Steven Benjamin chose to focus on the bird life in his garden in Cape Town to escape the confines of the lockdown.



During South Africa’s five-week shutdown (the country is still on Level 4 restrictions), Cape Town-born underwater photographer Steven Benjamin more used to sharks, whales and dolphins, used the period to look up instead – and indulge in bird-watching, another passion of his.



“Ever since the age of five or six, I have been interested in birds. I was dyslexic as a young child and I still have my first bird book where I ‘ticked’ backwards. I was trying to identify the birds that flew into my pre-school class and begged my mom to let me mark off what I’d seen, so birding has always been a passion,” says Benjamin, who also runs a seal-snorkeling business.



He has spent his life capturing South Africa’s marine world, and now, Benjamin had to redirect his focus to his Kalk Bay garden during the lockdown to photograph Cape Town’s resident birdlife.



He says photographing these feathered beauties is a way to bring joy during these uncertain times.



“They are so beautiful but incredibly difficult to photograph because they are shy and extremely fast. Photographing birds is a challenge but it creates a mental space to observe and admire nature.”



Soon after the lockdown started, Benjamin put white sugar in his bird feeder every morning and enjoyed the sight of local birds and documented them. He posted the images on Instagram and that garnered some online attention.



“The lockdown has made me relax and take the time to do things I would never have gotten around to doing. I settled on this project, which I work on every day. I’m always adding something new to the scene and there are always new birds and interactions happening. It’s made the days fly by,” he says.



During the lockdown, there was only one male Cape Sugar Bird that landed in his garden. This spectacular bird is unique to South Africa and mostly only found in the Western Cape. All of this will go into an exhibition Benjamin is working towards in Cape Town.

Steven Benjamin

Why This Photographer Looked Up During The Lockdown

Sure, optimism shone forth in Cape Town like the late summer sun bouncing off Table Mountain, as more than 6,000 powerful people, including more than 20 government ministers, headed for the biggest mining gathering on the planet.
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There were more mining companies this year, up 50% on last year, after more than five years of decline. The keen-eyed investors were back and looking for contenders across the continent. A fruitful place to be for the brave, like the motorbike riding maverick Mark Bristow who has spent the last 20 years making money digging gold in mines from Mali to Cote D’Ivoire. Two decades ago many fellow South Africans may have laughed at Bristow for taking risks far from home, in what many see as barren land for mining, but now they’re laughing on the other side of their faces. At the Mining Indaba, Bristow’s Randgold Resources announced it had increased gold production, for the fifth year in a row, plus it was debt free with more than $500 million in cash. Many mining companies would kill to be in that position.
Among the investors looking to blaze a trail across Africa is the Lagos-based African Finance Corporation that began life, in 2007, with a fund of $1.1 billion and now has assets of $3 billion, according to one of its directors, Osam Iyahen. It is a public-private fund, 42% owned by government, that invests in: oil; gas; resources; infrastructure and power. In January, it broke ground on a $200-million bauxite mine in the Boffa region of Guinea Conakry, just 15 kilometers from the coast, with plans to ramp up to 15 million tons.
“I think there has been a rebound in the industry this year,” says Iyahen in Cape Town.
“Last year was a bit of a disaster. People were not interested in talking about transactions; all they were worried about was protecting their downside. There was a lot of sulking going on.”
You could be forgiven for thinking the host nation is still sulking. South Africa, the biggest mining country on the continent, has been like a boxer on the ropes since the power cuts and global financial collapse of 2008. More than 60,000 jobs have been lost since 2012; capital expenditure ground to a halt and the South African industry lost R38 billion (about $2.8 billion) in 2016 alone, in a year when mining output fell 4.8%.
“We have to get our house in order in South Africa, capital is a coward and it goes to the place where there is least risk. We have to remember mining is a global game now and it is easier than ever for foreign investors to move capital around. Our grandchildren will live with the legacy of what we do now,” says Kieran Whyte, a lawyer and partner at Baker McKenzie, who specializes in energy and infrastructure.
The last few months of 2016 were better as commodity prices lifted, according to the Chamber of Mines, especially the risk haven of gold in the wake of the unpredictable, to put it kindly, presidency of Donald Trump.
“I think we are seeing the green shoots here, we just have to watch out for frostbite,” says Roger Baxter, the CEO of the Chamber of Mines, with a smile on the first day.
Baxter was alluding to two cold fronts: the first, the fact that South Africa – that mined more than a third of the world’s gold – is no longer the king of mining. In fact, in these troubled economic times, more and more nations, from West Africa to South America, are ready to accept foreign investors with open arms. A sign of the times is that, on the eve of the Mining Indaba, analysts in Cape Town were extolling the virtues of the copper, gold and coal mining nation of Chile.
The second frosty front is regulatory uncertainty. The South African government, which has met six times with the Chamber of Mines, has been working on amendments to its mining law since December 27, 2012. It promises to gazette the amended Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act (MPRDA) by the end of March; the Chamber of Mines feels it could be April.
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What is likely to be in the bill could cause conflict. It is expected there will be greater ministerial discretion and set in stone that all mining companies have to have 26% black ownership at all times. One of the problems is black shareholders, once they have passed their lock-in date, often cash in their stakes by selling to white shareholders, thus diluting the empowerment stake.
The Chamber of Mines, which represents almost all South African mining houses, disagrees strongly with this. It feels that once mining companies have borne the cost of financing black shareholdings it has done its job regardless of dilution. If this so-called “once empowered, always empowered” principle is accepted, many of the country’s biggest mining houses will be compliant overnight.
“I have never seen the Chamber of Mines so aggressive. Normally they get along to go along, but it seems the worm has turned,” says one mining insider in Cape Town.
It is all likely to end up in court where mining lawyer Peter Leon reckons they have a strong case.
“All they have to do is challenge section 100 of the MPRDA. This gives the minister the power to promulgate the act, but doesn&#8217;t give the minister the right to rewrite or amend the act. That would blow it out of the water,” says Leon.
There appears to be little sign of a U-turn by the government over an issue that could further confuse and deter investors.
“We don&#8217;t want to encourage a place where courts take the place of government. We don&#8217;t agree with the norm that if you don&#8217;t agree with us you take it to court,” says South African mining minister Mosebenzi Zwane.
It’s a cold front that could mean a Chile future.

