Patrice Motsepe

…entered the mining business when South Africa ended apartheid. Today the onetime lawyer and avowed capitalist is the country's first black billionaire.

On a brilliantly sunny Thursday in January, Patrice Motsepe, a vigorous 46-year-old with regal posture, is striding through a gleaming shopping mall on the Cape Town waterfront. Suddenly a crowd forms. A half dozen employees from the Build-A-Bear Workshop ask for his autograph.
Two giggling young women roll up their sleeves as Motsepe signs their arms with a black marker, smiling while admirers snap photos with cell phones. An older woman approaches Motsepe and nearly swoons, grasping his arm and laying her head on his chest as he pats her back and murmurs thank you in Xhosa, one of the six African languages he speaks.

 

 

 

All this is not for a movie star or entertainer but for South Africa's first black billionaire. Over 15 years Motsepe, preaching free market capitalism, turned a low-level mining services business into the country's first black-owned mining company, African Rainbow Minerals, with 2007 revenue of $875 million. Driven by the Asian commodities boom, ARM's share price has rocketed in the past year from $12 to $24, pushing the value of Motsepe's net worth to $2.4 billion. Motsepe, a lawyer by training, serves as ARM's executive chairman, with a 42% stake in the company. He also owns a 5.5% stake worth $295 million in Sanlam, a publicly traded financial services company outside Cape Town.

By billionaire standards Motsepe has a modest lifestyle. His three sons attend prestigious private schools, but he has only one home, in the affluent Johannesburg suburb of Bryanston, and no yacht or plane. His one indulgence is to own the Mamelodi Sundowns, a soccer team. It doesn't tarnish his star quality that he's married to one of South Africa's most glamorous women, a medical doctor turned fashion impresario.

But for all the adulation, in South Africa such success comes with a price: being labelled an oligarch. Even many blacks have complained that the country's 1994 transformation from apartheid to democracy has benefited only the elite few. The criticism stems from laws that require substantial black ownership in certain industries, including mining. A handful of politically connected individuals have grown enormously wealthy as a result. One of Motsepe's sisters, Bridgette Radebe, who's married to transport minister Jeffrey Radebe, heads a mining company and is said to be among the wealthiest black women in the country. "It's called crony capitalism," says Moeletsi Mbeki, 62, brother of South Africa's president and an outspoken critic of the race-preference laws. "It's an anticompetitive system."

Moeletsi Mbeki

It cost about $ 700,000 to make, not counting the five years of research Wrage and his colleagues put into it. It operates at 100-300m above surface level - much higher than a normal sailing craft - where winds are stronger and more stable. The kite can be used in winds of 12-74km/h and not just when the wind is blowing directly from behind the ship. Larger kites could cut fuel usage by 30 to 50 percent, Wrage said. The company hopes to double the size of the kites to 320 square meters and then expand them again to 600 square meters by 2009. They intend to fit 1,500 ships with the sails by 2015.

Motsepe concedes he benefited from the system yet says that his success was no handout, as he began building his mining business before the laws started taking effect in 2005. He says, "The legislation came way after we did our deals."
Motsepe and his family were in a better position than most to take advantage of the end of apartheid. Born in the sprawling black township of Soweto (next to Johannesburg), where his mother had grown up, Motsepe is a member of a royal clan within the Tswana tribe. He is, in fact, a prince.

Motsepe's father, Augustine Motsepe, was a critic of the apartheid regime. Before his son Patrice was born, Augustine was banished by the government to Hammanskraal, a rural area north of Pretoria where the government thought he could do less damage (he named his son after Patrice Lumumba, head of the Republic of the Congo and one of the first black African postcolonial leaders). There he opened a grocery store and then a beer hall and restaurant. "People don't know that there were very successful black businessmen in the years of apartheid," says Motsepe.

