I had heard stories and seen pictures of this town, thinking I would never set foot in such a place. But nobody can predict what is destined; I was assigned to photograph Orania, a small, whites-only Afrikaner town 155 kilometers away from Kimberly, in South Africa’s Northern Cape province.
We see Klein Reus (a small boy rolling up his sleeves) who is a mascot painted on the town’s sign. That is how we know we’ve arrived. I look for a petrol station where we are to meet our contact; James Kemp, originally from Pretoria.
We convoy into the town to a restaurant close to the Orange River. Feeling uncomfortable, I park the car facing the exit to make it easier to escape should things turn sour.
We meet with Kemp and young Joost Strydom who will show us around Orania, but first its dinner. The restaurant’s menu is in Afrikaans, and amounts are without the rand sign but with an O and a line across it, representing Ora (Oranian currency).
As a Soweto born and bred youth, I am out my comfort zone for a minute and my street smarts are left behind in the little Kia Picanto we parked. However, the local beer is great, something I can relate to with the locals, and the food is decent.
Soon after, it was back to Kimberly and we are told to drive slowly and keep the interior lights on so that kudus jump over the car and not towards the headlights. Strange as it sounds, we do as we are told. It’s a long drive back.
Day two, we arrive in Orania at 8AM, just in time for our breakfast meeting at Die Pienk Zebra coffee shop. I realize the waiters are not black, something unusual in the rest of South Africa. I had the usual toasted brown bread, bacon and half-done eggs, only this time it comes with dried lamb fat and a portion of pap. It was filling and tasty.
Then it was time to meet Carel Boshoff, the son of Orania’s founder and grandson of former South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd. He says the town was made to preserve the Afrikaans culture; I find it hard to believe, I think they were running away from us.
But before all that, young Strydom takes a picture of me sitting on top of large letters that spell out Orania, which I post on social media. I got a lot of questions and a few racial comments and it was an honor telling them the place is not as bad as they think.
After a short tour, we return to the restaurant for lunch. A group of teens laugh aloud while enjoying their milkshakes, a young couple kiss over a beer and a soft drink, while a man behind them looks at us without blinking, making us uncomfortable. It seems he doesn’t like the idea of black people sitting in their restaurant, indulging in Afrikaner food. That soon changes my mind about the place, but I decide that not all the locals can be racist.
We drive around the town again and I get a better feel about the place. Most here are working class, not the middle and upper class I assumed I would encounter.
Lastly we visit the Verwoerd Museum, the house where Betsie, the wife of the late apartheid leader Hendrik Verwoerd, lived. I don’t like the idea of going in, I fear we might get locked in and the community will come and make toast of us. We go into Betsie’s bedroom and the stale odour that hits me immediately makes me want to leave the house, and the town.
As we drive away, I stop the car to photograph the Orania sign, wondering if these people are genuinely not racist or if it was just an act for the media.

A Soweto Boy In An Afrikaner Haven

Tottenham Hotspur fans call him ‘The Beast’. In Swahili, Wanyama means animals; to the Luhya tribe to which he belongs, the appellation is more impressively specific – he is ‘the one born when an animal was slaughtered in celebration’. Spurs fans have indeed had much to be thankful for since the Kenyan midfielder’s arrival from Southampton in June 2016.
So far this season, Victor Wanyama has started all of Tottenham’s Premier League fixtures, and is arguably their most dependable asset. A silent enforcer who allows the club’s most creative players to pivot and rotate around him, Wanyama also has a dusting of the artist’s flair so beloved at White Hart Lane. His passing choices are deceptively simple and considered, and he recently demonstrated a hidden depth of slick versatility in Spurs’ January draw at the Etihad, dropping back to center-half when required against a predatory Manchester City side that were ready to profit had he been less assured in his understanding of football’s fluid geometry.
<div id="attachment_4729" style="width: 248px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-4729" class="size-medium wp-image-4729" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GettyImages-655297348-238x300.jpg" alt="" width="238" height="300" />LONDON, ENGLAND &#8211; MARCH 19: Victor Wanyama of Tottenham Hotspur during the Premier League match between Tottenham Hotspur and Southampton at White Hart Lane on March 19, 2017 in London, England. (Photo by Catherine Ivill &#8211; AMA/Getty Images)</div>
Wanyama’s destiny as his country’s most valuable football export was forged in the dusty streets of Nairobi, Kenya’s electric, bustling, intoxicating capital. He attended St Peter’s Claver Primary, in the infamous Landhies Road area in the old center of the city, where matatu drivers, market traders and teeth and skin-whitening peddlers jostle for custom in a chaotic miasma of klaxons and exhaust fumes. His class teacher, Penina Ogony, remembers him as quiet and respectful.
“He didn’t have much to say,” she laughs. “But he was a good boy, and he did well in his final exams. And he was huge for his age, as big as his teacher at the time.”
A few hundred yards up the road nestles Wanyama’s old secondary school, cowering behind the ubiquitous Nairobi construction sites with their laborers’ bellows and Hadean clang of metal on hot metal. Kamukunji is a nursery for the best football talent in the city; gifted young players from the school train a few blocks away at a local estate at dawn before class, with the most promising earmarked early by local Kenyan Premier League teams and allowed by the school to link up with their clubs during class time, provided academic targets are met.
A framed photograph of Wanyama from 2015 – he is addressing beaming Kamukunji students in the school courtyard – is the proud centerpiece on a table of jostling football trophies in the office of the school’s current principal, Patrick Gakung’u.
“Wanyama was very consistent,” he says. “He was able to successfully blend football and classes. That’s difficult, and it’s something we encourage here. And these young players prefer this school because we have that element.”
It’s a delicate balance that can be hard to sustain. The thin line dividing full-blooded enthusiasm and reckless indiscipline is easily crossed, as Kamukunji discovered in 2016 when their goalkeeper’s violent overreaction to a refereeing decision resulted in a two-year ban from all secondary school competitions. Gakung’u is appealing the ban, and argues that a cadre of talented and disciplined youngsters should not have to endure an injurious collective penance. He assembles the players in the school courtyard for a team photograph; they smile shyly in the sunshine as their coach, ‘Leopard’ Ngari, reminisces about a young, unassuming, “very hardworking” Wanyama.
“Although he was talented, he was very humble; you never saw him say no to others,” he says. “When he came back to address the students, he repeated one thing: you have to be focused. We are very proud of him.”
Gakung’u gently encourages current team captain Tom Atieno and attacking midfielder Fiston Nchungu to break from the group for a moment to talk about their aspirations.
“Victor inspired me to play like him,” says Nchungu. “To be disciplined. To play in England, because there is so much competition there.”
His captain favors Arsenal; what odds on these two young men facing off in a future North London derby?
The road to professional success to date has been a narrow and precarious one for a young Kenyan player; relatively few have made it the hallowed ground of a club in a top league overseas. Only eight of the current national team squad currently play outside Africa, and the UK’s strict and unsentimental points system for evaluating a non-EU national’s eligibility for a work permit is punishing on countries with a low FIFA ranking. That climate is evolving fast, however. Kenya has climbed almost 30 places, to 87th, in two years thanks to the appointment of former Glasgow Rangers striker Bobby Williamson as manager in 2014, and the dynamic new approach of the youthful current head coach Stanley Okumbi. In late February, local betting giants SportPesa, sponsors of the Kenyan Premier League and English top-flight club Hull City, sent a squad of 18 of the best young Kenyan players in the country to the UK for a training camp and friendly match against the Premier League side. Wanyama is unlikely to remain the sole Kenyan in the Premier League for long (and many Kenyan fans argue that Liverpool striker Divock Origi, a Belgian international with a Kenyan father, is also flying their flag in the world’s toughest league).
Wanyama’s recent success is even more remarkable, given the scarcity of such opportunities in Kenya a decade ago. His break came when he was scouted by former AFC Leopards coach Edward Manoah while playing in a high school tournament for Kamukunji (Wanyama’s disciplinarian father Noah had been a successful and adored left winger at the club, and ties between the Leopards and the Wanyamas endure).
“He was a striker then, tall for his age,” says Manoah.  “He was strong in the air and could hold the ball up well. He came on in the second half on his Leopards debut – and scored the winner.”
Wanyama’s development was rapid. He earned his first cap for Kenya at 15 years old, and quickly emulated the progress of his older brother McDonald Mariga, another of the Kamukunji ‘golden boys’. Mariga’s talent had been spotted by Swedish lower division side Enköpings SK, and he took quickly to European football, moving to Helsingborgs IF before joining Serie A club Parma, and later Inter Milan, where he became the first Kenyan player to appear in the Champions League.
After short stints at Nairobi City Stars and JMJ Academy, Wanyama at last followed his brother to Helsingborgs. A robust three-year stint at Belgian side Beerschot caught the attention of Celtic, where he became the first Kenyan to score in the Champions League in an emotional win against Barcelona. Mauricio Pochettino, then manager of Southampton, brought him to St Mary’s in 2013, recognizing the qualities of diligence, athleticism and humility that are the hallmarks of the Argentine’s team ethic; the move to Pochettino’s Tottenham in 2016 seems, in retrospect, an inevitability.
It’s January 2017, and a hot, bright morning at Marist University in the leafy Nairobi suburb of Karen, about half an hour outside the city. The AFC Leopards first-team squad is playing a gritty, breathless seven-a-side game on a difficult dusty surface as new head coach Stewart Hall, a seasoned former Birmingham City academy director, observes from the touchline. On an adjacent pitch, the Leopards youth team runs through passing drills as the club’s CEO, Ronald Namai, outlines a positive but realistic future for the next would-be Kenyan superstars.
“This year we have actually promoted four of the youth team, so we are focused on bringing young players through to the senior squad,” he says. “We have constant feedback from schools; if we identify a promising player, we will pay their school fees and they will train with us over the holidays. What we insist is during school days, you must be in school. Otherwise we are not going to allow you to train. You see we have promoted 17 year-old. But when you are 28, 29, you are on your way out. So what are you going to do after that? You need an education.”
For Namai, there is still room in his grounded realism for the promise of some modest success; one of the three Leopards players in the squad traveling to Hull, he insists, will be a Premier League player by 2018.
Hall jogs over while the first team takes a break. He points out Ibrahim Mao, one of the four recent graduates from the youth team. A slender, evasive winger with an intelligent first touch, Mao jumps a tackle and hits a fierce shot hard and early while we watch.
“There’s some real talent in Kenya,” says Hall. “I’m saying to all my players, now listen, there’s a Kenyan playing in England, but also Belgium, Russia, Bulgaria, Sweden, Norway, Denmark. There’s a Kenyan in the MLS in the States. And because of this, the scouts are moving out here and taking kids from here younger and younger.”
He says that fostering the right attitude in these players, a Wanyama-like focus, is now a priority.
“Before, it’s been a case of wanting to be the best in the village, not the best in the country. That’s been a problem.”
His exhausted squad breaks for lunch. There’ll be a second session in the afternoon to hone fitness; the announcement of the league’s opening fixtures is believed to be just days away.
“I’ve said to this lot, if you don’t want to be a serious footballer, I don’t want you at the club. And I’ll chase you away,” he says. “We’ve put in a recruitment strategy that says we want to be the youngest team in the league. And now there’s a hunger here. Everybody here should want to be Wanyama.”