Beware, It’s Chile Out There

Once a month, at full moon, hundreds of hikers don their headlamps and tighten their laces ready for the climb. It’s a long and sapping four kilometers to the summit of Lion’s Head, the outcrop overlooking the rooftops of the suburbs to the east of the city Cape Town. At the top you have an unrivalled panorama of the city bowl; from an imposing misty Table Mountain to the pristine white beaches of Clifton and the blue Atlantic beyond.
On this day, people were there to see more than that. Hundreds packed at the peak of Lion’s Head to see the moon rise in the east and the sunset in the west. It is a rare moment of natural beauty. For Cape Town hikers, a sweaty rite of passage is to bathe in the dusk and then walk in the beams of moonlight.
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Along the route is a tricky chain ladder that is not for the faint of heart. Some turn back, spooked by the dizzy heights. The final stretch is a cruel incline and scramble up the rocks that leaves you puffing.
For one man, this is more than just one of nature’s gifts. In a grey jersey he chooses the rise of the moon as his moment to propose to his love. As he drops on one knee, the crowd catches on. When he does the deed his blushing fiancé says yes; her face is as red as the sunset. The climbers of Lion’s Head break out into applause. This is surely a story for the wedding reception.
Others make the trek with friends, to share a drink. Selfies with yoga poses on the rocks are on their agenda to take in the moment. Another individual makes a Skype call to his family in England, they are impressed he made it up in an hour and a half.
It’s not always the safest place to be on top of a mountain. The weather can be misleading. Winds can gust and blow you off the rocks. Often hikers fall and need to be airlifted to safety.
As the night settles, the headlamps are switched on and a chill wind sets in – it’s time to go. The hundreds of people on top of the summit scramble down. In an instant there is a traffic jam on the rocks as slow as the streets of Lagos. At least the view is good.
All part of a night in Africa, hiking towards the sun and to take in the moonlight. Where else but in Africa?

