It only took South Africa’s cricket team 20 years to become the top-ranked Test side in the world. Two decades—that was all—and do not let anyone tell you differently.
They will try. They will say that South Africa, along with England and Australia, were one of first teams to first contest the sport at the highest level more than 120 years ago. They would be only partially correct. The South Africa that played cricket on the international stage until 1970 represented merely white South Africa.
The rest, and there was a rest, were ignored. Thousands of hopefuls from Indian, colored and black communities had to make do with sub-standard facilities as they formed their own competition. The late Basil D’Oliveira was one of them. A sensation on the matting wickets in Cape Town, D’Oliveira had to emigrate to England—with the help of money collected by his friends and teammates—to stand a chance of playing first-class cricket. He played in the lower leagues in Lancashire and county cricket for Worcestershire to qualify for his adopted country. After a sensational 158 against the Australians, in 1968, he was selected to tour South Africa with England, a dream return. It was not to be as South Africa cancelled the tour in protest, which proved to be a pyrrhic victory, as it led to apartheid regime’s isolation from world sport.
All of these marginalized cricketers, who would have loved to watch D’Oliveira in his prime on the turf of the land of his birth, kept playing on rough pitches, despite knowing they would never have the chance to represent their country. They kept cricket alive to ensure talents like Hashim Amla and Vernon Philander could make it in the future.
In 1991, when South Africa was readmitted to international cricket, with a tour to India, amid a fanfare of publicity and a meeting with Mother Teresa; Amla and Philander were nine and seven years old respectively. Previously, people of their skin color would have had no chance of being picked for South Africa. The team they saw walk onto the field at Eden Gardens in Kolkata would not have done much for their hopes of change. It was an all-white team, as it had been in the 28 years before.
Slowly, too slowly some would say, the faces of South African cricket did change. Still, it is not perfect in its representation of the country. Its greatest failing is that the team who wrested the number one Test ranking from England in August did not include a single black cricketer. But it did contain both Amla and Philander, who were the two chief reasons Graeme Smith was able to wrap his fingers around the mace given to the best team in the world.
Amla’s triple-hundred in the first match was the overwhelming reason South Africa assumed total control and emerged victorious at the Oval. Philander’s five-wicket haul, on the final afternoon of the third Test at Lord’s, sealed the historic achievement.
In the immediate aftermath, euphoria made it too easy to forget all that South African sport had been through. For generations it was used as a divisive tool, to elevate the few and exclude the rest. The South Africa of 2012 is bridging the gap. Eight of the 16 members of the squad were of color, five played in the team in all three matches and all of them put in telling performances.
Alviro Petersen scored 182 in the second match, an influential innings of grit and grind, that its magnitude cannot emphasize enough. JP Duminy held the lower order together, twice at Lord’s, and Imran Tahir, although spoken of as the weakest link, took wickets at crucial times to open England up. On the sidelines, fast bowler Lonwabo Tsotsobe picked up a yard of pace and performed well in the practice matches.
<div id="attachment_1330" style="width: 235px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1330" class="size-medium wp-image-1330" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/000_Hkg7093550-225x300.jpg" alt="" width="225" height="300" />Head Coach of South Africa Gary Kirsten looks on before the start of day one of the third and final five day international cricket test match between New Zealand and South Africa at the Basin Reserve in Wellington on March 23, 2012. AFP PHOTO/MARTY MELVILLE</div>
Almost everyone in the team weighed in with performances. Smith and Jacques Kallis’ centuries in the first match, along with Dale Steyn’s fiery five wickets, hammered home South Africa’s authority. Morné Morkel’s continued improvement paid off as he showed greater control than before and AB de Villiers took on the extra job of wicket-keeping as if he was born to do it.
The team went as well together as red meat and a fine South African Pinotage. There is a difference between that and a collection of people in the same clothes with a similar goal, which is what South Africa were before they conquered England.
Like so much of the rest of the continent, they were always thought to have great potential and routinely fell short of fulfilling that. What tripped them up was never their skill on the field, it was what went on off it. A baby in modern cricket, South Africa had a lot of development to make in a short space of time. With the demons of the mind, formed by insecurities and an inability to win a World Cup, that was tough to do.
It took someone with creativity and a unique approach to man management to flick the switch. Gary Kirsten, who played for South Africa soon after their comeback and also coached India, was that man. He introduced ideas that would normally be laughed out of cricket circles, such as regular interaction with explorer, Mike Horn, to give the team an extra edge.
It also gave them the freedom to operate as individuals and to allow their personalities to come through. Kirsten, perhaps completely unknowingly, created the perfect space for someone of any background to feel important. In that environment both those who had always been part of the elite and those that had not were able to flourish. And that is the secret to South Africa’s current success.

Why Africa Bestrides The World Like A Colossus

Four years ago, they had to sell their boat for their fellow rowers to go to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Four years later, they rowed in London to win an Olympic medal and they did it in a rented boat.
James Thompson, Matthew Brittain, John Smith and Sizwe Ndlovu have made history in bringing the first rowing gold to Africa and they did it on a budget amid struggle that could have deterred many others.
They’re a carefree bunch, full of laughter, usually after another random joke by the group’s comedian, Smith. They are at ease around each other, a reflection of the close relationship forged on the water. So they should, they’ve been together in the best and worst of times for countless hours on the water.
One moment they all cherish, is the instant they crossed the finish line in London.
“When I looked at the board and saw 1: RSA (Republic of South Africa). [It was the] best moment of my life,” says Ndlovu.
Ndlovu is the eldest of the four and the only one who’s ever had to work. Mixing training and working wasn’t easy, it meant early mornings and late nights. For Ndlovu it also meant being jobless and homeless.
“I used to start work at 10am after training and finished work at about two [in the afternoon] so I could get to training in Pretoria… I’d rather be in the water than that. The eight to five thing doesn’t work for me… In 2009 I had to [resign], because when I asked for leave they wouldn’t give it to me because I had already taken [leave twice] in one year to prepare for the world championships, so I had to leave and sleep on the streets. I’m serious,” says Ndlovu.
Money is short for athletes in most parts of the world. According to the golden rowers, athletes receive monthly grants from the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC) only if they fall within the top 12 (Olympic qualifying) athletes in the country.
For an example of how dire the lack of money is, go back to Beijing 2008. Then, the future rowing champions of London had to sell their boat to pay for their fellow rowers to travel to China.
“We are not sure how it happened [but] the money that came from whatever resources started to dry up and it was in the last stretch going into the Olympics. They were strapped for cash. It was also [during] that 2007 recession and stuff, so… without results you can’t attract money… And I think they took a risk to support the athletes that were [going] to go out and get a result in Beijing” says Brittain.
The team, which won bronze in the 2004 Olympics in Athens, came fifth in Beijing.
“They took the risk to get that result and I think that result has led to [SACOC] giving us more money for this cycle that’s gone past. We were able to buy a real top class fleet of boats and put some really good structures in place” says Brittain.
With 500 qualified rowers to choose from in South Africa, sponsorship deals go a long way to help Olympic athletes.
According to FORBES, American swimmer and Olympic legend, Michael Phelps has 11 endorsements to his name; deals that have helped him earn between $5 million and $7 million-a-year since Beijing. His endorsement portfolio is said to make the biggest stars in the National Football League (NFL) and Major League Baseball (MLB) blush. Especially because swimming is seen as a sport that merely attracts the eyes of the world every four years.
“SASCOC after Beijing made much more stringent requirements, they didn’t want to just take a big team over there [to London], they only wanted to take people [who] were going to perform. You have to be good before they support you, they are backing fewer horses and they are trying to back them better,” says Brittain.
“I think a lot of the other guys who did well at the Olympics went into it with the expectations of doing so well. We didn’t have that, we didn’t plan so much for this.”
They didn’t even have their own boat. It was rented from one of the world’s best racing boat makers, Filippi, which very graciously gave the golden four their winning chariot, after their win.
They are now back at home and resting. Soon they will be back in the water to prepare for the next competition.
Age matters less than technique in rowing and all four want to keep going.
One of Thompson’s heroes is 40-year-old Danish rower, Eskild Balschmidt Ebbeson who has been on the Olympic podium since the age of 24 in 1996.
This year they beat Ebbeson and his team. They walked away with four gold medals and R400,000 ($48,511) in prize money.
They reached the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, through a dream nurtured on a dam in Pretoria, South Africa’s capital city.
The four met at the University of Pretoria (also known as TUKS). TUKS has produced some of South Africa’s top athletes, including 800 meter silver medalist Caster Semenya and Bridgitte Hartley who won a bronze medal in the 500 meter canoe sprint.
The love for rowing began in high school.
“I started [rowing] at St. Andrews college in Grahamstown, [the school] rowed on the river which is [near] the same place as my family’s holiday house. So I thought, if I rowed I would go on holiday more, little did I know it would mean I would never go on a holiday,” says Thompson.
Smith also ended up rowing by chance.
“I got injured playing water polo so I had to pick a new sport, and after mocking the rowers for years, I decided to give it a bash, and I really enjoyed it so I continued with it. Then, after [high school] I joined TUKS and then went to my first international regatta at U/23 World Championships with Matthew, as a pair.”
“My dad had to sell one of his kidneys to pay for it,” jokes Smith, the comedian of the team.
Rowing is the third most expensive sport on SASCOC’s Olympic budget after athletics and swimming, which are first and second respectively.
From 2009 to 2012, leading up to the London Olympics SASCO spent R17.9 million ($2.1 million) on all sports and R2.6 million ($319.697) of that went to rowing.
A career as an athlete is no easy task and when it comes to these four, the love for rowing runs deeper than their pockets, but even a lack of cash wouldn’t force them from the water. Thompson, Brittain, Smith and Ndlovu’s names are engraved in the history books forever and all thanks to a rented boat.