We’ll Follow  The Beast To Hull And Back

You might be the most charismatic entrepreneur since noodles were invented, but recruiting the best talent, and retaining it for at least seven years, is a complicated task in today’s world where professionals are hopping from one company to the next. For many millennials in particular, staying four years at one company for four years is not desirable.
Who you bring into your company, can make or break its reputation. It can either be a disaster or glorious journey.
Jim Collins, in his book Good to Great, uses a bus to illustrate this. Before the bus starts driving, you need to find the right people, put them in the right seats, and only then can you decide where you want to go.
When the US government was breaking up John D. Rockefeller’s company, Standard Oil, he asked that he identify certain people he would like to retain. He did this because he knew he could put together another successful company with the right people.
Recruiting the same high-minded people, that share your ambitions, can be challenging. You end up with the scenario of leaders leading leaders, which can lead to friction.
I hear many entrepreneurs saying you should hire people more intelligent than you. This should be done with caution because you might find yourself in a position where your leadership is undermined. However, you also don’t want to be working with people that are incapable.
Some employees in your company may be entrepreneurial – they’re called intrapreneurs. They need to be enabled, rather than suppressed. Give them the freedom to come up with new ideas in your company, like Alphabet, which owns Google. This is a company that is innovative by nature and has a culture of enabling such restless souls – otherwise they will resign and start their own thing.
If you are, or ever have been, an entrepreneur, you will know that finding a right match for your company can be arduous. It is for this reason that numerous hedge fund companies, like Citadel and Bridgewater Associates, still interact with new candidates and recruits.
The conundrum we face is that we don’t always keep those recruits, no matter how much we value them. It has been found that, on average, only one out of 16 employees will remain for an extended period of time at a company.
Some companies, once they have shortlisted eligible candidates, try to talk them out of wanting to be employed there. They do this to ensure that they only hire people that are passionate about working for the company. The reason for this is that it is better, and more cost effective, to lose a candidate than an employee.
Goldman Sachs has one of the most vigorous recruiting processes. They will ask candidates to come at a certain time, then when they arrive, the senior personnel from Goldman Sachs won’t be there for the appointment, or will arrive late. The candidates who leave before the manager arrives will not go further in the process; those that remain are told the moral of the experience is to learn to wait for someone who is higher than you in business hierarchy.
In your company you have three groups of employees who roughly make up these percentages, the 20%, 60% and 20%. The first 20% are the unproductive people you wish to fire at the first chance you get; the second 60% are average employees, who are  and consistent, and who form the core of any company; the final 20% are your top-notch employees, who generally over-perform. The problem with this group is that everyone wants them; competitors are continuously trying to snatch them. For this reason, they tend not to stay long at a single company, instead moving to the highest bidder in the market.
That middle group – the 60% – is who you need to nurture. They will stick with you and their loyalty will produce the best results.

Hang on  to your stars

The long delayed signing of a new trade agreement with the European Union further exposes the chaotic state of integration within the East African Community (EAC) bloc.
The pact, known as the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), was originally set for ratification on October 1, 2016, but, five months later, that is still to happen.
The impasse has split the EAC bloc. While Kenya and Rwanda signed the agreement in September last year, Tanzania, Uganda and Burundi are yet to do so, citing the need for more time to analyse the deal.
The stance taken by Tanzania, Uganda and Burundi means that the pacts signed by Kenya and Rwanda are inconsequential – a new agreement with the EU must be endorsed as a bloc.
Tanzania’s President John Magufuli and his Uganda counterpart l have remained vocal against a rushed deal with EU, even as Kenya’s frustrations deepened given the risks of not concluding a deal with Europe.
“It is better if the signing of the deal is shelved until further consultations are made,” Museveni told a media briefing while on a state visit in Tanzania at the end of February.
Kenya stands to lose the most if the deal falls through. The other EAC member states – Tanzania, Burundi, Uganda and Rwanda – would continue to get duty- and quota-free access under the EU’s Everything But Arms (EBA) initiative, since they are classified as the least developed countries.
This whole quandary shows how shallow the EAC integration has been, despite the bloc attaining the critical customs union status way back in 2005 and a common market in 2011. Integration goes beyond just having such structures; other aspects, such as trust and solidarity, are critical to moving things forward.
A review of recent key events in East Africa reveals massive levels of negative rivalry and mistrust which doesn’t augur well for the bloc. Things have not been well since 2013 when Tanzania fell out with Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda following the formation of their short-lived ‘coalition of the willing’, ostensibly to push for faster integration.
The now collapsed initiative was a terrible diplomatic mistake by Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya because it weakened the spirit of consensus and teamwork in the bloc. Since then, the chaos and mistrust triggered by this wild experiment has been evident in key issues involving the bloc. For instance, a new infrastructure and energy partnership between Tanzania and Uganda has left Kenya frothing at the mouth, especially after Kampala pulled out of an initial deal to build a joint crude pipeline with Kenya in favor of a route through Tanzania.
Kenya clearly feels slighted by the latest dalliance between Dar es Salaam and Kampala as was shown during the recently held election of a new chairperson of the African Union Commission. When Kenya’s candidate in the elections, Amina Mohamed, was defeated, Nairobi promptly pointed accusing fingers at Tanzania and Uganda for allegedly sabotaging its efforts to clinch the position it had highly campaigned for. Both Tanzania and Uganda denied the claims.
“Uganda wishes to state categorically that our support to the candidature of Amina before and during elections was unequivocal. Uganda wishes to reassure the government and the people of Kenya, and Amina in particular, that we remain a reliable ally and partner given our warm and close relations and our commitment to the EAC integration,” Uganda’s Foreign Affairs ministry said in response to Kenya.
Tackling the mistrust and clandestine power rivalry will be critical in putting the EAC back on a clear path to full integration which would help address challenges such as those being experienced in the elusive EPA deal. The big brother syndrome has no place in regional integration and all partners must inculcate a spirit of comradeship to excel.
Kenya and Rwanda must not been seen to be bulldozing the rest to sign a pact with Europe. Their decision to sign the deal ahead of the rest sent the wrong signal to other EAC partners who read mischief in the whole process.
Concluding the deal with Europe is critical for the EAC as it would help settle anxiety among investors. Business loathes a vacuum and efforts must be made to clear all hurdles to find a deal that would be favorable to all.

The Elusive Trade Deal  that split east africa

Life in Nigeria today is like living in a dilapidated caravan, or driving around in a fancy jalopy.
When this sort of accommodation or transportation is your daily reality, then your long-term ambitions become hobbled by the pragmatic quest to simply make it to the next day’s hustle, the next salary, the next windfall or gift from that well-to-do cousin, and perhaps, for businesses, waiting for that large order that may never come. Under these faltering conditions, a balanced diet, quality education, satisfactory healthcare, comfortable and safe transportation, and strategic focus become luxuries.
For most folks, simply existing has become a risk; and for businesses and corporate citizenship, a wasteful pleasure. Phrases like “the economic growth and recovery plan” begin to sound somewhat pretentious. Another government mirage perhaps. Sadly, the disdain for diligence is rife and few Nigerians seem convinced that patriotism has its rewards. The paradox of hoping for affluence has become a pandemic, with citizens, companies and communities prowling around for scarce resources and opportunities like a herd of famished goats. Even government’s uptake of loans – $1 billion from the African Development Bank (AfDB) and $1.3 billion from China’s Exim Bank for rail projects – has not restored confidence in the shaky polity. Another $1 billion World Bank facility is expected to flow into government’s coffers in 2017, says Nigeria’s Finance Minister, Kemi Adeosun.
“The economy is on the path to recovery and confidence in the macro-picture is key,” Adeosun told CNBC Africa anchor Wole Famurewa in February. “Government is focused on investing in the priority areas of power and infrastructure… even as we continue work on payroll clean-ups and efficiency at the state level…”
The dire economy will not stop government from taking its statutory pound of flesh from companies, as oil revenues now represent only 10% of GDP. So, tax reforms will take center stage. At 6%, Nigeria has one of the lowest tax to GDP ratios in the world, with Ghana at 15% and South Africa 24%, Adesoun cautions, warning that “we should be very careful about getting excited about recent crude oil price recovery.”
At the micro level, pervasive poverty, disdain for Abujanomics and the proliferation of dodgy pyramid/Ponzi schemes is the new social order. Camouflaging as financial literacy, network marketing or empowerment programs, they represent on one side, the quest for overnight wealth and absolute disregard for government’s agenda and promissory notes, and on the flip side, the emergence of a new breed of professional charlatans peddling crafty concepts in an increasingly sophisticated economy.  Somebody needs to commission a poll to measure Nigeria’s social desperation index.
In a risk-averse, reward-hungry society such as this, contemporary concepts and capabilities like coding, digital literacy, big data analytics, cybersecurity, the Internet of Things (IOT) and artificial intelligence (AI) are farfetched ideas. Non-profits like the Lagos-based Book Club, which has been promoting the altruistic pleasures of reading books and advocating for a return to the culture of heuristics, seem largely ignored, their activities lost in the babble of personal, communal and corporate survival.
The nation seems to have lost a large portion of its liberal ethos. The number of pepper soup joints and event centers has now surpassed the number of libraries and bookstores in the land. Clearly, the pursuit of leisure and lucre has overtaken the quest for the wealth of knowledge to be found on books – or e-books.
But it is difficult to grow a culture of reading and research when citizens go to bed every night with hunger in their bellies and hyperinflation on their minds. Consumer price inflation peaked at an 11-year high of 17.9% in September 2016 and had neared 19% by February. “2016 was defined by politics and policy spats… our currency and foreign exchange issues led to the economy catching cold. But as we entered 2017 the forex issue moved from being a cold into financial pneumonia stage,” Kayode Oguntayo, a Lagos-based entrepreneur told this writer.
Notwithstanding these issues, Nigeria’s $1 billion Eurobond was eight times oversubscribed during its early hours of trading on the London Stock Exchange last February. The 15-year bond offering 7.875% in trading is the first Nigerian offering since 2013 and the 2015 change of government. Nigerian legislators had last year rejected government’s plan to raise $30 billion through loans.
Could Nigeria be flirting with a new era of economic rejuvenation?

