Zafar Siddiqi, the co-founder and chairman of CNBC Africa, passed away on Friday, February 23. He was 76.



An entrepreneur in media and education with an impeccable record across three continents – the Middle East, South Asia and Africa, Siddiqi was also the Chairman of Lancaster University Ghana and Curtin University in Ghana.



In a letter to the staff of the ABN Group, which includes both CNBC Africa and FORBES AFRICA,



Dr Rakesh Wahi, the founder and publisher of FORBES AFRICA, said that Siddiqi’s “leadership, wisdom, commitment, values and support will be missed and will leave a gap in our lives”.



“Twenty years ago, Zafar and I embarked on a journey to set up CNBC Africa. An ambitious project that was seen with scepticism as no one had attempted a Pan-African Business News Network for the African continent,” Wahi said.



Before starting his journey in media, which would span over 30 years, Siddiqi started as an accountant for global auditing firm KPMG and later as the Managing Director of one of its consultancy practices. He spent 18 years with KPMG in Oman and Pakistan.



His introduction to TV began in Pakistan specializing in providing business programs to overseas broadcasters. He later founded the CNBC Arabia network across the Middle East, the first international brand to broadcast in Arabic. This was followed by CNBC Pakistan and CNBC Africa.



“Nothing broke our will to succeed and succeed we did, with the support of all of you (management and staff) and armed always with each other’s strength and belief in what we had embarked on. We never gave up and vested our lives both physically and financially, into our beliefs,” Wahi added.



Siddiqi firmly believed in Africa and the future of broadcast journalism on the continent. “I believe Africa is on the verge of explosion as far as investment is concerned. There are not many places in the world that have the resources Africa has,” he stated in a 2018 interview with FORBES AFRICA.



His passion for TV was evident in his 2019 book, TV News 3.0: An Insider&#8217;s Guide To Launching And Running News Channels In The Digital Age, which was an authoritative study of the media world.



“In 2002, I launched CNBC Arabia, over the whole of the Middle East, which was 26-odd countries,” Siddiqi also told CNBC Africa in an interview in 2019. “The dialects were different, traveling was different. Media was just about opening up after the Gulf War… and that&#8217;s all changed. It&#8217;s changed so much. And I think technology has changed all of that. Social media has changed all of that. And I think that African countries are moving very quickly towards this integration, because you&#8217;ve got to keep up with what&#8217;s happening in the rest of the world. So that is why I firmly believe that these economies will move closer together. And hence, I believe that CNBC Africa will play a very important role.”



In the interview with FORBES AFRICA, as an entrepreneur, Siddiqi had this valuable piece of advice on the power of networking: “Remember to be yourself and be original, that’s how you succeed. Originality [always] comes through!”



His passing is a loss not just for the ABN Group but to the industry to which he was passionate about.

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Remembering Zafar Siddiqi: The Formidable Entrepreneur And Investor In Media For Over Three Decades

