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The $100 Trillion Opportunity: The Race To Provide Banking To The World’s Poor

The award-winning men’s fashion designer on the business of fashion and dressing up no less than the South African president.

1. Who you would like to dress and why? 
I would like to dress our [South Africa’s] head of state Cyril Ramaphosa; that would be really good on my CV. But not only that, simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. When you look at ministers and presidents, they look simple yet sophisticated. What people don’t realize is the most simple outfits are the most difficult to make. You can’t over-accessorize, you just can’t over-design. You have to keep it very clean and minimalistic and also in harmony with the person’s character…So I am ready for that challenge.
2. As a designer, when is the right time to start expanding to retail? 
As designers, we all have different business strategies. What works for one designer does not necessarily work for the other. But the best time to start is when as you fully understand the business of fashion and have completed your internship. The one thing I always advise upcoming designers is to not be too much in a hurry to establish their brand, because you will end up being an overnight sensation.
3. What does it take to build a brand like Palse Homme? 
Blood, sweat and water from the moon. It’s a long journey that does not have milestones in between, the reason I say that is that it’s like running a marathon that does not have a finish line. You have to strive to get somewhere and the day you get there, that is when you get to retire.
4. How do you stay disciplined with your money? 
I am very prudent when it comes to my finances. As an entrepreneur, you cannot do it all by yourself… so I have outsourced my public relations and finance services to the experts.
5. What is your most expensive indulgence? 
Sunglasses. I once spent R6,000 ($450) on them. I am a hoarder of good sunglasses; I don’t even know how many pairs I have.
6. What is the biggest challenge you have faced in the fashion industry? 
It’s very difficult for designers to attract potential investors. People don’t understand that to be able to showcase my designs during fashion week, it means we have to pay to be part of fashion week, most importantly, we have to raise capital, and the overheads become extremely insane because you have to come up with money to be able to put together your collection. Simultaneously, when you do that, you are even unable to take orders. You are stressing about that fashion week night that will take only five to 10 minutes. Mind you, while you are working on that, you have overheads like salaries and rent.
7. What do you spend your money on? 
Traveling! I always say to people I enjoy being out of the city and the country. There is something about traveling that just shifts your mind-set and makes you more appreciative of what you have back home [South Africa]…You realize that we have it all, in terms of food to the most amazing hotels; the energy people exude is phenomenal. We live in a very beautiful country.

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7 Questions with Award Winning Designer – Paledi Segapo

The former CEO of First National Bank (FNB), Michael Jordaan, is launching a new app-driven bank early next year. He says Bank Zero will not inflict exorbitant fees on consumers.
“It is possible to create a mobile bank at a much lower cost than the traditional banks… If we can stimulate a savings culture in South Africa, as well as help individuals and businesses to waste less money on bank fees, it will help the economy grow,” he says.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2016/11/01/banking-at-your-fingertips/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Banking At Your Fingertips</a>
Jordaan has worked in the banking sector for over 20 years and will need all his experience as he becomes a competitor of his former employers.
The idea came about three years ago, over a good bottle of wine with his co-founder Yatin Narsai, who is the former head of retail at FNB. The two were inspired by the app-driven businesses such as Uber and Airbnb.
<div id="attachment_35972" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35972" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="wp-image-35972 size-medium" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/image001-1-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/image001-1-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/image001-1-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/image001-1-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/image001-1-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/image001-1-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/image001-1.jpg 1365w" sizes="(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px" />Micheal Jordaan. Photo Provided.</div>
“We hope to solve many of the everyday problems that individuals and businesses still have when making payments or investments,” says Jordaan.
They spent the last year applying for a banking licence with the South African Reserve Bank (SARB). This year, they are working on integrating the bank into the South African payments system.
In 2014, Jordaan launched MonteGray Capital to invest in disruptive start-ups. Now, his own business is set to shake up the banking industry.
“It has been an incredible privilege to start with a blank sheet of paper and develop a bank from first principles. We will have no legacy technology and no reliance on income streams that should not exist, like electronic banking fees. The functionality of the app will be far richer than any bank we have seen locally or abroad,” he says.
Though, like most banks, Bank Zero will have an app and a card, it will not have a branch.
“Branches are old-fashioned. If you could design a bank from scratch you would never think of doing it around paper and bricks and mortar. Just like WhatsApp and Facebook don’t have branches, the bank of the future will be mobile&#8230;” he says.
In addition to South Africa’s big four banks – FNB, Standard Bank, Absa and Nedbank – Adrian Gore’s Discovery is launching a bank later this year. Is there room in South Africa for another bank?
“South Africa has 33 banks and the sector is highly sophisticated and competitive. The fact that [South Africa’s] bank fees are high in international comparative terms means that there is still a lot of room to lift the competitive intensity,” says Jordaan.
To differentiate itself, Bank Zero will only cater to those with smartphones and tablets.
Jordaan is intent on making his bank technologically innovative. He learned this lesson the hard way when he was chairman of Mxit. The messaging app was blown out of the water by WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.
“It is a powerful lesson why businesses must build for the future rather than hang on to the past. That is why Bank Zero will be built for smartphones and tablets, rather than for dumb phones.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/homepage/2017/06/27/cash-falling-fashion-will-disappear-forever/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Cash is falling out of fashion – will it disappear forever?</a>
“In a few years the only phones that will be sold will be smartphones. Today there are entry-level smartphones available for less than $40 but this could still halve in three years,” he says.
If Jordaan had his way, in the near future, brick-and-mortar banks will be as redundant as those dumb phones.

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Banking On Technology: New Mobile Bank Set To Launch

The IMF says the global economy is likely to expand 3.7% in 2018. What is your personal investment philosophy? 
A 3.7% growth rate for the world economy is quite thought-provoking when considering that some emerging markets, such as South Africa, are not expected to grow by much more than 2% in 2018. The foundation of my personal investment philosophy is the elimination of debt, starting with the most expensive debt.
Is it mainly cash, stocks or mutual funds where there is growth? Any other preferred financial instruments? 
The organization that I work for restricts me from directly investing in shares, due to independence requirements, and so I generally do not invest in shares. The asset I find attractive is property, followed by unit trusts. Interest rates are currently low, and have been so for some time as a result of the pressure that the global economy has been under, and so I do not consider cash to be an attractive asset class.
What about real estate, art, jewelry, wines, watches…? Do you see them as worthwhile investments too? 
I strongly believe that real estate should form part of any wealth creation and preservation strategy. I have never invested in art, jewelry or wines (as an asset), and so cannot speak with any authority on these type of investments. Over time, and with the exception of the odd property bubble, real estate has proven itself to be able to generate inflation beating returns for relatively low risk. However, one should always be cautious of property bubbles and unrealistic expectations.
How do you balance your portfolio between liquid and fixed assets to build wealth? 
We are fortunate enough to live in a country that still makes it possible to hold a good balance of both, and where fixed investments can be liquidated with relative ease. This is not always guaranteed in other parts of the world. When one is still young, I believe a portfolio should always be weighted towards fixed assets, with the liquidity being prioritized as and when one gets nearer to retirement.
Is investment about getting rich or increasing savings? What are your own long-term goals? 
The first goal of investment should be to secure financial independence and the ability to sustain one&#8217;s lifestyle long after retirement. This does not necessarily translate into being wealthy. After all, wealth is a relative term. With people living longer and longer, the ultimate long-term goal is to have enough to live on after retirement without having to make significant changes to one&#8217;s lifestyle.
What returns do you target from your investments and how do you monitor it? 
As a minimum, one should target for one&#8217;s investments to outstrip inflation and to cover any investment and financing costs associated with that investment. I enlist the services of a broker to monitor performance. 
 
What do think the seven habits of successful investors must be? 
Perhaps not seven in total, but a good mentor once told me the following: 
1. Try and pay off your debt in the shortest possible time. 
2. Do not be greedy. 
3. Do not follow the herd. 
4. Invest for the long-term, and do not be fazed by short-term volatility. 
5. Life is not only about money.
Was there any one time when you thought your plans didn’t work, especially in a volatile market? 
All asset classes come with some exposure and risk. Very few people in the world can claim not to have been impacted in some way or another by the 2008 global financial crisis.
With longevity increasing and global billionaires investing in prolonging life, how best can one be retirement-ready? 
Retirement-readiness is a big problem in society today, and it is an accepted fact that people generally do not save enough for retirement. There is unfortunately no silver bullet to this. The simple fact is that one gets retirement-ready through exercising discipline in saving, and to start saving for retirement at the youngest possible age. Of course, one is always in control of one&#8217;s lifestyle.

Me & My Money: Dion Shango

The first time I visited Ghana’s capital, Accra, was in 2014 and it was an impressive experience. From the airport to the hotel, I met people who treated their country’s guests with dignity.
When it was time to hit the street market of Accra, I exercised caution because I was about to experience the discomfort that accompanies shopping in a typical African market where you must sweat it out under the sun, guard your wallet, and watch out for other types of social menace. My brain was very alert throughout my visit at the famous Makola Market. Within minutes, this unpleasant experience was replaced with one of pleasure as I entered the modern Accra Mall. The ambiance was relaxing and consumers were treated with respect.
The success of entrepreneurs in this economic system will be determined by how good they are at selling what consumers want, which includes respecting the dignity of people.
Customers crave a welcoming smile, honesty, respect, convenience and high-quality. Offering what matters to customers, but which is not always easy to find, will be where African entrepreneurs find success.
In Africa, there is a scarcity of love being expressed towards citizens. This is evident in the continent’s poor infrastructure, hunger, poor healthcare facilities, and lack of empathy from politicians. This is why Africans are longing for anything that represents dignity.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/investment-guide/2017/08/10/learn-walk-water-want-grow-start/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Learn To Walk On Water If You Want To Grow Your Start-Up</a>
This is one opportunity that entrepreneurs cannot ignore. Despite challenges, the retail business is growing in Africa. Malls are always busy, not necessarily because the products are cheaper, but because many Africans, for the first time, are shopping in a dignified atmosphere. The demand for foreign goods is simply a result of customers craving self-esteem.
In Nigeria alone, the growth of modern shopping malls is fast and expected to double with new malls springing up every month across the country. The same is said of Nairobi that has the largest square meter shopping malls in sub-Saharan Africa. What is driving this investment? One reason could be the replacement of the humiliating market experience with malls that are clean and comfortable. The foundation of this business model is love for customers, driven by the need to restore dignity to the day-to-day shopping experience.
If you visit Lagos, Nigeria, at the moment, one of the things you will notice is the massive investment in infrastructure. This will enhance human dignity and promote business. A typical example is the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) scheme in Lagos that is threatening the age-old yellow buses, popularly referred to as Danfo. In the BRT buses, customers are treated to air conditioning and comfortable seats. In a Danfo bus, you have to endure stifling heat and stinging insults from bus conductors.
Lagos public bus users will naturally flow to where the dignity of the consumer is respected at a competitive price. Similarly, an entrepreneur can either attract or repel people to their business. When you care about your customer, you will see increased patronage and profits grow.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/investment-guide/2017/10/30/west-africa-less-attractive-investors/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Why Is West Africa Less Attractive To Investors?</a>
In my years of reading and relating with other entrepreneurs, I have found that most strategies and models are vulnerable to disruption and prone to failure; but the love strategy never fails. Business disruptors are usually entrepreneurs who try to improve current systems. Since the law of service says that your reward in life is directly proportional to the value that you give to others, these people are able to attract commensurate value which sets them apart.
The reality is that a business that attracts consumers and investors alike is one that focuses on meeting the needs of people on a consistent basis. These needs go beyond the obvious to include comfort, dignity, respect, care and, ultimately, love. &#8211; Written by Victor Mamora