Risks, Rewards  And Eurobonds

Keeping up with the international motor industry is a lot more complicated than Keeping Up With The Kardashians – with just as many family squabbles, scandals and break-ups.
Emerging at the top of the family tree is Volkswagen, ending 2016 as the world’s largest automaker with sales of 10.3 million; just a shade more than Toyota. Face-saving news after pleading guilty to three charges in the diesel emissions affair and paying a $4.3-billion fine to settle the US Department of Justice investigation.
And remember the German giant includes Audi, Bentley, Bugatti and Porsche. In turn, Audi owns Lamborghini, and Lamborghini owns Ducati. Yes, it’s complicated.
The number three spot goes to General Motors (GM) – or to be more accurate General Motors Company LLC – emerging with a changed name from Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2009 thanks to a multi-billion-dollar bailout from the US Treasury.
Most of that money has been paid back and a study by the Centre for Automotive Research reveals that the GM bailout saved more than a million jobs and preserved nearly $35 billion in tax revenue.
All of the Big Three made it onto the list of finalists for the South African Car of the Year 2017. Volkswagen with the new Tiguan, the most stylish Passat ever, and the technically supreme Audi A4.
Toyota ticked the right boxes with the rugged yet comfortable Fortuner (the bestselling SUV in the country) and have kick-started 2017 with record sales and the claim that one out of every four new vehicles that found homes at the start of the year was a Toyota or affiliate brand.
GM waded in with the Opel Astra which has been gathering international and local awards along with cousin Corsa.
The voguish Astra won the 2016 European Car of the Year award in one of the toughest automotive battles of the decade and the Corsa 1.0T Enjoy drove off with Compact Hatchback of the Year at the Cars.co.za Consumer Awards.
There has been a quiet revolution happening in the ‘more affordable’ car sector over the last couple of years. In essence, it used to be a sector where (and I’m not joking) a passenger airbag was considered to be an optional extra. And ABS was by no means standard!
Now many models hovering around the $25,000 mark boast more standard features than the luxury sedans selling for four times the price tag.
Take the Opel Astra 1.4T Sport. Cruise control, halogen headlights, daytime running lights, tyre pressure monitoring, side blind zone alert, hands free parking and heated sports seats and steering wheel are all included.
And there’s more… the Driver Assist Pack helps to warn drivers of an impending collision, picks up speed restriction signs along with the following distance and automatically throws out emergency anchors to reduce the impact of an unavoidable collision.
While the tech boffins in Stuttgart and Munich seems to be intent on making simple functions like turning down the aircon a life study, the Opels are blessed with IntelliLink – the most amazingly simple communication and media platform. Which complements the modern, free-flowing interior where the instruments are stark and easy to read and the controls are ergonomically excellent – or more simply, right there at your fingertips.
Although the budget hatches seem to be poured out of a common mould, the Astra manages to distinguish itself with a touch of exterior style – in fact the Sport model is quite a stunner.
You don’t have to spend too much time on engine choice. They are all petrol and all turbo charged. Starting with a single liter of displacement, through the 1.4l to the 1.6l manual which has a claimed top speed of 235km/h and hits 100 in less than seven seconds. Youssou N’Dour would be proud.
All very impressive – as it should be. There have been many decades for research and development. The Astra has been around for more than 80 years and sold over 25 million units!
Again it’s one of those intricate family affairs. Production hasn’t been consistent since 1936 and you may be more familiar with the name Kadett. And to complicate things even further, the UK models fall under the Vauxhall banner.
Now the new Opel era beckons. The Rüsselsheim-based carmaker has enjoyed the highest sales in five years with an increase of 46,000 units. The Astra was the main driver of increased sales across Europe, being newly registered more than 285,000 times. Overall Opel managed to increase sales in 18 of 22 markets including Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and Poland.
The resurgence of Opel in South Africa is gaining momentum – over the past two years Opel sales have grown by 9.6%, compared to the market decline of 15.5% over this same period.
And no resting on their laurels. Opel is in the midst of the biggest model offensive in its long history and intends bringing 29 new models to market before 2020. Seven of them this year – hence the motto ‘7 in 17’.
“With these seven new models for 2017, Opel will become a completely different brand within the next 12 months,” says Opel CEO Karl-Thomas Neumann. “We are making electro-mobility feasible for everyday driving with the Ampera-e.”
The Ampera-e, introduced at the Paris motor show, is designed to be the compact range champion with the ability to clock up 500 kilometers on a single charge with sports car performance.
Then the flood gates open with the new flagship Opel Insignia Grand Sport, an all-wheel drive sedan with a coupé-like silhouette. The Sports Tourer, the Country Tourer, the Vivaro and the Crossland X – a new stablemate for the Mokka X.
So the future looks bright for Opel, but it may not be with General Motors as parents. They have been in talks for some time with French automakers Peugeot SA (which includes the Citroën brand) and some say it is a done deal which will rock the European industry.
The major concern is that the deal with PSA and BNP Paribas doesn’t introduce any new barriers of additional tariffs in the shadow of Brexit.
With the addition of Opel and Vauxhall, Peugeot SA will become the second largest automotive company in Europe with a market share of 17%.
“We are proud to join forces with Opel/Vauxhall and are deeply committed to continuing to develop this great company and accelerating its turnaround,” said Carlos Tavares, chairman of the Managing Board of PSA
And back in Detroit, despite ending 2016 with $11 billion of cash on the automotive side, the share price took a knock. Why? Well mainly because of President Donald Trump’s threatened wall. A full 14% of vehicles sold in North America are manufactured in Mexico!
Indeed there is more intrigue in the global car field than you will find in the 13th season of the Kardashians… even with Kanye West joining the fray.

Nomical

Astra-Nomical

Jason Masters is part of the African talent taking the comic book industry by the scruff of the neck.
“Twitter was certainly instrumental in me getting to work with Warren Ellis, one of my all-time favorite writers. Out of the blue, a couple of years back, I decided I’d push my luck and mail him; just to say I was a huge fan and really appreciated his work. That and, of course, I made it abundantly clear that I’d love to work with him in any capacity someday. He was very gracious in the way he batted my email advances away. Warren is always busy, when you’re as prolific as him people are constantly trying to convert his creations into capital, often in a very obtuse form of Hollywood alchemy.”
“So, of course my feelings weren’t hurt, it was the most ridiculous of longshots anyway. Sometime later I had just completed a comic commission for a friend of one of his most notable anarchic creations, Spider Jerusalem. Never one to miss an opportunity I tweeted the picture out tagging him in the post. That re-started the conversation of possibly working together. We chatted a bit via email about what sort of book we might do and then a few days later he sent me an email asking what I thought of James Bond.”
Masters loved James Bond. He thought Warren would be hinting at doing a Bondesque comic book. It turned out that Warren was working with Dynamite Entertainment in the process of launching the first James Bond comic in over 20 years.
“It’s part astonishing that I got to do this, and petrifying. Once the wave of joy that accompanied the idea of being in charge of all the visual aspects of 007 passed, I was left with paralyzing dread. It was a huge responsibility. Never mind just James Bond, but the M, Q or Miss Moneypenny I designed might not fit the narrative that the staunch Bond fans have. Thankfully, it was well received and the work Warren and I did has opened the doors for other Bond books,” says Masters.
The series was launched in 2015 and won acclaim.  The company has also published adaptations of franchises like RoboCop, A Game of Thrones and Sherlock Holmes.
Reinvigorating the secret agent is the biggest gig for Masters’ career.  Not bad for a man who worked as an art director for an advertising agency a few years ago.
“I’m still waiting for a pinch of either glitz or glam to be sprinkled into my life, but I get to draw and tell stories for a living. That’s way better than most,” says Masters.
Many comic fans in South Africa consider Masters a homegrown hero. One of them is Mahdi Abrahams, owner of Readers Den, a comic book store in Cape Town.
“Jason is one of the few South African artists who has landed gigs with international publishers and had the opportunity to work on high profile characters such as James Bond and Batman.”
Abrahams says Masters got his break in the international scene long before his tweet.
“[He] has managed to acquire regular work from big international publishers,” says Mahdi.
Masters is now one of the few Africans to have brought characters to life on paper, like the X-Men, Guardians of the Galaxy, Batman and Wolverine.
“There are ridiculous talents in this country, the only thing holding most of them back is actually making product. Not a lot of idealistic young artists realize the amount of work that goes into just doing one 22-page story. It can get discouraging working on something for weeks on end in your own time and not have a completed story to show for it. We need more people to just finish those original stories and share them with the world. Almost 100 percent of the artists I know that have done that have gone on to bigger and better ventures,” says Masters.
Someone who has kept a keen eye on Masters’ work is Moray Rhoda. Known as the godfather of South Africa comic books, this 47-year-old design lecturer has been fighting for more than a quarter of century promoting African talent.
“Jason has grown a lot over the past few years. I think what sets him and Sean Izaakse (another international comic artist) apart is their dedication and love for comics and the craft of creating comics. They aren’t just artists, they are full collaborators when they get involved in projects – they always add to and improve on every script they are given. Jason is definitely an inspiration to anyone who’s ever met him – not just the artists and writers, but to people in general: the passion for his work is infectious,” says Rhoda.
While he may spend his days drawing superheroes that lead extra-ordinary lives, Masters prefers the quieter side of life in Johannesburg. His day starts in a very homely way by making breakfast for his wife and seeing his daughter off to school before being consumed by the world of the fantasy in comic books.
“Honestly, 264 comic book pages later, it’s still quite unreal for me,” says Masters.
The man with a license to draw because of a tweet.

