now looking to enter Nigeria, while United Bank for Africa and other Nigerian banks are rapidly expanding into Africa. In 2009, South Africa invested $1.6 billion (FDI outflows) into other African countries. MTN, a South African mobile giant, operates in 21 African countries; and Glo, a Nigerian mobile operator, operates in the Republic of Benin, Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire.
Africa’s statistics speak of tremendous potential: the continent is the size of China, Mexico, Europe, India, the States and Japan combined. The population will soon surpass China, with a middle class as big as India’s. Africa has enjoyed more than a decade of sustained GDP growth, which has often outstripped many other parts of the world.
There is frustration in that Africans are not reaping the rewards of the current global investor confidence. The mass export of commodities doesn’t see wealth trickle down.
Home-grown investments, focused on value-adding industries, are the key to changing this dynamic.
Africans still seem to choose products and investments from outside the continent. They prefer to export outside Africa rather than to trade, manufacture and add value within. Many African countries continue to trade raw materials but they don’t have the capability to refine or process, so they import the finished products from outside of Africa.
We need to understand what is preventing Africa from being home to value-adding and value-creating businesses. Why, for example, is Africa’s agricultural richness not generating an integrated growing and processing industry as it has done in Brazil?
Africa requires an environment that facilitates investment and greater market integration. The current weaknesses—corruption, high start-up costs, poor infrastructure—are well-known. But our study will also shed light on the legal, social and cultural differences within Africa that restrict cross-border investments.
There need to be integrated regional production chains within Africa, where Africa’s raw materials are processed into finished goods to be traded. Regional trading blocs— including the Tripartite Free Trade Area, which encompasses the East African Community, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa and the Southern African Development Community—would thus thrive, paving the way for a Continental Free Trade Area, that would produce and trade high value-added goods internally.
Greater market integration in Africa will lead to a significant reduction in the cost of doing business and alleviate some of the problems associated with securing work permits and labor mobility.
Over the long-term, Africa’s competitiveness will hinge to a great degree on how well we educate our young people. Often, the most talented Africans have sought educational advancement and careers overseas, but a combination of transformational educational technology, growing opportunities at home and the poor global economic climate could see this brain drain becoming a brain gain. Retaining talent, home-grown or otherwise, is critical. Policy that enables skilled Africans to work across our borders more easily will help achieve this goal.
Never have circumstances been more propitious for African business. A rise in disposable incomes, high rates of urbanization and a fast-growing working-age population speak of an emerging class of purchasers of consumer goods, financial services and infrastructure, as well as a potential source of manpower for industrialization and agricultural development.
Africans must explore ways to move beyond regional differences and competition to build Africa together from within, so that Africans at all levels become the primary beneficiaries of the continent’s growth.

Unite And Prosper

It’s a painting so recognizably Hodgins, this ambiguous portrait of power—the oversized suit; the patterns; the Matisse-ish blocks of bright color on the face; the thin moustache, its shape echoed in the shoestring tie; the festive bunting against an otherwise plain background. The portrait, A Gentleman from Mexico, is coming up for auction in Johannesburg this month. Sales estimates are as high as R600,000 ($76,600) .
When I think of Robert Hodgins, I think of the line from TS Eliot’s The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock: “There will be time, there will be time, to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet” because it prefaces the wonderful book simply titled Robert Hodgins; because he was 63 when he started painting seriously; because I called him about a year before he died—I wanted to do a video interview with him and he complained that his face was too wrinkled and nobody would want to look at it; because I’d met him at an exhibition and knew his face (he was wearing, I think, black-and-white striped trousers, he looked spry); and because the faces in his paintings are so often disguised, or only broadly suggested—they are brutish, they speak of baseness, they are ape-like, distorted, grotesque.
Hodgins captured something real in his paintings; a bit like Francis Bacon, but not the same: tortured but funny and sad too, something real about the world and about our particular Garden of Earthly Delights.
It’s how I’d buy and how first-time buyers are advised to buy: buy what you like, then if it doesn’t sell, it doesn’t matter; you’ll experience the intangible joy of owning an artwork to look at, to think about. But I’ll not be bidding at the next auction—the pace is too fast, the pressure too great. I’ll be merely watching the collectors, the experts, the investors—those who’ve been studying price histories as an indication of both how much to pay and how much to expect in future—auction databases are particularly useful for this, some going back as far as 1652.
Part of the anticipation around A Gentleman from Mexico is linked to the records Strauss &amp; Co has lately set for a Hodgins: starting with his A Seated Figure, Red Room that sold for R356,480 in May 2011; followed by Greenpiece ’99 No 3 (A Godson of the Godfather) selling for R612,700 in September 2011; and culminating in Igor Stravinsky &amp; Four Women that sold for R724,100 ($87,785) in February.
According to the fine art auctioneer’s managing director, Stephan Welz, the auction is likely to raise between R30 and R40 million ($3.6-5.1 million). Irma Stern’s Arab could fetch as much as R9 million ($1.15 million). Strauss &amp; Co sold Stern’s Two Arabs for R21,166,000 ($2.7 million) last year, the highest price achieved for any painting at auction in South Africa. Out of a total of 305 works on offer, 280 will be local, Alfred Thoba’s 1976 Riots among them.
&nbsp;
The auction takes place on Monday, June 11 at the Johannesburg Country Club in Woodmead.

Tag: Mexico

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

Executive Travel: Slikour’s Mexico

Unite And Prosper

Five Million Dollars At The Drop Of A Hammer