Love Comes Before Money

It’s a transaction that happens across Africa every day. In South Africa they call them blessers; around the world they’re known as sugar daddies. Men with deep pockets exchange money and gifts for sexual favors.
It may be a transaction as old as time but it acquired the euphemism of blessing.
It all started on social media: where women post about their expensive lifestyles on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
Last year, a Facebook page called BlesserFinder Mzansi (the nickname of South Africa) started – labelling itself as a travel/leisure page. This is one of hundreds of matchmaking sites for male and female blessers. And this is how it works.
The blesser sends an inbox message to the page describing the kind of person they want. They then explain the body features, age and how much allowance they are willing to pay.
The name and profile picture of the blessers are not revealed. The posts start with the words “Advert Alert”, then a screengrab of the description of what they want. Those interested, respond and are hooked up. Most of the men on the site describe themselves as travellers, who go on domestic and international trips and need women to go with them. They promise expensive clothes and shoes in return.
The administrators of the site, which has more than 50,000 followers, call for “morals to fall” and it is also open for same-sex hook ups.
Danger lurks in these sites as many are unregulated; women who respond to the Facebook messages could fall into the trap of human traffickers disguised as blessers.
A blesser can have up to 10 women.
“I did not choose to become a blesser; God appointed and blessed me to be a blesser,” says Serge Cabonge, a Congolese blesser, in an interview with South African news channel, eNCA.
Nothing is for free.
“When you ask for my number, I tell you straight away I can’t give you my number for free. You need to pay tax before you get it or you need to show me that you can do certain things. Why do I feel the need to do things for the girls? If you don’t do it, you’ll never be around them. For 75 percent of women in this country, without money there’s no love,” says Cabonge.
Cabonge takes the women on extravagant shopping sprees for perfume, designer shoes and clothes. He also takes them to fancy restaurants and pays their rent.
“When I pay for your rent, I expect to get benefits. I look for sex, nothing else,” says Cabonge.
But not all the women would be counting their blessings when they return from those expensive shopping trips.
According to a 2012 survey conducted by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), the blesser-blessee phenomenon is also considered be a key factor in the high HIV/Aids prevalence in young women, with the rate of new infections being four times greater for women between the ages of 15 and 24 than that of men.
These relationships thrive on gender and economic inequalities.
“It is also important to note that it is not only indigent women whom are affected but also educated graduates who are unemployed. This is also compounded by the fact that women are more likely than men to be unemployed,” says Kerry Oosthuysen, a lawyer for the Commission of Gender Equality.
“The economic and discriminatory environment faced by young women provides the optimal breeding ground for desperation, for quick means to a glamourous lifestyle of high-end bags and expensive dinners. We urge societies to instill a value system and ripe economic arena where young women are empowered to demand their rightful place within the labor force and relationships,” she says.
Churches are also against it.
“Transactional sex is an abomination to God. It never was his design for sex. Sex is to be enjoyed, not endured for financial gain, by the heterosexually married only. Fornication and adultery are spelled out clear as sins in many parts of the Bible. The Bible is not in support of the blesser-blessee phenomenon. The call for support of those in need is extended to Christians and everybody that has been blessed with riches but never in exchange for anything but blessings from God (Deuteronomy 15:11),” says Musawenkosi Dube, a believer from an Evangelical church in Swaziland.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2017/07/25/carry-child-someone/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Would You Carry A Child For Someone?</a>
<h1>The Blessed</h1>
<h4>Amanda Cele is an unashamed blessee. She vows to never date a penniless man.</h4>
It’s around 6PM on Friday at Booth Night Club in Sandton. A petite woman, in Valentino stilettos, a sequin silver dress and a Peruvian weave, walks in. Her name is Amanda Cele, and she is blessed by a man with money.
“I bought these shoes for R6,000 ($450) the dress was R1,800 ($135) and the hair was just too cheap, it was R2,500 ($190),” says the 27-year-old Cele.
Cele is one of thousands of blessees in Africa. She was born in Umlazi, just outside of Durban. She moved to Johannesburg at the age of six. Money makes her tick.
“I also like tidiness and intelligent people who challenge me to think and learn,” says Cele.
Blessee is a hard label to bear and one that she will likely carry for the rest of her life. She has been called all the names under the sun, including: gold digger, slut and prostitute. She is unashamed.
“I don’t care about critics. I’ve heard the worst comments on social media, even when I walk into a shisanyama or a mall I get nasty comments from people. I’ve heard people actually talk s**t about me and I let it go. Negative comments don’t bother me,” she says.
“I do get emotional sometimes and like any other woman I do scream, kick and shout. But then what makes me get up in the morning is the negative energy that I get from people, if I had it easy in life I wouldn’t be as strong as I am.”
“The only thing that bothered me was when the media published a story saying I was shot and found dead, when I was actually sitting at home watching TV.”
There’s no doubt her life has been tough. A few days after her 13th birthday, both her parents died. Cele was raised by her older sister.
“She had a baby and wanted to go to university but couldn’t. It was tough but it is things like this that make me not give up. Just because I grew up in a tough situation doesn’t mean I can’t be a better person.”
As if that was not enough, at 19, she became a mother.
“I had just finished school, I was staying alone and worked as a bartender, I did everything for myself; shopping and clubbing. I would steal money at the bar like nobody’s business. Then I fell pregnant, but I don’t have any regrets about it.”
A turning point was when her then boyfriend abused her physically and emotionally.
“I was like screw this relationship thing, I am done. There were times when I would look in the mirror and hated myself because I couldn’t see anything beautiful about me. I was 24 years old with a child; I couldn’t sit down and cry forever, I had to pick myself up, put on make-up and continue with my life.”
“I’m grateful I went through that relationship because now I look at men differently. I still think that I never really fully healed, I just need to get rid of the anger I have for men. There’s still bitterness inside me.”
“I had different types of men approach me and most of them would play with my feelings, fool around with me and after having sex they’d dump me. This got me thinking, ‘why can’t I get something out of this as well?’ We always have sex for mahala (free), why don’t we do it for our own gain?”
She has one main blesser and others on the side that she sees less frequently.
Cele met her first blesser on her way from work to a taxi rank. Her blesser agreed to give her R5,000 (around $400) a month.
Today, she receives an allowance of R20,000 ($1,500) a month. The oldest man she has dated was 72 years old.
“He’s dead now. He died a few months ago,” says Cele.
“I like them older. I can have a civil conversation with Jacob Zuma and we’d get along so well. I can’t stand men who are in their 30s.”
Cele knows her blessers are married.
“I know that they are not going to leave their wives for me, so let me eat their money. I’m happy with that. You need to be understanding when he’s not able to spend time with you and that’s the painful thing about it, especially when you start catching feelings.”
It can be dangerous.
In May last year, she was reported to have been assaulted by her blesser’s wife at her apartment in Sandton. Another myth, says Cele.
She calls what is frowned upon for being equivalent to prostitution a lifestyle choice – with no strings nor regrets. If Cele grows tired of one blesser, she replaces him with a new one.
“If I see that the insecurities are becoming a problem, I’d rather we stop seeing each other, but obviously I have to find a replacement before I leave. I wouldn’t leave just like that. I’ve been in a situation where the man got attached and the insecurities were getting too much,” says Cele.
“I know people who work seven-to-five and still have problems; you find that they have been working for years but still can’t afford a simple Toyota Corolla.”
“If I had to open my Facebook page now, 90 percent of the women there are people who are saying that they want blessers, and its working women, some are even married but going through a tough time.”
In the world of blessers, there are four levels. Cele is a level three blessee and her favorite holiday destination is Langkawi in Malaysia.
All she has to do is to be on call 24/7.
According to reports, some blessers are abusive and refuse to use condoms.
Cele has a certificate in beauty therapy that she says is lying under her mattress waiting for a rainy day. She wants to become an entrepreneur, like South African media mogul, Basetsana Kumalo.
“People don’t know that I have dreams and I’m actually working on them now. Being independent won’t mean I’ll stop being a blessee, that’s the part that people don’t understand.”
She vows to never date a penniless man.
“I have fallen in love with broke niggas because of the good sex. I don’t care about how he treats me; I am not going to eat good treatment. Now, I have to prepare for a gig and dress smart. Am I going to wear treatment? What will happen when the weave is worn out and needs to be changed?”
“Here’s my phone I got from a blesser who makes things happen,” she says picking up her black iPhone 7 worth R22,500 ($1,700).
Cele’s dream husband is Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote; she hopes he will read this article.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/life/2017/06/30/family-thought-lost-mind/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&#8216;My Family Thought I Had Lost My Mind&#8217;</a>
<h1>Blessing 101</h1>
Level one: A blesser buys you airtime, data and gives money for transport.
Level two: Buys you handbags; shoes from brands such as Louis Vuitton; Peruvian and Indian Remy weaves, as well as lace wigs.
Level three: Holidays to Dubai and Thailand, a monthly allowance of R20,000 ($1,500), a car and an iPhone.
Level four: Buys you a house under your name and gives you money to start a business. If you are lucky, he will introduce you to his wife.

