Debt Crisis Looms for Poorer Nations Most Vulnerable to Climate Change

In Its Own Sweet Time: Sustainability And Innovation In South Africa’s Sugar Industry

Eleven villagers sit under the shade of a marula tree, in the heat of midday, deep in the KwaZulu-Natal bush in a village called Gazini. They have been up since 4AM to tell their stories in search of a small solution to a large problem.
A week before, a herd of elephants trampled through the vegetable patch. Villagers woke to see an elephant in their backyard peering through their door. The backlash has been violent and bloody &#8211; earlier this year, villagers killed an elephant and stripped it to the bone.
Gazini is a scatter of farms two kilometers from the South African border with Mozambique; electricity or cell phone reception is unheard of. The villagers here live hand-to-mouth deep in the bush.
The villagers complain the elephants emerge from the bush in the dead of night, to strike terror into their homes. The reason the elephants roam is because their home in the bush is getting smaller by the year.
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Listening patiently to the villagers are two entrepreneurs, Mmabatho and Desmond Morudi, in white overalls, who believe their business can help the villagers sleep easy.
“The thing that made [the threat] clear to me was when we did a trip along the border fence. There you can see exactly where the fence has been broken and where the elephants cross over. We could see the broken poles snapped in half like twigs,” says Desmond.
The entrepreneurs believe that building 200 beehives, in a two-kilometer barrier will not only fend off the elephants but also make money. The villagers could be forgiven for being sceptical.
“I don’t think they are convinced, it’s still a test to see if it

really, really works to deter the elephants,” says Mmabatho.
“It’s [understandable] why they would believe such a large creature wouldn’t be scared of something so small,” says Desmond.
The Morudis have been working around this village since October. They start work early; the bees get aggressive as the day wears on. The hives hang on wooden poles, 10 meters apart, linked by barbed wire. If touched by an elephant, the hives swing and stir up the bees.
“So far we’ve put up a fence with 40 hives. Two hundred will be the final amount. The challenge is 200 hives is quite a stretch, it means they have to run through other villages of people who don’t even know that the project is going on. There is also the issue of leaving space for cars driving past as well as border patrols. You don’t want to cut the elephants off totally. You just want to cordon off the sensitive areas and leave behind a path.”
The buzzing beehive fence is the brainchild of Lucy King in Kenya, Head of the Human-Elephant Co-Existence Program for Save the Elephants, where she realized that elephants are scared of African honey bees and will avoid beehives at all costs. The bees sting the elephants’ soft skin, eyes, face, trunk and mouth.
The fences have an 80% success rate. They are made from local materials and are cheap, costing $150 to $500 per 100 meters, says King from her headquarters Nairobi.
The beehive fences have been so successful with human-elephant conflict (HEC), 13 countries have adopted similar projects, one of them being the Morudi’s growing business, The Village Market.
“We’ve obsessed over [King’s] manual and her work in Kenya… At the same time we were trying to find villages that we could work with. We had the skills, we had the knowledge, we needed the natural vegetation,” says Mmabatho.
In the shade of the marula tree, they have taken King’s research one step further. They want to use beehive fences as part of a R2.5-million ($180,000) dream to harvest, bottle and deliver wild, high-quality honey to suburban shopping aisles.
“In general our jars sell for R55 per 375g. Then we have Mmabatho’s baby, the raw high quality, for R75 per 375g. We aim to develop a luxury brand, bringing more orders to a premium market. We work on 35kgs per hive per harvest, which is once every three months,” says Desmond.
This means, by January, 11 bee keepers of Gazini could have yielded R49,000 ($3,500).
It’s been a long journey to this odd business for Desmond and Mmabatho. They come from modest homes in Kimberly and Pretoria.
“Our desire was to develop communities we grew up in, providing help for people and business opportunities.”
The idea was born in the home of Mmabatho’s grandfather in Winterveld, a rural town 68 kilometers northwest of Pretoria, in 2012.
“Bees would get into our ceiling and produce so much honey that the ceiling would cave in. Like every other family, we would try and smoke them out and kill them. But they would always come back,” says Mmabatho.
Instead her grandfather took the family on a beekeeping course and Mmabatho was hooked. She started her own company called Iliju Bee Farm.
Her work with Iliju Bee Farm led to Mmabatho shaking hands with ministers and members of the top 100 entrepreneurs of Europe. She also dined with Richard Branson. In 2013, Mmabatho was selected as one of the brightest young minds in South Africa, and again as one of the emerging changemakers by Spark International.
Things got even busier and Mmabatho’s husband, Desmond, left the comfort of corporate accounting to help manage the business. But success proved to be a devil in disguise. The business grew too quickly and couldn’t cope. They took on a bee expert who left a year and a half later and Iliju collapsed.
Then they started The Village Market at the end of 2014.
“As we learned more about bees, and their plight, that’s when it all came together. Lucy King’s study came after we had established Winterveld. Nora Taiga, of the Peace Foundation, now Elephant, Rhinos &amp; People (ERP), paid Mmabatho a subsistence salary of R10,000, then introduced us to the people of Gazini,” says Desmond.
“At the beginning of the year the crossings were getting quite significant. Previously it had just been bulls, but then we started seeing breeding herds coming through,” says Nonceba Lushaba, KZN Coordinator of ERP.
“From the elephant’s point of view they have realized that there are easy pickings here. It’s kind of like a naughty child who goes to pick sweets.”
In Gazini, finding the bees is half the battle. Once the hives are built, the beekeepers take the hives to their homes in Gazini and attempt to colonize them.
Bees are fussy dwellers; they need water, plenty of flowering plants, protective vegetation and far from direct sunlight. Once the bees have moved in, the keepers close the entrances at night and then transport the colony to the beehive fence. Work starts before dawn. In their bee suits they walk with the hives on their heads to this farm. It is so remote you need a 4&#215;4 to navigate a maze of bush trails to find it.
“Another important issue is researching bee diseases. Bee health is important if we want to conserve them. Research needs to keep track of these growing issues.”
Threats, like the varroa mite that attacks bees in the hive and contributes in part to colony collapse, are global concerns. This is why the couple have teamed up with the University of Pretoria (Tuks) Zoology and Entomology department’s Bee Group that will add valuable research to elephant behavior, bee repopulation and disease control.
Even though US and Europe honey bee colonies were under threat from Colony Collapse Disorder for almost ten years, the African honey bee  was safe from the impact of industrialized apiculture. This according to research by Robin Crew,  professor of Entomology and leader of the Social Insects Research Group in the University of Pretoria’s Department of Zoology and Entomology.
In Crew’s book “A World Without Bees”, the fact that Africa has the largest number of wild honey bee swarms in the world has contributed to wider genetic diversity and therefore populations are not as severely affected by diseases.
The beepocolypse, as it was called, could even be resolved with recolonization with the African honey bee because of its resilience.
Their Gazini project has even caught the eye of the African Union which granted $15,000 to the bee research at Tuks.
“It’s not just the sake of doing research for the sake of research, but using it to solve community problems. To help developed communities,” says Desmond.
On the morning of inspection, Mmabatho finds suspicious larvae in one of the hives. It turns out to be waxworm. These pests eat cocoons, pollen, the shed skins of bees, and chew through beeswax.
“We need the bees to focus all their energy on making the honey. As soon as invaders enter the hive they expend all their energy getting it out, which of course affects production,” says Desmond.
The couple believe that deforestation, pesticides and insecticides also affect the bees. They instead plant strong smelling plants and herbs, like spring onions, to discourage pests and also plant flowering vegetables like tomatoes to encourage pollination.
“We are trying to encourage our farmers to use organic methods so they don’t affect the bee populations. That is why, in addition to this, we sell veggies to markets,” says Mmabatho.
Once the honey is ready it its transported 600 kilometers to their bottling plant at the Riversands Incubation Hub that opened in September in Fourways, north of Johannesburg.
“The problem we have with honey in South Africa is a lot of it is imported. Because of important laws we need to irradiate it. You will see in the shops it will say it’s ionized by radiation in order to increase shelf life. The impact of that is that it takes away the good qualities from the honey.”
“There is also a lack of variation of honey in the market. We introduce some product differentiation;  infusing honey with lemon or cinnamon.”
Raw honey is murky and beige in color, a completely different experience from what you see in the shops.
“People are used to seeing this brown liquid here on the shelves that’s what they associate with honey. They don’t appreciate the real raw product will crystallize,” says Mmabatho.
Honey also can be used in health and beauty products and is a natural anti-inflammatory. Scrubs, moisturizers and masks can all be made from the by-product of the comb.
This is one business that is helping a tiny village sleep at night and got a couple of bright African entrepreneurs buzzing.

