Mandla Maseko struts with the cool of Michael Jackson’s moonwalk. It is appropriate as the DJ is the first black African heading into space. He describes himself as a township boy reaching for the stars. Soon he will be walking in the footsteps of Mark Shuttleworth, the South African millionaire who became the first African in space in 2002. For years, Maseko dreamed of the skies but thought it was merely that.
The former civil engineering student dropped out of university because he was broke.
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“We grew up in the township, we were not taught to dream big. We just wanted to be the norm.You never wanted to be a president or an astronaut, it was a far-fetched dream,” he says.
In 2013, the Global Axe Apollo Space Academy competition created a new trajectory for Maseko’s dreams. No one in Maseko’s family has set foot outside of South Africa but the 25-year-old is preparing to rocket into space.
Maseko is one of 23 civilians to win a seat on the space mission for an hour-long sub-orbital trip of 100 kilometers on the Lynx Mark II spaceship.
“We might orbit the Earth or we might just go to the International Space Station, you never know,” he says.
Whether its space or the skies, Maseko is taking wing. Maseko acquired his private pilot license last year and began training with the South African Air Force this year.
“I want to acquire my commercial pilot’s license and fly all over the world,” he says.
“The initial plan is to show ordinary people that they can go into space. That’s my mission. I’m a typical township boy from Soshanguve and Mabopane who is going to space,” he says.
Maseko has found the balance between space, the skies and his passion for music.
“Music is my passion and it’s a family business. My dad and I do it together. It would be nice to bring something new to the industry and DJ in a spacesuit.”
Training for the space journey was challenging but Maseko floated through it. A zero gravity flight was his favorite.
“Seeing your body pick up off the ground and just float like it has no weight stood out the most,” he says.
Maseko spends his free time imagining what space is like.
“You see pictures but actually getting to that point where I look outside my window and see this big white and blue marble called Earth,” he says.
His life has taken a complete turn. For the DJ on his way to space, Maseko’s most memorable moment may surprise you.
“I think what stood out the most was making it on to Beyoncé’s website. It was Black History Month and I was part of the people making black history,” he says.
Maseko hopes his humble beginnings and lofty ambition will inspire.
“The kids in the township have lost sight of what life has to offer. It’s killing their dreams,” he says. He started a CSI company called ‘Skies Aren’t the Limit’ so he could tell his story to schools.
“I think one of the key things around South Africa is to inspire and motivate kids and tell them that they can reach their dreams,” he says. He is living proof.
Probably next year, the date has yet to be fixed, Maseko’s dreams will come true. The flight is an hour long. Six minutes to get to space. 20 minutes to get to zero gravity. Maseko will go through a gruelling training programme of six to eight weeks. From Mabopane to the Milky Way, you couldn’t have made it up.

