Ferial Haffajee
In Cape Town, empowerment is more of an exercise in people’s capitalism than the version on show in Gauteng, the epicentre of black growth.
The Western Cape’s stronger community networks and wealthier communities have ensured that opportunity has been spread more widely.
Drawn largely from the ranks of struggle activists, new brown millionaires are displaying a wily business acumen, which in previous years was put to use doing the accounting for NGOs, running alternative newspapers or raising money for the underground.
The best example of a political elite branching out into business is that of former South African ambassador to Washington, Franklin Sonn, and his son, Crispen, who run a multimillion- rand computer networking company which has won lucrative state and parastatal contracts.
The major empowerment groups all run parallel foundations which foster and fund smaller entrepreneurs, administer bursary schemes or bankroll community sports clubs.
Unlike many Johannesburg operations, which have been fully funded by the banks, the Western Cape groups have often raised their own capital and brought it to the table.
Much of this came from wealthier people in their communities, but in several cases share offers to ordinary people on a buy-now-pay- later basis have been successful. We profile three major Cape groups:
Brimstone Investments
This holding company listed last year and has a net asset value of R500-million. It has interests in food, pharmaceuticals and clothing and it runs a venture capital fund to kick-start small and medium-sized businesses.
Its chief executive and founder, Mustaq Brey, is a self-made millionaire (although he claims that this status was lost in last year’s stock market crash), whose business discipline was instilled by his parents. His father ran a small general dealer, while his mother made and sold 5 000 samoosas a week and put his siblings through university on the proceeds.
Brey studied part-time through Unisa to earn his business degree. He was deemed too black to attend the University of Cape Town and not coloured enough to win entrance to the University of the Western Cape.
Successful at Unisa, he was later made the first black partner of a white Cape Town firm. “It caused some consternation at the time,” says Brey, because the firm was based in Claremont, which at the time was a white group area.
Brey moved on to start a one-man practice in Athlone where he was a well-known struggle accountant. He left two years ago (the firm now has 16 partners and more than 200 staff) to work full-time at Brimstone.
Brimstone invests in the fishing and clothing industries because they are “big work-givers to our community”.
Many of the workers at Brimstone and the companies in which it owns shares own equity through a share-incentive scheme.
Many Brimstone shareholders are ordinary people who made their investment in the stock exchange when they bought Brimstone shares in the past few years.
Luthando Investments
This new all-women company plans to be different to the more corporate women’s investment companies dotted around the country.
More rooted in its community, Luthando wants to create business opportunities in townships and in the poorest provinces.
“We place an emphasis on the rural areas and we will offer shareholding in each of the nine provinces,” says Pat Gorvalla, a veteran Cape Town businesswoman who is the deputy chair of women’s investment group Nozala.
Gorvalla is a former schoolteacher who opted for a career in commerce when she made three times her salary on her first morning as a taxi driver.
There is a certain down-home feel to the new company. We met at the home of Naledi Pandor, the deputy chair of the National Council of Provinces, who is also the chair of Luthando’s board.
A sheep was being slaughtered in the back yard as part of the Eid celebrations, children were everywhere and the doorbell kept ringing as a steady stream of visitors popped in.
Luthando has brought together a completely cross-racial team with a mix of skills which include Pandor’s political connections, Gorvalla’s business suss and a selection of entrepreneurial talent, including an interior designer and a civil engineer.
“Luthando is very attractive to other empowerment groups,” says Pandor. Absa has funded a CEOto work with the group and help them identify deals, raise capital and plan a listing when the time is ripe.
Luthando is still identifying its market niche. Gorvalla’s dream is to start enterprises owned and run by women, like a sweet factory in Khayelitsha, and to send young women to be trained in the United States.
Although their goals are altruistic, Pandor says frankly that she would like to make some money for herself: “I would like to be comfortable as long as I do it with honesty and integrity and not only for myself. There’s nothing wicked about being comfortable.”