Golden Glory  In A Rented Boat

South Africa lives and breathes football. Like oxygen, money is being pumped into the game in the form of prize money.
South African bank Absa renewed its sponsorship of the Premier Soccer League (PSL) for the next five years. The Absa Premiership is the richest sport competition in Africa, with R16 million ($1.9 million) up for grabs.
The current season will be different from previous seasons as it will be divided into four quarters, to be called the Q-innovation—the first of its kind in the world. As there are 16 teams in the PSL, each team will play 30 games throughout the season. The four quarters will alternate between seven and eight games, beginning with seven games in the first quarter. The winning team of each quarter will win R1.5 million ($182,600). The overall winner of the Absa Premiership will win R10 million ($1.2 million)—this means that there is a possibility of one team winning up to R16 million in a season. A bonanza for even the wealthiest of clubs.
Irvin Khoza—known in football circles as the Iron Duke—is chairman of the PSL and of the reigning league champions, Orlando Pirates. He is delighted with the renewal of the Absa sponsorship as well as the extra prize money.
“At the PSL, we are very excited with the Absa sponsorship and the new innovation that we have come up with,” he says.
“The prize money is very encouraging and surely it will help improve the standard of our football. When you look at our fixtures these days there is no game that is predictable because anything is possible in terms of the results. So it is going to be a very interesting season whereby all the teams that are competing in the PSL will be determined to do well from the beginning. We have very passionate supporters and fans who follow the progress of the PSL and we hope they will enjoy the quality football that the teams will be displaying on the field of play.”
MTN, the African cellphone giant, has also shown confidence in the PSL and has renewed their sponsorship for the next three years meaning that the MTN 8, with its popular slogan ‘Wafa Wafa’, will continue. The- winner-takes-it-all competition is one of the most-fascinating knockout cup competitions whereby, after merely four games, the champions win R8 million ($969,700).
MTN South Africa chief marketing officer, Serame Taukobong, is content that after a very successful four years of partnership with the PSL, which has benefited South African football, they will continue to invest in local football development and upcoming football stars.
“The MTN 8 is unique and is a very interesting competition that many people follow, hence we are so pleased that our partnership with PSL continues. It is even more exciting because we have the competition for the fans whereby they also have the opportunity to win some great prizes. We are looking forward to celebrating many more milestones in this MTN 8 exciting cup competition,” says Taukobong.
This season the football fans have shown great interest in attending the MTN 8 games—whether it’s the inexperienced or seasoned teams playing—crowds have been impressive. As the MTN 8 cup competition happens during the early stages of the season it showcases each team’s new players.
MTN was involved in bringing the world famous Manchester United to South Africa during their pre-season tour friendly games against Amazulu and Ajax Cape Town. By the way, if you need an example of how much money really is in football, Manchester United—the most valuable sporting brand in the world—is worth $2.23 billion. The fact that the two small PSL sides could compete on the same level as the nineteen-times English champions is a clear indication that the standard of football in South Africa has shown signs of improvement. Players across Africa show great interest in plying their trade in South Africa because of the magnificent stadium facilities and high salaries. Some top players in the PSL—who play for the big teams like Kaizer Chiefs, Orlando Pirates and Mamelodi Sundowns—earn more than some of the overseas players. These top earners include: Sundowns captain Teko Modise; Pirates striker Benedict McCarthy and Chiefs forward Bernard Parker.
The Telkom knockout cup is another competition in the PSL, which attracts interest, especially due to the R4.2 million ($511,000) prize money and the awards presented to individual players. What is encouraging for football in Africa is that the Nedbank Cup allows small teams from the lower divisions to participate, in what sometimes turns into a David-and-Goliath showdown for the R6 million ($729,600) prize money.
SuperSport, the satellite television channel which broadcasts across the continent, has been granted the television rights worth around R2 billion ($243.3 million) to broadcast the games live. Football clubs benefit greatly from these television rights because they get the grant from the PSL which helps them with funding. They can prepare for games properly, afford to stay in five-star hotels; travel on expensive flights, hire reputable coaches and pay good salaries to their players.
It appears failure is no barrier to the flood of cash into the South African game. The national team, Bafana Bafana, has performed poorly in recent games. The team failed to qualify for the last African Cup of Nations and struggled in the qualifying games of the World Cup against weak teams such as Ethiopia and Botswana.
Despite its lukewarm game, Bafana Bafana got a large financial boost from SABMiller, the owner of Castle Lager, which renewed its sponsorship of R100 million ($12.1 million) for the next five years.
The FIFA 2010 Football World Cup was a big success in South Africa when it comes to the organization of the event. The legacy continues as more and more investment pours into the country. Furthermore, South Africa will benefit for decades to come from its world-class stadium facilities and infrastructure which was built for the championships.
In the 1960s, Orlando Pirates used to travel hundreds of kilometers from Johannesburg to Durban on the back of an open truck. Now, they could afford to fly in private jets and the money, despite the recession, appears as likely as the Indian Ocean to dry up.

Football is Money in Africa

In Mozambique, there are few in football who do not know the name Shafee Sidat. He is the country’s most famous FIFA agent and, according to him, all Mozambican players want to be represented by his agency, Sports Africa. This season he will yet again be scouring the football fields of Africa for the deft touches of the lithe and swift legs of the next Didier Drogba.
Sidat represents 49 players worth $10 million: four Zimbabweans; two Zambians and six Brazilians. Among them, the most expensive Mozambican player, Simão Mathe, who transferred recently from Panathinaikos to Sandong Hueng, a club in the Chinese second division. Right now, Mathe is the agent’s goose laying the golden eggs.
“He left Mozambique for an extremely low value—$200,000. Currently he is quoted in the market at over $8 million. I had to wait three years for him to go up in value. He is my business card,” says Sidat.
Sidat’s love for football grew in the late 1980s. He played for Ferroviário de Maputo, and there was talk of a transfer to Sporting Clube de Portugal, one of the top three clubs in the Portuguese league. The uncertainty of a football career led him to settle for the security of an academic degree.
“I chose to attend the college of economics instead of going to Portugal,” he says.
Mozambique is hardly a happy hunting ground for football agents. It stands 107th in the FIFA rankings, which means hard work for Sidat.
“Even though some players show quality, they end up getting lost in the country’s statistical results,” he says.
The lack of training in the Mozambican clubs is another problem.
“Out of ten players going to the junior teams in European clubs, only two remain. We had more luck with Zambians than Mozambicans players, because Zambia is the African champion and has an English mindset. Zambian players are very professional,” says Sidat.
Brazilian players, with their Lusophone connection, are showing interest in playing for Mozambican clubs. Many see Mozambique as a bridge to the more lucrative market of South Africa and Sidat helps them cross it.
Portugal is the gateway to Europe for African players, says Sidat. Every time he tries to sell to European clubs, Sidat has to pay the player’s travel costs. All this investment is only refunded if the club buys.
According to the agent, under the transfer market lie dark realities. He says he knows cases of athletes who were abandoned in Europe, after being dropped by a team.
“I saw cases of FIFA colleagues, especially the Brazilians, who led a number of players to Europe. They lived in crowded apartments. Many of them were left stranded in these countries,” he says.
When buying players, Sidat watches videos from other agents.
“The images that come to us aren’t recorded by professional cameras. Agents sell the idea that the player we saw in the picture is who they are promoting, but sometimes it’s a different player,” he says.
In a game of heroes, Sidat has his. In his view, the best agent in the world is Portuguese agent, Jorge Mendes—a former footballer turned DJ and nightclub owner—represents several superstars including Cristiano Ronaldo and Real Madrid manager, José Mourinho.
Sidat wants to follow the highly successful management model of Gestifute, the agency owned by Mendes. It is going to take a giant leap to make it from $10 million in Maputo to the $650 million of Mendes in Europe, but, if nothing else, the career of Sidat shows that if you don’t give up anything is possible.