From Illustrator To International Man OfMystery

From Illustrator To International Man Of Mystery

For Nas Hoosen, the bug bit when he was five. From that day on he loved reading comics. But, because they were so scarce, he started making up his own.
Who would have thought these first drawings would be the start of a journey that would take Hoosen to writing his own feature film, The Wild Waste, for Cape Town’s Triggerfish Animation Studios, at the age of 29?
“I’d get part three of a story and it would end on a cliff-hanger, so I used to draw my own Spider-Man comics just so I could see the stories continue,” says Hoosen.
On any given day you will find the energetic Hoosen in Ansteys, one of the oldest art deco buildings in Johannesburg. Movie deals are as uncommon in this African city as comic book stores.
Hoosen was lucky to land it; his story was one in 1,400 submissions from 30 countries in a competition run by Triggerfish in 2015. Triggerfish was looking for four feature films and four TV series for development.
The cherry on top was the final eight would get a foot in the door with a mentorship at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, Hollywood. Called Story Lab, the competition is also supported by the South African Department of Trade and Industry.
“We toured every skull of the multi-headed hydra that is Disney, from the Lucasfilm offices to the Imagineering workshop. It’s everything you think it is, a bunch of stuff you can’t imagine, and then sometimes you’re just sitting in a Mexican restaurant with the screenwriter of The Lion King.”
Hoosen says it’s too early to tell what The Wild Waste will look like on screen; he describes it as a big shapeless thing constantly on the move.
“The gist is that it’s a big, exciting romp through a version of South Africa that I think we haven’t seen before. It’s an urban fantasy adventure film with robots and monsters and an epic quest at the heart of it. And it’s going to be fun,” says Hoosen.
“I don’t think most people – me included – realize just how much goes into the production of a film, particularly when you don’t have the resources to make screenwriting your full-time job. But it continues in earnest, with tons of planning and plotting and writing and rewriting and note-taking.”
Hoosen’s journey into the realm of fantasy started with Action Comics #532. He remembers the story vividly. Hoosen grew up a big reader. His older brother bought his first comic books and on Saturdays he shared bowls of cereal watching cartoons.
Hoosen didn’t get to where he is now by just sitting on the couch. He had some battles.
“My mother didn’t want me to study film because she was afraid I wouldn’t find work, so I studied journalism instead. And there are always going to be huge barriers for young people wanting to do what they’re passionate about, particularly if they come from households where money is a big concern. Our parents want the best for us but they also want us to have stable, healthy and successful lives more than anything, so they set up barriers rooted in expectation that for a long while really confuse us,” says Hoosen.
In addition to his movie, Hoosen co-founded the South African comic SECTOR, for which he writes the psychedelic horror series Red Air. The anthology releases an issue every two months and showcases Africa’s rising talent.
“Red Air is about a small group of astronauts who have been shipped off to build a civilization in the red deserts of Mars. But they’re losing it; disassociating. They have to listen to the same pop music day in and day out, over and over. And then one of them goes insane and starts murdering the others. It’s a comic about murder, music and madness. It’s a John Carpenter homage. It’s a psychedelic exploration of our subconscious relationship with pop culture. It’s also a lot of fun to write,” says Hoosen.
One of SECTOR’s co-founders is Moray Rhoda, often called the godfather of South African comics.
“The comic book industry is a huge money sink. Most people aren’t getting paid. Some are like [renowned illustrator] Jason Masters and some others who work with international publishers. For the rest of us who are selling locally, one issue will pay for the next issue at best. There is little incentive to carry on, unless you manage to build a fan base and have people interested in seeing where your stories follow on,” says Rhoda.
This is why SECTOR, which is one of the few independent comics produced in Africa, plays an important role in providing a platform to local artists to develop their work.
“SECTOR came out of a much larger conversation that was happening in the South African comics scene&#8230; We felt like the scene needed a lot of work – quality control, editorial guidance, and a shared financial interest to motivate people to make work on time and (mostly) hit their deadlines. Moray brought this up in the larger comics community and found enough interested parties that we could band together and make this book happen,” says Hoosen.
South Africans are playing an important role in the $1-billion comic book industry. Hoosen says Africa has produced successful professionals like Sean Izaakse, Joe Daily, Masters, Lauren Beukes and Dale Halverson.
“They all make fantastic work that is available through publishers like Marvel, Dynamite, Vertigo and Fantagraphics. And that’s not to mention guys like Loyiso Mkize, who make work like Kwezi locally, which is now being distributed through Exclusive Books.”
“One thing I do want to see more of is marginalized voices rising to the top. I mentioned five major creators and they’re all incredibly talented, but they’re also all incredibly white. I want to see black creators, I want to see more than one woman in the mix. This is South Africa after all.”
“We have the talent and the capability, but we need to be making the work. Creative people are by nature, I think, hesitant and trepidatious about making work and showing it to people. But f*** that. No one else can draw like you or write like you or think like you, so you need to be out there making work and showing it to people and getting feedback and working to improve.”
The popcorn must taste sweeter every time Hoosen sits in a movie theater watching an African story.