The Stings That  Make Elephants Fly

Four years of drought and South Africa is counting the costs on the farms. It is tougher than most for hundreds of struggling sugarcane farmers in KwaZulu-Natal who lost everything last year and fear the same this year.
Fifty-year-old Thembelihle Mzila grew up near Wartburg, 40 kilometers from Pietermaritzburg in KwaZulu-Natal. All she wanted, like her parents, was to own a sugarcane field. For more than 20 years, she has lived that dream. All these years, Mzila has worked long hours to feed her children and has build her house.
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“I have learned to use my own hands at a young age. I know how to use my hands, it is something I was born into, I never begged,” says Mzila, pointing to her sugarcane field stretching downhill near her homestead. When FORBES AFRICA met Mzila, the sky over the rural town of Wartburg was grey and the clouds were heavy. It rained when we left but not enough to make up for the four years of drought.
Mzila’s childhood dream is slowly running dry. Since drought struck a few years ago, there is little to harvest, forcing Mzila to look for other income while she prays for rain. Last year, KwaZulu-Natal was the first of five provinces declared drought disaster areas by the government. Early this year, the government announced a R15-billion ($955 million) bailout through loans, but Mzila and her 95 associates won’t qualify for it. They don’t have collateral. While she waits for rain, she is selling soft drinks and snacks to keep her children at school.
Mzila is the chairperson of the Inzwakele Co-operative Group, formed in 2011, that meets once a month. There are 95 members, who plough a field the size of a football field. Most are pensioners, unemployed and single parents. Besides solely depending on rain for ploughing, there are many other problems. They use their annual financial support from government to hire agricultural instruments and repair fences broken down by cattle.
It takes up to two years for a sugarcane harvest. Many are despondent as well as dry.
“Because of climate change, and its unpredictable weather, we find it difficult now to know exactly which months are good for ploughing the fields. Habitually we start in August and through to the end of January, but there was no rain last year, as a result the fields dried up and went hungry with no money,” says Mzila.
“Unemployment is very high here. Many people turn to farming for income. Though we have so many members, we still have a challenge to assist each and every one getting started with their own fields. We have many in the waiting list because we hire tractors and tools. We have a roster that we keep,” says Bongani Shangase, a 75-year-old former bus driver who now farms sugarcane.
<div id="attachment_4748" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-4748" class="size-medium wp-image-4748" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/P26B8333-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />Young children collect water from a spring in Kimaswa Western Kenya Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2015. 375 schools in Cheptai and throughout Western Kenya are currently being given Lifestraw Water Filters to ensure that every child at school has clean water to drink. Jaguar Landrover are supporting the project being run in partnership with Vestergaard and Climate Care and employees form Jaguar Landrover are currently visiting the schools to assist with distribution. ( Photo/KATE HOLT)</div>
“As the small cooperation farmers, we get advice or recommendation from the ‘mill’ as to what kind of sugarcane seed we should be planting at the given time. Based on the soil test done by Illovo representatives on our land, we were given sugarcane N12 and N48 seed to plant. Those of us who ploughed in 2012 have started selling sugarcane to Illovo.”
Mfanufikile Mbatha, 52, is another member who has yet to see his first crop. He’s a shopkeeper as well.
“We worked separately on our own gardens, ploughing vegetables for ourselves and selling when the product was good. But when the local officials approached us to organize ourselves, we came up with the cooperation in 2012. The thing that boosted our confidence was the government grant, although at times we received money a little late into the ploughing season, we are grateful for it,” he says.
They’d be even more grateful for a few weeks of torrential rain.