The 10 Million Dollar Man  Wants More

I remember the first thing I bought when I received my first professional pay check in Belgium: it was a shiny black Golf GTI—a big deal in those days! In those times, I spent every cent I earned, every month. The last of my worries was tomorrow. In fact, during the three and a half years I spent in Belgium, I did not save a cent and I did not study anything. I thought the school of life and football was enough.
As players we are used to instant results. We play a game: we win, draw or lose. The results are there for all to see after the game. Salaries are high, we live for the moment, the future is for, well, tomorrow, or even next week. The problem is that football careers do not last long. Our window of earning opportunity is short.
I knew that after my career as a footballer, I still wanted to be involved in the game. I made sure I took coaching to the highest possible level by achieving a UEFA ‘A’ license to enable me to understand the technical side of football. Because of my qualifications I went home, to Zambia, to be technical director of the Chipolopolo in September 2003, then won elections, as vice president, in March 2004. I then became president of the Football Association of Zambia; a FIFA coaching instructor; a member of FIFA committees and FIFA task teams and grew to understand the administration side of football.
My climb to football administration was gradual. But all the while, my business ventures continued. If you want to go far in football administration, you best have other business interests, since administration is not a money-making profession. One does this for the love of the game.
Very few players continue to make a living from football after the final whistle has blown, unless they become a highly successful professional coach. But even coaching requires study and qualification. A former player does not automatically make a good coach. Those days are gone. With today’s game, you need to be qualified to understand the technical elements of the game.
It becomes important to think about one’s future on your first day of professional football. In Belgium, retirement annuities are compulsory, the club paid the full amount as part of my salary. In the Dutch Eredivisie, retirement funds, which are tax deductible, are compulsory and as such after 20 years, I am still enjoying regular payments from my playing days in Holland.
We can only hope that the clubs in Africa can follow the European model. There should be mandatory pension schemes for footballers in Africa. Clubs should seriously look into this for both the well-being of their players as well as their own good reputation.
Today, players have football agents who should be guiding them better.
So many former players are faced with difficult times, you read and hear about them all the time. It makes me very sad and it is a question of lack of knowledge, which, as we all know, is power. Maybe it is also upbringing, education and the lack of thinking about the future.
When I was growing up, you thought that you would play forever, the limitations were non-existent. Retirement is not even in your mind. You live a day at a time and you want to have the best gadgets, the best car, the best clothes—and those become your key priorities.
You have too much time on your hands, you’re too young and you’re earning way too much money. Temptations are all around you and you become greedy for the now and it is difficult to see an end in sight. The last thing on your mind is that one day your career will end.
Medical insurance should be on the top of the list—it’s not easy to determine when you are going to stop playing because you can sustain a career-ending injury and without medical insurance your earning days are over.
On our continent for example, in early 1980s, it was common to see a very good talent sustain a small injury like a meniscus problem, a ligament injury or an ankle injury and end their career after a year. Instead of getting the appropriate medical attention, which was hard to come by, you would find that their career would be short lived because the problem would persist for longer than it should have and they ended up not being the player that they should’ve been.
In my school team in the 1970s,when I was just trying to break in, the important players would not come to class during the day, but attend school in the afternoon just so they could play the match. Unfortunately, today’s society tends to encourage the talent you have on the field rather than couple it with academic skills and qualifications. If you look at the American model with scholarships for top athletes, this is hugely successful. Education is encouraged and, even in Zambia, you hear most of the professional parents discourage their kids from too much sport, saying that they want them to concentrate more on education.
This can be a double-edged sword, as this often deprives a talented player of much needed practice time. The key is a balance of the two. It is imperative for young players to ensure they attain their education goals whilst living their sporting dreams.
My advice to current professional players is two-fold; career planning and studying in your spare time.
In Belgium, I spent three-and-a-half- years not knowing Flemish, and not doing anything about it, because I could get by as everyone tried to speak to me in English, so I just got by. Yet the first day I arrived in PSV Einhoven in Holland, they assigned a teacher to me, so I could study Dutch twice a week. Within six months I was fluent. The day I arrived in Mexico as a player for one of the biggest team in Mexico, Club America, I made it a priority to find a tutor to teach me Spanish. By the end of the first year I was fluent in Spanish. These talents are of immense value to me today. Besides my mother tongue, Bemba, I also studied French at high school for four years and can converse in the language comfortably. I used to be the official translator when the team travelled to West Africa during my national team playing days. My Italian improves every day thanks to my wife and mother-in-law, so all in all I can say I am a polyglot—a talent, which comes in very handy in the international football environment.
I did a technical directorship badge in Mexico from 1996 to 1998, which effectively made me a qualified technical director. By the time I ended my professional career, I walked away from football with two professional qualifications and four extra languages.
My advice to young career footballers is to be wise and not to get caught up in self-importance of the now, but rather to picture yourself where you want to be in the future. Don’t just train your body, train the brain at the same time. Unfortunately, you cannot be a player forever and when the final whistle blows you better have a new game plan.

Control Your Life  And The Ball

You have probably watched Nigerian movies and marveled at the common theme of African magic. If you have lived in Africa long enough, you have heard those who claim to be victims or beneficiaries of witchcraft, declare its supernatural powers.
From Malindi in Kenya to Balagaza in Nigeria, magic is a way of life, its mythical powers verge on religion. In Kenya, someone who suffers from a twisted mouth or a businessman who loses a client is likely to blame an envious neighbor or relative for the misfortune.
And witchcraft is big business and not just in Kenya. Before modern religion, magicians and witches were consulted for all ailments and circumstances. They doled out, and still do, curses and blessings for believers and decided who became wealthy and who became poor.
Never mind that most witch doctors and magicians have little or no money. African communities have a common saying: a doctor cannot be his own doctor.
Kenyans who believe in witchcraft use it to seek revenge, wealth and power and to keep their marriages alive. Many associate the practice with the impoverished masses who visit witch doctors in pursuit of an ever elusive change of fortune. But in Nigeria and Kenya, as with many African countries, the prosperous too look for fame and fortune through magic.
A local television station in Kenya recently ran a series on witch doctors. At a witch doctor’s shrine, on the outskirts of Nairobi, expensive cars drove in and out—politicians were looking to bewitch their electorate and contractors were looking for charms to win huge tenders. All over Africa, people battle remotely by using charms. The affluent, worried about losing their wealth or seeking to suppress rivals, will pay a fortune for protection from their enemies or to improve their luck.
This witch doctor was clearly not the kind found in the villages, who is paid in animals and food. So it’s little wonder that she owns a huge compound in an area that the middle class would need some magic to afford.
Politicians are some of the biggest consumers of black magic, some pay up to $10,000 per visit. With elections on the horizon in a good number of African countries, magicians and witch doctors are looking forward to an even bigger boom in their business. At Kenya’s last polls, presidential contenders were rumored to fly out to visit the most potent witch doctors south of the country.
In the fiercely competitive market, it’s a battle of the witches. Shopkeepers, hotel owners as well as livestock traders go to shocking lengths to attract customers. The success of Indian retailers is often attributed to charms—a cat jumping over an Indian shopkeeper’s counter at the close of business may mean more business the following day. For hotel owners who believe in the powers of magic, rinsing an undergarment in cooking water is a business strategy. Football teams are known to hire the services of expensive magicians to increase their chances of winning.
A Pew Research Center survey, conducted in 2010, showed that a quarter of Kenyans believe in witchcraft despite being deeply religious. Kenya was ranked as being the 11th most religious nation in Africa and 16th in the world—78% of Kenyans are Christian and 10% are Muslim. Close to nine out of 10 people stated that religion played an important role in their lives, but most of them forget the Bible or Koran soon after worship to seek solace in shrines and witch doctors’ dens.
Despite their belief in one God, heaven and hell, the survey found that sub-Saharan Africa leads the continent in the worship of witchcraft and evil spirits; sacrificial offerings to ancestors and religious healers as well as the belief in reincarnation.
The study ranked Kenyans 15th in Africa most likely to believe in witchcraft, a few points behind the Democratic Republic of Congo and way ahead of Ethiopia, Nigeria, Zambia and Rwanda.
According to the report, “A quarter of Kenyans, both Christians and Muslims, confessed they believe in the protective power of juju (charms or amulets) and that they consult traditional healers”.
A number admitted to revering their ancestors and treasuring animal skins and skulls or knowing people who did. Tanzania leads the pack in believing in witches and superstitious objects, with six in every 10 Tanzanians confessing to making sacrifices to spirits and dead ancestors. Rwandans, according to the poll, are the least superstitious people in Africa, with only five out of 100 people interviewed saying they believed in juju.
These results from across the continent would make any televangelist or fast-moving consumer goods manufacturer drool, as witchdoctors are not taxed. Maybe the receiver of revenue has been bewitched too.