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Rest In Power, Mother

Africa mourned the death of one of its leading boxing trainers, Nick Durandt, who produced an extraordinary 95 South African champions, in 17 weight divisions, and 38 world champions through the WBC, WBA, IBF, WBO, WBF and IBO organizations.
The champions Durandt guided spanned generations; from Gerrie Coetzee, Brian Mitchell, Sugar Boy Malinga, Phillip Ndou, Cassius Baloyi, to Moruti Mthalane. Durandt took pride in turning ghetto boys, with few prospects, into world champs.
In April, the 53-year-old Durandt died in hospital in Bethlehem, in South Africa’s Free State province, after a motorbike accident. He was the president of Crusaders Bike Club at the time.
Durandt, who was recognizable by his blonde locks flowing out of a black beanie or bandana, was born on Boxing Day in 1963, in Wolverhampton, England. His South African father, Cliff Durandt, was a professional footballer, in South Africa and player for Wolverhampton Wanderers in England. Durandt, before he immersed himself in boxing, played football for the University of the Witwatersrand under-21s, coached by the late full-back Eddie Lewis.
“Many people talk about things larger than life, really to me Nick Durandt was larger than boxing. He produced so many champions that no one can compare [to him] in this country&#8230; He has done it all,” says Peter Leopeng, a boxing analyst and commentator.
The uncompromising Durandt was a tough negotiator who always put the best interests of his fighters first. Mthalane pulled out of the mandatory title defence against Thailand’s Amnat Ruenroeng and relinquished his IBF flyweight title after Durandt refused the R60,000 ($4,400) purse.  He later negotiated a R1–million ($75,000) sum in Durban.
<div id="attachment_31463" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31463" class="wp-image-31463 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/IMG_0488-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="683" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_0488.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_0488-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_0488-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_0488-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Farewell The Man Who Called Mayweather A Coward</div>
“Nick fought against any promoter who thought he could swindle his boxers out of the purse, that’s why he was unpopular. For a long time he didn’t get along with Rodney Berman for that same reason. He was passionate about making sure he got sponsorship and endorsement for his charges. All his boxers were dressed up in Kappa gear,” says Leopeng.
Durandt’s colorful lifestyle and relentless pursuit of improving life for his boxers made him popular outside the ring as well. Before his untimely death, he fought tirelessly with national broadcaster SABC to televise boxing. He was also a fervent critic of former sports minister, Fikile Mbalula, whom he accused of forsaking the dying sport. When Mbalula brought Floyd Mayweather to South Africa in 2012, in what they called ‘The Reawakening of the Giant’, to revive boxing, Durandt refused to endorse the project and likened it to a tour for Mayweather to view African animals and the picturesque Table Mountain.
When FORBES AFRICA interviewed Durandt in 2014, he pulled no punches.
“In order to build more and more superstars, the television coverage is very important. People need to see the fighters live when they fight. Can you imagine; I arrive at the OR Tambo International Airport with the world champion and the people don’t know or don’t recognize him,” he said.
Leopeng had his own embarrassing encounter with angry Durandt in 2003. A high-spirited Durandt flew his African champion Ndou to the US to fight Mayweather. Days before the fight in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Durandt referred to Mayweather as a coward and promised his fans a knockout.
“Mayweather retorted that he would fight like a crocodile, he would take Ndou to the deep waters and see if he can swim out of the river. Durandt said that Ndou could swim breaststroke and backstroke. Mayweather pulverized and knocked out Ndou in the seventh round. Now back in South Africa, in a radio interview, I asked Durandt which stroke Ndou was doing while lying on the ground. Durandt swore at me and never spoke to me for six months,” recalls Leopeng.
Another memorable fight – billed as ‘Thunder in Africa’ – was between unheralded American Hasim Rahman and England’s WBC, IBF and IBO heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis at Carnival City, in Brakpan, east of Johannesburg, in 2001. Durandt was in Rahman’s corner when he knocked out Lewis in round five.
Although well-known for his bad temper, controversial character and tattoos, Durandt was a family man who was inseparable from his sons. When he retired in May 2016, he handed over the two gyms to his first born Damian, 26, whom he groomed from the age of 14. He also owned a tattoo shop across the road from his gyms.
To go with the many awards Durandt won as a trainer and manager in almost three decades in boxing, in January he received a Lifetime Achievement award from Boxing South Africa.
Durandt, known as Mthakathi, Zulu for wizard, will go down in history as the first trainer to be red carded for insulting the referee in Nasrec, Johannesburg. Boxing is duller without him.

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Farewell The Man Who Called Mayweather A Coward

One of the last survivors of the rebels who faced death with Nelson Mandela was a genial soul with a resolve of iron.
Ahmed Kathrada was one of the great worker bees of the struggle against apartheid in the 1950s and early 1960s. In the shadows of Liliesleaf, a smallholding in the middle-class northern Johannesburg suburb of Rivonia, used as a hideout by underground activists, Kathrada, wrote, worked and photocopied pamphlets tirelessly. When the struggle called upon him to pose as a white man – he dyed his hair, put on make-up and a moustache to pretend to be a Portuguese man called Pedro. It was a disguise that fooled people; despite this, he never felt comfortable going into restaurants where people of color were not allowed.
Discomfort in the heat of an armed struggle, against a brutal regime, shows the gentle soul that was Kathrada. He may have been strident when it came to principle, but never fell for bravado; humility was his middle name. He admitted to me once, in an interview for CNBC Africa, that he feared he could have broken if he had been tortured by special branch after his arrest half a century before. His heart was always tender and 26 rough brutal years in prison left few callouses. Once, on national radio, I heard Kathrada break down when a caller reminded him of a comrade who had been tortured to death more than 50 years before.
<div id="attachment_5630" style="width: 211px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5630" class="wp-image-5630 size-medium" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/funeral-076-201x300.jpg" alt="" width="201" height="300" />Kathrada’s widow Barbara Hogan and nephew Nazir</div>
If the scars were deep, Kathrada’s spirit kept a salving sense of humour. With a laugh, he told me how Govan Mbeki – the father of South Africa’s former president Thabo – used to sell eggs he coaxed from the Liliesleaf chickens to his fellow activists, despite their protestations. He also told me how the underground activists of Liliesleaf used to sell vegetables.
“Our best customer was the Rivonia Police!” he chuckled. It was the police of Rivonia who raided Liliesleaf with dogs, in July 1963, putting Kathrada behind bars on his way to trial for sabotage that carried the death penalty.
Even in the shadow of death Kathrada, in the so-called Rivonia trial in Pretoria, never lost his sense of humour. Prosecutor Percy Yutar quizzed him, on the stand, about a person who went by the initial K, referred to in Nelson Mandela’s diary. Yutar pressed in an attempt to humiliate: did Kathrada know anyone with the initial K?
“Yes,” replied Kathrada, “Mr Khrushchev.”
Even the judge laughed. The court spared Kathrada and his comrades the rope at the end of the trial in 1964.
“We subsequently found out that life was to mean life,” he said with gentle irony through his trademark smile.
When Kathrada emerged from prison, in 1989, apartheid had taken a lot more than his youth; it also took his birthplace. The place he grew up in, Schweizer-Reneke, in South Africa’s North West province, was bulldozed by the authorities in the cause of keeping the races apart.
Incarceration took even more. Computers, hotel room cards instead of keys and the paraphenalia of the modern world were a mystery. He tried driving on motorways that he had never seen, once, but found it too stressful. Even a harmless ATM spelled confusion as Kathrada found out one Sunday morning when he went to draw money with fellow Robben Island prisoner Laloo Chiba.
“He put in his card and it was swallowed, then I put my card in and pressed a few buttons and it was also swallowed. We had to phone the bank and they came to open up the ATM and get our cards out. Now Barbara gets my money for me,” he told me.
Former minister Barbara Hogan was Kathrada’s loving partner and they appeared kindred spirits. Kathrada would have loved to raise a family – a big gap in his life. The prison guards, on Robben Island, used to keep children cruelly out of sight of prisoners; Kathrada told me of the pain of more than two decades without that most natural sound; the carefree laughter of a child. Hogan was his family.
“When I phone home from overseas my first question is: ‘What happened in Isidingo (A TV soap opera), my second question is about whether the country has been overthrown!” says Kathrada drily.
One or two people in the African National Congress would whisper to you that Kathrada could be a bit star struck when it came to big names and would occasionally drop everything to be with them. It was Kathrada who accompanied the then United States senator Barack Obama to Robben Island.
When it came to integrity, there was never a waver, nor whiff, of scandal around Kathrada. I shall remember him for six words he shot back to me in the studio in 2010. I ventured that there was a rising generation of young people who chose not to know, nor care, about the causes and sacrifices of the struggle.
<div id="attachment_5632" style="width: 211px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5632" class="wp-image-5632 size-medium" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/funeral-041-201x300.jpg" alt="" width="201" height="300" />Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and Julius Malema at the funeral in Johannesburg, South Africa</div>
“That is what we fought for.”
The principled and upstanding way of Ahmed Kathrada that South Africa is poorer for losing; sadly, many of those principles he fought for have been abandoned by a generation old enough to know better.