Dry And Desperate

A family man, who stood up for what he believed in, paid with his life. In the coalmining town of Dundee, situated in a valley of the Biggarsberg mountains, in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) province, it is one of the many sad, yet largely unsung, stories of whistleblowing in Africa.
Blowing the whistle is a tough game in 21st-century Africa, but, it’s as important as ever in a world of more and more dirty secrets. In many parts of the world, whistleblowers have become household names,  such as Chelsea Manning, after disclosing sensitive military and diplomatic documents, and Edward Snowden after he leaked classified information from the National Security Agency. In Africa, online warrior Baba Jukwa, who leaked sensitive information about Zimbabwe’s ruling party Zanu-PF; and Kenya’s John Githongo, who embarrassed the powerful with his book It’s Our Turn To Eat, are far from lauded.
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Sadly, many whistleblowers in Africa are ruined or die unsung. They are shunned, harassed, jailed and left jobless.
In the small town of Umzinyathi District in KZN, South Africa, whistleblowing ended with a bullet. Grishen Bujram, from Dundee, was respected and hardworking. He had been an activist since he was 15 and a councillor. One day, he found that free houses for the poor were being sold for profit. South Africa has built millions of the so-called Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) houses, putting a roof over millions of heads.
Bujram was outraged and alleged the mayor of the African National Congress (ANC)-controlled Endumeni municipality, Thandeka Nukani, had sold 17 RDP houses and also taken one for herself; even though she had a well-paid job.
Bujram confronted the mayor and reported it to the council. On June 15, 2007, he was allegedly called for a meeting. His widow, Shirley Bujram, kissed him goodbye at the door at 6:30PM, unaware it was the last time she would see him alive.
“I was home with my children and I heard someone pounding at the door. When I went to the kitchen it was dark but I could see the police blue lights. I assumed my husband went and smashed someone or something else had happened. When I opened the door I saw the police and his nephew there. I said to the nephew, ‘if your uncle is in trouble I will leave him in jail till the end of the weekend,’” says Shirley.
The men in blue asked Shirley to sit down as they delivered the news. They said Bujram had been shot many times at the wheel in a township near Dundee.
“He was like a father to all of us in the community,” says resident Muzikayifani Khumalo – eight years later.
Another resident Thando Dube* says, “The thing that ended his life was his hatred for corruption. People like Bujram are the people who die for telling the truth. In this district, we are scared to talk because we are face to face with the gun. This place is corrupt but if you speak up you die.”
In the days after the death, Nukani, according to Shirley, visited the family to pass her condolences.
“Her exact words were ‘your husband’s killers must rot in jail’ which is shocking because she had previously sent me messages saying my husband is interfering with her work and has a jealous syndrome. If he continues on his path against her, he will be sorry,” she says.
According to the widow, a woman who was with Bujram, minutes before the assassination, testified in court that Bujram knew he was being followed by the mayor’s car, but thought nothing of it. Two brothers, on their way home from work; witnessed the mayor’s boyfriend, Bongani Shangase, shoot Bujram and her nephew, Siyabonga Nukani, used the car as a getaway vehicle.
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This breakthrough gave way to disappointment for the Bujram family. They say Dundee police had the case for three months but no arrest was made until the widow went to the organized crime unit.
Police arrested Nukani, but charges were dropped for insufficient evidence. Detectives arrested Shangase and Siyabonga Nukani. Shangase received a life sentence; Siyabonga turned state witness and got 20 years.
“Thandeka planned to have her nephew poisoned because he had turned state witness. Her boyfriend worked with other inmates to make this happen but the inmates couldn’t go through with it,” says Shirley.
There were charges for the attempted murder of Siyabonga Nukani, against Thandeka Nukani. They were withdrawn, in 2011, due to insufficient evidence.
Shirley Bujram and the police, with Siyabonga Nukani’s cooperation, also found there was a hitman, Mzamo Majola.
“I found out that when [Bujram] was killed it was the third attempt which became successful. The hitman had tried two times before. On the day Bujram was killed, Mzamo Majola couldn’t go ahead with it because there were people around. Shangase got agitated and killed my husband himself,” she says.
The police offered Majola a deal to turn state witness. Based on his evidence, police arrested Thandeka Nukani again.
In August last year, Judge Isaac Nkosi withdrew the Bujram murder charges against Thandeka Nukani after Majola went on the run.
For the second time, the former mayor walked free.
Thandeka Nukani has been redeployed as the personal assistant to Umzinyathi District mayor, James Mthethwa. She lost her mayoral seat after it was found R100,000 ($7,410) in legal fees, for the Bujram case, were allegedly paid for by the ANC.