‘Without Money There’s No Love’

The three hours I spent interviewing Terry Paine were steeped in the blood and sweat of the game. They were the kind of conversations rare in football these days – like the benefits of learning ball control with a tennis ball on the streets. It was football with laughter – full of the human frailties exposed by the beautiful game; rather than the vogue, yet false, notion of it as a cross between an academic subject and a computer game.
Paine is the sort of player that England used to be famous for: passionate about the game, down-to-earth, with that openness and innate decency born of growing up in a small town – Winchester, just north of Southampton in Hampshire. It is only that steely glint in his piercing blue eyes that reminds you that you wouldn’t stand a chance in a rough 50/50 tackle.
The bright sunshine on this winter morning, at a table outside an airy Rivonia café in Johannesburg, contrasts with a journey back to the dark days of vicious tackles on mud heaps amid the smokestacks and factories of industrial England. This is where Paine honed his craft as one of the fastest, toughest, trickiest and most enduring wingers England ever produced. He played 19 times for England, scoring seven goals, remarkably as a second division player. Paine won a World Cup in 1966, earned an MBE from the Queen and scores of scars along the way.
“In those days any tackle below the neck was allowed,” he chuckles. “But I never got seriously injured because I could jump.”
Paine’s trade as a professional footballer built a career that straddles the foggy days of bleak, windswept, terraces, where the fans had cigarettes in their hands instead of cell phones, to the glossy, money mad, 21st century game. He played 713 games for Southampton, the club where he began as a wide-eyed teenager, scoring 160 goals in 18 years.
The Premier League club made him honorary president, in 2012, and flies him from Africa for games in another world to the rough, tough one he knew at Southampton. In Paine’s playing days, a pre-match meal was steak, chips, a cup of tea and a slice of toast. In those days there were five people, including the manager, working at the club – now there are 300.
<blockquote>“What you have got to remember is it is business now, and big business. The sport is no longer the sport you and I knew and loved.”</blockquote>
At Southampton’s St Mary’s Stadium there is a swimming pool next to the dressing room with underwater cameras so physiotherapists can study injuries. The club uses special soap powder for washing the kit that reduces the chance of allergies or rashes. Every day, doctors swab the mouths of the players to see whether they are sick.
“If you sneeze nowadays they don’t play you – the medical side has really taken over. The big question is why are players getting so many injuries with all the modern equipment and pitches you’d want to carpet your front room with? No one can work it out.”
St Mary&#8217;s Stadium is a carpeted, cosseted world with one of the best youth academies in Europe that has produced a string of internationals, including Adam Lallana, Theo Walcott, Gareth Bale, Wayne Bridge and Luke Shaw.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/sport/2017/08/04/neymar-signs-psg-set-become-worlds-highest-paid-soccer-player-ahead-messi-ronaldo/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Neymar Signs With PSG, Set To Become World&#8217;s Highest-Paid Player Ahead Of Messi And Ronaldo</a>
When Paine was a talented 16-year-old playing for Winchester City, in the 1950s, there was no such thing as an academy. His father was a welder for British Rail and the young Paine spent a year as an office runner there before signing up for an apprenticeship in the body building shop in Eastleigh, a few miles out of Southampton, constructing railway carriages.
“I would have made the worst body builder, I was absolutely useless; football came to my rescue there,” laughs Paine.
<div id="attachment_33050" style="width: 264px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-33050" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class=" wp-image-33050" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/525723610-225x300.jpg" alt="" width="254" height="338" />Terry Paine gets presented to the crowd, during the World Cup qualifier between England and Andorra, as one of the members of the winning squad of the 1966 World Cup (Photo by AMA/Corbis via Getty Images)</div>
It was a colleague in the railway body shop that proved the catalyst for Paine’s career. Arsenal called  Paine to London for a trial and a fellow worker, a die-hard Southampton fan, phoned club manager Ted Bates to say he was about to miss out on what the newspapers, these days, would call a teenage sensation. What followed could have led to a court case in the uptight world of modern football.
“Ted Bates got in myself and another player, Colin Holmes, and locked the office door and said he wouldn’t open until we signed. Time was getting on and we were both starving so we signed just to get out.”
Bates sent a cheque for £25 to Winchester City to seal the transfer. Paine’s signing on fee was £10. He spent it on a bright red jersey on one of his first games for the reserves, in the Hampshire League, against Cowes on the Isle of Wight.
Money was scarce for the players, even though most clubs were pulling crowds in tens of thousands. The maximum wage was £20 in the winter and £17 in the summer; it wouldn’t have mattered if you had the dash of Ronaldo, you could have been paid the same as a loyal, lumbering, defender for Sheffield Wednesday.
“We always hoped we would play Ipswich just before Christmas because the Cobbold family that owned the club used to give all the players a turkey. In those days we struggled to buy a chicken for Christmas,” Paine recalls.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/sport/2017/06/12/fanon-soccer-radically-anti-capitalist-anti-commercial-anti-bourgeois/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Fanon on soccer: radically anti-capitalist, anti-commercial and anti-bourgeois</a>
This penury was one of the reasons hundreds of English footballers agreed to go on strike in January 1961. The vote among the members of the newly-formed Professional Footballers’ Association – the trade union for players – was 694 for and 18 against.
Paine and his Southampton teammates went to the pub across the road from the ground and voted 8-7 in favor of the strike to be staged on January 14, 1961. The Football League held firm saying removing the maximum wage would send many clubs to the wall. But the league caved in and, on January 18, the maximum wage was lifted.
“They could see the damage it was going to cause; it was no skin off their nose because it was the clubs that had to pay,” says Paine.
One of the first to cash in was the late <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2005/oct/20/newsstory.sportobituaries" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Johnny Haynes</a>, who played for Durban City in South Africa near the end of his career, the then captain of Fulham and England. His chairman and music hall comedian Tommy Trinder, as many believe in a publicity stunt, said he would pay Haynes £100 a week if the maximum wage was lifted. The day after, Haynes was in the boardroom and got his money.
Paine got his money too – £35 a week and spent his heavier pay packet on a Renault Dauphine, even though he couldn’t drive.
“The chief of police, who was a Southampton supporter, phoned the club and said: ‘Tell Terry Paine to pass his test, we know he is driving and doesn’t have a licence’. Weeks later, I passed.”
Innocent times maybe. But even then the big clubs were winking at corruption. It is still referred to as “tapping up” – the illegal approach to players without the knowledge of their club.
One summer a manager, from one of the big clubs up north, knocked at Paine’s door in Winchester.
“He pops up outside my house and says: ‘Oh Terry, I was on holiday down here and I thought I would come and see you’,” chuckles Paine.
Tottenham Hotspur, and its assistant manager Harry Evans, couldn’t leave Paine alone. Manager Bill Nicholson looked to strengthen his side, in the 1960/61 season, as it strove to become the first club in the 20th century to do the league and cup double.
“Harry Evans would be waiting outside at away games, whispering in my ear. It was all illegal but nowadays they have agents so it doesn’t matter.”
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/sport/2016/12/01/gifted-ghanaian-stranded-middle-england/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Gifted Ghanaian Stranded In Middle England</a>
Football agents and their vast fees they charge stick in Paine’s craw, as well as mine. Money that could keep a score of lower division clubs afloat. On this morning there is uproar in the English newspapers about the agent of Manchester United player, Paul Pogba, who charged £41 million to handle the move from Juventus.
“It probably took a few phone calls and a couple of meetings,” says Paine as he shakes his head.
<blockquote>“A line has to be drawn… All the clubs must get together and say ‘right we are going to cap this, don’t pay more than £20 million in a deal. But you know it’s a business now and the agents will say ‘if you don’t want to do the deal, we will go to Real Madrid’.”</blockquote>
Paine was one of the pathfinders for the highly-paid, sports car-driving, product-endorsing footballer of today. He first came to South Africa with fellow World Cup winner Bobby Charlton’s guest team, in 1979, and made his home in Johannesburg, in 1984, where he was offered a job as a football coach. These days he is a football pundit for a sports TV channel and often comments on players at the highest level, with half his talent, who earn more in a month than he did in more than 20 years.
“That’s always difficult; you have to be careful not to over criticize. You always try to give your honest opinion.”
His final verdict on the money-dominated business that is football?
“If I was playing now I would be a multi-millionaire… I think the players I played with would have thrived in the modern era – I wonder whether modern players would have thrived in our era?”
Spot on, from the king of the pin-point cross.

