He was one of the big names in business in Africa; as gentlemanly. as he was shrewd. He fought the odds and apartheid to stake his place in business and inspire millions of his countrymen to do the same.



Richard Maponya – the doyen of black business in South
Africa – passed away in the early hours of January 6, after a short illness.
Maponya turned 99 on Christmas Eve near the end of a long and fruitful life
that saw him dine with the Queen, laugh with Bill Clinton and chauffer his old
friend Nelson Mandela. Mandela asked Maponya, who owned a car dealership, to
pick him up at the airport in Johannesburg after his release from prison in
1990. 



Ï picked him up at the airport and that was the most
frightening time of my life. We were chased by people on foot, helicopters,
motorbikes and cars. Everyone just wanted to touch Mandela. They could kill him
just trying to touch him,” Maponya recalled to Forbes Africa in a cover story
in March 2017.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 



Mandela was a close friend of Maponya since the 1950s. The
future president, then a young lawyer&nbsp;&nbsp;
helped Maponya set up his first business against the restrictive
apartheid laws that shackled black business. 



Maponya wanted to open a clothing store in Soweto,
Johannesburg; the authorities said no. Mandela lost the fight for the clothing
store, but did manage to secure him a license to trade daily necessities. This
opened the way for Maponya to start out with a milk delivery business that was
to prove the foundation of his fortune.



More than half a century on, Mandela, then a former president
of South Africa, beamed with pride, in 2007, as he opened the first shopping
mall in Soweto. 



Maponya Mall had taken the canny businessman a good deal of
patience to put together. He acquired the land in 1979 – the first black man to
secure a 100-year lease for land in Soweto – and spent many more years building
up the mall.



“Ï fought for 27 years for that mall and was many times denied;
they actually thought I was dreaming. When Nelson Mandela cut the ribbon to
open the mall, that was the highlight of my life,” Maponya said years later. 



It was a mile on a road less travelled by Maponya in a long
journey from the tiny township of Lenyenye in Limpopo in northern South Africa
where he was born. He moved across the province to Polokwane to train as a
teacher and then, like many young men of his generation, moved south to
Johannesburg in search of his fortune.



In those days, the gold mining city was booming, but only the few saw the fruits. Maponya was blocked at every turn as he tried to make his way in business; he won through making a fortune from property, horse racing, retail, cars and liquor. 



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Maponya mentored many black entrepreneurs and inspired many
millions more he had never met. One of them was Herman Mashaba, the former
mayor of Johannesburg, who made his own fortune with hair care products.



“To myself and the people I grew up with he was an
inspiration to all of us to get into business…If he had started out in business
in a normal world there is no doubt he would have been even bigger than he
was,” Mashaba told CNBC Africa.



Maponya will be mourned by the millions who were inspired to
follow him and by a business world that is richer, in more ways than one, for his
nearly a century of hard work in which retirement was never an option.



“People who retire are lazy people. You retire and do what?
Bask in the sun?&nbsp; I am not that type of
man,” he said in 2017 at the age of 96.



He could never be.