Thandeka Nukani did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Nearly eight years on, Bujram’s comrades carry whistleblowing forward at equal risk. Mzwakhe Sithebe and Yussuf Kader are fellow activists who fight corruption in KZN and are often ridiculed for doing so.
“During the apartheid era we were fighting for justice together with Grishen Bujram. Now, in a democratic country, we are still faced with the same tendencies. The problem is people driven by greed,” says Sithebe.
“The problem is that politicians have been elevated and are like a law [unto] themselves. We will always fight for justice. The issue of being eliminated unfortunately is the fate for all of us who stand against corruption. We will raise questions that need to be raised irrespective of who will be offended and decide to kill us. We have lost a number of whistleblowers in this area. We need some kind of system that protects people willing to come forward with sensitive information.”
Kader, a businessman who now drives a bulletproof car, says whistleblowers risk their lives for the good of the country.
“Houses of the poorest of the poor are being taken by those in power. Some RDP houses get sold and there is a lot of inside corruption which we continue to fight against,” says Kader.
Because of the corruption, Kader has written a letter demanding the dismissal of five government employees.
“As it stands, I can be killed at any time but I am not afraid to die for the poorest of the poor.”
Endumeni Municipality’s Mayor Thulani Mahaye, the successor to Mayor Nukani, encourages people to come forward with any information that exposes irregularities.
“I am proud of the police and the community right now. They are working together to make this area safer and ensure arrests are made when a crime is committed. If someone needs to blow the whistle and they are afraid of being eliminated, they can secretly come forward and protection will be given to them,” he says.
Despite this, controversy over houses, that saw the death of Bujram, rumbles on.
A five-minute drive outside Dundee lies the small town of Glencoe. Its residents are up in arms against the municipality. They allege 71 names, for RDP houses, in Glencoe’s Sithembile Phase 2 projects, have been removed from the list.
“It is unclear how so many people lost houses they had applied, and had been approved, for. It can only be corruption. People’s names are disappearing from the list or being withdrawn without reason. For some people, untrue claims of application withdrawals are even made,” says Glencoe resident Sifiso Madi.
“An RDP house that I applied for was approved but when the houses were built they said I withdrew my application which I never did. They also said that they looked for me to come and sign documents but didn’t find me. This is not true because no one ever contacted me or my next of kin, sent a letter or came to where I stay to look for me,” says one Dundee woman who wants to remain anonymous for fear of retribution.
Another frustrated resident says “my cousin died in 2008 but an RDP house had been approved for him. He left dependants, so in 2013 when the houses were being built I decided to check on the progress to make sure his children have a place to stay. Funnily enough, they gave me a list that says my cousin withdrew the application. How is that possible when he is dead? Did he wake up from his grave to withdraw it? I asked the human settlement people to show me where my cousin signed to withdraw his application for the house he had already been approved for, but obviously, because it never happened, they were not able to provide any proof.”
Many who rocked the boat like Bujram also paid with their lives.
In June, just 55 kilometers from Dundee, Vusi Ntombela, an Nquthu Municipality council speaker for the ANC, and teacher and deputy principal at Luvisi Primary School, was gunned down while teaching a Grade 6 class. A gunman walked into his classroom and shot him four times. Two pupils were caught in the crossfire. Thirteen-year-old Elizabeth Nhleko died from a stray bullet.
The widow, Thembelihle Ntombela, told journalists she believes Vusi was killed because of tensions within the ANC. In December last year, Vusi had resisted an instruction from the ANC sub-region to resign as speaker. His murder is allegedly related to political tensions in the governing party’s Inkosi Bhambatha region and in the council itself.
Police arrested Mbhekiseni Khambule and Sibongiseni Mdakane for the murder. Khambule is the bodyguard of Nquthu mayor, Emily Molefe. Mdakane was later sentenced to life imprisonment. He confessed that he had been promised R15,000 (around $1,100) for the hit by his co-accused.
In May 2008, Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) councillor Peter Nxele was shot dead in his driveway for speaking out against corruption just a week after raising questions about R50,000 ($3,700) that had gone missing from a council business grant. He also requested a forensic audit into the spending of the Endumeni municipality. One of the five men accused of gunning down Nxele is Bongani Shangase, the same man who killed Bujram.
In June 2009, 124 kilometers from Dundee where Bujram was killed, Tony Malunga, an ANC councillor and regional executive committee member, was gunned down at his home in Greytown. He was allegedly killed because of his fight against corruption. Malunga was found lying in a pool of blood outside the ANC offices.
Back in Dundee, Shirley Bujram vows to fight for justice for her husband’s murder.
“My husband was diabetic but a month before he died he said to me he was not going to be killed by diabetes because there is a bullet there for him; and by the bullet he died.”