Farewell To A Gentle Soul

In the Africa I know, we sing and dance when we are happy, when we go to the battlefield, and in times of bereavement. We did it at the memorial service of 86-year-old South African female jazz trailblazer, Thandiwe ‘Thandi’ Klaasen on a warm January day. She died a week before, after a long battle with pancreatic cancer.
Could we have celebrated the colorful and illustrious career of Klaasen without the music and renowned Sophiatown style, the multiracial suburb she lived in until it was cleared away by apartheid?
Born in 1931 in Sophiatown, Klaasen and her contemporaries used music to fight the oppressive system and patriarchy. Tired of being an appendage to male bands, she formed a female vocal quartet called the Quad Sisters that shot to stardom with a hit song Carolina Wam, in 1952. They influenced the formation of younger female groups, including Miriam Makeba’s The Skylarks.
On this Wednesday afternoon at the memorial service at Germiston City Hall, east of Johannesburg, songs intertwined with messages of condolences from politicians, musicians and family. One outstanding tribute was the family band’s adaptation of Louis Armstrong’s hit, What A Wonderful World.
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I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself Mam’ Thandi,
Was a beautiful soul, A great dancer
and entertainer, If you agree just clap
your hands, Say how did you do.
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This classic was followed by words of Lorraine Klaasen, the image of her mother.
“I was a good observer of my mom. When I grew up I wanted to be like my mother, I wanted to travel the world like my mom and make people happy with my music. And I am really living the promise I made to myself… Music made my mom very happy… She travelled with me as artists but she played that role of a mom…,” says Lorraine, a 2013 Juno Award winner for World Music Album of the Year in Canada.
“What I am going to miss about my mother is her big heart and courage to start something and see it to the end. She taught me to trust in God. She was hardly in hospital. She was a very strong woman and a disciplinarian,” adds her son Roger Phambane.
The snazzy great-grandma’s penchant for wine drew chuckles.
Klaasen’s spells of inebriation were rarely boring. A friend and protégé, Abigail Kubeka, told tales of cooking and empty bottles.
“After all, she was a mother, a housewife and everything. She loved cooking her mutton curry for her husband, Lucas. One day she didn’t realize a cloth fell into her pot. So, she dished out for her husband and Lucas was eating with a fork, but the fork couldn’t pick up the meat. He called her: ‘Thandi, what have you cooked? You said you wanted mutton curry, that’s mutton curry. Ja, mutton curry, but this is a dish cloth,’” says Kubeka to raucous laughter.
Klaasen, among other things, was a magician. She would make a wine disappear in a second, says Nandipha Ndlovu, a granddaughter who called her a role model. Ndlovu is a young doctor in Germiston.
All the speakers agreed on Klaasen’s stoicism and resilience, mentioning how she survived the horror of 1977 when someone – maybe a rival – threw acid in her face. She was in hospital for almost a year.
“That day the fire was set to put an end to her rising star, but they were wrong. That was the day she was truly born. Everyone has got their turning point in their lives. We can rather choose to pursue it, chase your dream or you can turn back, or you can fail. But she didn’t choose to fail,” says Ndlovu.
She would tell people ‘they can burn my face, but they can’t burn my voice,’ says Khubeka.
She also used to joke that she never had one wrinkle in her face. Clearly she never lost the love and respect of her family, nor her sense of humor.