Between The Sun And  The Moon

It was a gloomy winter’s day outside the domed Good Hope Centre in the heart of Cape Town. Table Mountain peeped through the clouds and a slight drizzle pattered gently against the concrete roof. It was July 18, 1998, the day that saw the money of poor people stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the rich. A day the dream of turning $840,000 into $628 million took root.
This was the moment when Brimstone Investment Corporation Limited listed on Africa’s largest bourse, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE). It carried the hope of small shop owners, fishermen and teachers who had put their life savings on the line.
“It was early days at the Good Hope Centre, which is at the foot of District Six, what was then called the Fruit and Veg Market. We had this view we were taking the people to a different kind of market, the market of high finance,” chuckles Fred Robertson, Executive Chairman of Brimstone.
Many of the thousand shareholders that gathered ran the same streets as Robertson. The future entrepreneur and millionaire sold newspapers, apples and popcorn in cinemas in District Six. The company’s choice of District Six as the launch pad for wealth for the people was no accident – rather an unspoken statement. In the 1970s, the apartheid authorities moved Robertson and 60,000 of his neighbors to make way for white residents.
“You must remember there were forced removals across the country, not only in District Six. But we were thrown across this piece of wasteland called the Cape Flats. Families were taken apart. Friends and neighbors were all thrown. We were a family of nine children. My sisters were in different townships. Our family started disintegrating at the time,” says Robertson.
All this was a distant, if painful, memory as the shareholders in the Good Hope Centre stood nervously staring at two large computer screens as they flickered into life. Most knew little about the shares their money had bought. They were a cross section from the margins of Cape Town: the sort of people who walked to work with little money to spare.
This listing was also proof of the promises from Robertson, a former teacher, and his partners Mustaq Brey, a self-taught chartered accountant from Wynberg, and Lawrie Brozin, another chartered accountant who joined the company from his family business in Illovo, Johannesburg; three men, three worlds, three religions; one fear shared with their shareholders – a loss.
“We are talking about a community that was previously disadvantaged that didn’t know about stocks. We listed at R4 ($1.12) and came off at about R6 ($1.68),” says Brey.
“Life was good then, hey?” laughs Brozin.
Since that soggy day in July 1998, the investment company has gone from strength to strength. Brimstone these days claims assets worth $628 million, with an intrinsic net asset value (INAV) of R17.09 ($1.48 in June 2014) a share, a far cry from R4 ($1.12 in 1994) on day one at the JSE.
After 20 years of investment, the group employs around 3,300 and has 16,000 subsidiaries. Its associates are among the biggest names in Africa: Life Healthcare, Oceana, Sea Harvest, Lion of Africa Insurance, Old Mutual, Nedbank, Tiger Brands, Grindrod Limited, The Scientific Group, House of Monatic, Taste Holdings, Afena Capital and Rex Trueform.
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Chili Poppers
The Brimstone trio reflect on leaner times in their humble offices at the back of Newlands cricket ground on a brighter day. Around the boardroom table the mood is easy. In between questions, at least one of the three will reach out to snap up a steaming spring roll or a chili popper, made by Brey’s sister Bibi.
“Your sister is the best cook, I am telling you now,” says Brozin to Brey.
Bibi’s spicy tidbits are a small reminder of how everything, as Leonardo da Vinci said, is connected to everything else. In 1994, Bibi, along with her chili poppers, was at the first Brimstone shareholder meeting in the small Newlands Grounds South Club, a stone’s throw from this boardroom.
“We called in a whole lot of people together and explained to them what we wanted to do. The meals we ordered were from Bibi, she then brought us a bill the next morning,” says Robertson.
“For R5,000 ($1,400),” says Brey, ever the accountant.
“And we then gave her a share certificate,” says Robertson.
“I then said ‘you owe me another R12,500 ($3,503)’. She said ‘I owe you money?’ And I said ‘yes’. She ended up paying the extra money and landed up with 5,000 shares,” says Brey.
“Six thousand seven hundred and fifty shares [in total],” corrects Robertson.
Back in 1994, it wasn’t just the chilies that were popping. In that year, the shareholders spotted their first hot deal. They called it the Oceana deal: a 9.73% stake in Oceana Group, a collection of operating subsidiaries in the fishing and cold storage industries along South Africa’s west coast.
“The bank told us they would give us a loan of R4 million ($1.1 million). We had to raise another R3 million ($842,000) in six weeks. We went door to door. I even remember organizing a bond on the one shareholder’s house to get some money,” says Brey.
“At the time you were starting a company. It’s not like you were buying a company. It was an idea. You were backing guys,” says Brozin.
By 1995, the deal was done; the first drop in an ocean of investments that was to make more than a few waves. Word spread to the ear of former head of state Nelson Mandela.