Magic Spells Money

As I left the airport I was greeted by temperatures of over 35 degrees, it was humid and uncomfortable but within minutes I was seated in an air-conditioned car. My itinerary said that Agra was 205 kilometers away, so I figured it would be a two-hour drive. I didn’t realize the speed limit was 40 kms an hour—the journey took five painful hours. Yes at that speed, I still felt as though the driver was speeding—he kept swerving to avoid the crater size potholes. Driving in India is scary—there’s no adherence to the road markings; overtaking on a solid line is common practice; drivers hoot incessantly and cut lanes. Surprisingly, no one gets upset, no one swears or raises their hands and I arrived safely.
Agra—home of the famous Taj Mahal—is a bustling town, which looks like it had been derelict for a long time and suddenly people rushed back to rebuild it. The streets are filled with rows of abandoned housing complexes, small shanty shops and tangled power lines, which are connected mostly illegally. Cattle paraded the street without a care in the world—these sacred animals are kept like pets; children play alongside them and traffic stalls until they pass. Beef products are not allowed and if you see a steak on the menu, it’s probably buffalo meat. The McDonalds menu consists of chicken, fish and paneer burgers, with the McMaharaj being the equivalent of a Big Mac.
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Another big attraction, without which a trip to India would be incomplete, is the Taj Mahal. The white marble mausoleum was completed in 1649 in honor of emperor Shah Jahan’s favorite wife.
I drove back to New Delhi—the capital of India and home to more than 20 million people. It’s a more contemporary city, which houses the Indian parliament. Beautiful parks and gardens broke the sights of the bustling traffic, which seemed to go on for the entire day.
The food was delicious, we ate like kings, but only in restaurants. The street food looked and smelt divine, with Tikka chicken and roasted paneer on most corners, but horrible stories of ‘Delhi belly’ helped me resist.
From the capital, I travelled to Chennai, formerly known as Madras, where I had more of a culture shock as motorbikes and gas-guzzling tuk-tuks filled the streets. The streets of the densely populated city are busy until late, markets offer great bargains on fabrics and gold jewelry and food stalls, on most corners, fill the pavements with brightly colored, sweet delights.
From city to countryside, I decided to drop the pace a notch and travel to Kerala, further south. I boarded a luxury houseboat, which floated along the quiet backwaters of the Alleppey River. The highlight was stopping on the banks to buy fresh fish and prawns. I had never seen such big prawns before and never had my taste buds enjoyed such flavor. The houseboat cook skillfully prepared the seafood with his special spices. Eating on a houseboat, listening to the small ripples in the water and the crickets near the banks was another highlight.
The next day I caught a flight to Goa—India’s smallest state but a very popular tourist spot. Small windy streets, forest-like vegetation and the white sandy beaches are big attractions for foreigners and Indians alike. The region is known for its large spice plantations and cashew nuts. Gambling is popular here, unlike in the rest of India.
Mumbai, the home of Bollywood, is more liberal than the other Indian states—the people speak English well and are less traditional in their dress. Fancy five star hotels line the beach front. It’s known as a commercial hub and the economic giant of India as it is home to two Indian stock exchanges. Transport services are excellent: busses run frequently; bright yellow and black cabs fill the more affluent parts of town; tuk-tuks do short runs around the market areas and three million people travel through the famous Victoria Train Station every day, which is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
A sharp contrast though are the huge slums deeper in the city—children ran in the streets trying to sell scarves, beautifully woven materials and miniature elephants, when they should have been at school. We visited a massive open-air laundry where 2,000 men—who have taken on laundry contracts from nearby hotels—were washing sheets and towels. The government provides them with clean water and industrial dryers. Water is not safe to drink in India, even Indians drink bottled water.
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While I was there, it was Independence Day, 65 years of independence and yet India looks like it’s battling a dilemma of moving into a new age with the rest of the world or staying with its deeply entrenched traditional and religious existence. India is not easy in many respects—it’s hot and humid, busy and noisy, but wherever I traveled I felt safe and the people were humble. So while India may not be the ideal destination to kick back and relax it is a destination that will offer you a truly unique experience. The people of India prefer quality of life with little focus on materialism. There’s a real respect for tradition and culture. The food is fantastic and the hospitality is superb. India though deserves more than just two weeks.

Incredible India, Flaws And All

Ten years ago, weddings across Africa were planned at home—your aunties did the cooking; close relatives sewed the wedding dress and the simple church ceremony was followed by speeches, a meal and dancing.
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These days we have wedding planners, six course menus and everything from make-up artists and hairdressers to professional photographers. Even though most couples hold on to the traditional ceremony, the white wedding has taken center stage amid tiers of glamorous cakes, flowing champagne and designer gowns. Many of these weddings even have themes—Duduzile Zuma, the daughter of South African President Jacob Zuma, chose a Parisian theme.
Money appears to be no obstacle. The price tag ranges from $10,000 to $50,000 for the middle class; the super-rich spend millions. Nigerian billionaire Mike Adenuga is believed to have spent $2 million on his daughter`s wedding. The white wedding, replete with its extravagance and squabbles, has truly landed in Africa.
“I got married recently and did our traditional wedding ceremony with 300 guests at the countryside. It included dowry and all other required traditional rites, but we still came back to Nairobi to plan our contemporary wedding,” says James Masese, a local businessman.
He adds that his parents, who live up country didn’t really understand why there was a need to have an expensive white wedding in the city, but he wanted to have a fun, classy, party—it cost him $25,000 to entertain 200 guests.
Like the Maseses, many other couples living in cities feel strongly that the white wedding is a necessity, not only because they get official wedding certificates but there is a desire to make a statement. A big white statement that is! Being married according to European customs—wearing a white lace dress; exchanging vows and rings amid a sea of flowers; an enormous buffet; a tiered cake and dancing the night away—is fast becoming a way of keeping up with the Joneses.
The generational gap between parents and their children, when it comes to weddings, is slowly closing. Many parents, living in cities, will host the traditional ceremonies in their homes with outside caterers, marquees, decorated tables and flowers as they try to keep up with the times. They also help their children pay for their white weddings because expenses increase yearly; they want to ensure a great party and it gives them status amongst their friends to be able to do this.
“Brides and grooms seem to be splurging more on a lot of things that didn’t matter 10 years ago. The cakes are getting more dramatic, there’s a lot of attention to the wedding fashion and today couples want to have fun at their wedding,” says Funmilayo Victor-Okigbo, a top wedding consultant with The Wedding Company in Nigeria. “Gone are the days of sitting at the ‘high table’ looking miserable as they want to be where the action is. There’s a lot of attention to entertainment as most weddings end up being a music concert with two to four Nigerian artists performing live, depending on the budget. It’s no longer just enough to have a band perform,” she says.
Kanyi Ohawa, a wedding stationery designer based in Kenya agrees. Customized invitations done by her firm, All and Sundry Designs, set back clients $4-7 each.
“Ten years ago, invitations were on a single sheet of paper on embossed text in a plain envelope. Today, everyone wants a customized invitation card. A bride will come in and say this is my personality and my fiancé’s, can you come up with something that reflects us and stands out? Cards can have buttons, bows, beads, metals, bones, twigs and come in all shapes. The more unique [it is], the better it is! The wedding invitation is what sets the stage for the wedding day.”
These days, the lovebirds want all the bells and whistles to ensure an out-of-this-world celebration. Annual wedding exhibitions have become must-attend events, whether you are in Lagos, Kampala or Nairobi. The Wedding Expo—which was established 10 years ago and has two exhibitions in Johannesburg annually—is the biggest in South Africa, with 30,000 visitors and more than 300 exhibitors. Book stores are stacked with bridal magazines and wedding directories, which promise to help the couple find their perfect ‘supplier’ match. Many couples also enroll for dance classes so as to impress their guests on the night. Meanwhile, Kenya has been hit by wedding reality TV shows that air on Sundays.
“I have to be home every Sunday evening to watch both shows to see what other brides did for their wedding day and to make sure I do something better,” says Mercy Murungi, who is planning her December wedding. She admits that she has become wedding obsessed and her biggest fear is that her budget of $18,000 will not match her wants.
It is these kinds of pressures that are keeping brides on their toes in their efforts to outdo each other, regardless of budget.
“Some of the most costly weddings in Nigeria range from $500,000 to a couple of million dollars. It really depends on the family; how far they are willing to go and their social class. Nigerians love to look good as we’re very fashionable. A lot of money goes towards jewelry and clothes and then on drinks—we love our champagnes here!” says Victor-Okigbo.
Of course, this has meant booming business for the wedding industry. Suppliers of cakes, flowers, marquees and bridal gowns have been on the rise as they cash in on white wedding fever.
And then there’s the honeymoon.

My Big, Fat,  African Wedding!