They Can Burn My Face, But They Can’t Burn  My Voice

When Colonel Satya Pal Wahi took his morning walk in the park near his home in Gurgaon, a city 32 kilometers outside the Indian capital of New Delhi, he always took a few copies of FORBES AFRICA with him. When influential people stopped him for chat, which happened often to one of India’s best known people, he would hand them a copy with a recommendation that they read it. He believed that our reporting was promoting business in Africa, 5,000 miles away, and gave his time and energy, selflessly, to support this. That was the kind of man Colonel Wahi was; always working, looking forward and willing a better world.
In his busy office, Colonel Wahi read and dissected every line of FORBES AFRICA. Often he used to correspond with me about our articles with beautiful, flowing, prose; always concise, and precise.
In person, he was a warm, humble, kind, and gentle man, with whom there was never a dull moment. I had the honor to meet him a number of times, on his many visits to Africa, and also at the weddings of his grandchildren on home soil.
I was always struck by his energy and tireless erudition. With his eyes lit up, it was always straight into the issues of the day. The last time, in Chandigarh, we debated, at length, the opportunities and pitfalls of artificial intelligence.
Colonel Wahi passed on this passion for business and life to his son, Rakesh, who was also an Indian Army officer engineer and the present publisher of FORBES AFRICA; his grandson, Sid, is the executive director of our magazine.
A remarkable man, who had lived a memorable and illustrious life, was born in Khushab, a small village near Lahore, in what is now Pakistan. He graduated in electrical and mechanical engineering from Banaras Hindu University. On graduation he joined the Indian Military Academy, Dehradun, before joining the Corps of the Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, in 1950, where he reached the rank of Colonel.
On retiring from the army, Colonel Wahi served many corporate enterprises which included Bokaro Steel Plant (1969-74), Bharat Heavy Electricals (1974-78), before joining Cement Corporation of India (CCI), a wholly-owned company of the Government of India as its chairman. He turned the loss-making CCI into a profitable business and, in 1981, was appointed chairman of ONGC, the largest oil and gas exploration and production company in India. His tenure at ONGC coincided with the development of Bombay High offshore oilfields and he is credited with contributions in raising India&#8217;s oil output from 9 million tons to 32 million tons per annum. His efforts are also reported behind the modernization of the organization by the introduction of computerization and modern office facilities and the establishment of a training center for the organization.
There were a number of occasions where Col. Wahi&#8217;s charismatic leadership was hailed. One such incident was his deft handling of the blowout in the offshore drilling rig Sagar Vikas. His professional stewardship in the case not only handled the blowout effectively, but ONGC was praised all over the media for the courageous act of the Oil Soldiers of India. A more significant victory, perhaps, was the confidence that grew in the cadres of ONGC after this incident.
After his stint at ONGC, he was associated with Bharat Ophthalmic Glass Limited and served as the Chairman of the Standing Committee of Public Enterprises.
A recipient of the degree of Doctor of Science (honoris causa) from three Indian universities, Wahi has also received honors such as Petrotech Lifetime Achievement Award, Indian Geophysical Union Silver jubilee Award and Giants International Award. The Government of India awarded him the third-highest civilian honor of the Padma Bhushan, in 1988, for his contribution to society.
The world was richer for the life of Col Satya Pal Wahi and poorer for his passing. His legacy will live for all time.

Farewell To A Gentle Titan

It was just a few days before Christmas, but any feelings of goodwill in Maputo were smashed by the news that 36-year-old Valentina Guebuza, the daughter of former Mozambican President Armando Guebuza, died after being shot. The alleged perpetrator of the shots was her husband, Zofimo Muiuane.
The daughter of the former president was allegedly shot and died on her way to the Heart Institute hospital on December 14. After Guebuza was killed, Muiuane handed himself in at a police station in Maputo and was arrested the following day.
&#8220;The first indications we have is that this was an authentic case of domestic violence which ended, sadly, in the death of the citizen Valentina Guebuza,&#8221; says police spokesman Inacio Dina.
In 2013, Guebuza was listed as one of the 20 most powerful young women in Africa by FORBES. As a civil training engineer, Guebuza held prominent positions in the telecommunications and banking sectors and led several family businesses, namely Focus 21, Gestão e Desenvolvimento, Lda, a family investment holding company. She was also involved in fisheries, transportation, mines and real estate, and with significant participation in operations at the Port of Beira Terminal and the subscription TV company, StarTimes.
Guebuza’s rise in business was fast between 2005 and 2015 while  her father was president.
In 2007, Guebuza became a shareholder of Beira Grain Terminal. She was also a partner in the following companies: Railways of Mozambique (CFM), Cornelder de Moçambique, Nectar Mozambique, Sonipal, Seaboard Moz, Rainbow International, CFI Holdings and Merec Industries.
As chairman of the Board of Directors of StarTimes Media, a joint venture between China&#8217;s StarTimes and Focus 21, Guebuza was intrinsically involved in digital migration in Mozambique.
Civil society and private operators questioned the ability of StarTimes to carry out the work, as well as the procedure involved in awarding the company the tender.
Guebuza leaves behind a young daughter. She married Muiuane on July 26, 2014, in what was described as the ‘marriage of the year’. The wedding was attended by 1,700 guests, including the President of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, Swaziland’s King Mswati III, and the daughter of the Angola’s president, Isabel dos Santos. One year later, on July 2, 2015, they were the proud parents of a girl.
This supposedly happy story came to a tragic end on December 14.