The Day Football Crossed To Business

In these trying financial and debt-ridden times, any money-making scheme sounds better than it should.
The purveyors of Ponzi schemes step in and millions of Africans hand over their savings. In a Ponzi scheme, Peter is robbed to pay Paul. It promises a return on investments, with a claim it is secure; but there is no real investment.
The operator of the scheme uses the money deposited by early investors to pay the first dividend, until investors feel comfortable and decide to invest more. Eventually the scheme falls apart as more cash is taken out and fewer people join.
Yoliswa May (not her real name), of Johannesburg, regrets the day she heard the word Ponzi.
“I should have listened to my inner voice,” she says after R30,000 (around $2,200) went down the drain.
“It’s upsetting to think of how much money I threw away. I lost more than I gained, because I reinvested my returns. I am like a person who walked out of their house with money and got mugged.”
Encouraged by family, she fell into the trap and joined MMM – a worldwide Ponzi scheme run by a convicted Russian fraudster Sergey Mavrodi, who swindled 10,000 Russians out of 110 million roubles ($4.3 million at the time).
“My sister told me of MMM [South Africa], because she had invested with it and received money back. The second time her investment matured, she showed me and said ‘join man, this thing works,’” she says.
<div id="attachment_31374" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31374" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="wp-image-31374 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/GettyImages-514978632-1024x703.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="703" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GettyImages-514978632.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GettyImages-514978632-300x206.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GettyImages-514978632-600x412.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GettyImages-514978632-768x527.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Mugshots of Charles Ponzi</div>
May, in a heartbeat, cashed in her savings and invested R20,000 ($1,520) in MMM and a month later had about R26,000 ($1,900) in her bank account.
“I was excited after I received the money. I believed that it works. If I didn’t receive the R26,000, I would have never invested again. I chose to invest more money because I was told the more you put in the more you get. So I did just that,” she says.
It promises 30% returns in a new world order with its own currency – the mavros – making it harder for law enforcement to pin it down. It works on a “get help and give help system”.
There is no centralized bank; one member transfers money to another.
May topped up her investment to R30,000 ($2,200). Then things got ugly.
“Two weeks later, our mavros were frozen. They still are. Apparently there was a panic, and a lot of people were withdrawing at the same time so there needed to be a restart,” says May.
“When everything was happening, at the back of my mind I knew that we were warned that things would end this way. The authorities warned us to stay away from MMM because once our money is gone, it would be untraceable, but we didn’t listen. However members remain positive that we will get our money back. It’s a lesson learned. I will never get involved with Ponzi schemes again.”
While May has her head in her hands, Sifiso Sithebe, of Durban, is on his way to the bank with a smile on his face.
“It changed my life. My life has just never been better,” he says.
Sithebe is a breadwinner for his wife and three children but was drowning in debt before he invested R1,000 ($78) in MMM.
“I needed to settle my debt. My family and I were struggling financially. But when I became a member, money was no longer a problem. I could do more than I had planned to with the money I received,” he says.
“I renovated my house and even bought myself a second-hand car. If I never joined, I would have never been able to do any of that; that is why I don’t regret joining.”
Loyiso Heart, a businesswoman from East London, went into MMM with the same hope.
Tired of low returns from the bank, she invested R20,000 ($1,500) in MMM and her confidence in the system grew.  Her next attempt, however, was disastrous.
“My mother and I got together and invested R50,000 ($3,900). Two months later our money went down the drain. The stupid thing that I did was to move to MMM Nigeria after the MMM South Africa saga… I was devastated.”
Heart says, for a long time after both systems collapsed, she had hope it would recover.
“I don’t think they will ever return,” says Heart now.
<img decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="alignleft wp-image-31375 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/GettyImages-599310874-copy-1024x681.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="681" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GettyImages-599310874-copy.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GettyImages-599310874-copy-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GettyImages-599310874-copy-600x399.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GettyImages-599310874-copy-768x511.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />
National Consumer Commission (NCC) spokesman, Trevor Hattingh, says Ponzi schemes are popular because the returns on investment are high, but so is the risk.
“Investing money in a pyramid scheme is a risk because such schemes do not offer any guarantee that you will get your money back. The returns are also not guaranteed, and because the scheme is not registered as a business, or have physical offices, you will not easily be able to track them down if they do not pay you out,” he says.
They are also illegal.
“You run the risk of being prosecuted by law enforcement and other regulatory authorities in South Africa because pyramid schemes are prohibited in terms of Section 43 of the Consumer Protection Act… Consumers should note that they have no legal recourse when a pyramid collapses and they run a risk of losing all their invested money. A pyramid scheme is essentially a get-rich-quick scheme and people join it to make a quick buck. In doing so they obviously do not consider the risks involved,” says Hattingh.
Hatting warns consumers to be cautious with their money.
“Consumers looking to invest money should do due diligence on schemes before deciding to invest in them. Do research about companies and most importantly establish if they are registered to offer financial services. The objective of [Ponzi schemes] is to defraud participants. People are drawn into participation and end up losing their money. There are always more people that lose money than those who gain or benefit from the scheme,” he says.
The problem is so widespread that African governments are discussing working together to get rid of the illegal schemes.
On its website, MMM claims that it is a “community” of people that are simply assisting each other when in need.  It claims it’s a stokvel. A stokvel is an investment society to which members regularly contribute an agreed amount and from which they receive a lump-sum payment.
Worryingly, MMM has all the signs of a Ponzi scheme but its participants are adamant it’s a stokvel.
Miziyonke Mtshali, COO of the National Stokvel Association of South Africa (Nasasa), says this is common.
“We have seen Ponzi schemes that pose as stokvels in order to gain acceptance and support in the communities. We usually learn of new schemes through customers who contact our call center to verify the registration of the schemes they have been approached to join,” says Mtshali.
“In order to gain the trust of the public, these schemes claim that they are members of Nasasa.”
Mtshali warns people to be vigilant as they work with the National Prosecuting Attorney (NPA) to fight such schemes.
Despite these investigations, Mavrodi warns his participants on the MMM South Africa website not to pay attention to ‘negativity’.
“We’re fighting against the world financial system, helping ordinary people, breaking the rules and declaring it expressly – what is to be expected then? It’s only natural they are going to throw all kinds of obstacles our way. Have you seen what happened during Trump’s election campaign when he decided to go against the rules? Have you seen the river of lies and slander the “fair and independent” media poured down on him? It’s about the same thing,” he says.
While Mavrodi claims that all MMM participants have a good story to tell, May is still waiting for her money.
<h3>The Godfather Of The Ponzi Scheme</h3>
Charles Ponzi is the Italian father of Ponzi schemes. He swindled about $7 million, in the early 1900s, from new investors to existing ones. 
Born in Italy in 1882, he moved to Boston, United States, in 1903 and worked as a clerk. He was no stranger to fraud and corruption. He scammed people by promising them a whopping 50% interest in 45 days, or 100% in 90 days. He earned $15 million and became a millionaire in just six months. 
His scam was based on the purchase of International Reply Coupons (IRC), which postal senders provide to receivers to pay for the cost of a reply. 
Justice eventually caught up with Ponzi and he was charged with 86 counts of mail fraud and faced a lifetime in jail. He pleaded guilty to mail fraud and spent 14 years behind bars. 
He died on January 18, 1949, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

GettyImages-87252136-copy

I’m Like A Person Who Walked Out Of My House And Got Mugged

It is a hot, windy summer’s day in Road Port, Harare. A Coca-Cola can blows merrily down the street. The can has freedom many others here envy. This place is seized by an oppressive gloom. It is filled by a crowd of people pushing, shoving, shouting, buying and selling. There is dirty water flowing down the street and litter fills the potholes. Yet, this grubby place is seeing more trade than Zimbabwe’s biggest banks. Here, the black market is king and the new bond notes are pawns that can be sacrificed.
“The bond notes came recently and we are business people so we have already seen an opportunity to make a bit of money. We don’t see bond notes as having any sort of value, if you have 100 bond notes, I will give you US$70,” says Tapiwa Makoni, an informal money trader.
The Reserve Bank may say bond notes are 1:1 to the US dollar; the free market says no.
“People are already getting desperate for US dollars, especially when they are traveling out of the country. They are happy to get any real currency from us at whatever rate,” he says.
It all began in May, when the Reserve Bank Governor, John Mangudya, announced the bond note. Mangudya argued the notes would ease the cash crisis that saw the US dollar become scarce. It was going to come in gradually.
“The Reserve Bank has established a US$200 million foreign exchange and export incentive facility which is supported by the African Export-Import Bank to provide cushion on the high demand for foreign exchange and to provide an incentive facility of 5 percent on all foreign exchange receipts, including tobacco and gold sale proceeds,” says Mangudya.
The bond notes don’t seem to be helping much; as they too are restricted. The withdrawal limit of bond notes is $50 per day and a $150 per week.
Despite the introduction of the bond notes – that were touted by authorities as a solution to the liquidity crisis – there seems to be little improvement.
“There is a shortage of bond notes and there seems to be less US dollars on the streets. We used to get US$100 a day, but now my bank gave me only US$50 and 25 bond notes. The money is not enough because I need cash for my buying and selling business,” says a Harare trader who refused to be named.
Neville Mandimika, Africa Strategist at Rand Merchant Bank, says the bond notes are non-convertible.
“It is by decree that it is 1:1. The problem we are facing now is that because of the misunderstanding, fear and mistrust currently circulating in the economy, the US dollar is beginning to trade against itself because actual cash is more valuable than money in the bank because of the cash shortages. So [1:1] is of theoretical value but on the street, the market is saying otherwise,” says Mandimika.
According to Mandimika, the panic and kneejerk reaction has seen people holding on to their US dollars and moving it out of the country, which mitigates against the cash crisis being eased.
“That’s why the campaign by the authorities has been to reassure the market that this is not a fully-fledged return of the Zimbabwe dollar… The bond notes will spur inflation but not hyperinflation; at least we are not there yet… Everyone is trying to adjust.”
People have to adjust to it. If you have banked money in US dollars, you may get it in bond notes. This is not a currency and can’t be traded for another currency. Mandimika says Zimbabwe is likely to continue decelerating on a multi-quarter basis because of the debilitating liquidity crisis that continues to grip it.
“The continuation of the liquidity crunch has fueled the rise of the parallel market (US dollars are trading at a premium to the bond notes) which will likely add to the inflationary pressures. Although the latest inflation prints (November 2016), shows the year-on-year figure is still negative but month-on-month numbers suggests renewed inflationary pressure. This will likely be the trend for this year in the absence of a more permanent solution to the liquidity crisis,” he says.
It means the bond notes have been met with mounting anger and questions of legality. The city is full of protest banners mounted on brick walls, advertising billboards have #NoToBondNotes plastered all over them. Peaceful protesters are thrown into jail. One of them was Fadzayi Mahere, an advocate of the High Court and Supreme Court of Zimbabwe.
“Peaceful demonstrations are a constitutional right under Section 59. A demonstration had been organized by another entity, we believed in the cause. Unfortunately the organizers got abducted so the demonstration couldn’t happen,” says Mahere.
Once Mahere and her friends got news of the abduction, they decided to sit peacefully in the park. A handful of police came and ordered her and seven others into police vehicles.
“[Our rights weren’t read to us] in fact, we weren’t informed of the charges we were facing at that time. As citizens we are required by the law not to resist arrest so we went with them to the police station&#8230; We weren’t told about what charges we were facing until later on in the evening. We were asked to pay an admission of guilt fine and as a matter of principle, I was not prepared to admit guilt… the charges we were faced with were unfounded and trumped up,” says Mahere.
This meant spending the night in a filthy cell at the Harare Central Police Station. The tiny cell is cold and dark. There are no mattresses and blankets are infested with insects. The toilet is broken and water and urine floods the floor where some have to sleep, and no sanitary towels available.
“This is degrading to anyone. No one should be subjected to such conditions, even if you are held in cells pending trial. It was a long night. I am grateful I was in a group so there were moments of humour,” she says.
Mahere says, as unlawful as their arrest was, so are the bond notes. She says the term “bond note” is not defined anywhere in the Reserve Bank Act or the Banking Act.
“Bond note is not a term of conventional economics but an invention on the part of the Governor. It is clear that the law does not empower the Governor to create this, with respect, fictitious money,” says Mahere.
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However, Patrick Chinamasa, Minister of Finance and Economic Development, argues, in a statement, that under existing legislation, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has the power to issue bond notes.
“I need to highlight that under existing legislation the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has power to issue Bond Notes in terms of the provisions of Section 7 of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Act Chapter (22:15). The Export Incentive Scheme could also have been introduced through Section 2 of the Exchange Control Act (Chapter 22:05) which empowers the President to make regulations relating directly or indirectly to exchange transactions and the control of imports into and exports from Zimbabwe, and payments,” says Chinamasa.
Mahere, however, argues that the Reserve Bank Act authorizes issuing Reserve Bank vouchers, not bond notes, when there is a shortage of currency of any denomination to pay civil servants or employees of the state.
“The shortage must be shown to require urgent action in the interests of public order or the economic interests of the state. The justification given by the Governor for the creation of bond notes is, therefore, inconsistent with section 42B of the Reserve Bank Act. The Governor’s justification for the curious move relates to foreign exchange stabilization and an unsatisfactory attempt to ease the cash crisis.”
“Within a few months, because we are such an import driven economy, when people are trying to replenish their stock, we will see what happens, we will see what our government does when it has the scope of printing money. We have seen that in 2008,” she says.
Mahere adds that her problem is not the bond note itself but the refusal by government to address issues at their root and attend to the fundamental causes to economic problems in Zimbabwe.
According to the Reserve Bank, the Retailers Association of Zimbabwe, fuel companies, representatives of the various business associations and the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe agreed on the use of bond notes as a medium of exchange in the country. Most traders are accepting the bond notes but worry about their future.
“I hope this will not be a repeat of 2008 where government will start printing money that is actually worthless. I have to buy my stock in South Africa because no company makes the hardware I sell here. I heard some petrol stations are already rejecting it,” says Clive Moyo, a cabinet and coffin handle trader.
The argument goes on. What is clear is people are buying and selling pieces of paper they aren’t sure about.