&#8211; By Chris Bishop

Richard 128

The Life And Wisdom Of Richard Maponya

For 96 years, Richard Maponya has been battering down barriers of prejudice and proving that a black man can do anything.
His journey began in the dusty streets of Lenyenye, a township in the Limpopo province of northern South Africa, where he was born. He moved to Polokwane, where missionaries trained him as a teacher. With a qualification under his belt, he moved to Johannesburg, in 1948, in search of a teaching post and greener pastures. This was during the early days of apartheid and it wasn’t easy for a black man to do anything.
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“Back in those days, you had to register your presence if you moved to a new area. I had moved to Alexandra township and I went to the pass office to register,” says Maponya.
There, he found an Afrikaner man looking for people to work at his potato farm in Delmas, 65 kilometers north east of Johannesburg. Little did he know he was going out of the frying pan into the fire.
“He asked for my documents, looked at my pass and all my documents and said ‘this boy would fit in well with the group I am looking for’. I told him I was there to just register in the new area but he took my pass, paged it and he spoke in Afrikaans with another gentlemen with him and said ‘this man is 28 years old’… He took my pass and altered my birth year from 1920 to 1926. He also took my birth certificate and never brought it back to me. I think he wanted a group of people who were about 20 to 22 years old or so.”
On that day, Maponya lost his identity forever.
“I have employed lawyers to fix that but even in the archives of our government, they don’t have any records, so I walk as a man everyone thinks was born in 1926 yet I was born in 1920. This is one thing I never talk about, you are the first journalist I’ve ever disclosed this to,” he says as he reveals the pain of his past.
Like the bags of potatoes they were going to carry, Maponya and a group of young black men were loaded in a truck and taken to the fields to work.
“During those days, black people were terribly ill-treated. We had no rights whatsoever; I was lucky my uncle worked for a liberal Englishman who rescued me from being abused while digging and loading potatoes. They gave me a small job of washing dishes and my uncle’s boss came to pick me up a week later… I stayed with him for a few days and then went back to Alexandra.”
As we meet, 69 years later, Maponya has swapped his matchbox room in Alexandra for five mansions in Africa’s richest square mile, Sandton. When we compliment his beautiful Victorian-style home, he says, “Have you ever been to my other homes?”
It is hard work, smart decisions and some laughs, like this, that have helped him make millions. Even though he is suffering from flu, he talks to us.
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Maponya’s journey into entrepreneurship began 70 years ago when South Africa was no country for budding black entrepreneurs. The tough times steeled him for his long journey to become a legendary businessman.
Rattling along in the back of the potato truck, he never thought of a life in retail but then came an interview for a job in a department store.
“They were offering me more money than a teaching post would and the gentleman who interviewed me liked me from the word go,” he says.
Even more money was coming his way. Within months, he was promoted to a fashion buyer for the store. His boss, Mr Bolton, a kind and intelligent businessman, he says, taught him about fabrics, how to select clothes, and customer service. The two worked hand-in-glove for three years; turnover increased and Bolton was promoted to CEO of the group in 1951. Maponya thought he had struck gold.
“When he got promoted, he called me to his office and thanked me for helping him reach that point. He said ‘unfortunately I can’t promote you because you have a ceiling over your head, you cannot oversee white people. All I can do is maybe make you baas boy but that doesn’t really help you with anything,’” says Maponya.
The dapper looking 31-year-old Maponya nodded his head and muttered a courteous response, expecting little else to follow.
“I was very surprised because Mr Bolton continued to speak. He said ‘I am going to let you buy clothing samples here so that you can sell them after hours and on weekends so you can make a bit of money’.”
And he did. Before long, Maponya began to recognize the budding businessman in himself. His after hours hustle paid off.
“I realized people didn’t have money to buy upfront and I started a wear and pay system and it worked so well. People would take clothes and pay for them at month end and I was making a lot of money,” he says.
After a year of good business, Bolton was diagnosed with a brain tumour and was forced to retire. With him, he took Maponya’s business.
“The person who took over from him didn’t want to hear anything about it. He redirected the stock they gave me and gave it to Indian hawkers.”
It was a blessing in disguise. Maponya was angry. To be big, Maponya thought he had to risk big. He resigned from his job to pursue the uncertain world of entrepreneurship. He started buying clothing from wholesalers. The business flourished.