If you’ve been living under a rock be sure to emerge and catch up because Africa is in vogue.
As far back as 2009, the world’s top designers couldn’t help making inspired references to what was once called the Dark Continent. The likes of Marc Jacobs and John Galliano have paid homage to Africa’s intricate beauty. Well renowned international designer Vivienne Westwood, exhibited her interest in Africa through her Ethical Fashion Africa Collection. Other Labels bitten by the Africa bug have been Burberry, Gwen Stefani’s LAMB and Tommy Hilfiger.
Arise Magazine’s African Icons show at last month’s Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week New York featured designs by Gavin Rajah, Ozwald Boateng, Folake Folarin (Tiffany Amber), Tsemaye Binitie and Amaka Osakwe (Maki Oh).
At the Arise Magazine Fashion Week in Lagos, Boateng was handed the Lifetime Achievement award and labels KLuK CGDT and Maki Oh won best designer.
It’s gone beyond Africans inspiring international designers, to African designers sharing their own history and creativity.
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Nigerian Designer, Lisa Folawiyo, studied law at the University of Nigeria and followed her dream when she started Jewel by Lisa from home in 2005. She redefined the way one could wear Ankara—a colorful wax resist dyed fabric—and makes handcrafted clothes that take an average of 120 hours, using custom made prints.
Nigerian fashion is moving away from the local markets with their rows of fabric stalls and corner tailors.
Folawiyo has exhibited in Johannesburg, London, Paris and New York. To increase her appeal and market, Folawiyo launched a diffusion line, The J Label, in 2011. The pieces emulate the luxury core of her designs but are a more practical and accessible option. The new label offers anything from trousers and handbags to dresses. While the main label ranges from $350-$11,500, the diffusion line ranges from $150-$350.
In South Africa, and further afield, the name Gavin Rajah is synonymous with style, opulence and glamor. He is a true example of an African designer turned international sensation. Rajah’s fashion is inspiring, his shows are mesmerizing and it’s no wonder he’s dressed people like Beyonce, Nelson Mandela, Tom Cruise, Naomi Campbell among others. As if this were not enough, Rajah has even delved into jewelry design.
Taking fashion beyond just designs, Rajah wrote a paper titled “Creating an Identity in Design: South Africa the future of fashion?”, which reached as far as Milan. A founder of the Cape Town Fashion Week, Rajah, is serious about the industry and its sustainability in the country. He’s made a point of employing and mentoring young designers in his Cape Town studio and sits on the Cape Town Fashion Council board.
From UNICEF Ambassador to design extraordinaire, Rajah sees no limit for his brand.
The most stylish first lady of the United States, since Jackie Kennedy Onassis, is a big fan of Nigerian Duro Olowu. Michelle Obama has worn the designer’s garments on many occasions. Quitting law was the best thing Olowu could have done for the fashion world. The courtroom’s loss has evidently been the runway’s gain. Olowu’s love for art goes beyond fashion and makes for interesting collections; all that creativity makes it hard to imagine him wanting to succeed in any profession but this one. His career was catapulted when he won the New Designer of the Year award at the 2005 British Fashion Awards. Now his clothes can be found online and in stores in the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
“My job is not about dictating to women what they should wear, it’s about presenting them with beautiful options,” Olowu once told The Independent in London.
Deola Sagoe is a talented and beautiful mother of three, whose clothes have been modeled by supermodels Naomi Campbell and Alek Wek. Her daughters have fashion in their blood as they have launched their own fashion label CLAN. Sagoe went to college in the United States and has a Master’s in finance and management. She will showcase her new range at the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Africa being held in Johannesburg at the end of this month.
Describing the Deola Sagoe woman, the designer says: “She is colorful—she uses color to mirror her mood. She is vital—energetic—not the shy, retiring, type, but she also knows the appropriate time to hold her peace.”
The final feather on the African cap is Tiffany Amber’s Folake Folarin-Coker, another Nigerian who did not study fashion and escaped the legal world. Folarin-Coker has a degree in Petroleum law and spent her childhood in Europe. The label launched in 1998 but she made history when she became the first African-based designer to showcase at New York Fashion Week for two consecutive seasons, in 2008 and 2009.
Tiffany Amber has an online shop as well as three stores in Lagos. The brand had grown by adding two more lines and winning Arise Magazine’s Fashion Brand of the Year award for the Autumn/Winter 2011 collection.
With designers such as these, it’s no surprise African designers are taking the industry by storm and inspiring plenty. This is just the beginning as there are many budding designers.
Nina Baksmaty’s Koshie O label is gorgeous. The Ghanaian designer established a workshop in Ghana and her work has attracted the likes of Franca Sozzanni and Roberto Cavalli on their visit to West Africa. She has also brought in American singers Mỳa and Michele Williams for one of her campaigns.
Osakwe’s Maki Oh line is definitely on the right track. Her age has not hindered her will to take on the world fashion. Although she grew up in London, the Nigerian designer returned to her country of birth to start her fashion line. Her inclusion in the New York Fashion Week will only solidify her place as a young designer to watch. She brings her age and fun to her designs and shows that sometime the “now generation” is a little old school. Osakwe uses adire, which is a process of indigo dying cloth using natural indigo leaves as opposed to industrial dye. This is commonly done by Yoruba women in southwestern Nigeria. She says it takes a day to hand paint five meters of fabric and another day to dye and de-wax it.
Osakwe says her latest collection is inspired by secrets and people’s inability to keep them. This imagery is brought forward by the eyes in her prints.
Loza Maléombho is Arise Magazine Fashion Week’s Emerging Designer of the Year. She designs in the United States and manufactures the clothes at her workshop in Côte d’Ivoire. This talented designer’s work can be traced as far back as her early teens, when she made dresses for the women in her family. Her Afro-Modern designs make use of batik prints, wax fabrics and Kente cloth. She’s all about showing the world what she has to offer and helping out the Côte d’Ivorian woman in the process.
The other fresh talent to keep an eye out for is Mimi Plange. Her Boudoir D’Huitres label has been around since 2007. Fashion guru André Leon Talley took an interest in and mentored her for her New York fashion Week presentation. As if this was not enough of a fashion nod, she created a capsule shoe collection with Manolo Blahnik—a dream for any woman in the world.
Africa is bringing more than just oil, gold and war to the table. The future of fashion is here.

Africa In Vogue

South African roads are a seething mass of too many vehicles on an already strained infrastructure. There is a means by which to alleviate some of the pressure, but it’s seen as too risky and the process of getting a license is felt to be difficult. Motorcycles haven’t really been considered a viable option locally, yet in other congestion-filled countries, they’re viewed as pragmatic and fuel-efficient.
Traveling by motorcycle is very risky—there’s no denying this. However, due to the relatively small percentage of motorcycle commuters, the general level of awareness is greatly diminished. Of course, little mention has to be made of the speed at which some motorcyclists travel—the disparity between themselves and cars greatly diminishing reaction time.
While there are clearly issues with adopting two-wheeled transport en masse, theoretically this is a viable solution, reflected by the Gauteng transport authority’s recent statement. They have given the undertaking to AMiD (Association of Motorcycle Importers and Distributors) national director, Réhann Coetzee, that they will consider redrafting the legislature required for obtaining a driver’s license in order to ease the transition. This, of course, is good news for the flagging motorcycle industry which has been suffering the effects of the global economic downturn.
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In 2011, some 34,214 motorcycles (excluding quads and off-road bikes) were sold, in contrast with the 54,720 in 2008. The pressure exerted by a very expensive Yen has also had its effect on sales, despite the Rand, Pound Sterling and Dollar being corrected to previous levels. Similarly, boats have been seen as luxury items and the playthings of the rich and have suffered the same decline. What is often overlooked, is that this industry creates some 3,500 jobs for local artisans and plays a significant role in South Africa’s economy. According to Vanessa Davidson, CEO of MIASA (The Marine Industry Association of South Africa), “South Africa builds boats to international standards and thanks to local ingenuity and the tenacity of our manufacturers, we are able to supply excellent boats to the local market and to export boats at competitive prices all around the world.”
There’s clearly much value and interest in both motorcycles and boats, and as such the first co-hosted event between AMiD Motorcycle and Quad Lifestyle Show, and the Johannesburg Boat Show and Outdoor Lifestyle Shows took place this August at the NASREC expo centre.
Around 30,000 people attended the event which was superbly hosted by SA Show Services. South Africa’s Olympic gold medal-winning rowing team was present to meet their fans and sign autographs, and lifetime achievement awards were handed out by the Gauteng Boating Retailers Association to industry icons Leon Prinsloo of Raven Boats, Derrick Levy of Marine and Boating, Don Jarred of Angler Boats, Ronnie Arenson (who established Water World in Gauteng) and Peter Lindenberg (multiple South African waterskiing and Formula One powerboat champion).
The exhibition also welcomed back iconic Italian motorcycle brands Benelli, absent for 25 years, and Moto Guzzi, absent for five years. The Benelli Motorcycle Company is more than a century old and has a proud racing heritage. Now part of the Chinese Qianjiang Group, the company still operates from its original site in Pesaro, Italy and is being distributed by Puzey Motor Corporation SA. Moto Guzzi won more than 3,000 races in their illustrious career, and famously pioneered the use of wind tunnel testing for motorbikes. Along with Aprilia and MV Agusta, these brands fairly complete the list of remarkable Italian machinery now available to local enthusiasts.
Not to be outdone by the flair of the two-wheeled exhibitions, but keeping with the Italian-made theme, the Johannesburg Boat Show had as their star attraction, a R5,8 million ($704,000) yacht on display. The Atlantis 38 Open-Class Power Yacht as its officially known, measures in at 11,62 meters and has been called “the upgrade to end all upgrades”. Able to carry 12 passengers with ease, the Atlantis is still so nimble that it requires no additional skills to pilot.
Another formidable vessel on display was the nine-meter long houseboat christened Sensation Living. The boat is completely self-contained and solar powered. The hull is made of glass fiber and the entire vessel acts like a giant cooler box, such are the levels of insulation it offers. The boat offers accommodation for six people and entertainment capabilities for 12. With only a normal skippers license needed, Sensation Living is aimed at serious water lovers who only intend to set foot on land on rare occasions—and with a price tag of R1.2 million ($145,800), we wouldn’t want to leave this vessel either.
If bikes or boats weren’t your passion, the expo also housed the Outdoor Lifestyle Show. Inside the hall were a range of diverse offerings—from scuba gear to barbecue equipment to model cars. There was something for everyone, and an expo such as this provides a valuable entry point for those wishing to get involved in activities by creating awareness and providing expert advice on hand.
Outdoor activities have always been an important aspect of South African life, given that we live in one of the most beautiful countries in the world, with a wonderful climate to boot.