from africa To The Stars

Mark Shuttleworth is a South African-born tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist who is perhaps best known in the rest of the world for being the second “space tourist” to spend time living and helping with experiments on the International Space Station. After a year of training and reportedly paying about $20 million, in early 2002 Shuttleworth rode on Soyuz spacecraft to spend about eight days on the space station.
Shuttleworth had the wherewithal to buy his space ride since 1999, when he sold his four-year-old internet security company to VeriSign for about $570 million. Since then, he has used his wealth to finance and build new companies as well as to fund charitable ventures.
But living in South Africa, with its restrictions on capital movements, created problems for Shuttleworth’s international operations. This soon prompted him to take advantage of his dual British citizenship and emigrate from the land where he got his start to the United Kingdom, where he settled on the Isle of Man.
An international move is never cheap, but it wasn’t until Shuttleworth tried to move his capital out of South Africa that things got really expensive thanks to the South African authorities. That is why Shuttleworth also made the news this year in his attempt to get back a substantial sum (taken in levies) by suing those same authorities.
Perhaps the greatest irony of that case, Shuttleworth vs. South African Reserve Bank and Others, was that the laws relevant to the contest were themselves the cause of the very actions they were intended to prevent. In other words, had exchange controls not existed, Shuttleworth might still be living in South Africa.
The exchange control laws created two problems for Shuttleworth as a resident of South Africa. First, by imposing paperwork and bureaucratic second-guessing on all transactions involving foreign-exchange, the exchange controls prevented the efficient and competitive operation of any international business or charity projects. Second, the bureaucratic controls imposed costs and barriers to the optimal international deployment of already existing capital.
Although South African exchange controls have been loosened considerably during the past 20 years, they are still in force and they still place hurdles before travelers and businesses, especially when large sums of money are involved. The sums involved in the Shuttleworth case were not only very large but also subject to a 10% levy imposed as a condition for the granting of permission to expatriate blocked assets. For the privilege of moving the last of his own money out of the country, Shuttleworth paid, understandably under protest, a levy of more than $30 million to the South African Reserve Bank.
As if to highlight the irony, in a statement to the court, the Reserve Bank described the purpose of the levy: “The 10% charge, generally speaking constituted a disincentive to the exit of large amount (sic) of capital, thus asserting to maintain the financial stability of the South African economy.”
No doubt, the 10% charge was a disincentive to his decision to expatriate his capital, and it is understandable that Shuttleworth would later sue (unsuccessfully) to have the amount of the levy returned. But the interesting fact is that, despite the legally imposed cost, Shuttleworth still chose to move the money out.
Although exchange rates fluctuate for myriad reasons, it is not irrelevant that since early 2010, when Shuttleworth received approval to expatriate the last of his funds, the rand has depreciated 23% against the US dollar. Exchange controls are most likely to be in force in countries that have other self-imposed problems. South Africa’s relatively high inflation is entirely self-imposed and is one of many good reasons for South Africans to diversify into other currencies. It was Shuttleworth’s judgment that he would lose less by leaving.
The persistence of exchange controls, albeit liberalized, almost 20 years after the transition suggests a lack of confidence by the South African government in its own policies. It also signals a poor understanding of the rationale for its own policy of exchange-control liberalization. Such signals are not lost on either South African or foreign investors. But on the other side of this, a naïve belief that exchange controls give the government the ability to respond efficaciously to financial and economic crises, might embolden the government to enact the very types of policies that make such crises more likely.
The existence of exchange controls in any country is a special, and perhaps extreme, manifestation of a general failure to recognize that such regulations are more likely to aggravate, if not cause, the kinds of problems for which they are believed to be the cure. The Shuttleworth case itself gives us an example.
Proponents of regulation have claimed that exchange controls protected the South African financial system from the 2007-08 financial crisis. A weak response to such claims would suggest that sensible banking regulation protected South Africans, as it did residents in other countries such as Canada and Australia, neither of which has exchange controls. But a more sophisticated response would emphasize that it was not the presence of supposedly protective regulations but rather the absence of the types of pernicious regulations that set up the American financial and real estate sectors for failure.
A proper analysis of that crisis cannot ignore the distortions created by a host of government interventions such as government loan guarantees, the regulatory compulsion of banks to make subprime loans, tax incentives to purchase property, government-backed companies created to hold mortgage bonds, government-backed insurance of bank deposits, and central-bank accommodation of the financial and real estate bubbles.
The key intellectual error underlying the existence of exchange controls lies in the belief that government officials have the knowledge necessary to coordinate our lives and to provide for our needs. History has demonstrated that where this belief is most firmly held and has manifested in the various shades of central planning, the people have suffered accordingly.
It is naïve to believe that government officials have both the knowledge and nimbleness required to protect us from the symptoms of international financial crises. In a world of fiat currencies with routine official interest-rate manipulation and credit expansion, it is no wonder that we have periodic currency crises and disruptions in the foreign exchange markets.
In the early 20th century, South Africa followed the lead of Britain in its experiment with exchange controls. Neither country can claim to have had a good experience with such controls—they never live up to their stated purpose—which is why Britain eliminated its controls in 1979. South Africa should do the same.

Tag: Mark Shuttleworth

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from africa To The Stars

It Cost Mark Shuttleworth More To Leave South Africa Than It Did To Leave The Earth