Reg Rumney and Janet Wilhelm offer tips gleaned from research for their book, Movers &Shakers: An A-Z of South African Business People
What makes a “captain of industry”? Our encounters with the top people in business suggest that touching 2m tall would help.
The heads of our major corporations often tower over lesser mortals, like Sanlam executive chairMarinus Daling, South African Breweries chair Meyer Kahn and Barlow executive chair Warren Clewlow. Few are short, though Liberty Life founder Donny Gordon and Sol Kerzner of Sun City fame fit into the category of men whose physical size is outshone by their energy.
It has also helped to be white. Affirmative action, black empowerment and legislation in the form of the Employment Equity Bill, though they have generated much media coverage, have not changed the business landscape radically – yet.
Perhaps fears that the government might engineer radical change at the top has been one reason that big corporations have transferred their head offices overseas, though their executives maintain the reason for listing in London is access to a bigger pool of capital and that they themselves are not really relocating. Patriotism is part and parcel of business success.
The jury is out on whether one needs to be born with “connections” to succeed. Kerzner came from the wrong side of the tracks, for instance – although he knew about cultivating the politically powerful. Kahn is famously the “Boykie from Brits”, and the black executives have fought their way out of varying degrees of poverty, sometimes into political careers first, to become businesspeople. Richard Maponya, who made his fortune despite the apartheid laws designed to keep blacks out of the mainstream economy, started out running a dairy, for example.
But family ties do play their part. Some of the most successful firms in South Africa are, or started out as, family businesses.
The power of blood ties cuts across race. One of the most successful black companies is that of the five Kunene brothers; the new head of the South African branch of multinational bank ABN Amro is Werner Stals, son of former Reserve Bank governor Chris Stals; Nando’s Robbie Brozin was lucky enough to be financed initially by his father Max.
It does help to be born into a dynasty, like the Oppenheimers, the Ruperts or the Menells – but not all founders can pass on their businesses to their scions. Raymond Ackerman’s two sons have given way to a professional manager in Sean Summers; none of Gordon’s heirs plays a major role in Liberty Life and even Nicky Oppenheimer is not – not yet, anyway – chair of Anglo- American.
The Golding sons, though, have followed their mother, Pam, into the real estate company she started, and they head up companies in the group. And Bill Venter has appointed his sons as chief executives of two of the companies in his Altron Group.
The “old school tie” possibly helps one get to the top, but certainly not to the extent it does in the United Kingdom. It is surprising how many top businesspeople went, like Donny Gordon, to King Edward’s High School, among them Derek Keys, who engineered Gencor’s reversal of fortune and became the first minister of finance in the Government of National Unity. Didata’s founder Jeremy Ord is loyal to his alma mater and has recruited from his old school, Roosevelt High.
And it’s true that Rembrandt has found many of its executives at Stellenbosch University. A Stellenbosch University friendship with Johann Rupert led to GT Ferreira taking over Rand Merchant Bank, leading to the stupendously successful banking venture.
More important than the “right” university, a chartered accountancy qualification is almost a must. Professor Wiseman Nkuhlu, the first black chartered accountant in the country, who also founded the University of Transkei’s department of accounting, has been a player in the black empowerment arena.
Nonkululeko Gobodo, the first black woman to qualify as a chartered accountant in South Africa, is both head of an investment company and acting managing director of the women’s investment company Pontso.
The other favourite piece of paper is an engineering degree, often in mining. This stands to reason, in light of the continuing importance of mining in our economy. Phuthuma Nhleko of Worldwide African Investments, however, is putting the one he received in Ohio in the United States to good use in the telecommunications and oil industries.
An accountancy or engineering degree is often supplemented with a qualification from an overseas business school specialising in intensive business courses. Nhleko also has an MBA from Atlanta. Transnet’s executive director of finance, Gloria Serobe, earned her MBA at Rutgers University in New Jersey in the US – and they both got there on scholarships.
Few of the top businesspeople are without any formal qualification. One exception is Eugene van As, who has built Sappi into a huge multinational company with no more than a matric.
In banking a degree has not done any harm, but it does not seem to have mattered as much as long service. First National Bank’s Viv Bartlett came up through the ranks, for example. So did Nedcor’s chief executive, Richard Laubscher.
Being sports mad, particularly playing golf, is almost essential for success. Absa’s Danie Cronje has admitted to a near obsession with the game.
Laubscher is one of the few top business people who does not play golf. He seems unusual in actively setting aside time for his family. Most businesspeople state in interviews that family life is important, but at the same time attribute their success to hard work. And many do seem to work long hours.
South Africa’s top businesswomen are sometimes asked how they juggle the demands of family and work. This question is never asked of their male counterparts, who seem to rely on their “corporate wives” to take care of that side of their lives.
Not so with black businesspeople, who often come as power couples – often straddling business and politics. Sarhwu Investment Holdings MD Israel Skosana’s wife, Ursula, is the founder of a women’s investment company, for example.
Indeed, the emerging black businesspeople are notable not only for breaking into the world which was for so long the preserve of whites, but also for their diversity. One of the few things many have in common is having done time on Robben Island.
Movers & Shakers: An A-Z of South African Business People is published by Penguin, and will be on the bookshop shelves this weekend for R69,95