Living A Life Less Ordinary

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff recently encountered a young couple in their 30s, with a brood of young children and a hopeful outlook on the future. Until recently the father had driven a bus in Brasília, but thanks to an expansion of electricity and irrigation infrastructure, he turned previously unusable land in the countryside into a thriving vegetable farm, along with a side business raising chickens.
“How much do you make?” Rousseff asked him.
“Four times what I used to earn as a bus driver,” the independent farmer responded. More money was coming in, and the costs of raising a family in the countryside are lower as well. His new goal for his children: degrees in agricultural science.
“We are wagering,” smiles Rousseff, sitting in her minimalist, art-filled office in the Presidential Palace in Brasília as she recalls that conversation, “that people will be able to stand up on their own feet and walk by themselves.”
Her wager—Brazil’s wager—is on entrepreneurship. The past two decades have been formidable for her country: curbing inflation (by creating the real and pegging it to the U.S. dollar), privatization (notably, the state-owned telecommunication and mining companies) and a commodities boom (soybean and iron ore). Twenty years ago Brazil’s GDP was at $358 billion and ranked 11th in the world; today, at $2.5 trillion, it’s between sixth and eighth, depending on who’s counting. No other BRIC balances democracy and widespread wealth nearly as well. Half of Brazil’s population now occupies the middle class—their output alone surpasses the entire economy of neighboring Argentina. “There has been a shift, a change in the way we are [perceived],” says Rousseff, 64, whose position atop this shift now makes her the third most powerful woman in the world, according to FORBES’ annual rankings.
Brazil has become one of the most entrepreneurial countries in the world,  with one in four adults self-employed in some manner. Small businesses create two out of three jobs in Rousseff’s private sector—Brazil’s unemployment rate is an envious 5.8%—and 49% of entrepreneurs with companies less than 42 months old are women; the global average is 37%. In bustling São Paulo alone, 1.8 million small-business owners ply their trades, wares and ideas.
Technology has been a game changer. According to Nielsen, Brazil had 82.4 million Internet users in the first quarter of 2012 compared with 62.3 million three years earlier. On Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter Brazilians are the second most active social network users behind the U.S. “Technology is democratizing entrepreneurialism,” says Bedy Yang, the founder of Brazilian Innovators, an organization helping young tech entrepreneurs. “There are 200 million people in Brazil and 250 million mobile devices.” The Brazilian-born Yang lives in Silicon Valley and travels each month to her homeland to host monthly meetups. Three years ago you couldn’t find any venture capital, says Yang, as we lurch through the clogged streets of São Paulo. “Now I’m seeing Excel Venture, Redpoint Ventures and Sequoia. It’s the formation of a new asset class.”
Rousseff, who took office early last year, has a plan to keep the good times rolling: incentivizing the kind of entrepreneur that Yang cultivates and that her farmer friend embodies. Specifically, lower interest rates, to expand capital; investing in infrastructure; and targeted tax cuts. “In others words,” says Rousseff, “pro-growth bonuses.” This on top of an already robust layer of incentives for entrepreneurs, including retirement benefits and government microloans. “The corner hairdresser, the popcorn salesperson, we also like to help them,” says Rousseff, who es­pouses a program that advances up to $500 to these kinds of small operators.
The public supports her—a June poll put her approval rating at 77%, ahead of her predecessor and mentor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, at a similar point in his term. Perhaps more critically, so does Brazil’s entrepreneurial community. “Our government has made substantive reforms in recent years,” Eike Batista, Brazil’s top entrepreneur (and the world’s seventh-richest man, with an estimated net worth of $30 billion), tells FORBES, “and Dilma is building a fertile environment for investors. ”
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“I DON’T THINK I HAD A PLAN to be president,” says Rousseff. That’s an understatement: Rousseff’s route to Brazil’s entrepreneur-in-chief is as unconventional as they come.
Rousseff’s father, a Communist exile from Bulgaria, made a good living in real estate and construction. His two daughters attended boarding school, where Dilma studied piano and inhaled books, a habit to this day. (Next up: James Carville’s It’s the Middle Class, Stupid!) “I used to play volleyball,” recalls Rousseff. “My wrist is not that strong, but I could block my opponent.”
In 1964, when Rousseff turned 17, Brazil’s military overthrew the leftist government of João Goulart, the fifth political coup in 20 years. Overnight civil rights gave way to arrests, disappearances and torture. In 1967, unbeknownst to her family, Rousseff took the nom de guerre Estela and joined a radical faction of the Brazilian Socialist Party that preached revolt but settled for robberies and car-bombings.
Her first marriage lasted less than two years, but the second, to activist lawyer Carlos Araujo, a prominent member of the Brazilian Communist Party, would stick for nearly three dec­ades. Araujo and Rousseff joined an activist group responsible for stealing a safe containing $2.5 million to fund political actions. Araujo has said his wife “never took up arms.” (He also has said he didn’t know his wife’s given name until her arrest.) In early 1970 Rousseff was caught in a sting operation. Military officials tortured her for 22 days, sometimes using electric shocks, and she spent the next three years in prison.
By the time Rousseff was released in 1972, she was 20 pounds thinner and physically broken. Undaunted, she traded her radical politics for pragmatism. Rousseff pursued an economics degree, and with Araujo, now parents of a daughter, Paula, supported the Democratic Labor Party, a cooperative movement composed of leftist groups (a decade ago she jumped to the ruling Workers’ Party). As her reputation grew, Rousseff landed state-level positions as Secretary of the Treasury and Secretary of Energy before serving as chief of staff for President Lula da Silva, whom she succeeded.
Rousseff rarely discusses her days as a radical and torture victim, nor does she marvel much at her improbable journey from prisoner to president. For her time and country, she says, it’s typical, “the 1968 generation.”
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To see the challenges that Rousseff now faces—and the opportunities within her grasp—it’s instructive to relive a recent trip to Fortaleza, a city with 2.5 million people in northeastern Brazil, taken by Gary Garrabrant, CEO and cofounder of Equity International. (Garrabrant is a big believer in Brazil. His $2 billion private equity firm has half its money in local growth businesses, including homebuilding, commercial real estate, logistics and storage companies.) Rain had washed out the roads, forcing him to rent a four-wheel Jeep, which he navigated over high sand dunes (“no road, no signage”) with the help of a surfer he picked up along the way. He eventually made it to the city, where, he says, “two to three attractive investment opportunities were discovered.” Bad infrastructure; great prospects.
To increase the latter, Rousseff has decided to invest in the former. A short-term dividend of infrastructure spending: It should goose growth, which has slowed to an expected 2% this year, from a white-hot 7.5% in 2010. A medium-term advantage: Brazil will be more ready for its two-pronged coming-out party—the soccer World Cup in 2014 and the Summer Olympics in 2016. To her credit, though, Rousseff’s strategy centers mostly on long-term projects—her equivalents of the Eisenhower Interstate System—that will encourage entrepreneurial activity for decades.
Physical infrastructure is the most obvious need: As Garrabrant discovered, only 14% of the roads in the world’s fifth-largest country are paved. Of 142 countries surveyed, the World Economic Forum ranks Brazil’s quality of physical infrastructure 104th—behind fellow BRICs China, India and Russia. In August Rousseff announced plans for competitive auctions in which private contractors can bid for projects, such as the right to operate 7,500km of roads and 10,000km of railways. Total expected investment: $66 billion, with nearly half spent in the next five years.
Broadband is next. In Brazil high-speed Internet costs around $27 per month—if you can get it—versus $10 in China. To make the Web more accessible, Rousseff has allocated $500 million per year. Brazil’s mobile telecommunication plumbing needs more help. ­Connection fees are 48 cents per minute, versus an average 6.2 cents a minute in the average developed country, and the service quality is so horrendous that Brazil’s telecom regulator banned three big mobile phone operators from selling new plans in some areas until they improved. To fix the problem, Rousseff is pressuring the four foreign companies that dominate telecommunications to invest more and deliver faster. If they don’t have 4G running by the World Cup, they will face big penalties.
For Rousseff, “infrastructure” also means clearing the way for entrepreneurs to create. Starting a new business in Brazil isn’t easy. According to the World Bank, it takes up to 120 days to incorporate versus 6 in the U.S., with startup costs running ten times what they do in China. Rousseff is pushing to move business-tax payments online, which should curb the need to file with different authorities. This year Rousseff has also tried to boost smaller farmers, like the one she met outside Brasília, providing $8 billion in small, negative-interest loans.
But taxes remain her stickiest issue. “Brazil’s tax system is among the most complex in the world,” says Henry McVey, head of global and macro asset allocation at KKR, the private equity giant. These complications, which involve regional fiefdoms, make it highly difficult for Rousseff to cut Brazil’s onerous payroll tax, which is effectively 70%, across the board. Instead, she’s been content with targeted cuts to make domestic manufacturers more competitive. She’s also expanded a break for young companies with less than $1.8 million in revenues. Ultimately, she tells FORBES, she pines for a VAT-type system. “We have to change the tax structure from a payroll-based to a turnover-based taxation structure,” she says.
For all of her business-friendly policies, Rousseff also stays true to her background in social justice. She doesn’t feel these are mutually exclusive. “If you think the market alone was able to lift 70 million people out of poverty, I mean, you’re wrong,” she says.
In education, Rousseff aims to train more—and better—scientists and engineers. Until now few Brazilians have studied abroad. Last year only 9,000 Brazilians studied in the U.S. (excluding language students), compared with 260,000 from China and India. Under Rousseff’s Science Without Borders program, by 2015 that figure will jump to  100,000 (U.S. schools have already agreed to take 20,000).
Rousseff, now a grandmother, also advocates, via policy, on behalf of children. Every household with a child under age 6 gets $35—on the condition that the kids attend school and abide by a vaccination calendar. When Lula da Silva engineered the stipend in 2003, critics howled “as if we were giving hope to the beggars,” says Rousseff. The harsh truth: “The older you are the more protected you are. Stark poverty in Brazil is female and child.” Rousseff adding her own perks: 6,000 day care centers for lower- to middle-class families and free medicine for kids. Aid to children is funneled to mothers. (“Always the woman,” says Rousseff, “because the man tends to get the money and spend it in alcoholic beverage.”)
Rousseff faces major challenges. All this tax-trimming and social spending raise the prospects of a Brazilian fiscal cliff. Inflation remains a real concern. And corruption still festers nationwide and in the capital: Rousseff has already sacked six ministers and her chief of staff amid various scandals.
For what’s it’s worth, though—about $30 billion, in this case—the man with more personally at stake in Brazil than anyone, Eike Batista, is betting on ­Rousseff: “She is brave enough to carry Brazil ahead.”