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Maponya applied for a trading license for a shop in one of South Africa’s biggest townships, Soweto, but was turned down. He went to Mandela and Tambo, a law firm run by South Africa’s struggle heroes Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo. At the time, it was the only black-owned law firm in the country.
“Nelson was still a very powerful speaker. He was so powerful that, I would say, he could say to a mountain, move and it would move. They fought for my license but we didn’t succeed in getting a clothing store. But, they got me a license to trade daily necessities,” says Maponya.
At the time, there was no milk delivery in Soweto. There was also no electricity for fridges, so people bought milk for the day. Maponya saw a gap.
“I was shocked. People ate breakfast with milk everyday but had no place to buy close to them. I opened a little dairy there. I started with 10 boys cycling the neighborhood on bicycles everyday selling milk, cash, door to door.”
It was from these humble beginnings that his empire grew. The business moved extremely fast from 10 to 100 men cycling and selling for him; then, big business woke up.
“Clover saw the potential of selling milk in the townships and they started coming with big trucks to sell. They took the bulk of my clients and I realized I couldn’t compete with them,” says Maponya.
With the wisdom of knowing when to let go, Maponya gave up the milk-selling business for Maponya’s Supply Stores, a backstreet store that grew into a massive retail empire that was to make him a household name.
“I started with a butchery, then a fruit and vegetable store, and then a grocery store with two tables inside where we sold cooked food,” he says.
Maponya’s Supply Stores expanded across Soweto.  Growth meant problems.
“I struggled with getting the right people to manage the stores. The only stores where people were making profit are the ones where my wife and I were operating. The other stores would break even or run at a loss.”
It became frustrating, again, he knew he had to let go.
He closed the stores he and his wife couldn’t manage. This encouraged him to look for other opportunities. There was a long list because there were no services in the township. So, he built Mountain Motors, the second black-owned garage in Soweto.
“It surprised everybody. Some say it was the biggest in the southern hemisphere. We were selling petrol in an unbelievable manner. We were getting support from every black person in Soweto. We were selling over a million liters per month,” he says with a smile.
Mountain Motors became the first black-owned garage to have a motor vehicle dealership. Like all his other businesses, it took off.
“Later on, I was invited by BMW to take over a dealership in Soweto. That made history. I would get orders from people from America. It was history that a black man would sell cars those days… I would get an allocation of about 30 cars per month and I would sell all of them in a week… I would borrow cars from other dealers and sell three times my allocation per month,” he says.
It meant, when new stock arrived, he would return the cars he borrowed and would spend two months without stock. He tried and failed to get his allocation of cars increased. Paying staff, when there were no cars to sell, was hard.
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“As an entrepreneur, you should always know when you have made money and the business won’t be worth your energy anymore. It doesn’t mean it has failed, it means you have dug everything you can from it and it is time for something new that may make you more money,” says Maponya.
Again, following his own advice, he closed down the motor business and went on the hunt for a new venture. It ushered in some of his worst days in business.
“I applied for a casino license. I qualified for everything they required [besides the skin color] because it was still during apartheid. When we went for an interview, they asked me if I have R10 million, a lot of money at the time, and I told them I don’t have it in my pocket but I can make means… they said its either you give it now or lose the license… the licence was awarded to white brothers. This is a frustrating and terrible thing I chased and never succeeded.”
As painful as it was, Maponya used his canny and shrewd characteristics to go after his lifelong dream – a world-class shopping mall in the heart of Soweto. It took him 27 years of sweat, court applications and fundraising.
“You won’t believe it if I tell you I started building it on the 28th year… I even went to Parliament to make a presentation but I kept being turned down… They said the people of Soweto would never support a mall in Soweto because they want to shop in the city where there are brighter lights and I told them it’s not true… I have been fighting and fighting but I said as long as they don’t put a bullet on my forehead I won’t stop,” he says closing his eyes to emphasize his point.
In 1979, Maponya acquired land for the mall, in Soweto, on  a 100-year lease and, in 1994, the year South Africa got its independence, after several attempts, he acquired it outright. But the battle was only just beginning.