“If You Speak Up You Die”

Farming is anyone’s game, even if you can’t see.
Forty-five-year-old Nobuhle Mthembu had a severe migraine, aged 10, that cost her her sight.
“I woke up one morning and I just couldn’t see. My eyes were closed. My grandmother washed them with water and my eyelids opened but I have never been able to see since then,” she says.
The business of food has become her solace and living.
In an orange overall, on this cloudy winter’s day in the coastal KwaZulu-Natal province in South Africa, she navigates around the plot with her walking stick. Mthembu can do everything those with sight can, if not more.
“I use my sense of touch to do my work and run this business. Planting is easy and I can do it the same way a person with eyes can, the difficult part is weeding after planting has been done. Because I can’t see, I can’t use tools because I might take out the good too. So I have to use my hands. I touch around the plants and I can feel the difference between weeds and crops and I pull out the weeds.”
Water is pumped into tanks and buckets from a stream, running along the bottom of the plot, to irrigate the crops. Shipping containers are used to store produce.
“Even if we are disabled, there are things we are capable of doing.”
Mthembu has memory as her guide. She spent her childhood watching her grandmother farm.
“I enjoyed being in the fields with my grandmother. I used to cry to help at all times until they allowed me to. I told myself, blind or not, I will farm,” she says.
Because of her zeal, her grandmother gave her a field, the size of half a football pitch, to plant.
“In October, on my birthday month, my grandmother said I should plant peanuts on my section. I was very happy. The peanuts I planted grew and were amazingly big and I noticed that this is my gift, and I could make money from it. ”
“Farming is my thing. I grew up in a family that made its money and food through farming. My grandmother liked farming and I was always with her. Even after she died, I continued with the work,” she says.
Following her dream to make money, in 1989 she started a vegetable garden with her sister, Bukani Latha, who is paralyzed on one side.
“We realized that, as a disabled person, depending on the government doesn’t help because the disabled social grants are not enough and we need to contribute to the economy,” says Mthembu.
She gathered disabled people for a meeting to encourage them into the field. It was a long journey of 10 years.
In 2009, she gained permission from the local council to farm a plot of land at Inchanga, near Cato Ridge in KwaZulu-Natal. She finally founded the 19-member Bukani Sibonelo Disabled Women’s Co-operative. The council helped with seeds.
“This team gives me hope.  Every day, we make a difference in our lives and in those of our families, and most importantly we add value in the country by promoting food security through the items we sell,” says Mthembu.
The team grows spinach, cabbage, carrots, potatoes, beetroot and mushrooms. These are sold nearby, given to the needy and supplied to clinics.
Mthembu has won four awards and says they encourage her to work harder.
“I want my work to inspire other disabled people to get involved in agriculture and do the best they can instead of begging on the street.”
Profits and prizemoney are ploughed back.
“We now want to expand our work by supplying major retailers which could bring in good money for us. People may laugh or look down on disabled people but when you offer something valuable, the way they look at you is different,” she says.
Mthembu wants to read braille, there is no doubt she will. She has already proved where there is a will, there is fertile field and a way.

‘Blind Or Not,  I Will Farm’

