Making money is not all the owners of African Harvest are interested in they also believe in fulfilling their corporate responsibility
Mail & Guardian reporter New chip rather than blue chip is how the black empowerment company African Harvest sees itself. OWe are a new South Africa company,O says executive chair Mashudu Ramano. OWe are fully integrated and representative at management, staff and ownership.O He says the financial services and investment company is well-placed within the South African economy, but in the global context it becomes more a matter of scale.
African Harvest has the skills, but not yet sufficient resources, to compete on equal footing with companies that have existed for 40 to 50 years. Yet this has not stopped the company from opening branches in Namibia and Tanzania. OAs South Africa becomes part and parcel of a fully integrated Southern African Development Community region, business is becoming borderless,O says Ramano. The driving force is Onew business, new rulesO and doing business differently in an innovative way. This is perhaps characteristic of RamanoOs own life. He started working as a messenger at Liberty Life, completed a BCompt degree through the University of South Africa and landed a job in the actuarial department of what was then Anglo American Life. In 1991 he opened the doors to his own consultancy.
He has held various positions with the National African Chambers of Commerce, written as a freelance journalist, volunteered at the National Institute for Crime Prevention and the Rehabilitation of Offenders (Nicro) and was a founder member of the Association for the Advancement of Black Accountants in Southern Africa. African Harvest was listed in October 1997 as a joint venture between Coronation Holdings, 10 trade unions and African Legend formerly the National Empowerment Corporation (Necorp) of 30 small groups representing 300 000 people. Necorp raised the cash to acquire a 3% stake in the National Empowerment Consortium, which then bought Johnnic. The value of shares soared and returns flowed back to the small groups within Necorp.
For example, the KwaZulu-Natal-based womenOs investment company, Akhona Trade and Investments, raised enough cash to repay the loan they had taken out for the shares and remain with a pile of cash. Women remain high on the agenda at African Harvest in recognition of their contribution to the South African economy. The company transfers a percentage of profits to the WomenOs Initiative Fund, which in turn makes available finance to various projects around South Africa. Other corporate responsibility programmes include sponsoring rural schools in the Eastern Cape; several youth-related projects, including a job experience placement programme in the Western Cape; and one development programme involving the San in the Northern Cape. It is not all rands and cents at African Harvest. Earlier this year the company sponsored the Cape Town leg of the annual North Sea Jazz Festival at The Hague in The Netherlands.
OWe are all jazz lovers,O Ramano says. OIt gives us an opportunity to support a most important aspect of the South African industry, the music industry.O