Various attempts to finance construction failed, until Maponya’s holding company entered into a joint venture with Zenprop Property Holdings. The sweat and pain paid off and on September 27, 2007, Nelson Mandela, the man who had been in prison for as long as it took Maponya to build the mall, cut the red ribbon to open Maponya Mall.
“It was the highlight of my entire life. It was a tough exercise to get money. I could have met about half of that but I needed help. To see this come to life made all the pain I have ever gone through in business worth it,” he says.
Today, the R650-million ($48.7-million) mall has more than 200 stores and a cinema; it is also one of the largest shopping centers in South Africa and one of the growing Johannesburg attractions.
“I am very proud of the mall. It can stand anywhere in the world and compete. I am proud I have built something for the people of Soweto because I have always wanted it to be an economic hub.”
A world-class mall was not the end, merely a milestone. The Maponya Group is also in the poultry industry. They count Pick n Pay and 24 hospitals, in Gauteng, the province of Johannesburg, among their customers for eggs. They also grow vegetables.
Maponya still has filling stations. He also intends to build another mall in Soweto. Maponya Group’s ventures also include property development, horse racing, retail, automotive sales and liquor.
“I wasn’t born to be an entrepreneur, I learned to be one. I don’t think anyone is born to be an entrepreneur, you learn. I looked at the young boys of my age, when I was young, managing their father’s businesses and I had to go and say ‘baas’ to small boys like that? No, I was not going to allow it. I told myself I am going to create a business for myself and also create jobs like they do,” says Maponya.
While this unfair advantage inspired him, he was also inspired by many black small businessmen; among them was the late Richard Baloyi.
“When I was staying in Alexandra, Baloyi was the only richest black man I had ever known. He owned buses. That man inspired me, he was my role model. When I looked at him, I said ‘I want to be rich like that man, one day I will be richer than that man and indeed I did it. If he was still alive, he would shake my hand and say ‘boy you have done it’.”
Maponya’s success has earned him many friends. Apart from being married to Mandela’s cousin, Marina, he calls Mandela, his lawyer back in the early 1950s, his greatest friend.
“Mandela asked me to pick him up at the airport when he was released from prison because he knew I owned a car dealership. I picked him up at the airport and that was the most frightening time of my life. We were chased by people on foot, helicopters, motorbikes and cars. Everyone just wanted to touch Mandela. They could kill him just trying to touch him,” he says.
According to Maponya, Mandela was scheduled to sleep at one of Maponya’s houses in Sandton but there wasn’t enough security. They booked a place to sleep for the night. He says the most frightening part was when he drove Mandela to FNB Stadium, in Soweto, the next day. People were streaming from all areas for a chance to meet him. The stadium was packed.
“We managed to go in but coming out was a nightmare. There were more people outside than inside. We realized they will squash us and never allow the car to move.”
Mandela was picked up by a helicopter bound for Orlando Stadium, where there was another crowd waiting.
“When we were on our way to Orlando Stadium, we could see all the people from FNB Stadium running to Orlando Stadium.”
“I drove him after that to a few meetings but I realized I can’t cope with his schedule… I gave him a BMW 7 Series as a gift and a driver who drove Mandela from that time until he died,” he says.
To top that, Maponya has dined with the Queen and calls Bill Clinton and the Oppenheimers friends.
At this time of his life, Maponya has a lot to be proud of but still has more up his sleeve.
“I am 96 years old now and I am not going to retire. The day I retire would be the day you say to me ‘lala kahle’ (rest in peace), then that would be my retirement. I would know I have done my piece. People who retire are lazy people. You retire and do what? Bask in the sun? I am not that type of a man,” he says.
Mentoring young people is a big part of Maponya’s life. Monalisa Sam says she was lucky to be mentored by Maponya. The two crossed paths when Sam was a general manager for Maponya Mall Property Trust in 2007. A friendship was forged in the two years she worked there, before she left to co-found Tungwa Retail Holdings in 2011, a company run by black women.
“Mr Maponya has been such a big part of my journey. I think he is probably one of the most underrated elders in business in the sense that young people don’t know the lessons they can learn from him. There is so much pressure on achievement and success that we forget to build a legacy which is what Maponya did. His life story is so important for young people in business,” says Sam.
You have to admire Maponya for doing what many can’t. He could have chosen the easier path instead of pushing his way into business in a white man’s world. Easier still would have been to stick with what he was trained to do – and teach.
Maponya has been the first in many things, but this is not the last we will hear of him.