Sekunjalo Investments
Another big and well-established Cape Town empowerment group, Sekunjalo has investments in health care, financial services, information technology and fishing.
Like many other Western Cape groups, it displays key links with new power. An MP sits on its board, as does a judge and a member of the Finance and Fiscal Commission.
Sekunjalo will list in the first half of this year. Until then, the company will not say what it is worth. But a brochure states its intention to “broaden the base of ownership”.
Currently, Sekunjalo has 500 direct and 3 000 indirect shareholders. The Sekunjalo Foundation supports several sports clubs and other community projects. It provides mentoring and other business skills to small and medium-sized businesses.
The company has notched up several successes. Premier Fishing, in which it owns a stake, exports lobster to the East, Europe and the Americas, while another subsidiary has won a contract to upgrade computer systems at all Western Cape hospitals.
Thirty-six-year-old Dr Iqubal Surv is the chief executive of Sekunjalo and a key thinker on the philosophy of black empowerment. A former team doctor for Bafana Bafana, Surv was the first black doctor to be made a fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine.
@`Yisha Sathane, yisha tokoloshe’
The Universal church promises to cure Aids, exorcise the devil and much more. But there is a price to pay, writes Bafana Khumalo
They came in their thousands to collect on a promissory note. The promise was simple yet quite profound: “On Sunday the 28th of March there will be a special healing service at Joubert Park. If you are suffering from HIV or Aids or if you have other problems you must come because you will be healed!!!”
The note bore the seal of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God. This was a special open-air healing session. Except for its length – it went on for four hours – it was no different from sessions that are held daily throughout the country, where promises of great health and wealth are given in exchange for a few, if dear, pieces of silver.
The Universal church has exploded in most working-class areas of South Africa. It has taken over every conceivable form of premises, from storefronts to halls to movie houses.
Most cinemas are virtually empty at 10am in the morning. Bar one. By 9.30am in a movie house at the corner of De Villiers and Kerk streets in downtown Johannesburg the patrons are already sitting quietly, some in pairs, talking in muted tones. Men in sober white shirts and ties walk about the 2 000-seat hall, which is slowly but steadily filling up. They could be ushers in any cinema – only these are the ushers of God, the God of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God.
The church uses the cinema for its marathon daily services: the last ends at 8pm. Services are led by “pastors”. Ten of them sit below the stage, hands placed on the heads of a few individuals, some praying, some listening.
A man on stage – seated at a synthesiser – gestures at an unseen sound engineer who adjusts the sound booming out of the state- of-the-art speakers situated all around the walls, some of them concealed in the ceiling. The muted rhubarb fizzles to a hush as a voice booms into cinema: “Lord Jesus Christ, I pray to you this morning …” The gathered throng stand and respond to the voice of the man leading today’s service, “Pastor” Abel, repeating every word after him. (In a later conversation he refuses to give his full name.)
He bellows into the microphone: “Now talk to your lord! Tell him what you want!” Congregants break into individual prayers, some pleading, some cajoling, some collapsing in tearful abandon.
A woman in her late 20s and dressed in a brightly coloured African dress pleads: “Oh Lord, I need you, please help me. You are my last resort …” Such individual conversations with “the lord” are encouraged throughout the service.
Pastor Abel looks on approvingly from the raised stage and stops the session abruptly, commanding: “Say to the person next to you, `The lord is here for you … the disease that you have will go away.'” Obedience follows. He breaks into an energetic ditty that makes the gathered faithful move to the groove.
The ushers are joined by women dressed in navy-blue skirts and shirts. All wear badges with the insignia of the church, a red heart with a white dove. They patrol the aisles, hawk-eyed.
The song is so gay that whenever the accompanist on the synthesiser breaks into a drum solo, some of the gathered faithful break into whistles and ululation. The atmosphere is carnival. “You are not sick because you are supposed to be sick,” smiles Pastor Abel happily into the microphone, “you are sick because you are hiding your joy!” The day’s healing session is about to start.