Animate The  Beloved Country

In Tamboerskloof, high above Cape Town, Lauren Beukes wakes to the beautiful sight of Table Mountain and cascading clouds over the roofs of historic houses. Though, what she sees behind it are unsettling horror stories than can make your blood run cold.
Right at her doorstep you get a clue to what kind of person Beukes is. There is a crack in the floorboards, near the threshold, that she has stuffed with newspaper.  She saw in a movie that ghosts can find their way through such a crack, so she filled it in just in case.
This is an insight into the twisted mind of a comic book entrepreneur, who earns good money for dark stories that will have you looking over your shoulder. The unsettling world of Beukes caught the eye of international comic book brand DC Comics, thousands of kilometers away in its headquarters in New York. In many ways DC is the Washington DC of North America’s $1.03 billion industry, that sells 99 million copies a year. That’s almost enough to give a comic book to every person in South Africa and Uganda combined.
It all began long before Beukes filled the crack in her floor – with a chance meeting, in an equally unlikely surrounding, at her first book launch at a science fiction convention in 2009 in Montreal, Canada.
“I flew there so broke. I was eating the hotel breakfast and smuggling the extras into my bag,” she says.
Her prospects in Toronto weren’t as hungry.
There, Beukes met Bill Willingham, creator of Fables, one of the biggest adult DC Comic titles, who has been in the industry for over a decade. He set up a meeting for Beukes with DC deputy editor Shelly Bond in New York.
“He said, ‘you are going to go see her. The meeting is on Tuesday at three o’clock. You better be there’,” says Beukes.
Beukes’ existential moment came in the DC lobby, in front of a statue of Superman swinging into a telephone booth (we’re not joking). A more intimidating place could not have been created for a comic book fan like Beukes. Superman had been her hero as long as she could remember.
“The first time I went, shame, there was a young guy in a new suit, he was really sweaty and clutching his portfolio and three different people got his name wrong. Then Shelly Bond comes up to me and was like ‘Lauren, Bill said he was going to send you’.”
“I was thinking I don’t know what I am doing here, I am such a fraud. Now I get to work on titles like 2000AD which were childhood influences,” says Beukes.
Beukes nailed the introduction. She was asked to present a new idea and she gave them a horrifying rendition of Rapunzel, of long hair and fairy tale fame, haunted by her past and a Japanese ghost.
“I thought Rapunzel is all about the hair. Japanese horror is all about the hair. This can’t be a coincidence,” says Beukes.
The story took off and DC wanted more. After Fables, Beukes went back, only to find, to her horror, her ideas had dried up.
That was it, Beukes thought, she was on her way out and on the verge of leaving comic book heaven empty handed. She was on the way out with her head down when she remembered a conversation she had with her friend and cover illustrator, Dale Halvorsen, back in Cape Town.
“I was heading out with [Bond]; I wondered&#8230; ‘should I say this idea [Halvorsen] thought of?’ So I told [Bond]. She was like ‘yes, that. Give me the full pitch now. I want to start with the artists.’ She was literally walking me to the elevator.”
Halvorsen’s idea was hauntingly simple: what if the 1980s horror movies were real and where are those kids who were in them today? Halvorsen and Beukes watched horror movies for years and had been playing with the idea for a matter of weeks. They never expected DC to want it.
In this moment of rejection, dejection and desperation, Survivors’ Club was born. The story put Beukes back in business with DC.
“Horror has its own particular set of rules which goes with each genre. It tends to be very formulaic, but if you understand those rules you can subvert them and interesting things start to happen,” says Halvorsen.
“We wanted to pull the rug out from under you, and then you look down and realize the rug is made from human skin, and then you realize it’s not your human feet,” says Beukes.
It is here in Tamboerskloof, ghost free we hope, where the adventure began. They called the brainstorming behind their ideas ‘creepy playtime’, using every dark corner of the living room to fire their imagination.
Under a wall-sized bookshelf filled with action figures and comic books, the pair spent countless hours discussing the sounds a shotgun should make when it blows your brains out; to acting out the horrific adventures their characters endure.
“It’s the only way to make it sound natural. It’s kind of like improvisation; we try to figure out what needs to be said in the scene. In reality we try to creep each other out. Every line is by both of us. We play out dialogue and act it out,” says Beukes.
They draw inspiration from within.
“You take a seed of your personality and you grow it into a tree. There are bits of me in Alice [one of the main actors in Survivors’ Club], and bits of us in all the characters. I just love acting Alice out the most because she is so evil,” says Beukes.
And if you thought Beukes’ neighbors would be worried about the screams in the night – think again – the neighbors are in on the act. Often, they help out by acting out a lingering horrid death.
It’s all about the devil in the detail. The pair believes strongly in creating lifelike scenes, to the point where they will consult a paramedic from New York and a Gambian living on a cyber waste dump to find out how they speak. At one point, Halvorsen had to bring in his action figures because there was so much choreography and then so many characters they were losing track of.
“My eight-year-old daughter comes in the room and says why are you swearing and we tell her we are acting&#8230; we’re deep nerds,” says Beukes.
Before Beukes was famous, she would often be found rummaging through the comics at the Readers Den, a nearby comic book store in Rondebosch, Cape Town, recalls owner Mahdi Abrahams.
“Lauren is a long-time comics fan. She’s done quite a bit of comics work over the last few years for main publishers such as DC, Vertigo, and 2000AD. Except for Joe Daly, she is the only South African writer who has managed to break into the international comics scene, to the best of my knowledge. She has definitely put South Africa on the map as a result and naturally serves as an inspiration,” says Abrahams.
“The fact that she is a best-selling novelist with worldwide recognition, writing comics of course, further reinforces the validity of the comics medium, and makes people aware that comics are not a lowbrow art form churned out by hacks.”
There is growing demand to see women take the lead. For the 40-year-old Beukes, being a successful woman in the industry is rare.
“[Beukes] is also very much on the forefront of furthering the position of women in comics: as professionals working in the industry, as an increasingly large part of the comics readership and audience, as well as the growing positive representation of female characters in comics,” says Abrahams.
What has opened the doors for new authors is the search for fresh ideas. For years, comics have catered for the middle-class teenage white male.
“In South Africa we need to get more girls into comics. Every time I go into Readers Den, they want to offer me a reader’s discount, I say to them you can give me a discount, but I want you to give that to the next girl who comes in here. I’ve pushed them that we need to see more comics for girls. I don’t want Archie. I want to see superheroes that aren’t Catwoman and sexualized.”
“We need to be reaching girls. Girls don’t even know that comics are an option available to them. So much of the superhero stuff is so slanted to boys. That’s why you have so many people cosplaying as Harley Quinn, because she is a freaking badass.”
The pair are leading by example. Survivors’ Club features strong female leads like Chenzira Moleko, a black South African who opens the gates of hell playing an arcade game in a shebeen in Soweto. Before you ask, you can probably guess the other five characters being either possessed, haunted or insane.
The love Halvorsen and Beukes have for comic books started in childhood. Back then comic books were scarce and often lost track of running stories.
“I think that’s where storytelling comes in, because you had issue 12 and then issue 33 of Spider-Woman and you had to work out what happened in between,” says Beukes.
These days, it’s much easier getting your hands on comic books. But getting your name out as a twisted like-minded author is a tough task.
“Where we fall down is as writers. [South Africans] can be absolutely incredible in drawing but they haven’t developed the writing skills. Right now there isn’t enough money to support it. I think South African artists need to know that they can pitch internationally, and it’s not as hard as they think it is,” says Beukes.
Another who has been fighting for more than 25 years promoting African talent is Moray Rhoda, known as the godfather of South African comic books.
“I think Lauren Beukes has made an incredible difference to how South African comics are perceived. Her background in writing fiction literature means that people tend to give her work more weight and consider it more seriously than they usually do,” says the 47-year-old design lecturer.
“I think the fact that we have locals making international waves and coming to the attention of international publishers could, finally, be the big thing that inspires our community of comic book creators to make that South African invasion of international comics a reality.”
The challenge is finding readers.
“It’s such a rich environment here. But in having said that, I’ve pitched stories to Vertigo, set in South Africa ,and they come back asking for an American point of view character, so we can understand the environment they are in,” says Beukes.
It’s all part of Beukes’ dream that began with an elevator pitch in New York, that flourished in a house with a crack in the floor on the gentle hills of Cape Town, and ends up delivering horror to the shelves of the comic book stores around the world.

The Horror  Is In  The Detail

It was imagination and young obsession that became a business. Brothers Nizar and Mahdi Abrahams spent their childhood scouring stores for secondhand Batman and Superman comic books. It helped them transcend the grey backstreets of their home in Athlone, Cape Town.
Twenty eight years later, this childhood obsession has built a thriving business. It is a comic book shop poised to surf the growing wave of interest in the industry. In 2015, comic book sales hit their highest levels ever, $1.03 billion in North America alone, according to The Comics Chronicles. In Africa, interest may be small, but thanks to movies it’s picking up.
Comic books are a surefire bet for the multi-million-dollar movie industry; they come with a readymade fan base and familiar storyboards. Of 2016’s 10 top-grossing movies, six were originally comic books. Top of the list was Captain America: Civil War, which made $1.153 billion, according to Box Office Mojo.
“It’s a quick pitch to somebody, because the visuals are there&#8230; Comics are one of the cheapest ways of getting your ideas out there. It’s not like a movie that requires a producer and cameramen. It can be a one-man project. It’s how many artists got their names out there,” says Nizar.
For the Abrahams, it started out as a way to make pocket money for burgers and chips. The brothers sold their secondhand books at a stall in Greenmarket Square in Cape Town. They found comic books that sold the fastest and opened their own store, Readers Den, in nearby Long Street. Like Clark Kent it was only just getting out the telephone booth.
“Our first shop didn’t even have a till&#8230; The comics must have been speaking to us. We weren’t even thinking about it being a viable business. We knew if it didn’t work we could always go freshen up on our studies and get a ‘real job’. It’s like 25 years later and we are still having a [blast],” says Nizar.
Multi-million-dollar movie deals are as distant as the top of Table Mountain for African writers, but that doesn’t stop any of them from trying. Before getting there, you have to go through the frustration of writing for small audiences on scarce platforms.
“There are South Africans that are working at international standards and struggle to find work. It’s on the fringes. You could produce the best artwork, the best comic books, but if you don’t have a publisher or a distributor it’s pointless, that is critical to make the whole thing work,” says Mahdi.
The brothers say the shop was around the size of a closet when they opened its doors, on Long Street, in Cape Town’s business district. On their first day, more comic books sold on one table than any other goods in the store, says Mahdi with a hint of pride.
The 1990s market saw a boom; collectors were beginning to make millions from selling vintage comic books after holding on to ‘mint’ – that is pristine – editions. It brought a new generation of artists to the fore.
“It was a superficial understanding of the market. People thought you buy up the latest comics and keep them in mint condition, whereas the real investment in comics is the genuine vintage comics,” says Mahdi.
A glut of comic books forced many stores to lower their prices, lose money, and close. The brothers survived and out of the ashes, in the last decade, they rose. TV series, like The Big Bang Theory, and the growing gaming industry also helped to usher in the age of the geek.
“When we started, we used to get those judgy looks. Now it’s become normal,” says Nizar.
Collectors who treasured their comics now see returns in the millions. In 2014, Action Comics #1, which first featured Superman and lays claim to the birth of the superhero, sold for $3.04 million on eBay. It cost 10c in 1938.
This is a world away from the Abrahams brothers. For them, it is not the vintage comics that are the big sellers, but graphic novels. With a catalogue of over 4,000, they bank on selling 100 a month.
Is it no surprise the next big thing to hit Africa will be nerd conventions. Les Allen, founder of GeekXP and the owner of ICON, a comic book convention held in Johannesburg since 1992, has seen this firsthand. When he started out, his convention ran at a recreation center in Sandringham, with, at best, a couple of hundred hardcore fans showing up.
“Conventions are now serious business, and the truly successful ones have a range of activities and attractions, including local and international guests. ICON 2016 took that jump, inviting best-selling fantasy author Raymond E. Feist to be our guest of honor, and hosted over 40 different panels and workshops to entertain and educate,” says Allen.
“These are things we wouldn’t have been able to do if we’d stayed at a rec center. Our 2017 plans are already underway, with one international guest already confirmed, and we’re negotiating with two more.”
Allen believes growth in this industry is down to the mainstream success of movies based on Marvel Comics and television shows based on DC Comics.
“There are also shows like Game of Thrones which have massive followings, a large portion of which haven’t read the books which started back in 1996. These people can be considered ‘fantasy geeks’, but wouldn’t know, or possibly relate, to the tag.”
Conventions are an easy way for companies to connect with fans, just ask Allen who has been a geek since he was nine years old.
“It’s interesting to note that San Diego Comic-Con now touts itself as a ‘pop culture’ event, rather than a comic convention, which reflects their expanded event offerings, even though the original comic book industry is still a large part of it.”
“At a convention, a new fan is exposed to a rich history that they may not have been aware of (remember, Superman first appeared in 1938), which can move them to pick up the comic books and graphic novels.”
“At ICON 2016, our first at Gallagher Convention Centre in Midrand, in Johannesburg, we had a number of first-timers – people who’d never been to a geek convention at all. Our 2016 attendance figure more than doubled our 2015 number, which was a combination of old-time attendees returning, but also new fans looking to experience things for the first time,” says Allen.
“You can point to rAge as being one of the trailblazers when it comes to geek culture conventions going large in South Africa – it’s now a staple for hardcore gamers and the casual fan alike, and has helped make the idea of a geek convention acceptable.”
Back in Cape Town, the Abrahams brothers are also getting into conventions with their own FanCon and Free Comic Book Day.
“When we started [Free Comic Book Day], which was in 2002, we were lucky to get one or two artists. There was zero interest for the people that attended, they literally would sit there. Eventually we started getting an uptake and we get about 30 to 40 artists a year,” says Nizar.
By contrast, FanCon, held at the V&amp;A Waterfront, drew in 4,000 last year. Fans arrived from as early as 6AM to book their spot in a queue that stretched for hundreds of meters, hours before the convention even started. The turnout was unexpected.
“At some point we even went out to calm people down,” says Nizar.
These events are now bringing in international guests to Africa and are a big chance for local talent to leave an impression.
“Overseas the standard is very high with A-list celebrity appearances and fans camping for days outside the venues. It’s huge money. I think the comic book guys understand we are small,” says Nizar.
The local numbers may not be as big as international conventions, but the demand is growing. Annual events like rAge and ICON which maybe catered for 500 a few years ago are now bringing in tens of thousands.
“Twenty five years as a comic shop. It’s glory days for us, it’s time to go out with guns blazing. We’ve had so much fun reading these comics, it’s about time we brought our heroes to South Africa. This is the best part; these are our heroes, the guys we would never meet. Now we get to meet them face-to-face and pick their brains,” says Nizar.
“You need to remember in the 1940s, when comic books first started, authors didn’t even have their names published with their work,” says Mahdi.
A childhood spent pouring over the pages of heroes to an industry growing into a world of celebrities and lucrative deals.