‘As Long As They Don’t Put A Bullet On My Forehead  I Won’t Stop’

Richard Maponya was trained as a teacher that never taught but he has enough students in business to fill a stadium. In the 1950s, a young Maponya did everything, from selling clothes door-to-door, meat to butchers, BMWs and property to the wise and wealthy. He endured oppressive apartheid laws and was shunned at every turn. Despite this, he has built an empire that is an inspiration to budding entrepreneurs.
In his retirement, Maponya, 88, still finds time to do business on his computer in the comfort of his home in Hyde Park, a suburb north of Johannesburg. In this winter’s afternoon, we met him settled in his study suited and booted. Around him, myriad photographs with prominent people, from Nelson Mandela to Richard Branson, tell his story. Amid these pictures are the Order of the Baobab, an honor from government for his contribution to entrepreneurship and the economy.
It is some minutes before Chichi walks in, for the father and daughter catch-up, from a meeting with a Nigerian delegation for Brand South Africa.
Together, they reminisce about their struggles from a small shop in Dube, Soweto, to what is today the Maponya Group.
“People often remarked that this girl Chichi, had she been a boy, she would be just like me. But I don’t see a difference… I am very happy with her personal development. It is so pleasing when a parent sees a child stepping into her father’s or mother’s field when one is still alive. I am witnessing what Chichi is doing, representing South Africa. She’s now an asset of a nation,” says Maponya.
Maponya’s remarks go down well with his devoted daughter.
“She was a very humble and loving child when she was growing up. I knew there was something in her because she would do things that reflected some intelligence in her. I knew then she was going to be somebody. Now the evidence is before us. We can see what she has become,” says Maponya.
Chichi beams, hearing this. She could have been 12 again.
“I thank the foundation my parents made not only for me but for every South African. So many black people looked at my dad and said, wow, if he could start from such humble beginnings and make such an impact in the economy and their communities under such harsh and difficult conditions. And here I am, I have better opportunities now and there’s access to capital. Why would I want to fail? So a black child looks at it in that perspective. And then you have a different narrative. There are white people who say he’s such an inspiration because against those odds, being a black person, having everything against you, and you succeed. What would stop me as a white South African with everything going for me, not to succeed? Either side sees this as our South African legacy. We dare not fail,” says Chichi.
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Maponya interjects to instruct Chichi to fetch a printout of an email on a mahogany desk.
“Absolutely, on that point, can you read this to prove what you just said?” he says.
“Dear Dr Maponya, I trust all is well. I am a big follower of you and respect you greatly. You are my role model and it would be a great honor to meet with you and help us and advise us in business. It would be a dream come true to meet with you in person and listen to how you started and where you are right now. Myself and my son have a fairly new business&#8230;,” reads the email.
Maponya says these frequent messages keep him going.
“For people to recognize what I have achieved during the difficult times in South Africa, I am humbled. During apartheid, black people were not meant to be businessmen. When I first came to Johannesburg, I wanted to be a businessman. But white government said no, you are here to sell your labor, if you want to be a businessman, you must go back to your homeland,” says Maponya.
Maponya acknowledged the influence of the Brazilians. He took Chichi with him to Brazil, in 2010, for business. Brazil once had an unemployment rate of 40%. Within 10 years, the country managed to reduce the number to 5%, he says.
Maponya sent Chichi to meetings when she was still at school.
“I was very fortunate to be mentored, the word mentoring didn’t exist at the time but when I reflect now I realize that was mentoring. Being taken under the wing, with my mom, we sat down and did books; going to meetings and negotiating business on behalf of family. That was mentoring,” says Chichi.
With Chichi in the driver’s seat, the Maponya legacy is guaranteed to live on. Like her father, Chichi has roped in her daughter Palesa Mabuse. Palesa is managing Chichi’s side business in outdoor media called Nalesa Media. Chichi also has Maponya Medical Solutions, which supplies medical equipment to hospitals.
“When you look at our history, there are not too many South African black businesses that succeeded the second generation. Most of them die with the founders. There’s that responsibility in me now that says I need to change the curve. I need to make sure that in my own little space, what was taught to me by my parents, I am able to pass on to my children. Hence when my daughter showed interest to work with me, I embraced it. I am nurturing her,” says Chichi.
“That was my teaching. When they went to school I would ask what other children carry at school. If they say it’s 20 cents, I would give her 20 cents. When she asked for more, I would say alright, when you come back you must come to the store and earn it. There was never money for nothing,” says the older Maponya.
After obtaining a BCom degree in economics management and marketing from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Chichi worked in a project management company; Black Like Me; South African Institute of Civil Engineering (SAICE) and Kwezi Asset Management, for more than a decade. She then returned to work with her father and their first project was Maponya Mall, her father’s holy grail, valued at R650 million ($52 million).
“When I finished my tenure at Kwezi, I went back to my dad and said I am back now. I had known they had always wanted to build a mall but they had not succeeded in doing it. I said let’s start now. You are the brains, you are the experience. Here is the fire now,” she says.
It took Maponya almost three decades and a string of lawsuits to carve out the first shopping mall in bustling Soweto, a township south of Johannesburg. In 2007, the former President Nelson Mandela launched the mall.
“I always knew that I will go back and work in the family business and take over and run it. I worked in the family business since I was in school. I would come from school and do my homework, go to the shop and the garage…
I left the comfort and the cocoon of the family business. Papa and Mama were very strict. I guess they were trying to protect us from being complacent,” says Chichi.
Maponya Mall has caught the attention of investors abroad.
“This last week I entertained a Venda chief. They say to me please, come and build a Maponya Mall in Venda. The same plea came from South Sudan, Ghana and Nigeria,”
says Maponya.
Beside family business, Chichi is leveraging her name with Brand South Africa on the continent. In 2012, she was appointed chairperson of Brand South Africa after she served as a trustee since 2009. The tenure will run until March. In 2008, she was voted ‘woman of the year’ by the Businesswomen’s Association of South Africa.
“In 2009, when we were appointed, Brand South Africa didn’t have a domestic mandate. So the domestic mandate was established that year. We changed the name from International Marketing Council to the current name. One of the attributes of a brand is its people, especially when it’s a national brand,” says Chichi.
They have a huge mandate, therefore, it calls for collaborations with other government departments and private sector to get the work done, she says.
Chichi is concerned that the attacks on foreign nationals in the country can taint relations with other nationalities. But she says these are isolated incidents that could be challenged by creating employment for the youth.
“In adversity, we rise stronger and more united. This has unified us as African people. It has brought us so close together. When you look at migration across the continent, people are looking for better opportunities and prospects… We don’t have Africa that’s in crisis. We don’t have Africa that is in war. Gone are those days. Africa is moving forward,” says Chichi.
Father and the fire – no one can ever put them out.