Pastor Abel instructs everyone to go to one side of the cinema. The pastors form a corridor on the opposite side, through which everyone must walk in order to be healed. “We are going to burn the devil out of you, we are going to heal your body, the lord is going to get the tokoloshe out of you,” he rattles into the microphone as the people walk through the gauntlet of pastors who touch them and pray as they pass.
Everyone has now broken into individual prayers and to soundtrack this process Pastor Abel intones into the microphone, “Yisha Sathane. Yisha tokoloshe [Burn Satan. Burn tokoloshe].” He repeats the phrase, dragging the middle vowel of the first word such that his voice starts resembling a blowing wind. The accompanist gets in on the act, playing sound effects of thunder and lightning. The din drowns out any of the sounds that might have seeped through from the bootleg music salesmen who hawk their wares outside on the street.
When Pastor Abel gets tired he hands the microphone to one of 22 pastors who take up the howl, screaming into the microphone, screaming, screaming …
Some of the people – mostly young women of slight build – overcome by emotion are taken up on stage and a wrestling match ensues between the women and zealous pastors as they shout prayers – “Show yourself Satan, get out of here Satan!” – in a relentless physical and aural assault. The “laying of hands” is violent – the women are grabbed by the throat, almost throttled, some of the women nearly losing consciousness.
At the end of this session eight women are still on stage. Pastor Abel points at the audience and declares, “All of the people on this side have had their demons removed” and turns to the stage: “The people who still need praying for are these. Let’s pray for them.” Another assault begins as some of the women scream and shout, inviting shouts from Pastor Abel: “Scream Satan! Burn Satan! Scream Satan!”
After 10 minutes, only a woman in her early 20s remains. “Oh, this one is stubborn. This tokoloshe doesn’t know what the lord is made of. We’ll show him. We’ll show him. Get out! Sathane! Get out! Get out!” he screams as his voice echoes, courtesy of the unseen sound engineer. The woman struggles as she is grabbed and wrestled by three of the “pastors”. Finally she relaxes and staggers off stage, seemingly sapped of all energy.
Pastor Abel is pleased with himself. “Look at the person next to you and ask him, `Do you still believe in Jesus? See you next week.'” The congregants oblige, including a young man of about 16 who looks zoned out on glue. He is quickly ejected by two of the “pastors”.
Pastor Abel tells them that this is the most important part of the service, “Where you receive the blessings that you came here for.” A few people smile as he says that those who want to receive those blessing should come up front. “I am going to start with anyone who wants to give R200 upwards to come forward. Come and plant and you will reap. Come forward. Do I have anyone for R200 upwards?”
His delivery is now akin to that of an auctioneer. A stony, shamed silence greets him. “Akekho bazalwane [Isn’t there anyone, fellow Christians]?” he asks. “Say `Amen’. Don’t be ashamed,” he sympathises, immediately moving to the next scale of blessings. “Those who say they will give R100 upwards come forward and receive your blessings.” Three people walk to the front and hand money to the male “pastors” who touch each on the head.
Pastor Abel asks one, a well-dressed man, “How many cars do you have?” The man responds: “Six.” A satisfied smile spreads across Pastor Abel’s face as he says: “You see, he had nothing when he came here, now six cars. This is what happens when you plant.”
The scale goes down right down to 50c, the blessing session with the most subscriptions.
The last pitch is for a swab of cotton wool “which you can use on all those people who are sick. You can even put it inside your purse, go to the bank and say, `Lord, heal me, I am sick financially.'” Here the scale starts at a paltry R50 and slides down to R10.
It’s noon, the packed hall has halved, the next service has started. Another pastor has started hissing into the mike: “Yeesha, yeesha Sathane.” The banner outside declares: “Stop suffering! A new life awaits you! Universal Church of the Kingdom of God.”