Though one of Patrice's maternal great-grandfathers came from Scotland, the old government classified the Motsepes as African. The family had to pull strings to get their seven children admitted to an Afrikaans-language Catholic boarding school that was officially designated for so-called "coloureds," South Africans of mixed race. From age 6, Motsepe spent school holidays working behind the counter in his father's store, where he says he learned his earliest lessons about business. "Whenever my father made a profit, he always ploughed it back into the store," Motsepe recalls.

He graduated from the University of Swaziland and then became one of the few black law graduates of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, designated whites-only by the apartheid government (Motsepe had to apply for an exemption to attend). In 1988 he joined Bowman Gilfillan, one of South Africa's largest corporate law firms, and in 1993 he became the firm's first black partner. Energetic and affable, Motsepe never wore his race on his sleeve, says Bowman partner and long time Motsepe lawyer and confidant Neil Rissik.
Indeed, ask Motsepe about what it was like to grow up as a black man under the violent, racist apartheid regime and he responds with bromides. "The apartheid system was very bad for our people, very bad," he says blandly, switching quickly to the positive. "Only in South Africa could you have a change in government without civil war. If there wasn't the depth of love and caring among our people, this would not have happened."

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How to Catch a Cheating Spouse?

There are some common signs to look for if you're concerned that your spouse is being unfaithful.

- You start receiving hang up calls on the phone.
The other person might be calling to see if your partner will answer. If you don't have caller id - get it. Then you can see who the hang up calls are coming from. You may choose to call the number back and see if you recognize the voice. If you do this, call from a pay phone so that your number isn't recognized.

- Your spouse starts working a lot of hours or taking a lot of business trips.
See what you can do to verify your spouse's whereabouts. If they're going out of town, be sure to get an itinerary. Try calling the hotel room when he wouldn't expect it; maybe an hour after you've talked and said goodnight for the evening.

 

 

 

 

 

- Your spouse stops wearing their wedding ring.

Unless something such as a dramatic weight gain or weight loss has occurred, it's suspicious if your partner suddenly stops wearing a wedding ring.

 

 

- Interest in sex is lacking.
If your partner's sex drive suddenly declines significantly, it could be a big sign that something's going on. Some people are simply not interested in their spouse sexually once they have a new partner; others feel too guilty to have sex with their spouse when they're sleeping with someone else. Be aware that a decline in sex drive can be caused by stress, medication, or other issues as well.

 

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You lose access to bills.

If you suddenly no longer have access to the cell phone bill, the home phone bill or your spouse's credit card bill, it could be a sign that there's something on those bills they don't want you to see.

 

- Your spouse suddenly wants to try new sexual techniques.
It is a paradox of affairs that a cheater will often have a renewed interest in sex with you. If your partner hasn't indicated a desire to work on your sex life, you might well wonder whether he or she learned these techniques elsewhere.

- The emphasis on your partners appearance increases, they join a gym, etc.
Unless this is part of a desire to get healthy decided on by the both of you, your partner might be interested in looking good for someone else.

 

 

- You begin to get showered with gifts.
If your spouse is suddenly away from home more than usual, but brings you a gift nearly every time they come home, your partner could be buying you gifts both to ease the guilt and to avoid making you suspicious.

If your spouse is demonstrating some of the above behaviors, you may have legitimate cause to worry. Take time to examine your relationship and see if there are clues as to why your spouse might be looking elsewhere; though there are certainly situations where there don't seem to be any concrete reasons why people cheat.

If you believe your spouse is cheating, it may be wise to look for some evidence before you confront them. Many cheating spouses will tell you that it's "just your imagination" when you confront them with your suspicions. If you want to get to the bottom of the situation once and for all, confronting your partner with evidence is the best way. Find those hidden cell phone bills. Read personal emails, Check into travel arrangements for those "business trips".

Infidelity in a marriage is one of the most devastating things we can face. But, until you know once and for all whether or not your spouse is really cheating, you can't deal with the situation and try to recover. Intuition is often right on target; if you think something is wrong and your spouse is displaying cheating behavior, there's a good chance with your life. You're right. So, take the time to find out what's really going on in your marriage so that you can get on.

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