IMG_8876

Father & Fire

“You must keep going, don’t let go,” replies the teacher.
A moment across a table as an African trailblazer in business uses his lessons in life to help shape a young entrepreneur.
The teacher is 86-year-old Richard Maponya; his pupil is 32-year-old Monalisa Sam. They grew up worlds apart with the same aim.
Maponya, a trained teacher who never taught, joined a company in the 1950s to sell clothing to miners. This job spurred him on to become an entrepreneur.
For more than 50 years, Maponya did everything. He sold clothes door-to-door, meat to butchers, BMWs to the rich and property to the wise. Most came in oppressive apartheid days when Maponya was shunned at every turn.
Maponya Mall is his holy grail. It took Maponya $62.8 million, 28 years and a string of lawsuits to carve out the first shopping mall in the bustling Soweto.
“It was like a war, I don’t know how many times I had been turned down by the apartheid government,” Maponya says.
&nbsp;
Former president Nelson Mandela opened the mall in late 2007. In 1957, Mandela, then a young lawyer, assisted Maponya when the businessman was trying to obtain a license to open a retail clothing store.
By contrast, Sam is the daughter of a former headmaster, who had it easier. Her father, Gideon Sam, is now the South African Sports Confederations and Olympic Committee (SASCOC) president. Sam was part of the first generation of black children to enrol in formerly whites only schools. She has a Bachelor of Commerce in accounting degree from the University of Cape Town and was employed by Old Mutual Properties.
Their paths crossed when Sam was a general manager for Maponya Mall Property Trust in 2007. A friendship was forged in the two years she worked there, before she left to co-found Tungwa Retail Holdings in 2011, a company run by black women.
“When we interviewed Monalisa for the job, there were many others but she was the star. We grabbed her with both hands. And we were not disappointed by our decision. She’s very talented and confident. I know she will go very far,” says Maponya.
To this day, Maponya, albeit frail, hasn’t lost his hunger for business, nor his dress sense that made him a snappy salesman a lifetime ago.
The mentor and protégé meet at Maponya’s house in Hyde Park to catch up and assess how the young entrepreneur is faring.
“The business is coming on well, Papa, but as any entrepreneurial project it takes time with a lot of challenges. But we are grounded on what we want to do. We will keep going,” Sam tells Maponya.
Maponya surprises his protégé with talk of a new business.
“I have been very busy with a little challenge. I have ventured into the chicken industry. It has been monopolized by Afrikaaners and I just felt I had to have a crack at it and see if I can make a difference and see if I can encourage some of the black folks to join in. It is not an easy industry,” he says.
“If you want to succeed in this industry you must own everything. Don’t depend on other people,” Maponya advises his student.
The talk veers towards the government’s black economic empowerment (BEE) policy aimed at wealth redistribution. They both feel it has failed.
Maponya criticizes the BEE policy and tender system which the government uses to give contracts to the public.
“They came up with something they themselves cannot control. The white men saw opportunity in the BEE. It has created so many white millionaires as it made it possible for them to just pick a black person and say this is my BEE partner,” says Maponya.
“As the black partner you never get access to finances, you don’t know what’s going on with money, you are not empowered, you are just a token,” Sam interjects.
They agree BEE has failed to spread wealth. It is benefiting the few with political connections.
“The other thing it does Papa, it encourages a sense of entitlement among black people. There’s this idea you don’t have to work, you don’t have to understand anything. If you are just there as a black person, you are going to get something,” adds Sam.
Sam says the deals are out of most people’s reach.
“It has done a lot of harm, it has killed the youth initiatives,” says Maponya.
“Tendering is the worst thing that has ever been created. It has become a monster that has corrupted people from right at the top of government to the bottom of the ladder,” says Maponya.
“The idea is that you will never get a tender if you have not done something unscrupulous. Some say by the time it comes out in the papers it is too late. Newspaper advertisement is just a formality to say we are transparent,” says Sam.
Maponya says the government must scrap the tendering policy.
“It hurts me seeing the country becoming the most corrupt nation in the continent,” says Maponya.
The National Empowerment Fund (NEF), the government funding agent, argues that it is doing its job with distinction and merit.
“The relevance of the National Empowerment Fund is far beyond question. There’s no other (funding) entity that does what we do, no bank that does it. NEF is run with absolute integrity,” says Moemise Motsepe, the marketing and communications manager of NEF.
On average the NEF receives more than 300 applications a month. Those that are not successful are considered for a business mentorship program that runs over six months, says Motsepe.
“To date the National Empowerment Fund has funded over 500 black businesses which have created over 44,000 jobs. Over 20% of the beneficiaries are women,” he adds.
Despite these problems, Sam is far from discouraged.
“If you listened to Papa’s story when he started, the times were different but the business principles are the same of saying take the opportunity, understand where the gap is and how you service that gap,” she says.
“For many years, Papa nurtured his dream of building and owning a world-class shopping center in Soweto. In my time at Maponya, I learnt so much from him. But the most important thing he has taught me is humility and patience.”
It is evident in the conversation that the duo’s problems are different but the suffering is the same.
Like his clan totem elephant, which is the emblem on his business and tie, Maponya remains a heavyweight in business who is far from ready to give up his title.