Glory Days For Geeks

When you first meet Sanjeev Kumar, you do not expect the kind demeanor from his serious stature. The Founder of Bank M stands tall in blue jeans, a black Lacoste dress shirt and a black jacket. He breaks into a small smile as we exchange greetings and lets me know that he is ready for anything I may throw at him.
Although he is behind one of Tanzania’s most successful banking institutions, Kumar’s background is very far from finance. Born and raised in India, he graduated with a degree in law, specializing in taxation law, and was selected to join the management-training program at State Bank of India, the biggest bank in India about 35 years ago. It is here that his love for banking was born; Kumar says it grew on him and he wouldn’t go back to law today if given a chance.
So how does a man of Indian descent end up in the coastal city of Dar es Salaam? Call it perfect timing. Kumar built his banking experience with State Bank of India and soon after moved to the French bank BNP Paribas before making the calculated move to Tanzania in 2001 to become the Chief Executive Officer of Diamond Trust Bank (DTB). His time here showed him the challenges his corporate customers had with managing large cash collections that would not get delivered to the bank in time due to the early closing times most institutions enforced.
“When I came to East Africa, banks here were fat cats and customers didn’t have a choice and had to take what was given. Banks used to open whenever they liked and closed promptly at 2PM,” says Kumar.
This gave him the idea to provide customers with better service by extending operating hours during the day and keeping the bank open over the weekend.
“There are banks in Asia who have done the longer working hours strategy and it has worked for them, but they couldn’t incorporate the service standard guarantee so when I saw that, I knew this new model would work very well in Tanzania and Kenya as well.”
Bank M was an idea formulated by Kumar, and five other investors, after he left DTB in 2004. Kumar had a desire to do his own thing and create an institution that provided the type of service customers were looking for.
“We started with focus. I believe focus is the key for good customer care, so right from the word go, we were focused on wholesale banking and within wholesale banking we concentrated on large business families. We don’t do anything else. We don’t do savings accounts, no ATMs – nothing except wholesale banking,” says Kumar.
Since opening in July 2007, Bank M has grown steadily with paid-up capital now reaching TZS73.06 billion (around $33 million) and balance sheet and profitability growing at a compound annual growth rate of 45% over the past decade. The company has since won the heart of the Tanzanian corporate sector with its longer working hours and customer service guarantee. It is the only financial institution in Africa that is open 12 hours a day, from 8Am to 8PM, seven days a week. It also won the Best Commercial Bank Tanzania 2015 award and is the sixth largest bank in the country in terms of profitability.
Kumar claims that this new style of banking has helped Tanzania’s economy in various ways. Many of Bank M’s customers are supermarkets and restaurants that deposit their earnings for the day in the late evening hours. The bank also does cash collections and deliveries from their customers’ offices.
Bank M started at the right time in Tanzania. The country’s GDP has consistently grown since then, at an average of 7 to 8%, but there is uncertainty for the private sector, according to a Stanbic Bank report on African markets.
“Prospects are looking good for Tanzania’s economy as it grows closer to the 7% mark, making it stronger than both the Kenyan and Ugandan economies. The jury is still out though on the various reforms mandated to enhance productivity in the region,” says Jibran Qureishi, Regional Economist for East Africa at Stanbic Bank.
Jesse James A’ruwa, Co-Founder and Senior Investment Advisor at SMA Capital Limited,  however, says banks can still do more.
“There still remains a huge gap to fill in the financial sector to ensure that the public has access to the full array of financial services, including access to money markets and investment funds etc. I believe that for the financial sector to really take strides towards advancing the economy, the stakeholders within the financial sub-sectors need to adapt their products to the reality of the Tanzanian people and their mindsets,” he says.
Kumar has since opened a variant of Bank M in Nairobi, Kenya.  The majority shareholders of Bank M have set up a Bank Holding Company, M Holdings Limited, which has been licensed by the Central Bank of Kenya as a non-operating bank holding company. M Holdings has been licensed by CBK to acquire a minimum 51% stake in local Nairobi bank, Oriental Commercial Bank – now rebranded to M-Oriental Bank. With this new acquisition, the bank will focus on large family businesses in Kenya. Kumar says there is a big difference in finance management between Kenya and Tanzania.
“In Kenya, $1 is just KSH102 while in Tanzania it is TZS2,235, so the circulation is much less in Kenya. In Tanzania, if you change $100,000 you’ll need a suitcase to carry it, but in Nairobi that is still manageable cash. So Kenyans don’t need as elaborate a structure but we will definitely still offer cash pick-up and delivery.”
Bank M plans to expand in eastern and southern Africa, to countries such as Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia and Malawi.
Kumar is an avid runner but finding time for this can be difficult. He spends about 14 hours a day in his office in either Tanzania or Kenya, but says it does not feel like work as he enjoys his job immensely. He credits the company’s success on its customer service.
“Our focus on clients is the main factor that determined our success. Giving them the kind of service they wanted, delivering what they need to them at the time and place of their choice,” he says.
Kumar left India to advance in his career as a banker and ended up doing a lot more than that. He has found a new home in East Africa and is playing an important role in developing the constantly growing financial sector here. Fat cats beware.

The Tiger Taking On The Fat Cats

We wait 20 minutes before Siphile Buthelezi walks into his offices in Sandton sporting a tailored suit. On his table is a pile of documents and files of more than 20 clients of his law business. Not too bad for a young man who grew up in a squatter camp, in Clermont, in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal.
“I start my day by going to the gym, then come to the office to check emails, draft legal opinions and, if it’s a day for litigation, I go to court. If I have board meetings I don’t even come to the office, and once I’m done I come and work until midnight,” says Buthelezi, Co-founder and Managing Director of Buthelezi Vilakazi Inc, a corporate and commercial law firm.
Buthelezi talks fast, with his hands, and has many stories to tell of his short but eventful 34 years of life.
“I’m the eldest of three children and we stayed in a one-roomed shack. So, we’d sleep on a mattress on the floor and my parents slept on the bed. So we would hear everything that happened at night,” he says.
His mother, a domestic worker, desperately wanted her son to be educated, and his father, a construction worker, walked him to school.
“My dad didn’t go to school at all. Even today, he can’t write; for him to write his name he needs to look at his ID but what I admire about him is he valued education,” says Buthelezi.
“My mom would come home, and it still pains me that she’d come with what was supposed to be her lunch at work, four slices of bread, and say this was supposed to be my lunch I brought it for you guys.”
According to Buthelezi, the environment made him want to be a gangster.
“In the squatter camp environment; you get exposed to different people and things, for example there’s a sheeben next door and sometimes you find that your understanding of a successful person is a thug who drives a nice car,” says Buthelezi.
Instead Buthelezi left school for music.
“Growing up I did music and danced for kwaito stars, Mzambiya and Msawawa. I enjoyed it but I knew I couldn’t do it for free,” he says.
This led to him buying a bus ticket to Johannesburg.
“I remember at the time a ticket was R100 (around $7.50), so my group and I came here for more gigs and at some point I wanted to be a full time musician.”
Johannesburg changed his mind.
“What was interesting is that when I got to meet more celebrities I realized their lives are not as glamourous as they make it out to be. There was a group called Tribe, one of the members asked us for R5 and for me that was a shock because I’d see these people on T.V. and then one of them was asking us for money. It was a wake-up call,” says Buthelezi.
Buthelezi went home and toiled at a construction company where his father worked. He used his money from music money to register at university. Luckily his mom’s employer also helped.
“My mom packed my bags and took me to the bus station, she gave me R20 and these are the words I’ll never forget, ‘my son this is all I have but there’s one thing I know, God will be with you’. She had tears of joy that I was starting at varsity but also because she couldn’t give me more,” says Buthelezi.
For Buthelezi, going to university was a dream. He knew he’d be better off at campus than at home.
“In the squatter camps people play music until the early hours of the morning. How are you going to study?”
It was four years of struggle, especially with English.
“Having studied at a public school, and not a model C school, there was a culture shock.  And I had to learn everything in English and some of the professors were foreigners who didn’t pronounce words the way they should have,” he says.
As a result, he failed his first test in constitutional law with just 8%. It took him a few months for his grades to improve. Meanwhile the study loan didn’t cover everything.
“I didn’t have money to buy clothes, food and books. I also got a bursary from Cecil Reynolds charity bursary for outstanding academic performer which covered part of my fees,” says Buthelezi.
In his second year, Buthelezi had a plan up his sleeve.
“My plan was to take part of the [student loan] money, get a driver’s license and a professional driving permit. I approached one of the taxi owners; I asked him if he could give me a chance to drive on weekends. I put it in a way that I’d be relieving drivers then I started driving from Friday ‘til Monday. The owner started rotating his drivers and one driver would be off on certain weekends and I’d take over, they’d even bring the taxi to me on campus.”
“In my first load there’s a lady whom I won’t forget, a classmate, when I got into the taxi, she said ‘are we ever going to get where we’re going’.” Buthelezi shakes his heads and grins.
He’d make about $20 a day. His fellow drivers called him Sfundiswa – loosely translated: the learned one.
“I’d carry my books to the rank, and while waiting for my load I would take it out and study and when the taxi is full I’d put it away and drive off to my destination,” he says.
Hardship was just around the corner. It hurt so much when a girlfriend dumped him that he wanted to kill himself.
“I can tell you now I’ve never been heart broken by anyone but that lady. I loved her with all my heart, I wrote her name on each and every book I had.”
Buthelezi met his wife Slindile, a doctor, on Facebook through a friend and realized that their families knew each other.
The years of struggle paid off – a law degree from the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Fresh out of university, Buthelezi was hired as a candidate attorney at Bowman Gilfillan, a large firm based in Johannesburg.
“In my first year of doing articles I paid off the study loan, I did not wait to build a home for my parents, or take care of myself because I knew the difference it made in my life. I knew my first obligation was to think of another Siphile who needs the loan to study,” says Buthelezi.
He spent a year in New York working for Davis Polk &amp; Wardwell LLP, a law firm where he worked in the Credit and Capital Markets Departments and at Morgan Stanley, an investment bank.
Later, he built his family a five-roomed house.
In 2015, he started Buthelezi Vilakazi Inc, with Amanda Vilakazi, the company’s Head of Litigation and Dispute Resolution. It has another office in Umhlanga Ridge, in Durban.
“I wanted to do other things, not just law, but get into business that I couldn’t do at the time and to also serve our government in audit committees.”
Buthelezi is also the Co-Founder at RadioVybe, a social media app; Non-Executive Director at South African Airways (SAA); Board Chair at SAA Technical, and Deputy Chair at KZN Growth Fund.
“As a boss, I expect the best from anyone who works for the firm. I expect the best documents to go out to clients.  Clients of the firm are my clients and anyone who works for me needs to treat me as their client. They need to impress me as I impress my clients,” says Buthelezi.
“Never even once undermine any type of work, another person would have said no to taxi driving. Many young people say no to doing odd jobs. In those jobs you meet interesting people; when they see you’re focused, they open doors for you. Opportunities given, grab them with both hands, run and never look back.”
Unlike his first taxi passengers, Buthelezi is certain he will get where he is going.