It Is Bond Belief

They call them zama zamas which means ‘those who try their luck’. Wearing his traditional Zulu earrings, looking hirsute with whiskers on his face, this is Dumisani Ngcamu, otherwise known as Ntshebe – ‘the bearded man’. He is an illegal miner and has been risking his life for eight years trying to scrape a handful of gold dust underground to support his eight kids. He works in abandoned mineshafts around Johannesburg, a city in South Africa built on gold.
“You see, here in Johannesburg, gold is everywhere but people don’t know that. Sometimes you don’t have to go deep, it’s closer than you think,” says Ngcamu.
A trip to Johannesburg from his village Nquthu, in the KwaZulu-Natal province, looking for greener pastures, led Ngcamu to illegal mining even though he never worked in a mine. Immigrants from neighboring Zimbabwe, the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo and Mozambique introduced Ngcamu to this industry as a marketer of syndicates.
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“I was earning R30 ($2.20) a day, I did not mind how small it was because I had food on my plate. I knew this was a serious job when I got arrested, but luckily for me I had learned every process of mining. I knew where to find gold,” says Ngcamu.
After he was released he went on his own and started mining in built-up areas.
“I mined within near distances, I reached barriers where you would find houses and firms, I then realized I could make more money in abandoned mines. That’s when I started working with other people,” says Ngcamu.
It all revolves around a shanty town called Denver, near Johannesburg, where most of the residents are from the KwaZulu-Natal. Here, shacks and shady corners are full of idle youth who drink to drown their sorrows and clusters of people playing chess and cooking meat. The majority of people in this area are the poorest of the poor and try to make a living through illegal mining and crime.
“Whenever government officials wanted a gunman, they knew Denver was the perfect place. R5,000 ($370) was enough for criminals here, but today you won’t find a single criminal because everyone is involved in mining,” says Ngcamu.
“You would hear that a policeman has been shot at Denver hostel on a daily basis, no police officer would enter this place back in those days, but today we are able to communicate with them.”
The troubles on the surface match the problems underground. There’s fighting between factions and theft among rival groups of illegal miners.
“They used to rob our stuff. When you’re down there you need to act like an animal. Things I encounter down there are devastating. I saw someone being hit with a hammer on the head; if you are a handsome young man, without a beard like mine [laughs], they would rape you and kill you. I was lucky not to get caught. Shootings and a person being lost is common in there.”
Ngcamu survived a horror encounter with a rival faction.
“You even have slaves. They catch you, tie you up like you a goat, hold you hostage and make you work for days. Your job would be to work and you deliver the gold dust up until the exit point. If you say you tired, they kill you, and luckily I managed to escape,” he says, while chuckling.
He says foreigners are most prone to such torture.
“When I look at this country, foreigners are not seen as humans, they are seen as animals. Those [foreigners] who I mined with were mostly victims of such things. If it is a group of mixed nationals, then things will get sour.”
Such experiences led Ngcamu to appoint people to act as security guards who would look out for them while they dig. He knew where to find them.
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“You know who is a criminal in your area so we appointed criminals from Denver. We told them the money they will make with us is better than what they would make from crime.”
“Now we are free, because we know people are looking out for us. Everyone is benefiting. Police are happy because there is no crime,” he says.
Illegal miners even pay the guards with a plate of gold dust after they have returned. As it is a community business, women and children are also involved. Women are mostly employed in the manufacturing of the gold. They are tasked to use a piece of equipment called a phenduka – a hand driven cylinder.
Iron balls and water are added inside the perforated phenduka stand. After spinning, the water is sifted into plastic buckets until liquid mercury is visible when being strained. The end process is burning the liquid mercury until it becomes solid gold, then it goes to the market.
David van Wyk, a mining analyst who has studied illegal miners for decades as a researcher for the Bench Marks Foundation, knows the lives, challenges and syndicates of zama zamas. You’d be forgiven if you mistook him for Albert Einstein with his vast knowledge.
“In Africa, before colonialism, people did small-scale mining. Traditional African mining was small scale artisanal mining all over Africa. You still find it in Burkina Faso, it also happened around Great Zimbabwe. If we want a situation that is not so disorderly, that is no so violent and unsafe, we need to pass regulations for small-scale mining and allow it to take place,” he says.
According to Van Wyk, small-scale mining started 200 years ago, before big companies started operating, but it is seen as a threat to the weakening South African mining industry.
“As we have a downward curve in the availability of gold mining, we have an upward curve in small-scale mining.”
“Economically their costs are very low, they do not use a lot of water they do not use a lot of electricity, they don’t use a lot of technology,” says Van Wyk.
He believes the reason there is factional fighting is because of the syndicates the zama zamas work for. Syndicates struck a deal with the zama zamas to buy gold from them; they then sell the gold to the formal economy. They provide zama zamas with food and water and make deductions when workers, like Ngcamu, return from digging. Van Wyk, though, says some of the syndicates are against illegal mining.
“My allegation against the Chamber of Mines, who are always making a noise about zama zamas, is that their people are involved. My second problem with the Chamber of Mines is that they represent monopoly mining, that’s why they are very much against zama zamas.”
“In South Africa, if you are black and you shoot an animal, you are a poacher, but if you are white and shoot an animal you are a trophy hunter; same applies to mining.”
The Chamber of Mines of South Africa refutes the claims.
“It is simply a mischievous claim. As is the case in most countries around the world, mineral resources in South Africa belong to the state and may only be mined by licensed operators. It doesn’t matter whether it is small-scale, medium-scale or large-scale mining, the point is, it needs to be regulated,” says Charmane Russell, spokesperson of the Chamber of Mines.
“If we formalize zama zamas and actually create laws and regulations and organize them into cooperatives, then there can be training in mine health and safety for these guys,” says Van Wyk.
Mines Rescue Services has been rescuing trapped illegal miners for the past 92 years.
“The challenges we face is that there are no maps, no mine plans. We do not know where to go. We work in extremely dangerous conditions. That’s why we have to work with illegal miners to guide us to a place where these guys are trapped,” says Christo de Klerk, CEO of Mines Rescue Services.
De Klerk and his crew use specialized equipment to roam underground and search for illegal miners. He believes the conditions illegal miners face is inhumane.
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“If you look at the amount of the bodies we have recovered, a lot of those bodies were killed during the faction fighting; these people are armed and very dangerous.”
“Authorities have to get together to stop them, we have to stop the inflow of illegal immigrants, we have to try and close all these holes, the prosecution of these people is important but the main thing is that the syndicates who buy gold and sell the gold must be infiltrated and stopped,” says De Klerk.
Ngcamu disagrees.
“Government needs to rethink things; they shouldn’t listen to those who say shafts should be closed because it is risky. We know it is risky; they should stop acting act like they are in sympathy with our lives when they just want to prevent us from getting small fortunes. We’re hungry, they should let us eat,” says an irate Ngcamu.
Not far from Denver, Ngcamu takes us to a place where they first started mining. It seemed like a long day at work for the security guards who were looking out for the illegal miners. Not far away is a metals factory. Pointing towards it, Ngcamu has a story to tell.
“You see when they started operating here, they would call the police on a daily basis to come and arrest us for mining next to their company. Luckily for us, the officers were black, they were our brothers, and they understood us. Criminals used to steal their metals, but now it has all stopped. They do their business we do ours, it’s just a mutual agreement,” he says.
After some explanation and pleading, one of the security guards who didn’t want to be identified agrees to speak and sugarcoats how they deal with criminals.
“We tell them what they’re doing is not right and should never repeat it. A lot of people know what gold looks like so they would be taking chances to undermine us,” he chuckles.
“You see, if government closes these mines that would mean he has killed all of these guards and their families. That would make government responsible for deaths of these people,” says Ngcamu.
The whole country was in shock as scores of miners were rescued in an abandoned mine in Langlaagte, on the outskirts of Johannesburg. Four dead bodies were recovered in a day that proved to be the last throw of the dice for illegal mining, events there brought about a lot of public debate on how to stop it.
“What happened in Laanglagte doesn’t deter me; whenever you enter a certain job you will face challenges. Even in firms, you can die reading a newspaper; you can die even though you occupy a top position. So what happened to our brothers won’t make us cry, to our brothers’ families we send our condolences but we expect anything down there. When we go down we pray, when we return we pray,” says an unapologetic Ngcamu.
The mine in Laanglagte is abandoned by Central Rand Gold, leaving opportunities for Ngcamu and his crew to make a living. Van Wyk believes Central Rand Gold, listed on the in the London Stock Exchange, should never have received a mining licence in the first place. The mineshaft is situated at George Harrison Park which has been a national monument since 1946. Next to the park is the 99-year-old school, TC Esterhuysen Primary School, with its football pitch 10 meters from the mine pit.
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“The mine did not have water, so they used the school’s water, which is illegal as well. When we talk about illegal mining, we always blame zama zamas, but people don’t know how many big monopoly mining operations, listed on the London Stock Exchange, that are operating illegally and flaunting the laws of this country,” says Van Wyk.
Ngcamu says nothing will stop them from mining.
“If I stop, what will I say to my two kids at university? People need to be fed, for me stopping is not an option.”