It Hurts Seeing My Country Becoming The Most Corrupt Nation

Sixty years ago South Africa was no country for budding black entrepreneurs, but Richard Maponya managed to defy the odds and opened a backstreet store that grew into a massive retail empire on the back of which he became a legendary black businessman.
<div id="attachment_277" style="width: 209px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-277" class="size-medium wp-image-277" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/CTX7445-199x300.jpg" alt="" width="199" height="300" />Richard Maponya at the Maponya Mall, Soweto</div>
That grocery shop in the township of Soweto, opened in the early 1950s, led to several in the years that followed. From there he ventured into car dealerships, petrol stations, butcheries, supermarkets, bus services and funeral parlors. He later joined a consortium that acquired Coca-Cola’s bottling plant, when the soft drink giant decided to disinvest in apartheid South Africa. He also became a cell phone provider and his name was linked to many deals and ventures.
To be big, Maponya had to risk big, but his achievements were many, not least his own economic freedom, which he had won long before political freedom came in 1994.
Canny and shrewd, he continued to move with the times and pushed his pile of chips into property development and four years ago unveiled his biggest lifetime achievement: the Maponya Mall in Soweto.
“I wanted the people of the township to be able to spend their money in the township and create employment for themselves.”
This year he opened Maponya Motor City not far away from Maponya Mall. And there’s more to follow. The 90-year-old still has a few more ventures up his sleeve.
You have to admire Maponya. If it was a desire to make a go of his life that drove him all these years, he could have chosen an easier option than betting on business in an all-white, male world. Easier still would have been to stick to what he had been trained to do—high school teaching. But Maponya has no regrets and if he could roll back the clock he would do it the same all over again.
“The only thing that would be different this time is that I would be an even bigger entrepreneur,” he says without a hint of humility in his voice. “The playing field is leveled now and things are so much easier today than they were when I started out.”
He was born in 1920 in the small village of Lenyene, in Limpopo, and later moved to Polokwane, where missionaries trained him as a teacher. With his qualification under his belt, he headed to Johannesburg in 1948 in search of his first teaching post. But as fate would have it, the dapper-looking 28-year-old was snapped up by a drapery store in the city center before he had a chance to sit the other side of a school desk.
Maponya hadn’t envisaged a working life in retail.
“But they were offering me five times more than the teaching post would have paid. And I said to myself, ‘these may be the greener pastures I was looking for after all.’”
Little did he know how green those pastures were to be.
Yet those were dreadful times for black South Africans. That year—1948—also marked the dawn of apartheid that would result in a half a century of inhumanity for non-whites. Maponya ought not have been an exception. He was living in the township of Alexandria, renting some space in the home of members of his extended family and subjected to the same harsh reality that every other black person endured.
“We were like foreigners in our own country,” he remembers. “The native was treated in the worst possible way.”
But Maponya had struck lucky though he didn’t realize it at the time. At the drapery store he reported to a man by the name of Mr Bolton—“we did not call the white man by his first name then”—and the pair worked well together.
Bolton was hard-working and enterprising. Maponya was equally so. Bolton was also a good businessman and he coached his employee in the trade.
He taught him about fabrics, quality and design. He mentored him in customer care. He encouraged him to select clothing and designs that would appeal “to my people” as Maponya put it.
Before long, he began to recognize the budding businessman in himself.
The pair worked hand-in-hand for three years, during which time Bolton was scaling the corporate ladder until he was promoted to CEO of the company in 1951. But before he closed his executive door on the drapery floor, he asked to meet with Maponya.
“Son, I am being promoted because of our joint efforts and I don’t know how to thank you,” Bolton told his junior.
Maponya nodded his head and muttered a courteous response, expecting little else to follow, but Bolton continued speaking.