“Mandela was one of our first shareholders. He paid for shares, like everybody else paid for shares. He saw it in the newspaper and then called us to the presidency and said he also would like to invest, like everybody else. And we said ‘yes of course,’” says Robertson.
“He bought 240,000 shares with
a cheque of R300,000 ($85,000),”
says Brey.
Foul Weather On The Horizon
It was not all fair winds and following seas. Storm clouds loomed over the horizon as foul weather threatened to sink Brimstone.
“In 1995/96, it was the start of a huge boom in the stock market. South Africa was in a fantastic space. Everyone was listing. We used my house as an office in Illovo, a study at the bottom. We had cigars and whiskey. It was just such a crazy time. We became quite substantial after about a year because the market carried us. Then the music stopped,” says Brozin.
The financial storm hit in August 1997.
“The world financial markets were in turmoil. At the listing time it had been up to R6 ($1.68). Our INAV, if you did a calculation of what our values were, it was then R2.50 ($0.35) at that stage,” says Brey.
By 1998, Brimstone’s share price almost hit the seabed.
“Then the vultures came out and said they wanted to buy us out. They told us we could make R150 million (around $30 million)… A financial group in Johannesburg came to us and said why don’t we delist Brimstone, buy the shareholders out at current market price. Buy them out at a rand. Sell all the assets and then make R1.50 (30 US cents) profit,” says Brey.
“But we said we don’t want to leave Cape Town. We’ve taken money from the people from the [Cape] flats; we’d have had to run out of Cape Town if word got out that we’d do something like that. It was unethical. What we then decided to do was sell off all liquid or listed stocks, the easily sellable stuff. Turn that R1.50 and give back capital of R1.50 to our shareholders. Our shareholders liked it, but the market didn’t. Our price went down to about 20 cents ($0.03) in October 2001,” he says.
“The lowest of the low our share was 18 cents,” says Brozin.
In those days, you couldn’t even buy chewing gum for that.
Brimstone weathered the storm and looked to the ocean for salvation. In 2003, they doubled a stake in Sea Harvest to 61.44%, one of the largest hake producers along the west coast – its gross value in 2014 was at just over R557 million ($52 million). The waters appeared to have calmed and the shares rose with acquisitions into Old Mutual (now at $22.4 million), Nedbank (now at $47.5 million), Life Healthcare (now at $202 million) and Oceana (now at $162 million).
Five years later, another whirlwind hit. This time it was the 2008 global financial crisis, in which the whole world got soaked. Companies floundered after the United States (US) property bubble burst. Sub-prime mortgage-backed securities on US property price estimates crashed. The knock on effect hit Cape Town with a vengeance. Brimstone’s headline earnings went from just over R752 million ($69.9 million) in 2007, to a headline loss of about R77 million ($7.1 million) in 2008.
“Looking back over the past year, it was a period that brought some extraordinary challenges. The turbulent and perhaps up to this point, unprecedented deterioration of the global financial market, has and will for the foreseeable future continue to impact on economies, businesses and ordinary people across the developed and developing world. Like many other companies, Brimstone has not escaped the effects of the negative market,” wrote Jakes Gerwel, former Director-General of the Presidency when Mandela was in office and the Non-Executive Chairman of Brimstone in 2008.
By the end of 2008, Brimstone’s net asset value had declined to $204 milion, an erosion of 7.7%.
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Turning Point – Life Healthcare
Joy came in the morning. To the rescue was a lifesaver in more ways than one. The Life Healthcare deal, struck in 2005, matured in 2010 just in time to save the company.
“Life Healthcare issued almost double equity on our shares. In June 2010, we unbundled Life Healthcare and created significant wealth for our shareholders,” says Robertson.
The unbundling threw off the recession and stabilized Brimstone’s name in the investment business. It was a good time to be in the South African private healthcare market with a growing and aging middle class and a cash strapped public health system.
These days, Brimstone’s 5.04% share in the private hospital operator is valued at over $202 million. It’s an important part of the $628-million company. Brimstone’s share price now sits at R17 per share, a far cry from the dark days of 2008 and $0.03.
So, do they think that their shares are undervalued or overpriced on the JSE?
“We’ve always been selling at a discount. We trade at about a 20 percent discount. You will see most investment holding companies will trade at this,” says Robertson.
In the last year, the company has been busy. In April, they sold their shares with the diagnostics group, The Scientific Group (SG), to Ascendis in a deal worth R284 million ($26.7 million). In July, they also led a R1.6 billion ($151 million) transaction giving them an 4.97% share of Grindrod, the South African-based freight holdings company.