It’s a story that has stuck on Bradley Porter like a tattoo. When you are in the business of renting office space, not being able to pay rent as the leaser can be quite ironic.
Born in the Free State province in South Africa, and growing up in the coastal city of Durban, Porter’s future in entrepreneurship was inevitable having had a father who had a tiling business.
“It’s almost an affliction you are born with and I can’t really help it. I had a burning desire to have control of my own fate and destiny. And whatever it takes, you have to fulfil that desire and passion,” says Porter.
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He grew up at the height of apartheid, attending the University of Durban-Westville which at the time was one of the political institutions in the country. When he didn’t succeed in university, he joined the army and from there decided to go live in Britain for nearly 10 years.
It was during this time as an employee that he realized he couldn’t work for someone else for the rest of his life. He packed his bags, returned to Durban, and with the little money he had saved he started two businesses. Along the way, one of his friends, who had purchased space in a building, suggested Porter hire 200 square meters for his ‘Experience This’ business on Florida Road in Durban, a hub of activity for tourists and locals.
“I said ‘I don’t need all that space. I don’t’ need 200 square meters’… but I said ‘if you are prepared to try start this business with me, I’ll take the 200 square meters and we will experiment with this business’ which became known as Flexible Workspaces,” remembers Porter.
In October 2005, Porter founded Flexible Workspaces after spending eight years in the serviced office industry of Britain. The company provides fully serviced offices in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province and Johannesburg. It was founded as a solution to the ever-changing business environment and to offer alternative options to the business community.
The business caters for small businesses that are starting out. Finding the right office space can be daunting especially when your budget is limited and you working with a small team.
Porter and his friend set up offices. They started with just furniture, the phone system that was already supplied and around $10,500 to get the business going.
“We were so undercapitalized it was unbelievable and we didn’t have any spare cash. To start off your business these days, realistically for 1,000 square meters, you would need at least R4 million ($350,000). For 200 square meters, you would need around R1 million to R2 million ($87,000 to $175,000),” he says.
Two years later, Porter says they decided to open up their next offices in Umhlanga, around 17 kilometers from Durban, even though the first offices on Florida Road were not flourishing.
“The reason we opened in Umhlanga was because of the trend at the time. This was around 2007, the trend was very much up north, outside Durban. We needed to be able to provide a presence in Umhlanga, which is becoming the commercial hub for KwaZulu Natal or Durban anyway,” says Porter.
But this move ushered in his worst day.
“I think every entrepreneur will have one and for me personally it’s so real it’s like a tattoo on the back of my brain. I can relate to it now. I get goosebumps when I think about it because it’s just so real still,” says the 44-year-old.
He calls it Black Friday. It was September 7, 2007 and they had just expanded Flexible Workspaces and the rent was due. Porter was abroad on holiday but had to come back to South Africa to solve numerous problems, the main one being that they hadn’t paid R73,000 ($6,360) in rent for the 500-square-meter Umhlanga offices.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-3358 aligncenter" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/reception1-3-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" />
Unfortunately for them, with a business renting out space to other small business, Flexible Workspaces didn’t have any bringing in money so that they could pay rent. Porter sat in one of the offices looking at the Gateway shopping Centre with one hand on his head and the other holding the telephone to his ear. He was calling the landlord, apologizing for the late rent and begging for some leniency.
“The business model worked in such a way that we take a risk, we’re a bit like a hotel but for businesses. So we’ll go into a space, we do a deal with the landlord, we take a risk on all the capital expenditure. We fit it out, we staff it, we supply the internet, tea and coffee. Everything gets supplied. These services all have to be supplied on day one. And on day one you usually don’t’ have any clients. Unless you’ve been clever about it and been more strategic,” he says.
“But usually, particularly for us, the day one meant no clients. So by the time we got to day 30, we might have had one or two clients but it wasn’t enough to cover our rent and the overheads we had.”
After spending 15 minutes, which felt like years, on the phone with the landlord, she agreed to give them an extension for a few days to come up with the rent money.
Fortunately, they made it happen. It wasn’t more than a week when the business signed a deal with a data storage company, who remain his clients today. But they had to hobble through paying rent for the following months.
“We went through a three-year recovery period and then in about 2011 we started looking at space in Sandton. And that went really well. We took a small portion of 600 square meters and we filled it very fast. And about a year later, we recovered sufficiently to double the space to 1,200 square meters in Sandton. And we are looking for more now,” he says.
“With the benefit of hindsight I should have started this business in Johannesburg. I think it would have been much more successful by now.”
Flexible Workspaces caters to those who want an office space instead of working from home. Porter says serviced offices reduce the costs and hassles of renting space and combines the best features of a low-cost office in a prime location.
“Our objective was to build a network of business centers, so we were never going to stop at Durban or Umhlanga,” he says.
Since then, the business has 15 employees and turns over around $1.3 million a year.
In October 2013, Flexible Workspaces opened its third serviced offices next to the swanky Montecasino precinct, outside Johannesburg. Porter says that he hopes to open more offices along the continent’s only fast train, the Gautrain, from Johannesburg’s city center all the way through to the country’s capital, Pretoria.
“We want to expand the business nationally and cross borders. I’d like to have a national footprint in five years, international I can’t tell you. We are growing this business organically, so we are using our own money, it’s all self-invested. The pace at which we can grow is limited to the amount of money we make.”

My Worst Day: Bradley Porter

The latest bid to become the economic hub of Southern Africa has come from KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), on the east coast of South Africa.
The Dube TradePort (DTP) in Durban is earmarked to be the catalyst of this transformation and is under consideration to be classified as a Special Economic Zone (SEZ), owned by the provincial government and managed by a corporation. The DTP aims to expand trade, encourage economic development, create jobs and increase foreign direct investment (FDI) by linking transport to connect the province to international economies. It is part of the province’s 20-year plan with R560 billion ($56 billion) worth of projects in the pipeline. It’ll employ up to 35,000 people.
The KZN MEC for economic development and tourism, Mike Mabuyakhulu, says that India and China’s large populations make them attractive destinations for South Africa’s exports. The province is looking for opportunities to increase trade with other southern African countries as well as increase tourism.
The DTP is home to the R7.8 billion ($ 780 million) King Shaka International Airport and lies between the Richards Bay and Durban ports. It is situated on the N2 development corridor that connects the Eastern Cape with Mozambique.
According to Mabuyakhulu, seaborne trade accounts for almost 80% of South Africa’s imports and exports. The port of Durban handles most of the trade in southern Africa, handling around 2.7 million TEUs.
The DTP zones are separate projects that interlink. Dube iConnect is a 24 hour telecommunications and IT service provider that will be using 36 km of fiber optics and a 10 gig pipe to service all the DTP zones.
The Dube Cargo Terminal is a three-year-old state-of-the-art terminal with the capacity to handle 1,000 tons per annum, with plans to increase it to 2 million tons by 2060. The terminal houses Customs, the departments of Agriculture as well as Health, the South African Revenue Services and South African Border Police—200 meters from the Dube TradeZone.
The TradeZone houses logistics, warehousing, light manufacturing, assembly, processing and high value cargo. It also includes the R28 million ($2.8 million) state-of-the-art flight kitchen facility. There has been a recent buzz among investors who are expected to sign contracts soon.
Dube Agrizone is 20 hectares that include a greenhouse hydroponics facility. Sixteen hectares of greenhouse produce 40 tons of fresh produce—including cucumbers and tomatoes—for large retailers, while a separate greenhouse is being developed for cut flowers and pot plants. The next question is what this will mean for the small farmers in the province?
The MEC says efforts will be made to integrate them into the new project. The idea for the zone dates back to 1994, when new ideas were sought to increase agricultural output and stimulate exports.
At the center of the R5 billion ($500 million) Dube City, three minutes from the airport, is Dube Square. The city will have accommodation, conference facilities, restaurants, retail and offices.
A memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Indian conglomerate, Action Group, has been signed for $217 million to build a mini city nearby that is expected to attract close to $2.2 billion in FDI.
The provincial government will retain ownership of the DTP and investors will be given long-term leases.
According to senior managers at Deloitte and Touché some of the challenges facing the DTP are the uncertainty around the SEZ regulations and the inaccessibility to rail. They feel that “government can play a significant role in helping the DTP realize its potential of becoming an economic hub”, through training of workers and offering greater flexibility with government incentive packages for specific projects. Deloitte and Touché warns that final SEZ legislation must meet the needs, of not only the zones for which it is being created, but also the expectations of foreign investors.
This could be a thin tightrope to walk on the way to the promise of prosperity.