THE REAL DEAL

The bid came on Twitter from a self-proclaimed expert in social media. His account had just 15 followers, so the expert bit seemed implausible.
“I will give you another 5,000 twitter followers,” his tweet stated. It was going to cost a mere $5.
“It’s my lucky day”, I thought, as I clicked on the link to his website, which offered packages with four orders in the queue. His website was crammed with praise and good reviews from previous so-called follower buyers. A quick internet search brought up many more saying: “Buy Twitter followers—1,000 quality followers for only $14—save now. One hundred percent money back guarantee!”
Always being one for a good deal, I happened to spot 22,000 Twitter followers for only $20. A few clicks later, I’d  have my own Twitter empire and fame, beyond my wildest dreams.
It’s the new big deal in social media—the purchasing of Facebook friends, likes and Twitter followers. It creates illusions of influence and grandeur overnight yet with little substance.
The other week I received an e-mail from a young businessman claiming 25,000 followers on Twitter. I fed the account details through a website called StatusPeople.com, an application that analyses accounts for their follower validity. There we had it! The tool identified the Twitter feed as having an almost 80% fake follower rating—these are ghost Twitter accounts set up by someone with merely a name and at best a photo. These accounts are inactive in terms of tweeting and are designed to be fillers. They are registered in bulk to sell to someone looking for large numbers of followers overnight.
I ran a few prominent Twitter accounts through the Status People application to get an indication of how many fake accounts exist in the Twittersphere. Surprisingly, a lot. First up was Pastor Chris Oyakhilome from Nigeria, better known as ‘Pastor Chris’ or ‘Christ Embassy’ to his followers both in real-life and on Twitter. With more than one million followers, the Status People application indicates that 47% of his followers are inactive and 18% are fake, which means that the remaining 35% are legitimate and active Twitter followers. Would this be a case of ‘many are tweeted, yet few are active?’
In South Africa, I analyzed some of the bigger twitter accounts. South African cricketer Graeme Smith has a 230,000 Twitter following, of which 53% are inactive and 27% are fake, which doesn’t leave many to influence or tweet after the match.
Then there is @GarethCliff, the South African Idols judge and breakfast radio host, with a 340,000 Twitter following. He has a 44% inactive following and a further 17% are listed as fake, according to the application. By no means do I believe that any of the above mentioned accounts bought followers, especially Cliff—who has an army of fans the length and breadth of the land, however public personalities have been known to leverage their Twitter accounts for promotional purposes as an added-value service, imaginably, leaving their clients expecting.
South Africa’s Woolworths retailer was not spared when @JustinHarrison—sporting more than 680,00 followers, of which 78% are considered fake by the Status People application—unleashed a public relations nightmare on the retail giant after claiming so-called racially discriminatory employment practices, which were ceremonially dismissed by the retail giant. Nevertheless, this led to a mainstream media and Twitter onslaught which lasted for weeks and resulted in Woolworths disabling their Facebook wall due to the public outcry on their social media platforms.
Remarkably, even with the high amount of ghost Twitter followers involved, this matter managed to gain remarkable media exposure and in monetary terms what can cost one man, may mean earnings for another.
Ad Dynamo, a contextual advertising company which focuses on mobile and online platforms, introduced a new marketing service called  ‘sponsored tweets’. According to the company, Twitter users who have signed up to Ad Dynamo’s sponsored tweets service become paid publishers by responding to briefs prepared by advertisers.
“The advertiser can review the tweeter in advance of authorizing and paying for their tweet—looking at the user’s recent tweets, profile, and so on.  Each tweet purchased by the advertiser is overlaid against the advertiser’s Twitter account, enabling them to review the increase in followers, retweets and mentions against each individual tweet purchased. This enables them to measure the effectiveness of each tweet purchased and of each Twitter user that submits a draft to the advertiser,” says Ad Dynamo spokesperson, Richard Bell.
For the unseasoned marketer, this could prove to be dangerous ground initially, as those with massive followings on Twitter could charge a premium, for brands to get exposure to thousands of followers, only to find that these are ghost accounts. Ad Dynamo assures me that they have integrated post-campaign analysis to monitor the success of individually paid tweets, however, this is very much after the fact as opposed to a pre-screening.
So what value do advertisers receive if the perceived amount of targeted followers is actually an inaccurate number? Very little one would imagine.
As exciting as these thousands of newly-bought followers might be for anyone’s ego, it’s a bit like hosting a dinner party for blow up dolls, and for advertisers it would be much the same experience. Tweets are being read by fewer people than expected and will receive virtually little engagement or response. So, what is the point of all of this?
This will be one of the bigger stepping stones in the development of social media, much like when the first cellphone and modem came along—we didn’t really know what to do with it or how to use it effectively. The accurate measurement, use and credibility of social media will be the next big breakthrough, apart from figuring out how to develop a sustainable business model around these platforms, and maybe make some legitimate friends.

Buy A Friend

The construction of one of the world’s most futuristic buildings, in terms of kindness to the environment, happened as an afterthought to the R22.5 billion ($2.6 billion) deal that four years ago saw UK-based multinational cellular operator Vodafone gather a 65% controlling share in South Africa’s Vodacom.
Vodafone’s Innovation Centre, at its headquarters in Midrand, Johannesburg, opened at the beginning of this year. It is a seemingly unremarkable single-story, glass-and-wood structure designed to accommodate only around 12 researchers; but it has been awarded six stars by The Green Building Council of South Africa (GBCSA)— the only such rating achieved in this country and indeed all of Africa. The six stars denote it as a world leader.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-1290" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/IMG_7120-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />
The idea for the building took shape shortly after the mammoth cellular-phone share deal, when the two companies’ technical teams were to be integrated. According to Suraya Hamdulay, Vodacom’s executive head of corporate citizenship, the interdisciplinary task team planning the merger decided it would be nice for the innovators to do their research inside an innovative building.
The whole exercise fitted with Vodafone’s stated intention to, by 2020, reduce its carbon emissions by 50% against its 2006/7 baseline of 1.23 million tons, and to reduce emissions in its emerging markets by 20% in 2015 against a 2010/11 baseline.
It was decided to locate the facility in South Africa because—being both an emerging and a developed economy—it would help consolidate the group’s efforts across the board.
With its six-star rating, the Vodafone facility is at the spearhead of a growing trend in South Africa—as in most of the world’s developed countries and a few developing economies—towards environmentally friendly building practices. The global tendency took a decisive turn in 2002 with the launch of the World Green Building Council, a federation of national councils that was joined by South Africa’s in 2007.
The GBCSA says, on its website, that buildings are estimated to consume 40-50% of the world’s energy through their construction and operation. Green buildings can more than halve the energy use of conventional buildings, with similar reductions in potable water usage, runoff to sewer and solid waste. The council’s purpose is to promote green building, act as a resource center, develop and operate a green-building rating system and improve knowledge and skills through training and education.
The features that had it award the Vodafone Innovation Centre its highest rating are remarkable for their novelty and also for their simplicity. Designed with the help of WSP Environment &amp; Energy South Africa, part of a leading international company, the innovation started with the very choice of a site and its preparation.
The building, reminding one somewhat of an unassuming wildlife lodge, is situated on what used to be a parking lot serving Vodacom’s adjacent headquarters. In the construction, as much use as possible was made of waste and discarded materials. Soil excavated for the foundations and second-hand tiles and reject stock bricks were used in the landscaping of the mainly indigenous garden and its pathways.
The whole purpose was to limit the use of concrete and cement to a minimum. Three layers of compacted soil separated by recycled plastic membranes form the foundations. Gabions resting on the layered foundations support the floor. Outside, air is cooled as it filters through the rock-filled wire-mesh baskets that form the gabions and serve to ventilate the building through vents along the sides.
The double-paned glass walls serve a variety of purposes. They reduce heat from outside and allow hot air trapped between them to escape through vents in the roof. By letting in natural light they limit the use of electric lighting. Bright light is dimmed by the building’s extended eaves and automatic blinds shut out direct sunlight. The see-through walls also create a sense of translucency, especially for those working inside who are able to look out into the garden.
Rain water from the roof goes into tanks from which it is used to flush the toilets and irrigate the garden. Inside the building is a small atrium serving as a wetland through which water from the sinks and basins get purified and re-used to flush the toilets.
The air-conditioning is done by an intricate system of solar tubes on the roof that pipe water into an absorption chiller and cooling coils from which it is passed through pipes in the floor and through cooling grids that are mounted in pot plants for the condensation to wet the plants. A spread of 292 photovoltaic panels, generating 230 kWh a day, drive fans that cool air by blowing it over the cold pipes.
No power-storage batteries are used. Through what is called virtual storage, excess electricity is diverted to Vodacom’s adjacent building to reduce its use of Eskom (the national electricity supplier) power by day. At night, the favor is returned in decidedly unequal measure by passing back such small amount of Eskom power as the Innovation Centre might need.
Even though it is mainly solar power that gets used, everything is designed to limit consumption. LED lighting is linked to motion sensors so that when nobody is in the building the lights will automatically switch off. The researchers work on laptops as they have been found to be the most power efficient.
“We are engineers, we have to have coffee. So we looked around for the most power-efficient coffee machine we could find,” says Etienne Gerber, the center’s program manager.
<h4>There&#8217;s a big new trend in building</h4>
The trend towards greener building is gathering pace in South Africa, as in a good many other countries, despite hard financial times. Since its establishment five years ago, the Green Building Council of South Africa (GBCSA) has already awarded 23 star ratings to buildings around the country. A further 34 buildings are in the pipeline for registration. 
Rosanne Mitchell, the council’s marketing executive, says as consumers become more discerning and environmentally conscious, they will be the drivers of sustainable design and construction as well as greener building occupation. The building industry itself is changing. Green building practices used to be implemented by only a few companies. Now these are practically standard practice. 
Vodafone’s Innovation Centre in Midrand is the only building to have been given six stars. Five more buildings have been awarded five stars for excellence, and seventeen have received four stars, which is for best practice. 
The five five-star buildings are the Standard Bank in Rosebank, Absa Towers West in Johannesburg, the Aurecon Century City Campus in Cape Town, Millennia Park in Stellenbosch and the Sisonke District Offices in Ixopo, KwaZulu-Natal. 
The GBCSA has over 1,000 member companies broadly representative of the private and some public sectors. Apart from developing its rating system, it has put more than 3,000 people through green building courses and accredited 400 green-building practitioners. 
Mitchell says there are strong indications that more and more the construction industry and the corporate world will see green building as an inevitable part of business as usual. As with fire safety standards and disability access, sustainability will soon be taken for granted. 
According to several recent surveys, it will become just the way we build.