A Ride From A  Taxi Driver  To Legal Eagle

Ali Resting, the pioneer of Swaziland’s internet, chuckles when he speaks of failing first-year computer science at university. As a tech entrepreneur and university drop-out he is in esteemed company. He follows a well-worn path walked by Apple’s founder Steve Jobs through to Twitter’s Jack Dorsey and the most famous drop-out of them all, Microsoft’s Bill Gates.
Resting’s parents did not quite see their son through that prism of the failed graduate set to blaze new frontiers of technological advancement. He returned from South Africa’s Rhodes University in 1996, aged 18, and got the silent treatment.
His university studies at a premature end, Resting began work at his father’s civil engineering company in Swaziland’s capital Mbabane, which shared offices with an architectural firm. At a younger age, Resting had ambitions of becoming an architect, attracted by its “visual aspect”, and drifted unconsciously to that side of the offices.
He found the architects somewhat bemused about how to network their 20-odd office computers and took on the “pet project” and successfully built an intranet system. It was a pivotal moment for Resting as he realized then that his passion was his vocation.
Resting had failed his university year through the distraction of Rhodes University being one of the earliest among South Africa’s tertiary education institutions with access to the internet and he soon went walk-about from his studies.
“I would spend a lot of time fiddling in the labs (at university) and I learned and understood about the internet, which at that stage was just known as the World Wide Web. I found out about an internet research project, which had nothing to do with the curriculum perse, and I soon became well acquainted with it.”
An only child, born in 1978 to a Welsh father and Swazi mother, he was exposed to rudimentary PCs at an early age and quickly became astute with DOS and other programs. His academic primary school progress saw him accepted as a weekly border at the Sisekelo High School, initially established by sugar milling companies to provide well-resourced education for the children of their expatriate employees.
“It was very strict. We were not allowed to hold hands with the girls, we were not even allowed to be within five foot of a female,” says Resting.
The school on the banks of Usuthu River in Swaziland’s Lowveld region, however, had a couple of computers and Resting spent leisure time writing computer programs and a 3D version of the game Minesweeper. He became so proficient he assisted in teaching computer studies to his classmates.
His maths teacher advised him: “Maybe I should think of IT as a profession and not architecture. So he got me thinking about IT as a career. But back then the only company that anyone had really heard of was Microsoft… I didn’t see it as a skill then; just a passion.”
Following Resting’s intranet installation, the “pet project” quickly established a momentum of its own. Working with Lachezar Karadjov – an architect fascinated by the concept of global connectivity and who was to become his business partner – he created a basic gateway to CompuServe, the first major US commercial online service provider. Swaziland joined the internet age.
Real Image’s formative years saw the door-to-door selling of internet dial-up email services, initially signing up five subscribers who remain on the books today. The fledgling company built the country’s first internet website portal and claimed some prime digital real estate with the ownership of the legend swazi.com. But income remained elusive and Karadjov shared some of his architect salary with him.
“We had no idea how we were going to make money at that stage,” says Resting.
His partner was 30 years senior to the teenage tech entrepreneur. Resting acknowledges, although at the time it went unrecognized, the benefits of Karadjov’s mentoring of him in the ways of business. Karadjov was to retire from Real Image a few years later in 2004 and Resting bought him out to become the company’s majority shareholder.
In the early days Real Image’s office space was a cubicle in the architect’s offices. As the business expanded, so did the computer hardware which began to spill out and display tangles of electrical wiring and connections.
“It was damn hot, and it never looked good, as we had customers walking in and seeing all these things.”
At 19 years old, Resting’s company, Real Image, became Swaziland’s first internet service provider (ISP).
The financial gravity of Johannesburg pulls the bright and the talented to it from throughout southern Africa. Resting’s lack of a degree would not have handicapped him from employment in South Africa, where the IT industry’s rapid evolution thrives on the innovative.
But he never considered it as an option.
“I want to leave a legacy behind and I want to be known as the guy who brought connectivity to this country and I continue lobbying to bringing proper connectivity.”
“To go to South Africa is about making a quick buck and a substantive living working in those markets. In Swaziland I get to experience all the challenges there are to rolling out a network, be it terrestrial or wireless. Money will come in due course, I am not worried about that. But what we are doing is building value.”
“Our (Real Image) rate of growth used to be 6 or 7 percent. Now we are hitting the 15 percent mark compounded, which is 17 to 20 percent year on year. We may be doing R30 million ($2.3 million) [annual turnover] today, but in five years we may be beyond the R50 million ($3.8 million) mark and it is an organically grown company.”
As a dominant player in connectivity, employing 40 full time staff, Real Image hosts 80% of the country’s internet content, and provides a range of services, including internet or intranet, through to website development and tailored software.
“One of the ways to quickly grow your numbers is buying up the small operators. But then what are we trying to achieve. We are very much driven by quality of service and believe that we provide a superior product.”
The geographical triangle of Mbabane, Manzini and Matsapha, about 20 kilometers apart at their furthest apex, forms Swaziland’s industrial base and hosts its manufacturing and finance industries, some of King Mswati III’s myriad palaces and the seat of government.
Swaziland’s comparatively much higher internet costs to neighboring South Africa is a consequence of a government parastatal acting as the gatekeeper for importing bandwidth and able to charge monopoly prices in an uncompetitive arena. Within this constricted operating environment, Resting is on a mission to reduce data costs and increase connectivity speeds by making the epicenter of the Swazi economy a WiFi zone.
Owing to Mbabane’s mountainous terrain five WiFi towers have been built to service the capital, each structure costing R500,000 (around $38,000) before the installation of the electronics, but fewer are required in Matsapha and Manzini as the landscape gives way to shallow undulating hills.
In October last year, communications minister Dumisani Ndlangamandla cut the ribbon to open Real Image’s Mbabane headquarters. The double–story, open-plan offices has a public internet cafe – with limited free data access – and amid the workspace’s rows of computers a tabletop football game. The architecture firm that provided him a small cubicle for his initial foray into the digital world is now a tenant at the new offices.
Resting says he has the “ear of government,” and continues to lobby for the liberalization of the sector, including the removal of the “exclusivity clause” that makes the import of bandwidth the sole preserve of a government parastatal.
“My hope is that by the end of this year (2017) the pricing of the internet is going to drop dramatically in the country. Dramatically,” Resting predicts with a smile.