They Dig, They Die

At’s a regular weekday in Kigali’s lively central business district where single-storied shop tenements, with tables heaving with African artefacts, jostle with gleaming commercial towers. On the arterial street by the high-rise Bank of Kigali, vendors hawk cheap clothing, and shops smelling of dust and sweat sell colorful jewelry and bric-a-brac. Most have a cash-only policy, a far cry from the bank next door, which, in its sprawling air-conditioned halls, doles out digital payment solutions for Rwanda’s consumers.
<div id="attachment_28650" style="width: 616px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-28650" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="wp-image-28650 size-full" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Daniel-Monehin-Division-President-MasterCard-Sub-Saharan-Africa.jpg" alt="" width="606" height="902" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Daniel-Monehin-Division-President-MasterCard-Sub-Saharan-Africa.jpg 606w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Daniel-Monehin-Division-President-MasterCard-Sub-Saharan-Africa-300x447.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Daniel-Monehin-Division-President-MasterCard-Sub-Saharan-Africa-600x893.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Daniel-Monehin-Division-President-MasterCard-Sub-Saharan-Africa-202x300.jpg 202w" sizes="(max-width: 606px) 100vw, 606px" />Daniel Monehin Division President MasterCard Sub-Saharan Africa</div>
But the services-savvy Rwanda is proving it’s ahead of most African countries on innovations, not just in the financial space, but in general. As laid out in its Vision 2020 strategy, it aims to include 90% of its citizens in the financial mainstream. ‘Cashless Rwanda’ are the new buzzwords in the corridors of power.
At the World Economic Forum held here in May, Rwanda’s government signed a deal with Mastercard, the technology company in the global payments industry, to promote the move to a cashless economy. High on Rwanda’s agenda is digitization of school fees and national healthcare claim payments.
At the announcement, Francis Gatare, CEO of Rwanda Development Board (RDB), had said: “We are confident Rwanda’s partnership with Mastercard will be beneficial to the country and its citizens as we are implementing our vision of becoming a knowledge-based service-oriented economy. I believe this can only be achieved as we embrace the fourth industrial revolution.”
The MasterCard Center for Inclusive Growth has committed up to $1 million over the next three years to advance economic growth and financial inclusion in the land of a thousand hills.
The country, which famously triumphed over tragedy since the genocide against the Tutsi in 1994, is now up for the challenge of embracing technology to overcome concerns like financial literacy and inclusion of the rural poor, who are mostly still reliant on cash.
How big is the cash economy in Africa?
“According to a recent McKinsey report, two billion people remain outside of the formal economy. Various studies confirm over 90% of retail transactions in sub-Saharan Africa are in cash,” says Daniel Monehin, who leads Mastercard’s business across sub-Saharan Africa as Division President.
“In Rwanda, only 42% of adults own a financial account, whether formal or informal… We know that government cannot achieve financial inclusion alone, and neither can the private sector – we need to work together.”
In September, Bank of Kigali, RwandaOnline and Mastercard launched Irembo – an online payment solution to make online payments safer, simpler and smarter.
RwandaOnline developed Irembo, including six government engines, allowing Rwandans to make online payments to any of these government entities through the use of debit, credit or prepaid payment cards. Residents can pay for driver’s licenses, birth certificates, and identity cards. The portal also allows travelers to Rwanda to apply and pay for travel visas.
<div id="attachment_28649" style="width: 760px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-28649" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="wp-image-28649 size-full" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Raghu-Malhotra-MM.jpg" alt="" width="750" height="499" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Raghu-Malhotra-MM.jpg 750w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Raghu-Malhotra-MM-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Raghu-Malhotra-MM-600x399.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px" />Raghu Malhotra</div>
“At Mastercard, we don’t limit our thinking to ‘traditional’ versus  ‘new’ – we explore what is going to meet the needs of a market and its citizens as there is not one solution that can meet all needs. Rather our focus is on creating a ‘world beyond cash’, developed through partnerships and driven by advances in technology,” says Monehin.
Indeed, Rwanda’s aim for a cashless culture is good news for the city’s new innovators and entrepreneurs.
Afshon Wallace, the 26-year-old founder of 250 Taxi, a web-based transport solutions provider connecting riders and taxi drivers using a mobile app and website, launched earlier this year, says it’s encouraging. Wallace says he caters mostly to expatriates and is witnessing growth of up to 100%.
“The cashless payments ecosystem in Rwanda is still in its infancy. The government’s push for paperless payments through the smart Rwanda master plan has been a great boost and great sensitization programs are being carried out by many players,” says Wallace.
But there are myriad challenges.
“The population lacks the adequate financial awareness on cashless payments. We have had less than three percent of our users asking whether they can use cards.”
Wallace says compared to the M-Pesa service in neighboring Kenya that has seen great success, locally, mobile money is still to catch up.
Yet, products such as Tap&amp;Go (smart cards enabling cashless payments) on Kigali’s public buses are becoming popular.
“We have huge government support when it comes to e-payments,” says Patrick Buchana, the 26-year-old CEO of AC Group, who started Tap&amp;Go in 2015.
David Karuletwa, the Rwandan-Canadian COO of RSwitch, a financial interoperable solutions company, whose passion is financial inclusion using fintech, says Rwanda is primed to be a hub for financial services.
In 2010, RSwitch launched Rwanda’s first debit card issued by banks in Rwanda and later rebranded it to SmartCash card.
“Rwanda and the entire pan-African market are paving the way for financial inclusion using mobile banking and payment solutions,” says Karuletwa.
From paper to e-payments, cash to cashless, Rwanda’s bank notes are moving out of the wallet into the world of www.

From Wallet To www

Its 6AM and Clive Makumbe just arrived in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare. He has traveled 300 kilometers, from his small farm in Masvingo, just to withdraw money. Banks in his town are dry as Zimbabwe suffers cash shortages. When we bump into each other, this is the sixth bank he has tried to get money from.
“I am preparing for the planting season because that’s how we survive. I ordered farming supplies but I haven’t been able to make payment for over a week because there is no money, that’s why I decided to take a bus and come here,” says Makumbe.
Once again, he is out of luck. This bank has money, but he can only withdraw $100 per day. He needs $2,200 to pay a supplier.
His only hope is mobile money.
“I am going to ask friends to lend me whatever they have, so that I can give my supplier at least half of the money I owe, so I can begin working. I know if they send it via EcoCash, I will be able to get it because EcoCash always has cash, unlike the banks.”
Like most mobile money services in Africa, EcoCash helps the unbanked save and move money through their phones.  According to Makumbe, in Zimbabwe, it’s better than a bank.
“Banks are unreliable. It’s so bad that we can’t send money out of the country even via internet banking. You have to do long applications to even be able to do that. Most of our suppliers are out of the country and paying them is a nightmare and some of them don’t want to do business with us anymore.”
With EcoCash, Zimbabweans can withdraw money from any MasterCard ATM in the world, they can make payments to one another through the mobile service and they often have cash available for withdrawal. Now they can also save some money on their phones.
“Zimbabwe has a poor savings culture. People don’t trust banks. A decade of hyperinflation left people’s savings in bank accounts wiped off to almost zero and now with bond notes coming, the same will happen.”
With EcoCash’s mobile wallet, which already has more than 1.5 million customers earning interest on all amounts starting from as small as $1, Makumbe says he and his friends always know they have money that they have access to when needed.
“We have a club of six where we each contribute $50 a month. We can track all transactions through our phones and when we need the money, at least there is a guarantee that you can get all of it without limits. We plan to buy groceries and share them at the end of the year,” says Makumbe.
“Group savings culture for specific purposes or asset investment is a common phenomenon in Zimbabwe, but the target segment is largely unrecognized and underappreciated. EcoCash Savings Club is intended to reward this diligent savings behavior, as well as become an enabler for access to other services, such as mobile credit. It also offers an opportunity to extend EcoCash mobile money agency businesses to groups of people that are creditworthy, but have been long marginalized,” says Natalie Jabangwe-Morris, Chief Executive of EcoCash.
Mobile money services thrive in most parts of the continent.
According to Sebastian Wolf, a Uganda-based economist for the International Growth Centre, the increase in mobile money transactions has increased the rate at which money is used as well as the money multiplier.
“This has made inflation in East Africa more difficult to predict and would argue for choosing inflation targeting over reserve-money targeting in East Africa. In terms of inflation, mobile money seems to bring gain without pain,” he says.
By making small commissions on millions and millions of transactions, mobile money is big business in Africa. Data also shows big opportunities for boosting financial inclusion among women and poor people, according to the Global Findex.
For MTN, a South African mobile service provider, the product’s revenue increased by 40.8% and performed well in Uganda, Ghana, Rwanda and Benin. Although successful in most parts of the continent, mobile money has failed in South Africa. MTN has pulled the plug on its local mobile money business. The problem is three quarters of South Africans have bank accounts. Vodacom also scrapped its M-Pesa service in South Africa after a disappointing take-up among users.
“Vodacom’s decision is based on the fact that the business sustainability of M-Pesa is predicated on achieving a critical mass of users. Based on our revised projections and high levels of financial inclusion in South Africa, there is little prospect of the M-Pesa product achieving this in its current format in the mid-term,” says Shameel Joosub, Vodacom CEO in a statement.
It was a smart decision.
Earlier this year, Vodacom only had 76,000 active users in South Africa compared to 9.7 million mobile money users across Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique and Lesotho at the end of 2015. Revenue from M-Pesa in the financial year 2015/16 grew by 19% to R1.63 billion ($114 million), while Vodacom’s group revenue climbed 7.5%.
“We remain of the opinion that opportunities exist in the financial services environment and we will continue to explore these,” says Joosub.
And they are.
In other parts of the continent, Vodacom is trying to squeeze more revenue out of the financial service sector by encouraging users to sign up for M-Pawa, a mobile banking service. Already, it says, 15% of its money base is signed for M-Pawa. In Bangladesh, the fastest-growing financial services company is a mobile money provider called bKash. Less than four years after launching, it processes about two million transactions per day, with a total value of nearly $1 billion each month.
“By 2030, two billion people who don’t have a bank account today will be storing money and making payment with their phones. And by then, mobile money providers will be offering the full range of financial services, from interest-bearing savings accounts to credit to insurance,” says Bill and Melinda Gates in their annual letter.
With mobile money, people like Makumbe may not need to go back into town ever again.