The Sad End Of The Millionaire Princess

The genius son of Mafalala has gone; the fast and deft feet that learned the game on the rugged streets of Maputo, in Mozambique, have been laid to rest. They called him the Black Panther and the Black Pearl; whatever they called him, he left defenders speechless in his wake.
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On the streets of Mafalala, as rough as a flying tackle, Eusébio learned the football that was to take him from poverty to stardom with a ball made out of newspaper wrapped with rags. Mafalala was a tough training ground of cuts, bruises, grit and stones; where, to this day, barefoot youngsters trap and pass. I have stood on that makeshift, sandy pitch in the twilight of another warm Maputo day, listening to the shouts of the young and hopeful. If you close your eyes, you can see the young Eusébio and Mario Coluna—two world class players who emerged from Mafalala—passing to each other and laughing their heads off. Maybe, I am merely a football romantic.
Eusébio’s mother’s house is a free kick’s distance away. The street that runs by it, is named after the man.
With his skill on the ball and explosive pace, Eusébio shone over football in his hometown like the sun. He signed for Sporting Clube de Lourenco Marques at 15 and soon caught the eye of scouts.
Legend has it that a chance encounter in a barber’s shop, in Lisbon, sealed Eusébio’s chance of a glittering career. In the barber’s chair was a scout, for Brazilian team Sao Paulo, who had just returned from Mozambique where he had been bowled over by the skilful young Eusébio. Listening to the scout’s story was legendary Benfica coach, Bela Guttman, who flew straight to Mozambique and persuaded the young man to sign for around $10,000. Eusébio’s mother put the money in the bank and said she wouldn’t touch it until her son had made it as a professional. Imagine that, in this age of avaricious football agents.
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There was controversy in Portugal before Eusébio kicked a ball. Sporting Clube de Lourenco Marques was a feeder club to Sporting Lisbon, who didn’t take too kindly to rival Benfica snatching a young star from under their noses. Sporting appealed Eusébio’s registration in a wrangle that lasted five months. Eusébio was cloistered by Benfica in a fishing village in the Algarve until it was all over.
Eusébio scored a hat-trick on his debut for Benfica; two weeks later, he scored a hat-trick in a friendly against Santos, which had Pele in the side, in Paris. Few, including Pele, had seen anything like him. He was a new breed of striker: fast, robust, good in the air, a master at free kicks with a fearsome shot; a forerunner of the great nimble goal scorers of the modern era like Maradona and Lionel Messi.
In an illustrious career, that exceeded all expectations, Eusébio scored 473 goals in 440 games in 15 years at Benfica. For Portugal, he played 64 times, scoring 41 goals. His finest hour was during the World Cup in England in 1966 where Eusébio scored nine goals in six games, winning the golden boot, and could very easily have won the tournament for Portugal. The 1966 Portugal side was considered the greatest ever and was captained by Coluna, the other sensation from Maputo. The Portuguese journalists christened the midfield colossus Coluna the “Sacred Monster” because he was both terrifying and beautiful.
The night before the semi-final, in which Portugal was to play England at Goodison Park in Liverpool, the English Football Association switched the game to
Wembley, in London. It meant the Portuguese traveled down from Liverpool by train, overnight, arriving sleepless and in poor shape.
Even then, Portugal lost narrowly 2-1 with Eusébio scoring the goal. You could not imagine this kind of conniving
gamesmanship in the game of today. No surprise that, in Portugal, this semi-final is known as the ‘Jogo das lagrimas’—the game of tears.
Eusébio also stamped his name on the European Cup and scored twice in a 5-3 win over Real Madrid in the final in 1962. After the match, the 19-year-old swapped shirts with his boyhood hero Ferenc Puskás.
In that game, Eusébio displayed his trademark politeness. Benfica were awarded a penalty and captain Coluna prepared to take it.
“Senor Coluna, may I take the penalty?” Eusébio asked.
The one man from Mafalala passed the ball to the other; Eusébio scored and the cup was secured.
In 1968, Benfica lost 3-1 to Manchester United at Wembley. Many remember the game for a superb solo goal by George Best; many more will remember it for the moment Eusébio stood and applauded United goalkeeper, Alex Stepney, for
saving one of his bullet shots.
That was the gentleman and sportsman Eusébio was—a humane and gentle spirit who lit up the game and did Africa proud.
In Mozambique, Eusébio was revered during his many visits, but never tempted to return home. Among some in
Mozambique there is a tinge of regret that the great man never brought his energy and skill back to the land of his birth. Coluna did; when his playing days were over he came back to coach the unfashionable Text Chimoio to the national championship followed by many years of work in the
administration of the game in Mozambique. Coluna, who played nearly 700 times for Benfica and 57 times for Portugal, is retired in the quiet suburbs of Maputo, a long ball away from Mafalala where it all began.
Maybe, Eusébio gave his all to the game in the name of Africa and that was enough for one life.

