Louise Flanagan
ANYONE can make it in the new South Africa.
The East London Small Business Development Corporation and the Institute of Marketing Management yesterday presented its Emergent Entrepreneur award to former Military Intelligence agent Basie Oosthuysen, who currently runs a sewing school for unemployed people.
Oosthuysens previous business experience was in running an educational organisation called Dynamic Teaching, part of a network of front companies run with the help of MI funds. Later he set up and ran the African Democratic Movement, political vehicle for former Ciskei military ruler Brigadier Oupa Gqozo.
Two of the four finalists for the award were Andrew van Wyk, owner of Queenstowns Buffalo Springs Spur which was destroyed in a limpet mine bombing by Apla in December 1992, and Zandisile Ngwanya.
Ngwanya, who owns a butchery, used to be a major general in the Ciskei security police until he was jailed for complicity in the July 1987 murder in detention of activist Eric Mntonga. As a businessman, Ngwanya had unusual problems — his Ciskei bottlestore was bombed by another senior policeman whom he had implicated in the Mntonga murder.