Banking At Your  Fingertips

For over 15 years, I’ve raised money for, invested in, and advised the management of African companies. I’ve worked in sectors as diverse as transportation, agriculture and manufacturing. I’m an advocate for Africa, but I’ve learned some painful lessons along the way.
When I first started operating in Africa it reminded me of a Salvador Dali painting where everything warped and melted into each other. The turmoil wasn’t entirely unexpected though. I had read the negative press over the years: government corruption, widespread poverty, hunger and the aggressive tumors that would metastasize into Al Shabaab and Boko Haram. Even as someone who grew up in New York, doing business in Africa scared me. On Wall Street, Africa was categorized as an “exotic” market; erratic and unpredictable with a disproportionate risk/reward ratio.
You could win really big if you were smart and lose even more if you were unprepared. That was the opportunity. In those days, most emerging markets bankers in the United States (US) would only look at deals in some of the more popular countries, like Brazil or China. But Africa? An investment in Africa would have had many of the so-called experts rolling their eyes at you. The reality was that most folks on Wall Street could barely name five countries there. Asking them to find Djibouti on a map was like asking them to find the hair they had on their head 20 years earlier. That’s when I realized that operating there would differentiate me from everyone else. I was either going to be very right or very wrong. Surely, I thought, if I could operate in New York I could easily do business in Kenya or South Africa. Right?
Wrong.
In the early days, we just couldn’t get it right. As naïve Americans, we were culturally blind toward Africa. It slowly started to occur to us that Africans were unique, depending on the country they were from. Because of our naivety, we were ill-equipped to do business there. Almost every one of our early deals collapsed. Every conversation was misread. Everything we thought would happen, didn’t. And getting paid was as easy as trying to tie your shoes with your teeth.
As time passed, we gradually began to make progress. We congratulated ourselves on finally figuring out the “science” of doing business in Africa. We convinced ourselves that we had arrived – we hadn’t. Closing new debt and equity investments was almost impossible and we continued to struggle and question our methodologies.
Then the epiphany occurred. What dawned on us was that doing business in Africa is not a science, it’s an art.
The African market is full of abstractions and contradictions. It was nearly impossible to create an investment thesis or structure a capital raise like we did in New York. Projecting cash flows and investment returns was like shooting at a moving target. The traditional rules of investing didn’t apply in Africa. It became clear that, if you wanted to do business on the continent, it is more about the people than the transaction. Relationships and trust needs to be developed.
As they say, when in Rome, do as the Romans do. So that’s what we did, except we did it in Africa. We started to adapt our thinking so we were seeing things through an African lens, not an American one. Though it may sound counter intuitive, my African education didn’t come from doing deals there or looking at income statements and balance sheets. It came from dealing with the people – one on one. But not as corporate executives or managers or board members, just as people.
There are a few truths that I Iearned on the continent over the years. In Africa things move slowly, very slowly. What you see is never what you get, you need to adjust as you go. Be ready to negotiate, and renegotiate. Remember, you are an outsider and are in their house. The world you come from and how you do things doesn’t matter. Lastly, respect their diverse cultures.
Africa is a complex continent full of idiosyncrasies most westerners don’t understand. But should you be bold enough to bring your business there remember this essential lesson: when in Africa, do as the Africans do.

