South African Entrepreneur
South African Entrepreneur
From humble beginnings, together with his late wife, Marina Maponya, Richard opened Maponya’s Dairy Products in Soweto. It was from this that he was able to establish other retail businesses including Maponya Supply Stores, a general dealer which included greengrocers, butchery and eating house. He continuously sought new business opportunities to diversify. However, this wasn’t easy given the restrictive laws of the time prohibiting black people to engage in certain business interests. He then opted to remain within the purview of the permitted trading interests and established a string of businesses including; the first motor franchise in Soweto, Mountain Motors, which had a General Motors dealership, which later closed down when GM disinvested in the country; petrol filling stations, a supermarket – the largest yet in Soweto, a BMW franchise (the first in Soweto) – Soweto BMW, Bottle Stores, one of only two car hire operations, bus service and a funeral parlour among others.
When Coca-Cola disinvested in South Africa, Mr. Maponya put together a group of black business men and formed a company, Kilimanjaro Holdings (Pty) Ltd. And successfully bid for a bottling plant in East London. He also successfully bid for one of the first cell phone service providers.
Through his retail businesses, Richard Maponya has been involved in property development for many years, and has been actively developing nationally for investment purposes and for 3rd parties for over 10 years. Mr. Maponya’s development of a regional shopping centre in Soweto, Maponya Mall, is said to be the largest private investment into Soweto and ‘has changed the face of Soweto’. The iconic Maponya Mall is a symbol of hope and a catalyst for development in Soweto and many such areas.
Other achievements include:
• Recipient of the National Order of the Baobab, the highest honour a country bestows on individuals
• Recipient of Honorary Doctorate from University of Johannesburg
• Recipient of Honorary Doctorate from Tshwane University of Technology
• Recipient of the prestigious Ernst & Young Award: A Dream in the Making
• Recipient of the ‘Financial Mail Little Black Book: Lifetime Achiever Award’
• Recipient of ‘Sunday Times Top 100 Companies: Lifetime Achievement Award’
• A Trustee and founder member of The Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund
• Founder and first president of NAFCOC (The National African Federated Chambers of Commerce).
• Founder and Chairman of the Johannesburg African Chamber of Commerce, (a position held for fourteen years).
• Served on CODESA I & II
• Was Instrumental in establishing African Bank Limited with the objective of creating a financial institution that would understand the needs of the black entrepreneur and consumer and provide such products
• Founder member Black-Chain Limited which was a Black owned supermarket group
• Founder of Afrimet – a wholesale business whose intention was to leverage the buying power of the black retail entrepreneurs
• Was Chairman of Kilimanjaro Holdings, a wholly black owned Coca-Cola bottling company and the first Black company to be listed on the JSE
• Was first Black in SA to be awarded horse racing colours, (ANC colours) at a time when there was still opposition to this type of progress in this sector and went on to become a leading racehorse owner and breeder.
• Served on the board of Telkom Limited
• Mr. Richard Maponya together with his late wife, Marina Maponya, were among the first to be invited to dine with Dr. Mandela at Victor Vester Prison prior to his release. Was honoured to be the first to fetch Mr. Mandela and his entourage when he first returned to Johannesburg after his release from prison.
• Hosted a number of International dignitaries such as Dona Fologo, Moshe Dayan, Congressman Edward Kennedy, Congressman W.M.L. Dickinson and Harry Oppenheimer, amongst others.
• Hosted Mac Hendry, a former Ambassador of the United States
• Has had the pleasure of addressing international business leaders and decision-makers on various economic and business subjects and outlook for SA during
• Has hosted first Black World Champion Tennis player Arthur Ashe
• Hosted acclaimed international singer Percy Sledge
Richard Maponya, son of the soil, is well respected in the business circles, political arena and communities at large. He is a role model and a true South African Icon.
Wendy holds a portfolio of interests and has been a social entrepreneur since 1991 after 10 years in corporate marketing of a luxury brand. Wendy recently stepped down as Chairman of Vendome SA, the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), the International Marketing Council (IMC) responsible for Brand South Africa and as director of the Johannesburg Securities Exchange. She is a Trustee of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award International Foundation to equip young people for life, a Patron for Junior Achievement South Africa to develop entrepreneurial capacity, a member of the founding board of Patrons for Student Sponsorship Programme, which has enabled more than 500 academically distinguished students from low-income families in South Africa to access private school education, a Chancellor of the University of Johannesburg, on the board of the International Institute of Management Development in Switzerland and also sits on the International Advisory Board of Essec Business School in France.
Wendy is a recipient of two Honorary Doctorates in commerce for her pioneering contribution to the economic empowerment of women. She is currently assisting an entrepreneur to start a global movement of entrepreneurship, which will be launched during 2011. Over the past 15 years, Wendy has received international recognition from the World Economic Forum in Switzerland as a Global Leader for Tomorrow, the Osaka Junior Chamber in Japan as an Outstanding Young Person, Leadership in Practise by Unisa Business School in South Africa and Woman of Worth from the Jewish Achievers Awards in South Africa. She is featured regularly in various media (Sunday Times, Financial Mail) as one of South Africa’s most powerful women.
Wendy's vision is for Africa to grow up, to take
her rightful place in the world, to be responsible, to think of future
generations and to change the image of poverty, war, genocide, poor
leadership and corruption.
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Mark
Shuttleworth South African Entrepreneur |
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Mark Shuttleworth is an African entrepreneur
most well-known for his First African in Space Mission, where he travelled
as a cosmonaut member of the crew Soyuz mission TM34 in April 2002. He is also the founder of the Ubuntu Project, a popular Linux-based operating system that is freely available worldwide for desktops and servers. Ubuntu was founded in 2004 for consumers and large-scale enterprise deployments alike. It is used by a number of people, from those who just want a PC that works for the web, to heavy industry, massive cloud computing environments, national police forces, banks and schools in the Amazon. From 2004 – 2010, Mark had the responsibility of CEO of Canonical. He lead design and product strategy at Canonical Ltd, the company behind Ubuntu. Canonical provides support on a commercial basis for the free Ubuntu operating system. It also builds many of the unique elements of Ubuntu for desktop, cloud and server deployments. Mark is passionate about the triple thrusts of cadence, design and quality in open source. He believes that free software can become the de facto standard way the world builds and experiences all software. His current focus is primarily on design, championing the idea of design-driven development and finding ways to bring design thinking into the open source process. He is also the founder of a number of other projects including Thawte, a company specialising in digital certificates and cryptography; HBD, an investment company and The Shuttleworth Foundation, which funds innovative thinkers to bring about change in society. Mark studied Finance and Information Technology at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. |
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