Augustine Motsepe, father to mogul Patrice Motsepe, Richard Maponya and Ephraim Tshabalala were millionaires during Apartheid at a time when Black people were prohibited from owning land or running any meaningful businesses. How did they do this?
Firstly, one thing a lot of Black millionaire businessmen during Apartheid had in common was that they all started making their fortunes starting from the mid 1960s and particularly the late 1970s...
This period coincides with the adoption by the Apartheid government's adoption of the Bantu Councils Act in 1961 and the formation of the Urban foundation by the Rupert, Oppenheimer and Menell families.
Primarily, the Bantu Councils Act was designed by the Apartheid govt to form bodies in the townships that would govern on behalf of the Afrikaners, due to growing resistance to white administrators in the "locations"
Essentially, residents in townships were to elect Black mayors and councilors who would then be funded by and act on behalf of the government. These councilors were intended to shield the govt from increasingly restless Black people in the townships
How the system worked was the councilors would be responsible for issuing trading licences in the townships for anyone wishing to start a business, to monitor compliance with state restrictions on what could be sold & enforce limits on amounts of stock a trader could hold at once
For instance, licences would be awarded for specific business activities – such as trade in fresh produce - but not fresh meat, which forced inhabitants of the township to purchase meat from businesses in white-owned businesses
As councilors were representatives of the Apartheid govt and were allowed to start businesses of their own - Pretoria would look the other way when they violated the rules. Hence they automatically had a leg up on other non-connected businessmen
For instance, Richard Maponya, a member of the Bantu Council in Soweto, received a licence to sell groceries, open a butchery to establish a “Bantu” restaurant. Black people were not allowed to sell medicine, however he was able to stock and sell it in his store
This was was the same technique employed by Ephraim Tshabalala, who used his membership of the Sofasonke Party to get elected into the Bantu Council, by 1968 he was declared a millionaire
When Tshabalala eventually became mayor of Soweto in 1983, he had a car dealership, shopping complex, a dry cleaners, a meat market, a cinema, a butchery and restaurant. He also had over 100 rental houses, each worth an equivalent of R2 million today
During his campaign to become mayor of Soweto, Tshabalala threw a US$60K wedding for his son Vusi to a Swati princess. About which he said:
''I wanted to show that in South Africa, we are not slaves. When you are hard at work, you can make millions. The sky is the limit if you work. You can never be a politician, you can never lead the people in the right way if you are empty of stomach. A man must have something"
About his eligibility as mayor, Tshabalala continued, "a man must have something so he can talk for his own interests, not like a man who speaks for his own trousers only"
Tshabalala was forced to resign in December 1984, less than a year after becoming mayor, when residents increasingly resisted the council system and started killing councilors and burning down their houses, questioning the source of their funding, which was never really clear
Richard Maponya himself had resigned from the UBC in 1977 under pressure from the youth of Soweto. Incidentally, this was the year the Oppenheimer-Rupert-Menell Urban Foundation was formed...
The purpose of the Urban Foundation was to create a Black middle class that would act as buffer between the poor disenfranchised, increasingly angry Black people in the townships and white people in the cities. Maponya and Cyril Ramaphosa were some of the first beneficiaries.
The Urban Foundation, like the Urban Bantu Councils was decidedly a concept designed to spread the impression that any Black person who "worked hard" could prosper just like any white person, a misconception that many Africans harbour to this day...
For example, in The Big Debate, a talkshow on SABC 2, Moeletsi Mbeki proudly pointed out that "Black people in South Africa are not oppressed", and that's why Motsepe is a billionaire. Well...Motsepe's father was a wealthy farmer during Apartheid. So there's levels to this.
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