Africa’s next hot spot

For three aspiring engineers, our wheels of choice were 150cc Big Boy Scooters. At the start line, in the city of gold, we joined 60 other like-minded crews on a journey labeled as Africa’s greatest social rally—the Put Foot Rally.
The expedition, onboard our three stallions, would take us 7,000 kilometers, through seven countries and six border checkpoints, in 21 days, all in support of Project Rhino KwaZulu-Natal. The rally’s intention is simple: to catapult adventurous spirits into their backyard and in the footsteps of David Livingstone. We set out to prove that Southern Africa can be explored on any wheels you choose.
<div id="attachment_1394" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1394" class="size-medium wp-image-1394" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/P7030297-300x219.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="219" />Our Scooters parked on the beach at Senga Bay Lake Malawi</div>
With frozen fingers, James, Matt and I waved at encouraging hoots, as we cleared Jo’burg on a chilly winter’s morning. Finally, we hit the open road, full steam ahead at 70km an hour, and made our way to the first border post into Botswana. Our first taste of open road biking included: dodging suicidal flamingos and angry ostriches as well as the odd elephant—something extraordinary when on two wheels. For the first couple of days, as we rode towards Etosha National Park, our morning sessions were split into 30km stints interspersed with star-jumps on the open road and warming our hands on the exhaust pipe.
Traveling up to 700km a day, meant we arose early; behind the fog and cold came daybreak, which brought new surprises perched on the horizon.
Out in the wild, we had to constantly monitor our fuel situation. Fuel is gold and with a range of 200km we were bound to run out, somewhere along our adventure. This happened in Namibia en route to Windhoek. With two scooters curb-bound, James slipstreamed a 18-wheeler truck for 40km and returned with a couple of liters.
We learnt that poor navigation in the middle of the night is all part of the experience. The excited faces, accompanied with cold beers, at the checkpoints were moments of accomplishment. These checkpoint parties consisted of a 300-strong group dressed in anything from animal print to luminous polyester, where many a story were shared from the days’ travels.
Desert evolved into mountains, which turned into grasslands and we had made the first leg of the journey to Etosha Park. There are some roads that make your heart beat fast and others that take your breath away. Perhaps the greatest part of riding across Africa is that you see every rolling hill, every river crossing and every bustling village. We learnt to have conversations, while riding, without saying a word and there were many humorous moments while shepherding Matt—who before this trip had never ridden a scooter.
Riding through the Caprivi Strip towards Livingstone was quite an experience. With only a couple of shirts and a Leatherman, we were often invited to dine with hospitable locals. Here the spirit of Ubuntu is real. After breaking down 80 kilometers out of Grootfontein, we hitched a ride back to town in a copper truck, negotiated accommodation in exchange for three beers and had our scooters serviced by a resident mechanic for free. Within one day we were back on the road in Livingstone, Zambia.
Not only does the Put Foot Rally give travellers the opportunity to explore some of Southern Africa’s most beautiful spots but it also facilitates fundraising for a great cause. The crews raised R560,000 ($65,000), which was used to buy 450 new pairs of school shoes for schoolchildren in Livingstone. It also created awareness and raised funds to help fight rhino poaching through Project Rhino.
We had cruised the Kavango, traveled the entire interior of Namibia and enjoyed the crisp taste of a Mosi on the banks of the Zambezi River. On entering Zimbabwe the beaten track led us towards Kariba Dam. We hopped onto a ferry and had a full day of downtime, much of which was spent sipping on Lion Lager and snacking on Kapenta (Tanganyika sardines). Well refreshed, we made our way to colorful Malawi and rode hugging the ‘Lake of Stars’.
Exploring the fleamarket-style villages by scooter was an experience. Traffic was always a breeze and the interest we received from people gave us an opportunity to learn hidden secrets about the country.
A conversation was bound to be fired up at every pit stop, especially with police officials, who asked how we managed to pack everything including a golf club. Officials let us through every roadblock or border post, laughing ‘Hah, silly Mlungus’, a reminder that when traveling Africa always remember to pack a sense of humor.
Next, we rode southwards into Mozambique, which presented us with unique landscapes. The bright lights of Teté; long, white beaches of Vilanculos; the historical architecture and the waving coconut trees of Inhambane made for an atmosphere like no other. As we cruised to Barra lodge, the idyllic finish line of our scooter odyssey, the realization hit that while not everything had gone our way—breakdowns led to nights on the side of the road and a couple of tumbles had depleted spirits—Africa and her people always seem to provide. Traveling across Southern Africa by scooter gave us the chance to take it slow and travel uninhibited. The rally gave us the chance to bond and give back to communities and conservation.
Go ride, Africa is more accessible than you think.