“You have a ceiling over your head because you are black so there is nothing I can do,” he said, stating a glaring fact. “All I can offer you is a job as a foreman.”
“But I would like to give you the chance to buy samples and soiled clothing that you can sell after work or on the weekends to make some extra money for yourself,” the new CEO told him.
“And that is what gave me my start in life,” Maponya remembers, all these years later. “Without it, I wouldn’t be where I am today.”
He started selling the garments on a ‘pay while you wear’ basis. Folks had little cash to spare then so he indulged them with credit. Trust went a long way in the early 1950s.
“‘Take it and wear it’ I would tell them and I would collect the money at the end of the week. They never let me down. I never lost a penny in those days.”
And it was from those humble beginnings that the empire began to emerge.
At this hour of his life, Maponya has a lot to be proud of, yet he refuses to step down. To this day he still works a five-day week, six if his children allow him. On the eve of his 91st birthday, I tell him he is a poor advertisement for a pension plan.
“I don’t even know what the word retirement means,” he chuckles in response.
These days his time is taken with his latest project, the Richard Maponya Institute for Skills Training and Entrepreneurship.
“This is the big one,” he says. “This is my legacy project. This is what I want to leave behind, a place where young people are not only given a skill but the know-how to go out and create work for themselves.”
The legacy idea began to take shape a couple of years ago as Maponya began to take stock of the challenges facing South Africa. Idle youth stared him in the face.
“If only I could tell you that it is thousands and thousands of youth that are unemployed, it might not be so bad. But it is not. We are talking about millions and millions of our young people who have no jobs. That’s a lot of people and I don’t think we fully realize how awful it is for them or how dangerous it is for society to have so many idle youth falling into the trap of poverty. They deserve more and so does South Africa.”
For guidance, he turned to Brazil, a country that made some clever moves many years ago when it began to train its youth to become the kind of entrepreneurs that would start the small and medium-sized enterprises that now form the backbone of the South American country’s economy.
“South Africa is no different. We need young men and women who will go out and create their own jobs and not depend on the economy to create work for them. It will never happen that way. This is a society that is becoming too dependent on the state. The state can only do so much and it certainly cannot solve the challenge of unemployment.”
Maponya’s plan is a commendable one, but how difficult is it to become an entrepreneur? Is it something that everyone can do? Or is it a character-driven thing?
“If you have discipline you can become an entrepreneur,” he tells me. “That’s the core requirement: discipline. I wasn’t born an entrepreneur. No one is. You learn to become on. But you learn it through discipline.”
What about a vision, or a plan?
“You might have the best plan in the world, but if you don’t have the discipline to pull it off, it will never happen. Discipline is everything.”
Can discipline be taught?
“It’s not only about teaching it, but learning it. The will has to come from the person, not the teacher. What can be taught is how to develop discipline. The rest is over to you.”
As simple as that?
“It can be,” he says. “If not, we have to decide to live in poverty and with poverty. But if we want to change it, then we must join hands as South Africans and begin to turn this ship around. We need strong, social leaders. We need mentors. We need willing youth. If we have all of those, and I believe we have, then many things are possible.”
The training institute—on Brazilian lines—is still work in progress, but he hopes he can open its doors to the youth of Soweto at some stage next year.
“And if it works, and I know it will, then I would like to see it replicated all over South Africa. But I just want to get this one right. This is my legacy. My way of giving back. This really is my big one.”
And will he then hang up his boots?
“No,” he says, without a flicker of hesitation. “For as long as the Lord gives me my health, I think I will work until the last day. I think I will die with my boots on. That is how I think it is going to happen.”
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Tag: Richard Maponya

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