There’s no business like family business

Fordsburg is one of Johannesburg’s best shopping districts, especially if you’re hunting for authentic Indian and Pakistani foods. This is the place to go for spices, a decent chicken breyani, buy-in-bulk-and-save samoosas, halaal meat or a hearty lunch after an exhausting morning looking for bargains in the nearby Oriental Plaza. And chances are, the place you want to go is run by an Akhalwaya.

There seems to be an Akhalwaya eatery or takeaway on almost every street in this neighbourhood. Although all the Akhalwayas are related, their businesses are run independently. One of the Akhalwaya stores, for example, functions as a halaal supermarket where I like to stock up on frozen naan breads going cheap-cheap, and where my friend, a Malay-Chinese Muslim from Singapore, was disappointed in her quest for halaal ostrich meat. Other businesses import spices or sell fast food.

Mahmood Akhalwaya (35) is the third generation in his family to be involved in the spice trade. Along with his father Ebrahim and his brother Farhaad, he runs E Akhalwaya & Sons, one of the best known spice importers in South Africa.

‘My grandfather came from India in 1926, I think, and lived in Standerton before he moved to Johannesburg. He was a travelling salesman and he would buy and sell ‘kaffir corn’ as it was then known [milling sorghum] and chillies.” Soon Ismail Akhalwaya opened a shop on what is now Dolly Rathebe Street and let the customers come to him. ‘People used to come from all over to buy spices from him. The Durban spice market only opened afterwards,” says Mahmood.

Ismail had four children — two boys and two girls — who between them have 15 grandchildren ‘and a lot of great grandchildren! My father is one of the sons. The other son is a doctor and his wife runs our Durban branch,” says Mahmood. ‘My dad left school at an early age to work. The family paid the bills for my uncle to be a doctor.”

Initially the shop sold only chillies, curry masala and pickle masala. But because of the family name, which is closely associated with the spice trade, customers began requesting lentils and other pulses and more spices. Nowadays E Akhalwaya & Sons import from all over the world, including India, China, Thailand, the United States, Singapore, Australia and Canada.

Mahmood grew up with the spice trade. ‘At weekends we used to help out. In our last years at school we used to come from school to the factory in the afternoons. We knew what the business was and how things worked. I remember going out to the farm areas to buy chillies, in the Groot Marico and Rustenburg, with my grandparents before I went to school.”

Working in a family business has its ups and downs, says Mahmood, but he values the sense of tradition that comes with the company. ‘On the whole I’m quite okay with it. I had a chance to go on my own, to study. It was never forced on us. We basically chose it.”

He’d like his children to join them in the business one day, but it should be their choice. ‘I’m liberally minded,” says Mahmood, ‘and I’d like them to choose their own paths. I would be very happy [if they joined the business]. I would like it to remain in the family.”

Pick n Pay’s national network of gleaming supermarkets in upmarket shopping centres seems a far cry from the Akhalwaya spice legacy. But this, too, is a family-controlled business. It’s just the scale that’s different.

Its origins are now South African business lore. Raymond Ackerman purchased four small stores in 1967 and the group was listed on the JSE in 1968 as the Pick n Pay Group. Four decades later, Raymond and his wife Wendy are still in charge. Although there’s a non-Ackerman CEO, Nick Badminton, at the helm, Raymond is still chairperson of the group and Wendy is an executive director. The Ackerman Family Trust holds 48% of Pick n Pay Holdings, which in turn has 53% of Pick n Pay Stores.

‘We work very well together. We make a good team, we are synergistic, we are able to spark ideas off each other,” says Wendy. ‘We’re in constant contact during the day and our offices are next to each other.”

In addition they have two children directly involved in the company. An Ackerman son chairs the holding company board and a daughter serves on the Pick n Pay Foundation’s board.

Clearly there isn’t a feeling that business is no place for women. ‘I don’t allow chauvinism or sexism. I’ve been fighting glass ceilings all my life,” says Wendy. She’s proud of the fact that Pick n Pay has recently appointed the first female general manager of a hypermarket. Although women serve on the company’s boards, there was a feeling that this position was too dangerous for women because of the incidence of armed robberies.

Starting the group took courage. ‘It was a challenge. Yes, certainly, it was a challenge. We started in Cape Town and all the other companies were headquartered in Jo’burg.”

Resale price maintenance prevented retailers from competing too closely on goods such as cigarettes, bread and milk, but Pick n Pay took on the system. ‘We had major tussles with government. We cut the price of bread and received a R50 fine from the minister of agriculture. We were selling three or four thousand loaves at the time. But the newspapers came out on our side and they had to back down. We were efficient and we could keep prices down. We still keep bread at a cheaper price,” she says, referring to the ‘ordinary government bread”.

The only battle they haven’t won, she says, is the battle to be allowed to sell petrol. ‘Every time we’ve found a loophole in the law, they’ve blocked it. We’ve been at it for nearly 30 years now. We believe that, if we are more efficient and keep our expenses down, we can sell any product.”

But they’ve also been rewarded with staff loyalty. ‘People tend to stay on,” says Wendy. ‘We have enlightened policies in place, such as nine months’ maternity leave, funeral, housing and education benefits [and share options]. Some of our people have been with us for almost 40 years. We have built up the company over the past 40 years and it’s been hard. We’ve had battles with unions and suppliers.”