Business In Africa Is An Art Not Science

It was a strange and unsettling experience on a Thursday night; easier to shrink from than describe.
It was Walter Magaya’s first South African crusade at the Pretoria Showgrounds; 54 kilometers from Johannesburg. The crowd sang and danced as the Zimbabwean founder of Prophetic, Healing and Deliverance (PHD) Ministries took the stage.
As we sat, there was a sudden, soul-rattling chill; accompanied by shrieks. A woman ran through the congregation. Speaking in a strange language no one could understand. She sounded like two different people; one male, one female. She lost control.
“Leave me, Leave me!” she screams, as Magaya’s ushers shepherded her to the front of the stage; closer to the charismatic preacher.
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In a green shirt and jeans, the woman squirmed on the ground; tearing her hair. Her eyebrows knit as she appeared consumed by rage.
“Leave me alone!” she shrieked; trying to bite the ushers’ gripping hands.
From the stage above booms the voice of Magaya.
“Come out, come out,” he says, attempting to command the demons he believes are in the frantic woman. The woman vomits.
There are 50 more people; screaming, rolling on the ground and vomiting.
This is the theater of the faithful on which the curtain went up with the arrival of Magaya, at OR Tambo, two nights before. Hundreds filled the Johannesburg airport to welcome him. They sang, danced and carried large posters like he was a rock star or politician.
This is more than worship. It’s also a thriving business that’s turning over millions every year. People risk their lives to get close to Magaya. Last year, 11 people died in a stampede during a crusade in Kwekwe in Zimbabwe.
“We have put measures in place to make sure something like that never happens again,” says Magaya.
On this night in Pretoria, people ran to the stage to offer cash for the answer of prayers.
This frantic scene is being played out across Africa. The commercialization of churches is arguably one of the fastest growing businesses in the continent.
Magaya claims to pull 200,000 people every week to his Harare church. Many of the faithful dig deep into torn pockets. Most earn about $350 a month; yet they pay handsomely for this spectacular display of power from above.
Money is scarce in Zimbabwe right now. According to independent Harare-based economist, John Robertson, the total workforce in the formal sector is about 700,000 people; out of a population of 14 million.
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“We employed that number in 1968 when the population was one third of its present size. So employment has gone backwards at an alarming rate,” he says.
“Part of our problem is that production workers’ wages are making many of our goods uncompetitive. Wages are lower in China and many other countries, but productivity is higher elsewhere because businesses have been able to keep up with changing technology. Zimbabwean factories have not. So, wages plus productivity are working against us as all imports are now cheaper than local products.”
No matter how hard times are, still they come. Thousands offer money in hope of riches and health. They call it partnerships; giving to receive.
Magaya claims he is a trillionaire in spirit; but is unable to calculate his worth, that could be frowned upon by the scriptures.
“Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God,” so says Matthew 19, verse 23, in the Bible. Magaya believes people should also live comfortably on earth.
“We all want to go to heaven but we all want to stay on earth. No one wants to die now. Before you go to heaven, what about now? [Jesus] was rich yet he became poor for our riches and we should not only focus on one part. We are underutilizing Jesus. He wants you to go to heaven, but he also wants you healthy on earth. He wants you to be happy, married,” he says.
“I don’t see anything wrong with people in ministry living a good life because they represent the largest corporation (Kingdom of God) on the earth.”
It is wealth that began with 45 followers and now has hundreds of thousands who give. His ministry has no board or clear means of regulation. Many, outside the church, question how he maintains his alleged lavish lifestyle. Word is, Magaya makes around $2 million a month.
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Critics say churches like Magaya’s exist to boost wallets and egos; without transparency, nor accountability. Magaya counters he is accountable to his financial director.
“I created a team which governs me. My wife has a salary and I have a salary. If I go to [the financial director] and ask for $20,000 to give to someone, they know how God speaks, I have trained them, they will give me that money,” he says.
Magaya says his ministry does not depend on offerings and tithes. It is bankrolled by a multitude that understands, have been healed, or merely want to support – the churches call these donations seed.
“The finance team has pushed a lot for me to have nice things. The people that give money actually think my living standards are low and I should upgrade them. Whenever the church and my financial directors decide to get me things; that’s the only time I get them,” he says.
The Financial Director of PHD Ministries, Nelson Marimo, every inch the accountant, says he makes sure every penny given to the church is banked and accounted for.
“Three people in the ministry, including myself, have access to the account. The prophet has no access to it. He doesn’t have anything to do with the money. It’s our decision what he gets. If he needs anything we advise him correctly about the funds available,” says Marimo.
“We cannot put a price on what he is worth or what he should have. He has done so many things for us and the people.”
Brendon Strauss, the Food Distribution Co-ordinator for the Bryanston Methodist Church in South Africa, says prosperity churches give a bad name to other churches. He says the church is not meant to be run as a business.
“The bible says people should give 10% of whatever God blesses them with to say thank you and that’s all God asks for,” Strauss says.
He says his church helps people in the community without demanding money from the congregation.
“We for example get food from shops and give to the needy in shelters and HIV support groups. We don’t subscribe to selling things in the church. Pastors get stipends for their role and it is enough for them to survive.”
Father Xolani Dlwati of St Monnica’s Anglican Church in Midrand, South Africa, says the most import thing is to help people understand that healing comes from God and churches are just vehicles of healing.
“The challenge is our ignorance where we don’t study the bible and see what the bible says. People need knowledge so they can see if they are being taken for a ride. The grace of God is sufficient for all. You cannot be paying back the priest for blessings God has given you. If you want to give, you can do so voluntarily through giving thanks and not because you are being forced to,” says Dlwathi.
Prosperity preachers sometimes find themselves between a rock and a hard place. Many followers give money for results. A problem arises when the promises are not kept. In Magaya’s words, “When people give money, they partner with the vision [of the ministry]”.
It’s not always that simple. Earlier this year, Magaya was hit with a nearly $2-million lawsuit by a Harare couple who allegedly gave him money and cars to fulfil a prophecy that they would own an airline. The Zimbabwean entrepreneurs, Upenyu and Blessing Mashangwa, behind the lawsuit, allegedly also “seeded” $15,000 towards this prophecy.
Blessing says they came into contact with Magaya when they were selling their eight-bedroom house in the Harare suburbs.
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“Magaya requested to see us… about an airline vision he claims he had received from God when he visited the property we were selling. We worship in (UFIC Prophet Emmanuel Makandiwa’s church) and we felt if there was any airline deal then Prophet Makandiwa would tell us, therefore there was no need to meet him and we denied meeting him,” she says.
They eventually sold the house for $450,000 to Magaya.
“At the time we had three offers ranging between $500,000 to $550,000. We sold the house for a lower offer because we felt we were supporting the work of God,” she says.
According to her, Magaya asked them to “seed” for the airline prophecy to come to fruition. The couple seeded a 2014 Land Rover Discovery 4 Limited Edition. Magaya denies this.
So, does Magaya accept gifts from the poor?
“I accept gifts because whoever gives is blessed. If I don’t accept, I will be blocking someone else’s blessings,” he says.
Magaya says that he educates more than 5,000 children each year and passes on 90% of all he receives.
PHD Ministries is not the only church accepting gifts and it can turn ugly.
Zimbabwean single mother, Amanda Tshuma, says she left the Roman Catholic Church in search of miracles. She went to a Pentecostal church in Bulawayo.
“The situation in Zimbabwe is very hard. I was starting a business because I had lost my job. Every Sunday, the pastor would tell us to give money in tithe and offerings and also seed so that God can bless us,” she says.
Because of her search for economic emancipation, Tshuma did what she was told.
“I seeded almost everything I had. I even took the little money I had to start my business and gave to the church.”
After two years of waiting for a miracle, life became unbearable.
“I had debt and couldn’t afford food or a place to stay and I got kicked out,” says Tshuma.
The church, the one place she expected help from, didn’t help.
“The pastor wouldn’t even let me and my children sleep in the church while I thought of a plan. That’s when I saw that he doesn’t care. I left the church and I no longer attend any church because I don’t know who is after my money and who wants to help me go to heaven.”
Tshuma refuses to name the church for fear of retribution.
Like Magaya, many of these preachers are seen to be as much about profit as prophecies. Nigeria’s TB Joshua, Chris Okotie, Matthew Ashimolowo and Chris Oyakhilome live like rock stars and pull large congregations. In South Africa, some pastors have been known to make people eat grass, hair, snakes and drink petrol, all in the name of Jesus.
In the Christian Bible, Jesus turned the money changers out of the temple.
“It is written,” Jesus said to the traders, “My house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of robbers”.
In the 21st century, money has a home in many churches which sell copies of the sermons, gospel music videos and anointing oil. During Magaya’s crusade in Pretoria, worshippers bought both a DVD and anointing oil for R100 ($7.5).
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Like in any business, style and reputation are huge marketing and selling points. This is not just an African thing. In Los Angeles in the United States (US), some pastors flaunt their wealth through a television reality show called Preachers of L.A. These pastors live in mansions, drive expensive cars and wear the latest fashion.
“P. Diddy, JZ, they are not the only ones that should be driving Ferraris and living in large houses,” says Bishop Ron Gibson on the show’s 2013 trailer.
Pastor Jay Haizlip says “the Bible says that those who sow among us should reap from us, that’s implying that preachers should be taken care of.”
“The Bible says I wish above all things that you would prosper and be in health, even as your soul prospers. I believe that,” declares Bishop Clarence McClendon, one of the stars of the show.
Most of those who believe in these charismatic pastors don’t mind coughing up.
“It is our will as congregants to make sure they [pastors] are safe and all their needs are met. The only problem comes when they get richer and forget the poor. The media is only focusing on one side of the story. A lot of good things are happening in the church but no one is reporting about it. Most of them are rich but they take care of the poor. No one sees that,” says one of Magaya’s followers, Panashe Mandebvu.
These fundraising schemes make religion more emotive and controversial. Governments and religious groups in Africa are taking notice. The State is wading into the realm of prayer.
The government-backed Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities, in South Africa, recently launched an investigation into the commercialization of religion.
“We are launching an investigative study on the commercialization of religion and the abuse of people’s belief systems in terms of when these institutions are being run, how are they being run, where is their funding going into, who collects how much and what do they do with the money, where does the money eventually go to, what are the governing principles that are there,” says chairperson Thoko Mkhwanazi-Xaluva.
Findings will be released in April.
Magaya’s advice?
“If you feel like someone is eating your money, the best thing is not to give them.”
According to Statistics South Africa, based on their 2001 study, almost 80% of South Africa’s population follows the Christian faith. This means about 80% of the population are inclined to give money towards the Christian churches, steering the debate towards church taxation.
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In South Africa, churches are classified under Section 15(1) of the Constitution, one of the most liberal in the world. This means they are registered to provide services without intent to make a profit.
According to the South African Revenue Services (SARS), non-profit organizations take a shared responsibility with government for the social and developmental needs of the country. Preferential tax treatment is designed to nurture non-profit organizations.
“The preferential tax treatment for not for profit organizations is however not automatic and organizations that meet the requirements set out in the Income Tax Act, 1962, must apply for this exemption. If the exemption application has been approved by SARS, the organization is registered as a Public Benefit Organisation (PBO) and allocated a unique PBO reference number,” says SARS on their website.
A 2012 report by The Economist estimated the annual spending by the Vatican and church-owned entities in the US to be around $170 billion. According to FORBES, Catholic Charities USA has annual revenue of $4.39 billion. According to a 2012 University of Tampa study, not taxing churches is costing US government coffers an estimated $71 billion each year.
Steven Friedman, a University of Johannesburg political scientist, who has specialized in the study of democracy, says governments need to be careful when they come up with ways to curb the rise of churches making money.
“Some churches are exploitative but it’s simply not clever people preying on the poor. We need to be careful with the interventions we put in place. Everybody should pay tax but where do you draw the line? How do you put it into law when there are so many different churches,” he says.
“I am not sure there is a solution beyond encouraging people that are being exploited to stop being exploited.”
Magaya counters that churches are neither businesses nor exploiters.
“It is very wrong to tax churches because churches are not being celebrated enough for the job they are doing. They [authorities] must actually look at areas where they can make sure that they celebrate churches,” he says.
In Kenya, the government has had enough of fly-by-night churches. Last year, it issued a ban on the registration of new churches; following a television exposé of a Salvation Healing Ministries pastor, Victor Kanyari, tricking his followers into donating seed money.
Kenya’s Attorney General, Githu Muigai, said in a press conference early this year, it is not the policy of the government of the Republic of Kenya to interfere with the freedom of religion and worship. The government also called for fresh registration of existing churches. The religious bodies were also required to file details of their financial returns with the registrar of societies.
“Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world,” so says the Bible. Maybe words worth thinking about if you go to church this Sunday.
<h3>The Day I Was Attacked By Demons</h3>
“If I could hit her with my camera, I would have,” I remember thinking.
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In the midst of Walter Magaya’s service, it was drama. One by one, men and women were flocking to the stage claiming they were possessed by demons. I clicked away.
Suddenly, like a rugby tackle, I felt someone grab me around my thighs; it was a woman. She grabbed me, lifted me, and the next thing I was on the ground fighting. My one hand was in the air to protect my camera and the other was pushing her away to protect the sensitive parts of my body. She was mumbling loudly and crying. It took three ushers to make her let go.
I got up, ran away from the demon zone to where I was seated, checked for vomit, I was clean but felt dirty nonetheless. An usher who saw the attack ran to me and asked if I was okay. I was fine, but I looked back and thought “what the f**k did I just go through?”
For a split second during my ordeal, I thought the demons were coming for me. Had I known the day was going to be dramatic, I would have taken a long lens, worn a pair of work boots and a helmet.
Despite the ‘demonized’ woman, the hospitality shown by one of the members, Jerome Galiao, was great.
All I have now is a cut on my finger as a reminder.

Prophets Of Profit

Before money was invented, before the word entrepreneurship was formulated, people in ancient times traded by offering value. As far back as the Stone Age, people had to transact by exchanging goods that were of equivalent value to what was  to be received.
Today, this concept can be described by two words: value proposition. This has gained currency over time, but some entrepreneurs still miss the mark.
Business is based on the following basic principles; you are either saving your clients time and money, or making them more money. In supply and demand, distribution comes as a value-added product.
Geographic proximity to a product does not mean others have the same advantage. Cocoa is a good example. The product is largely found in West Africa. Any entrepreneur setting up a distribution channel to Singapore will be adding value on two fronts; firstly that area of Asia doesn’t have in the same abundance of cocoa as West Africa, and secondly from the logistics front.
In the knowledge economy, access to rare information elevates the value of those who have it. This is why companies call in consultants and advisors at an inflated cost. It is also why we keep going to conferences, paying international speakers large amounts of money to speak for 30 minutes. It’s all about the value one can bring to the table, and that comes from experience or study.
Scarce skills, like firewall experts, are rewarded handsomely, as cyber security threats rise. A shortage of something increases its value; art collectors can attest to that.
Marketers use this strategy to create a craving for a product and service. You are unlikely to see a Bugatti advertised on billboards and in newspapers. People who can afford the supercar know where to find it.
Entrepreneurs need to reprogram themselves to create value, rather than looking for money. Money chases value. No one holds a monopoly on cash; if you offer customers value, they will gladly give you their money.
Even Albert Einstein, a man of science rather than business, said, “Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.”
There are survivalist entrepreneurs who keep complaining as if money repels them. We need to be innovative in how we sell our products and services. The market will pay for the value you provide.
Jannie Mouton is well known for creating value. He did something unique through Capitec Bank. They entered a market which had gigantic financial institutions; they added value through two things in particular. They lowered bank charges and demystified the banking system. This related to the general population, most of whom were clients of other banks. Today, Capitec is one of the largest retail banks with four million clients, and they claim to be registering around 100,000 new clients every month.
Adding value is reliant on the industry that the entrepreneurs find themselves in. You need to make promises to clients that differentiate yourself from your competitors. You have to appeal to what they want. The successful execution of this can convert prospects into new customers.
While you are trying to make millions, never forget that at some point almost everyone in Zimbabwe was once a billionaire. It’s not really about the money, it’s about the value that you add through your company. Align yourself with a sense of value, then all these others things will fall in place

Tag: Money

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