Homage To The Black Panther  And Sacred Monster

Millions loved her, millions more hated her; few could ignore her. When former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher died of a stroke at the Ritz Hotel in London, on April 8, it knocked the rest of the news off the bulletins for days.
It was the end of a life that made waves from Brussels to Africa with an attitude that could both divide and inspire. When she joined Parliament in 1959, the grocer’s daughter from Grantham was one of the few women in a legislature that resembled a gentleman’s club. In her years in Westminster she overcame prejudice against women and people from humble backgrounds.
“You turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning,” said Thatcher in one of her most famous speeches, in 1980.
The Iron Lady—as the Russians dubbed her—criticized Europe, sacked her ministers, went to war with Argentina, poured harsh words and legislation on the unions and scorned Africa’s biggest liberation movement.
Thatcher called the African National Congress (ANC) terrorists, she refused to recognize the party and cast doubt on its ability to govern. Despite this, according to Thomas Wheeler, a research associate at the South African Institute of International Affairs, Thatcher found apartheid unacceptable, even though she didn’t believe in sanctions. Zambian president, Kenneth Kaunda, clashed with Thatcher over apartheid at a Commonwealth conference in Lusaka, but the two ended up dancing the night away in the ballroom.
“We acknowledge that she was one of the strong leaders in Britain and Europe to an extent that some of her policies dominate discourse in the public service structures of the world,” the ANC was gracious enough to say.
Thatcher also had little time for the liberation forces of Zimbabwe, then Rhodesia. In 1979, Thatcher banned her envoy from meeting with ZANU leader Robert Mugabe; refusing to talk with someone she regarded a terrorist, until he became Prime Minister. At the time, Britain was mulling over whether to recognize the interim government of the late Bishop Abel Muzorewa. His was the first black-led administration in Zimbabwe, but nationalists saw it as a puppet regime.
Many Rhodesian British passport holders helped vote in Thatcher in the May 1979 election in the hope that it would postpone independence. Ironically, it was Thatcher who pushed through the Lancaster House talks in London, later that year, that ushered in independence on April 18, 1980—the night when the Union flag came down for the last time and Bob Marley played to jubilant thousands at Rufaro Stadium in Harare.
Two years later the Iron Lady was rusting. Her social welfare cut backs angered the poor and led to riots in 1981; by 1982 she was the most unpopular British Prime Minister in history. When British forces repelled the Argentinians from the Falkland Islands in 1982, Thatcher rode a wave of popularity to a landslide victory in 1983.
On that night, covering my first election, I asked one of the more experienced journalists what this victory meant.
“Fewer and fewer people are going to get richer and richer,” he had said on that night.
So it was. Thatcher borrowed free market theory from the Chicago Business School to turn Britain from a dowdy backwater, laden with regulation and exchange controls, into a dynamic capitalist economy. When she deregulated the financial markets of London in 1986, it made fortunes for the dealers and drew capital and expertise from around the world.
On the way, Thatcher crushed the trade union movement, including a victory over the powerful National Union of Mineworkers in 1985, the union which had brought down the Ted Heath government in the early 1970s.
“If you want to make an omelet you have to break a few eggs but she picked up the shells and smashed them against the wall,” said her former opponent, former Labor leader, Neil Kinnock.
Unrest over the growing inequality of wealth and a riot over a highly unpopular Poll Tax in 1990 sealed Thatcher’s fate and by the end of the year her cabinet colleagues had ousted her in favor of John Major.
In death, Thatcher may have won over many sympathizers from Africa. Thousands of British people organized parties to crow over her death and many people on this continent are likely to frown upon that.
Thatcher was cremated after her funeral on April 17, at St Paul’s Cathedral in London.