7 Thousand Kilometers, 6 Borders,  Ride For Rhinos:  No Regrets

Shell applied for gas exploration rights for an area covering 90,000 km2—the size of KwaZulu-Natal. Falcon Oil and Gas applied for an area of 30,000km2—one-and-a-half times the size of the Kruger National Park—which encompasses Jansenville, the mohair capital. Sunset Energy applied for 35,000km2 around Graaff-Reinet. Besides these, there are many more; together they cover an area the size of the Eastern Cape Province. It could be the world’s fifth largest shale gas find.
<div id="attachment_728" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-728" class="wp-image-728 size-medium" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/JWE-Head-Shoulders-3-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />Jan Willem Eggink</div>
According to Jansenville, Sasol is not pursuing further exploration, after initial studies of the Karoo “did not reveal particularly strong prospects”, although it remains interested in the venture. “[It] supports the current moratorium on additional license applications” which allows the government “to define the robust and world-class regulatory environment that is critical for the responsible functioning of shale gas exploration and operations”. Sasol was awarded a technical co-operation permit of 82,145km2 offshore Kwazulu-Natal and might apply for exploration rights after the year-long study period.
Econometrix, South Africa’s largest independent macro-economic consulting firm, reports: “Just 10% of the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimated 485 tcf (trillion cubic feet) shale resource could add R200 billion ($24 billion) to GDP annually and create 700,000 sustainable jobs.”
Jan Willem Eggink, general manager upstream of Shell, says: “The hundreds of thousands of jobs are only generated if we are producing the gas and it goes into the market where new industry will start. The exploration phase will not generate a very high number of jobs because the skills are not yet here. We will have two rigs: each rig will have 50 to 100 people, possibly slightly more; it depends on the rig.”
PASA believes that only 10% of the estimated reserve is viable for exploitation. Eggink believes that Econometrix’s case studies on 4% and 10% of the gas reserves are “conservative cases”.
“The bottom line is we have to drill wells to actually find out whether the shale [is] there and can be productive,” says Eggink.
South Africa imports 65% of its natural gas from Mozambique. This could be the solution to the country’s dependence on foreign energy.
“The National Planning Commission (NPC), headed up by Trevor Manuel, outlines the challenges for South Africa which are inequality, poverty, unemployment, education and energy. I think these have to be resolved in the foreseeable future. If not resolved, I think there is a huge problem for South Africa. This project provides an opportunity to address many of these issues listed in the NPC report,” says Eggink.
“If you have sufficient energy in a country, then industries will build, employment will rise appropriately and through that, education will also get a boost because if you have significant employment opportunities these people need to be educated.”
Shell has conducted public participation meetings in the Karoo and Cape Town, he says.
“The Environmental Management Plan (EMP) we submitted has the most extensive consultation any project has had in South Africa so far. We had, I don’t know, 6,000 questions which we have all answered individually. They are published on the Golder Associates website, which is an independent entity.
“With regard to environmental impact, the footprint of the development will be very small. First of all, we will explore, and we will explore up to 24 wells in accordance with the EMP in our area. These drilling rigs will end up on a football pitch-sized area. After that we may go into development, and nowadays, on this football pitch-sized areas [you can place] up to 32 wells. One development could be between 1,000 and 2,000 wells which would mean, with these horizontal wells, that you would need 60 or 70 of these football pitch-sized areas, four to five kilometres from each other. That is one development.
“That will be a pretty small area, compared to our license area. We will be operating in 1% of the area for development, and at surface the impact will be significantly smaller than that 1%.” FORBES AFRICA calculates it to be 900km2.
When it comes to water contamination by fracking fluids and gas, Eggink quotes the April 2012 report on The Environmental Impacts of Shale Gas and Shale Oil Extraction Activities, by the Committee of the Environmental, Public Health and Food Safety of the EU.
“It is important to note that no official or other reputable sources have demonstrated any systematic [connection] between shale gas and shale oil extraction and human and animal health. No official or other reputable sources worldwide have demonstrated any cases where hydraulic fracturing has led to contamination of drinking water.”
Eggink quotes one case, which is currently being disputed, in Wyoming. It relates to the poor quality of wells, which he assures will not be the case with Shell as it adheres to high operating standards.
All the chemicals to be used will be disclosed on Shell’s website. Eggink claims that from a list of a few hundred possible chemicals, only 8 to 10—on occasion slightly more—are used, depending on the rock mechanics of the site to be drilled.
According to Econometrix: “At depths of 4,000 to 5,000m below the surface where the shale deposits are expected to be found, any water in the vicinity or between the surface and those depths is likely to have been rendered unusable through natural contamination with arsenic and uranium.”
Chapter 10 of Shell’s EMP outlines its commitments to ensure minimum environmental impact and adhere to safety regulations. The most salient points include: full compensation to landowners with proven direct negative impact or loss due to their activities. Shell won’t compete with locals for water and will monitor water quality through an independent party. It will employ local experts to identify the most suitable water source for development areas. Shell promises to recycle flowback water and responsibly dispose of remaining fluids. It promises that permanently plugged and abandoned wells will adhere to the highest international practices.

Tag: KwaZulu-Natal

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