Drop Out, Cash In The King Of The Kingdom’s Internet

After a decade studying and working in Australia, Swazi-born Roberto Russo had just been granted citizenship when he took a phone call from his father in Swaziland. The telephone conversation was to change his life’s trajectory overnight.
“I never thought of coming back to Swaziland. I was happy in Perth. But when my old man said to me he was thinking about selling the business I thought ‘what is the worst that can happen?’ I can always go back to Australia. I have not looked back,” says the 35-year-old Russo.
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The lay of the land for entrepreneurs in Swaziland and Australia are poles apart. Australia is an open democratic society with a large middle class customer base, government support for emerging businesses, and perched on the doorstep of Asia’s huge and burgeoning economies.
Swaziland is an undemocratic feudal society ruled by sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, King Mswati III. It has a population of 1.3 million, the majority living in poverty, unemployed or practising subsistence agriculture, and a government actively favoring international and local corporations at the expense of small and medium enterprises.
To compound its reputation as an entrepreneurial backwater, Swaziland’s tentative claim to being a stepping stone between the economies of South Africa and Mozambique is wishful thinking at best.
In reality, the construction of world class road infrastructure between the industrial and business hubs of Johannesburg and the port city of Maputo has left Swaziland out of the loop. The South African city of Mbombela boomed at Swaziland’s expense by servicing the trade route.
Swaziland’s national economy is habitually mismanaged for the benefit of Mswati and his expansive royal household and was one of the factors resulting in the country flirting with a financial meltdown in the wake of the global recession in 2008. A lifeline of a $335-million loan from neighboring South Africa was refused as the fine print included political reforms. Financial oblivion was only averted after the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), discovered that Swaziland, as a customs union member, was eligible for an $88 million windfall in 2012 and it came with no strings attached.
The financial crisis was caused by a drop of more than 50% in SACU receipts as a consequence of the recession and squeezed Swaziland’s public sector wage bill that accounts for about 18% of the approximately $4 billion GDP – the highest ratio on the continent.
Russo was clearly looking through a different lens at the business opportunities that existed when he decided to return home in the midst of the country’s financial crisis and swing for the entrepreneurial fences. In the eight years since buying out his father, his businesses have grown eightfold to record a $10 million annual turnover. Russo’s stable includes a paint manufacturer, tool supplier and advertising firm.
Swaziland’s proximity to Mozambique has proved an advantage against Russo’s South African competitors.
“We export seven to eight tons of paint daily to Mozambique. Purely on geography we are able to load two trucks in the morning and make delivery and they are back by 5PM,” he says.
Sandwiched between two countries allows for different business strategies for each, while also benefitting from lower water, electricity and labor costs. Mozambique provides for bulk paint sales, while the South African market offers a niche that sidesteps the competition from South Africa’s thousands of paint manufacturers.
The company supplies specialized paints to a Johannesburg-based architectural firm, including insect repellant paint for malarial areas and paint that can be applied in wet weather.
“We are small enough to be able to custom-make our product to fit client needs… the bigger guys would ask ‘look, how big is the project?’ and it would not be worth their while,” he says.
“One of the downsides of being such a small, isolated country is that you get comfortable at what you are doing, even though you do it well. It’s important to attend tradeshows and ensure we remain current, to give us a competitive advantage.”
Technical staff recruitment can also be difficult.
“There is only a small pool of paint chemists that you can get hold of in southern Africa… but people are quite naive. People in South Africa think that Swaziland is a small little farm town. People that do know the lifestyle we live in Swaziland would come at the drop of hat.”
Swaziland’s formal economy is dominated by corporates, from telecoms to sugar producers. At its center, and controlled by King Mswati III and his coterie, is the opaque Tibiyo TakaNgwane, meaning  wealth of the nation, fund that has shares in many foreign and local corporates operating across diverse sectors.
Tibiyo was envisioned as a national empowerment vehicle and was established by Mswati’s father King Sobhuza II after independence in 1968. From its small beginnings, where every Swazi man was required to donate to it, usually a cow, the fund has grown to an estimated $2 billion. Like Mswati, whose personal fortune was put at $200 million by FORBES in 2008, the fund is exempt from tax, as well as civil and criminal scrutiny.
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The fund’s rapid expansion is attributed to many factors, including eviction of small-scale farmers without compensation to grab some of the country’s best agricultural lands for the fund’s sugar interests and the government’s favoritism for contracts, tenders and beneficial regulations to foreign and local corporates the fund has stakes in.
Swaziland has the trappings of a democracy, but is not recognized as one. Mswati and his royal household, government and the state have become all but indivisible.
A small business owner based in Manzini with an annual turnover of R10 million ($770,000), who declined to be identified, says “If you fly too high, you are going to come short if you come up against businesses with government interests.”
“The main driver of business in Swaziland is the government. Pretty much everyone is dependent or indirectly dependent on government,” he says.
Lynette Fraser, Russo’s 38-year-old sister, established her own water bottling business, Viva Beverages, through purifying municipal water using reverse osmosis. She sells about 100,000 500ml bottles monthly and is able to compete with her South African competitors through lower transport costs. There was a business spike recently for sales of her five liter water bottles, after the capital Mbabane experienced debilitating water shortages, where Matsapha did not.
In recent years, she says there is a growing number of entrepreneurs opening businesses, where in the past “a lot of people would go to Johannesburg because the opportunities are just so vast.”
Excluding sugar production, about 90% of Swaziland’s economic activity occurs in the Mbabane, Matsapha, Manzini corridor and entrepreneurs recognize the benefits of businesses being concentrated within easy reach of each other.
But government business involvement remains a debilitating factor. Founder and Managing Director of the internet service provider Real Image, Ali Resting, has wrestled with government for deregulation of the sector, especially a legislative clause giving Swaziland Posts and Telecommunications Corporation (SPTC) exclusive rights for importing bandwidth, resulting in hugely inflated and uncompetitive internet costs stifling investment.
“The first question investors ask is if connectivity is reasonably priced? …It does deter investors if they are spending huge amounts of money towards connectivity, when they shouldn’t have to,” says Resting.
Deregulation would not only act as a lure for companies to invest in Swaziland, it would also benefit connectivity in the region.
“There is an opportunity for Swaziland to become a transit location between Johannesburg, Durban and Mozambique by using it as a conduit for fiber infrastructure. If you can position yourselves to have the shortest route, because the internet is distance sensitive, it makes more sense to go through Swaziland… it’s a huge opportunity,” says Resting.
For entrepreneurs in Swaziland, opportunities seem to be limited to the government.

The Call  Of The African Kingdom

A political science student felt so angry and so strongly about a statue that early one morning he woke and drove to one of the townships on the fringes of Cape Town. Here he picked up a bucket of faeces, heavy from the night before. He put the stinking bucket into his car and drove to the University of Cape Town (UCT).
For the last few hundred yards, Chumani Maxwele, put the bucket on his shoulder. He wore running tights and a pink construction hat and clearly had no respect. His destination was the green lawns and scented flowers of the entrance to the university. He took a deep breath and threw the manure into the face of one of the world’s most famous colonialists who had died more than a century before.
<div id="attachment_4680" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-4680" class="size-medium wp-image-4680" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Chumane-Maxwele-047-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />Chumane Maxwele</div>
Maxwele was an angry Africanist who didn’t feel this face fitted in his continent; the face belonged to the statue of arch-imperialist Cecil John Rhodes, who died just down the road in his beach house at Muizenberg in 1902, and who donated the land to the university.
“The statue was a political symbol. Even when Rhodes was still alive and now dead, he represents a particular symbol of black people in pain, suffering and dispossession. If you look at the images of Rhodes, it’s all these African people lying with horses, his articulations and so on, you can tell there’s a direct relation between Rhodes and UCT, and UCT being controlled by white people. And there’s a direct relation with who controls the economy of the country and the state of black people. And yet the university takes so much pride in the man,” says Maxwele.
The bucket of faeces launched the Rhodes Must Fall (RMF) campaign. After a month of unrest and consultations at the university, the statue was transferred to a museum in Cape Town.
The anger from UCT reverberated across the country, with dozens of colonial statues defaced or destroyed by angry youth. Louis Botha, the first Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa, survived two wars but couldn’t dodge the red paint of protesters outside Parliament in Cape Town.
Exactly two years after Maxwele started the campaign, FORBES AFRICA spoke to the man in Cape Town. He had just left the gym, dressed in blue and white shirt, tight blue jeans and black brogues. He kept his composure throughout but his emphasis to decolonize the university was as sharp as it was two years ago. He looked nothing like the rabble-rouser portrayed in the newspapers.
“The process of bringing the poo to the statue, it was within political education in this country. People talk about townships and health issues at the university level, and yet these things are really happening. Us black people, we are there, we know these things first hand. People keep the poo buckets in their rooms at night, and in the morning take them to the pavement. And kids play with them, no one cares. I thought I might as well bring one to the university, as a way of saying there’s a problem there but at the same time addressing the racial problems at UCT,” says Maxwele.
At face value, Maxwele’s campaign can be simplified as only against Rhodes’ statue but the man insists there’s more to it than meets the eye.
“There are a lot of complicated issues involved in Rhodes Must Fall. Coming to the university as a rural African student, you are sort of told to leave who you are at the university’s entrance. There’s so much institutional and personal racism going on. Part of my protest was to exhibit white arrogance and black assimilation into the university system,” says Maxwele.
“On the question of curriculum, what is being taught and who is teaching it, and how it is being taught. There’s no way you are going to talk about the brutal killing of black people with what it deserves as a white person. UCT doesn’t recognize apartheid.”
Maxwele says black students and academics have accepted they must assimilate to survive. They fear they’ll be excluded and persecuted like he was.
“It is not easy to be honest to your cause. I have been suspended by the university for two years in 2015 and 2016,” he says.
In September last year, the anti-statue feeling spread to the University of Ghana where students and academics petitioned for the removal of Mahatma Gandhi’s statue. The protesters claimed the proponent of non-violence was racist and the university must replace his statue with an African hero.
The President of India, Pranab Mukherjee, unveiled the statue in June last year at the University of Ghana campus as a symbol of close ties between the two countries.
Gandhi, a native of India, spent 21 years in South Africa as a lawyer and civil rights activist. More than half a century after his assassination in India, like Cecil John Rhodes, Gandhi’s legacy divides the world.
Ashwin Desai, a professor of sociology in South Africa and co-author of The South African Gandhi: Stretcher-Bearer of Empire, wrote that Gandhi was never a saint, not even close.
“Some youngsters recently defaced Gandhi’s statue in Johannesburg for his perceived racism, while others demanded the defaming of Nelson Mandela, seen as a figure of excessive compromise who heralded disastrous economic policies…” says Desai.
The fervour and anger around statues grows. Many philosophers give reasons for this. The only certainty is if you put up a statue in Africa, be assured someone will want to tear it down.

Tag: April 2017

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The Call Of The African Kingdom

The Fight Over Statues Never Stands Still