THE IRON LADY AND THE TERRORISTS

Master storyteller; revolutionary author; passionate poet. Chinua Achebe was awarded more than 30 honorary degrees and won numerous international prizes, including the 2007 Man Booker International Prize for his achievements in literature. His first novel, Things Fall Apart, was published in 1958, two years before Nigeria gained independence from Britain. The groundbreaking story of village leader Okonkwo and his subsequent downfall was acclaimed for looking at the destructive impact that Western colonial values had on Igbo society. It has sold more than 8 million copies, been translated into more than 40 languages, adapted for the stage and screen and has become required reading for students around the world.
Things Fall Apart was unique. Achebe used it to change the role of African fiction into a tool for social and political analysis and psychological insight. Three days after its publication The Times Literary Supplement wrote that it: “genuinely succeeds in presenting tribal life from the inside”. Through Achebe’s storytelling, and due to him writing in English, which was rare in African literature at that time, the world was introduced to African life as seen through African eyes.
Achebe’s journey towards becoming the father of modern African writing began at a young age. Although his family converted to Christianity, traditional Igbo religion always fascinated Achebe. His interest in Igbo rituals and customs would become a key part of his fictional works, which are filled with depictions of Igbo life and proverbs. At school, Achebe was an avid reader. His love for English literature led him to William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. But the books he read, including Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, often portrayed Africans as uncivilized and in a dehumanizing light, according to Achebe. At first, he agreed with the depictions; however, by 1948, he realized that he had taken on negative Western representations of his own people. He revealed, during a lecture in 1975, that he believed Conrad was a “thorough going racist”.
While studying English, history and theology at the University of Ibadan, where he graduated in 1953, Achebe was compelled to write.
After reading Mister Johnson, the story of a young Nigerian who falls foul of the British colonial regime, by Irish novelist Joyce Cary, Achebe was angered by what he called: “the most superficial picture of not only the country, but even of the Nigerian character”. His desire to become a rebel against Western representations of Africa was sparked. He used his prowess for incisive commentary to tear down European notions of Africa and examine the tensions between African traditions, colonial modernity and Christianity. This, he powerfully demonstrated in four other novels—No Longer at Ease (1960), Arrow of God (1964), A Man of the People (1966) and Anthills of the Savannah (1987)—as well as several poetry anthologies and children’s books, short stories and essays. Achebe can draw the reader in without being overly academic, by using tales about complex individuals as a microcosm for the wider world.
He has used this gift to reflect Africa’s struggles with colonialism to its victorious battles for independence. His criticism has moved from the European colonizers to African leaders and, more recently, to contemporary Western perceptions of Africa.

Farewell The Father Of African Writing

With a glint in his eye, Nelson Mandela used to introduce Arthur Chaskalson thus.
“This is my lawyer… he managed to get me 27 years in prison!”
Chaskalson used to tell the story, against himself, with a laugh. Like the great man himself, the veteran human rights lawyer was a man of impeccable integrity, who never took himself too seriously. Chaskalson was born in Johannesburg in 1931 and studied law at the University of the Witwatersrand from where he graduated in 1954.
In court, Chaskalson was a serious man, who quit a lucrative practice to stand up for the oppressed. For the best part of half a century, he argued for human rights and freedom.
It was a passion forged at the Palace of Justice in Pretoria in 1964, when Chaskalson was a young member of the team that defended Mandela in the famous Rivonia Trial. It was the trial where Mandela and a number of his comrades were accused of sabotage—an offence that carried the death penalty. It was also the trial where world opinion turned in favor of the accused; overnight, criminals transformed into the freedom-seeking Benjamin Franklins of Africa.
“It was mid-winter and I remember he was wearing prison clothes with short trousers. He was in short trousers and the idea of putting people into short trousers was really to humiliate them. But it was impossible to humiliate Mr Mandela, he had this tremendous dignity, which transcended anything anyone could do to him. And from the very beginning of our very first meeting and discussions with everybody, it was clear that everybody respected him and saw him as a leader. Whereas he in turn respected them and insisted on decisions being taken by discussion and consensus not imposed upon anyone. And throughout the trial there was that collegiality and discussion,” Chaskalson told me in 2010.
Chaskalson was also in court when Mandela made his world famous speech from the dock, which took more than more six hours, in which he vowed to die for his beliefs.
“The court was packed, the people were silent and at the very end when he said that these were ideals for which he had struggled and hoped to live for, but if needs be he was prepared to die, there was a dramatic silence which we could actually hear the silence, in the court, and feel it. And it was absolutely quiet, not a sound, and then the judge said Mr Fisher, you can call your next witness.”
The next time Chaskalson saw Mandela across a court room was in 1994. Then President Mandela had made Chaskalson the first president of the highest court in South Africa, the Constitutional Court, and attended the opening ceremony in Johannesburg.
Among the first business to be considered by the new court was an application to restore the death penalty—a weapon that had been used ruthlessly by the apartheid government and abandoned by the new government.
“He sat next to me on the bench and I remember he started by saying: ‘The last time I was in a court it was to hear whether or not I was going to be sentenced to death.’ That’s how he started his comment but the next day we were going to consider whether or not capital punishment was consistent with the Constitution. So it was quite a dramatic, quite a dramatic opening and if he had been executed what would have happened?”
A rhetorical question made possible by brave lawyers, like Arthur Chaskalson, prepared to swim against the dark swirling tide of oppression.