Africa’s Greenest Star

Mara.com is an offshoot project of the Mara Foundation, one of Africa’s largest non-profit social enterprises, which lends support to emerging African entrepreneurs at the forefront of their journey. Mara Online will be the continent’s first online mentorship network and will connect young, budding African entrepreneurs to established enterprises and businessmen.  “Mara.com will be a transformational project and will nurture an ecosystem for African entrepreneurs and youth while improving skills and emerging talent,” says Thakkar.
“The idea for the Mara Mentors site started as an offline venture by Mara Foundation. We mentored 120 companies but felt we could have more impact and reach more people across Africa and other emerging markets. Through this initiative we want to share knowledge and expertise with the next generation of business leaders in Africa. The mentees will be given guidance by some of the brightest and best minds in the industry who have already volunteered to be mentors.”
The Mara.com platform will have three dimensions to it: mentorship, jobs and dating.
Mara Mentors will put young African users in touch with well-established and successful entrepreneurs from across Africa—mentors who will offer insight, expertise and experience into a wide spectrum of industries. The mentors on the network will also provide mentees with access to networks and will transfer knowledge and experience to those who are up-and-coming in order to help them transform ideas into sustainable enterprises. At their own discretion, the mentors can at some point opt to meet in person with the mentees and provide support with funding and infrastructure.
Mara Jobs, on the other hand, will provide a user-friendly platform for employers and prospective employees across Africa to post jobs and resumes as well as to promote careers and employment opportunities across all industries.
“With more than 5,000 people employed across Mara Group’s companies, we understand the difficulties of the hiring process in Africa today. We want to use the knowledge we have gained and give the employers and the job seekers a better user experience,” says Thakkar.
Mara Dating will help young Africans find love and companionship. However, according to the Mara.com team, access to Mara Dating will only be possible after registering with Mara Mentors or Mara Jobs, thus attracting a wide spectrum of youth and inspiring the next generation of African entrepreneurship.
The website is being developed by designers and programmers in Silicon Valley, Bangalore, London, Dubai and a few cities in Africa. It will be free to all users, but the network’s complementary jobs and dating sites will utilize third party advertising and other revenue-generating models to financially support the platform. In addition, revenue generated from Mara.com will be channeled to the Mara Foundation towards financing its other social enterprise initiatives such as the Mara Launchpad (a group of business incubation centers across Africa), Mara Launch Funds (which provides small start-up funding for small businesses and start-ups across Africa) and the Mara Entrepreneurship Academy.
Thakkar tells me Mara.com will kick start some innovative initiatives. Considering that Africa is transiting from personal computers to smartphones, the website will base its foundation on mobile and feature phones to fully get adopted by the target audience. Mara.com is currently launching in Nigeria, but the platform will go live globally in December.
Thakkar started trading computers at age 14, after immigrating to Uganda following his escape from the 1994 Rwandan genocide with his family. He parlayed that small computer trading operation into a pan-African conglomerate, the Mara Group, which has interests in everything from real estate and tourism to financial services, information and communications technology, renewable energy and manufacturing, with revenues of around $100 million. Through his Mara Foundation, he says he gives back millions of dollars annually towards grooming and mentoring young African entrepreneurs.
“With Mara.com, I want to ensure that other successful African business leaders have a platform to groom and support young African leaders,” says Thakkar.
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ADAPTED FROM AN ARTICLE ON FORBES.COM

Africa’s First Online Mentorship  Network Is Born

Jonathan Liebmann is 29, owns 25 buildings and has lived on five of the seven continents. Now, he has made his nest in a small corner on the east side of the most vibrant city in Africa—Johannesburg.
Johannesburg city was established in 1886, as a farm where gold miners from all over the globe came to make their money. That is where it got the name Egoli—meaning place of gold. In decades to follow, it became the shopping mecca of Gauteng’s elite. Today, all the big banks and businesses have relocated to the northern suburbs and the new tenants are mostly African immigrants looking for a place to make a living; the streets are busy, there are shops at every turn and a multitude of languages in the CBD.
There is a sign that hangs between two buildings on his street, it reads Maboneng— meaning place of lights in Sesotho. It’s a fitting description for a beacon in the middle of a city plagued by crime, dilapidated buildings and grim life. Just down the road, there’s a men’s hostel where even the police are afraid to go.
Liebmann is rejuvenating the east’s run down image one building at a time. The corner coffee shops, restaurants, independent movie house and boutique hotel are abuzz as you walk the streets of Maboneng Precinct.
He has just bought his 25th building, which he will convert into apartments. We stand on the roof of the new building looking down onto another flat roof. Two recycling vendors are having lunch on a two plate stove, they are surrounded by recycled bags containing plastic bottles. This is one of the many facets of Johannesburg hustle.
You could say the streets behind Liebmann are a playground for his entrepreneurial mind.
<div id="attachment_1283" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1283" class="size-medium wp-image-1283" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/380-380_1-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />Property developer Jonathan Liebmann, Johannesburg; 19 July 2012 &#8211; Photo by Brett Eloff.</div>
Liebmann’s entrepreneurial spirit is as young as many of the buildings are old. He made his first profit at 18, at a time when most people hadn’t even thought about buying their first car, let alone buy one. He had bought, renovated and resold an apartment and at 21 he turned an old factory into an office for rent.
“When I was 18, I realized I wanted to be involved in property. I went to university but while I was [there] I started investing in property on a small level. I bought my first apartment that I renovated, with the bank’s money, and then I just worked my way up from there… I enjoy being the pioneer and taking the first steps, so for me that risk was an attraction. And at the same time I was completing my accounting degree so I was working and studying as well,” says Liebmann.
Liebmann bought his own apartment at 20, after a year of nomadic life across the world, traveling and doing odd jobs from construction to telesales consulting. Traveling is something he learnt from a young age, as a child Liebmann moved almost ten times with his divorced single mother and older brother.
“I started thinking about how I could do my own large developments of [loft culture] and started looking for old factory spaces that would have the right type of aesthetic to do that and that’s when I found my first buildings in Maboneng.”
“I traveled all around the world after school and that exposed me to a lot to urban culture,” he says.
And since his return to Johannesburg—the city of his birth—he wants to inject new life into the city; artists, business and residents are following him.
While on his travels, Liebmann went from being a construction worker to a telesales person, skills he would later use in his chosen career.
You can tell from the moment you meet Liebmann that he’s driven. He’s sharp and has an air of confidence that could be interpreted as arrogance when he speaks about his work. He’s got that ‘I know what I want and I know how I’m going to get it’ tone as he tucks his brown hair beneath his ears throughout the interview.
Earlier this year, Liebmann was invited to the World Economic Forum in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
“I was selected as a global shaper along with 30 other young people from Africa. I learnt about the common objectives of African countries to collaborate with one another in an attempt for Africa to become the next frontier,” says Liebmann.
While we sit at a corner coffee shop, a number of people greet him as they pass by. Liebmann and his vision are growing in stature in this area of decaying factories and empty buildings, which is a living manifestation of the saying “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure”.
Not only has it managed to attract people and money back into the city but it has also put his family back together.
His mother owns a coffee shop, his father owns a gallery and his step-brother works here too.
It’s a risky investment.
One minute one area could be the trendy spot where the masses flock and in a number of years may degenerate and experience flight.
His architect, Enrico Daffonchio says property goes in cycles in every city of the globe.
“There is a spectrum of different perspective [on its potential], however the spectrum of opinion from the cynics is reducing… Cities get renewed throughout history, it’s not a new thing. There are tax incentives to refurbish those areas. [So] there’s tax incentives and governments copy each other ,” says Daffonchio.
How did Liebmann get people to Maboneng and does he think they will stay?
“I think initially the challenge was changing people’s perceptions of the city. Yes, it’s a continuing struggle but it’s far easier as we grow block by block… I think Johannesburg is at the beginning of its curve of regeneration. There’s a long way to go [but] it’s certainly showing promise… You’ve got to build spaces that attract people back…”
Property economist and University of Capet Town lecturer, François Viruly says it’s not the government’s duty to upkeep the city.
“The role of government is primarily to ensure that an environment is created that encourages private sector investment in the CBD&#8230; I don’t think that there is anything wrong with the private sector owning buildings in the CBD. Urban decay is a problem that local governments have faced across the world. In South Africa, the decentralization of commercial space has invariably left CBDs with high vacancy rates.”
These are vacancy rates which Liebmann is grabbing with both hands—a dream he is creating one building at a time.

Tag: October 2012

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