A savvy investment banker and businesswoman is about as close as one can get to choosing an ideal candidate to run the investment arm for South Africa’s economic engine room, Gauteng.
Nomhle Canca slipped quietly into her job as CEO of Blue IQ Investments Holdings last September and may find that her three-year tenure coincides with arguably the most exciting, or most frustrating, phase of Blue IQ.
Conceptualised in 1997 and established in 2000, Blue IQ was corporatised in 2003 and must now deliver on its mandate, which Canca describes as “correcting market failures”.
To the distant observer Blue IQ seems like a good idea, grouping a range of seemingly disparate projects. A closer inspection suggests a mixed success story, something that may one day be called Shilowa’s curate egg, after the Gauteng premier.
“I describe Blue IQ’s success in three phrases,” she says.
The first achievement was in identifying sectors where suitable investment can be made. That process identified information and communication technology (ICT), tourism and high-value-added manufacturing.
The second phase was in identifying actual investment opportunities. The company is now in charge of projects as diverse as the Gautrain Rapid Rail Link, The Newtown Cultural Precinct and Cradle of Humankind, the City Deep Logistics hub as well as the Johannesburg International Airport Industrial Development Zone (IDZ). These projects have attracted R3,2-billion worth of investment between 2001 and 2003.
The phase that Canca now oversees involves the investments that are coming up to commercial viability and the Gauteng provincial government reducing its holding or even disposing of them. That is where the mixed success lies.
The Automotive Supplier Park in Rosslyn, just outside Pretoria, is a resounding success. An 80ha piece of land has been allocated to accommodate car-parts manufacturers and suppliers. Its building programme is running two years ahead of schedule, and houses both original equipment manufacturers and component makers.
Other areas may prove more challenging. Blue Catalyst, the division responsible for stimulating the local venture capital market by investing in high-risk, knowledge-based industries and innovations, is a case in point. According to Jenny Yates, an executive manager, or chief catalyst, at Blue Catalyst, they have seen 350 project proposals. Of these, they signed 12 memoranda of understanding. In the end, they offered seed funding of R300 000 to four projects. And one project received venture capital funding of R7,5-million.
Canca says the low proportion of projects that ultimately gets funded is compensated for by the high rewards from the high risks that it bears.
Canca notes that she has been an investor for many years, “the difference now is that I have the government as my partner, which is a big stick to walk with”.
So, where have they had the least success? “Where we have had challenges,” she says euphemistically, “is in areas like the Gautrain and Johannesburg International Airport IDZ. This is because they work with multiple layers of government and multiple government departments. Thus, reaching decisions takes time.”
Canca has spent most of her life preparing to live in a rapidly changing society such as post-1994 South Africa. She spent the 20 years up to 1991 in Atlanta and it was during that period she witnessed two fascinating processes.
The first was seeing blue-collar workers leave their jobs to run companies and lift themselves from lower-income status to upper-middle-income.
The second process was witnessing Atlanta rise from a sleeping giant to one of America’s leading hosts of international headquarters. Canca firmly believes the metamorphosis she witnessed is possible in Johannesburg.
The American experience has left her with a heavy accent. You should hear her say the word gemors (mess). It is as funny as it is extraordinary.
Canca burst on to the national scene in 1993 when, having returned from exile two years earlier, she founded Wiphold alongside Wendy Luhabe, Louisa Mojela and Gloria Serobe.
Her departure at Wiphold was shrouded in acrimony, yet she is content in her reflection that “she went out and looked for investments for Wiphold” and now remains a shareholder to one of its trusts. She also has an investment company in the fast-moving consumer-goods sector, thereby avoiding a clash with her Blue IQ work.
Canca describes herself as being in a “reflective” mood right now, with much of her time outside work taken up by her six- and four-year old children. That probably explains why her 40th birthday, coming up in October, will be spent in the seclusion of a spa, rather than at a big bash.
Her extended family was forced into exile by the assassination of her grandfather, Chief Albert Luthuli. They scattered to various parts of the world, the result being that, when the family celebrated its first Christmas back in South Africa in 1993, there was a confluence of Russian and British accents to add to her own American, much to the fascination of Luthuli’s widow, Nokukhanya. Just as the chief could never have imagined the impact his life would have on the liberation struggle, he could never have imagined the impact his death would have on his family.