A Giant Of The Courtroom Who Stood Tall For All

“Is there anything that you haven’t done, that you’d still love to do?” I asked Zwelakhe Sisulu towards the end of the interview.
After a deep sigh, he pointedly and regrettably replied, in his trademark baritone voice, “The reason I got into journalism was because of my love for writing. Then I was diverted. I never did what was my first love. I hope that one day I’ll get a farm in some remote area, age gracefully and write.”
Well, it was not to be.
Just over a month later, death would put paid to that wish along with the hope of the journalist who was interviewing him.
On Thursday October 4, I was chairing a public discussion in East London, in South Africa’s Eastern Cape when, the Managing Editor of FORBES AFRICA, Chris Bishop, sent me a text message saying that Zwelakhe Sisulu had died.
It was barely a week after we had published, as part of our October issue, a nine-page focus on the increasingly volatile mining industry in South Africa. Five of the nine pages focused on the chaos in the platinum sector, while the other four were dedicated to manganese mining, looking at whether new players like Kudumane Manganese, of which Sisulu was chairman, were doing anything different to avert the crisis that the platinum sector was experiencing.
Sisulu’s encounters, and views, were the thread that held together the manganese article. Chris and I had subsequently spoken about going back to Sisulu, with the hope of possibly getting him to grace the cover of one of our future issues. The leftovers from my interview would form a good basis from which we could build a really strong lead story about the rise and rise of a journalist-turned-entrepreneur, who had so excitedly told me, “There’s nothing as exciting as being an African in Africa today”.
I knew that it would be one of the easiest stories I would ever be able to tell, for Sisulu himself was the master story teller. Like a good journalist, he had the amazing ability to tell so much, so well, in so few words. When, for example, I asked who had inspired him the most in his life, he gave a simple yet sophisticated reply, “It’s difficult to say, but the man I admired greatly was Oliver Tambo. He’s somebody who stood head and shoulders above everybody else. Joe Matthews looked through you like a prosecutor. Madiba tapped you with a jab. Oliver Tambo hugged you.”
I immediately got the picture, or rather, the message.
Like his hero Tambo—the man who held together South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) for decades in exile, while other leaders like Mandela were in prison—Sisulu appeared soft, yet his intellect was so sharp, his organizational skills impeccable and his determination steely.
Never the one to shy away from new challenges, in July 1978, a mere three years after kicking off his journalism career as a cadet reporter and merely 28 years old, Sisulu was elected president of the newly founded Media Workers’ Association of South Africa; the same year he was appointed news editor of the Sunday Post.
Two years later, he would lead the longest and biggest strike by media workers in the country, ending in successful wage negotiations, albeit the authorities would retaliate by forcing the proprietors of the newspaper he worked for, The Post, to close down.
As if that was not enough, Sisulu—alongside fellow journalists who had led the strike—would be banned for three years, placed under house arrest and would not be allowed to work as a journalist, attend public meetings or even go to townships other than the one in which he lived.
Following the lapse of his banning orders in 1983, Sisulu would get a Nieman Fellowship, a mid-career journalism award entitling him to a year’s study at Harvard University. And it was during this time, sitting among the audience listening to a speech by his hero, that he would not only rekindle his childhood memories of how warm Tambo was, but find other good reasons for admiring him.
“Oliver Tambo stood up and spoke. There isn’t a speech in the world that has made more of an impression on me than that one. The thing about that man was the way he would marshal his facts and use them as galloping horses. He was quite unequalled. I had always thought of the struggle in emotional terms. But when Tambo spoke I understood, for the first time, that there was actually a rational contestation, that it wasn’t just Amandla! Amandla!” recalled Sisulu.
On his return to South Africa in 1985, Sisulu was appointed editor of The New Nation, a new weekly publication sponsored by the Southern African Catholics Bishops’ Conference, one that, in more ways than the publications he had previously worked for, would become a bigger thorn on the side of apartheid’s apologists. Needless to say that more bannings, gagging orders and imprisonment would follow.
When Mandela was released from prison in 1990, Sisulu became his press and private secretary, traveling the world with the revered statesman.
“No one would see Madiba if I didn’t want them to see him. The question rose to me very fundamentally when I was working for Madiba, do I want to be a gatekeeper all of my life?”
Following the historic 1994 democratic elections, after which Mandela was elected South Africa’s first black president, Sisulu was deployed by the ANC-led government to the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), the national public broadcaster, as its first black Group CEO, a position he would hold until 1997.
After leaving the SABC he would become a businessman, with stakes in a string of companies that straddle mining, energy, telecommunication and the media.
As more messages came through to my cellphone on that fateful day, from, among others, board members of a community television station that I chair and which Sisulu’s broadcasting outfit generously supports through funding, equipment and training, and as tributes continued to appear on social media sites from fellow journalists—who either worked with him or who were inspired by his activism as  a journalist—my mind raced back to our encounter a
month earlier.
From the bits he had told me about the years he had spent outside the limelight focusing on building his business empire, I could not help but be in awe of the kind of model entrepreneur he had become, in a continent so desperately in need of them. He told me the story of how he was working with government of São Tomé and some Chinese business people. The terms were that the São Toméan government wouldn’t pay a dime, but after 18 years would own
the station.
Brutally frank, as he was kind, provocative even, he sneered at ongoing suggestions for the nationalization of mines in South Africa. Not surprising for a mining magnate, I pointed out to him during our interview, but he insisted his reasons were more practical than ideological. He cited as examples telecommunications utility Telkom as well as the SABC.
“The major challenge facing this country is the management of public assets. Until and unless we perfect management of public assets, we must not even talk of nationalization.”
Not far from the auditorium, from where I had just received the news of his premature death, was the state of the art minerals polishing factory Sisulu had urged me to visit. Based at the East London Industrial Development Zone, the factory was very special to him, he told me. He was passionate about the project because it was, in part, his way of giving back to the Eastern Cape, the largely impoverished province that gave birth to both his parents, struggle stalwarts Walter and Albertina Sisulu, as well as other outstanding South African liberation heroes like Steve Biko, Mandela and Tambo.

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