“Over the past 10 years, Brimstone has delivered an annual total return of over 40 percent to investors. Over the past year, Brimstone’s exposure to the fishing industry in particular, through Oceana Group and Sea Harvest, as well as its investment in Tiger Brands, has boosted its performance. The underlying assets offer investors the opportunity to get exposure to unlisted companies with good earnings growth. As the company is relatively closely held by investors, with a small free float, liquidity is an issue for new entrants,” says Mia Kruger, Director, Equity Analyst &amp; Portfolio Manager at Kruger International.
“Grindrod has been in existence in Africa for over 100 years. The infrastructure sector which we are busy with at the moment is exceptional. Grindrod, in Mozambique, is doing well with port and the rail,” says Brey.
Other investments include the purchase of a R125 million ($11.7 million) fishing trawler from Norway called The Harvest Atlantic Peace that works for Sea Harvest out of Saldanha Bay, 120 kilometers north of Cape Town.
“She is, touch wood, fishing absolutely phenomenally. [Sea Harvest] certainly is one of the biggest economic drivers along the west coast. I think people underestimate the importance of Sea Harvest. In Saldanha, we must be the biggest consumers of electricity; pay the most taxes; pay the most rates and employ the most people. Again, the knock-on effect from that is an economic driver along there and it keeps hundreds of small shops open,” says Robertson.
A study by the University of Cape Town concluded that this single business was the largest economic driver along the West Coast of South Africa. It employs 2,400 people, of which 51% are female.
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Largest AGM In Africa
Brimstone’s ticket to billions lies in the hands of hundreds of shareholders’ homes across Cape Town. Most of them are working people; one reason why Brimstone hold their AGMs after hours, in the evening.
“In the early days, we had one shareholders’ meeting in the day. People came up to us and said ‘are you going to pay me for my day I am not going to work?’ We’ve learned that part of setting up Brimstone and developing Brimstone was we had a new wave of shareholders, who had never invested in the market before. Shareholders for the first time got shares in a listed company. We had to educate them. I think more of this should have been done in the country to be honest,” says Brey.
“I’ve learned from Brimstone that one takes for granted that you have a stockbroker, you go and buy a share and all is well. But that isn’t the way life works for the shareholder we have. They don’t know what a share is; they don’t know what a share certificate is; they don’t know what a CSDP [Central Securities Depository Participant] is. It’s very confusing. We’ve been very accommodating and I don’t think there is a company today that actually manages that process for our shareholders,” says Brozin.
“Three hundred people come to our AGMs. It’s one of the biggest in the country. I think you can’t go on doing business as usual, offered to us in our new democracy. You couldn’t do this before,” says Robertson.
Empowering the previously disadvantaged remains a core aspect to Brimstone’s success.
“They are saying today one percent of the world’s population owns half of the world’s wealth. That’s why we have some of the issues we have got today,” says Brozin.
“People say [Black Economic Empowerment (BEE)] is dead. I don’t believe that. I believe it’s very much alive. We are going to have to do much more of it if we are going to get this country into the right economic shape that it should be in… We are going to have to rethink in this country for its own good how we’re going to do BEE going forward. It’s going to have to cascade more and go broader.”
When it comes to Africa investing in Africa, they say it’s simple.
“The people of Africa should have more stakes in those businesses than what they have ever had before. That also counts for any region you invest in. You can’t go in and just do business and not employ the people there and not leave the profits behind. You have to leave the country in a better place than what you started in,” says Robertson.
Almost 20 years to the day, it’s a fair walk on a gusty summer’s day as the trio trudge into the wind up Signal Hill. A former teacher and two accountants, who turned an idea into an investment company, look down the valley beneath Table Mountain. In the hazy distance is District Six, the former home of Robertson. It’s one of the only parts of Cape Town that has been left fallow. This is land Robertson and his 60,000 neighbors are claiming back.
“It was our home after all,” says Robertson.
“Oh, I didn’t know you had submitted for that?” says Brozin.
“My family did a while ago. But we’re waiting to hear from the government. Hopefully they won’t give us our piece of land back. We’re hoping they’ll mix it up and give us one higher up on the hill instead. The views from there were much better,” says Robertson.
All three laugh at the joke and the analogy. You could argue Brimstone is always looking to move up the hill.
As the sea crashes onto the Cape Town shore, the sound is another reminder of yet another analogy that even the sturdiest vessels can be wrecked by a violent storm. Just
ask Brimstone.

Tag: Table Mountain

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

Why This Photographer Looked Up During The Lockdown

Beware, It’s Chile Out There

Between The Sun And The Moon

Mandela And Billions… Then The Vultures Came Out