SOWETO TYCOON’S DESCENDANTS CARRY HIS TORCH

ENDEAVOUR: Late Soweto entrepreneur Ephraim “Mshengu” Tshabalala’s two grandchildren set out to relive his legacy by opening an OPC franchise at the family’s new shopping centre…

By  Len Maseko

Under the apartheid system, black business toiled in a prohibitive environment deliberately created to limit its growth – in line with discriminatory policies that subjugated natives.

Yet, a  small group of black entrepreneurs still managed to break through the apartheid mould to carve a place for themselves in their rural and township neighbourhoods – all without access to capital which shored up their white counterparts under the Nationalist Party rule.

Among them were notables such as Ephraim Tshabalala, Richard Maponya, Connie Ntshona and Paul Mosaka, whose barn-storming streak propelled them to defy the odds stacked against them to pioneer new feats. Amid the adversity, they still showed chutzpah to inspire generations of upcoming young entrepreneurs to, not only emulate their success but to push the boundaries beyond the limits.

Thanks for their vision, these pioneers were able to set the bar as high as they could for the coming generations,  displaying an indomitable spirit and capacity to stay the course despite enormous challenges thrust in their way.

Today, as the current generation celebrates the legacies of the likes of Tshabalalas for paving the way through great fortitude, their example sadly remains a hard act to follow.

Yet, the apple might not have fallen far from the tree, if the progeny of the black business dynasties like the Tshabalalas will replicate their patriarch’s mainstay and vision to take his baton forward today.

In this vein, the latest development in which the Tshabalala children and grandchildren have set out to continue the pioneer’s legacy by venturing into big-time commercial property, and create scores of employment opportunities, a laudable source for hope.

Last week, the younger generation of the family opened Soweto’s latest multimillion-rand shopping centre – doing so on the very land where he began his entrepreneurial journey as a small-time butchery owner in Mofolo, Soweto, in the 1950s.

Notably, the young Tshabalalas are following on the intrepid steps taken back then by the patriarch in his younger days when he, together with wife Kinini, started a butchery business. The future Mrs Tshabalala, hailing from Greytown in KwaZulu, met her bus-driver hubby-to-be in Johannesburg while she eked out an existence as a domestic worker.

Thanks to the bride’s clergyman father who, when the couple tied the knot, serendipitously gifted them with a butchery operating licence – a precious piece of paper that would later transform their lives beyond what was imaginable for black folk during those humble beginnings.  

Indeed, serendipitously since nearly six decades later – last week – two of their grandchildren opened a butchery, OBC Chicken franchise, at the very same site their grandparents’ meat business started. Needless to say, the wheel has remarkably reached full circle as the two grandchildren – Nozizwe and Khethiwe – have succeeded in making their dream to retrace their grandparents’ nascent entrepreneurial steps a reality.

Indeed, times have changed – what with their granddad back then collecting offal on a bicycle from surrounding abattoirs to be sold at the family butchery, and now this activity supplanted by the OBC fleet network’s seamless operation that executes the same task at the touch of a button.

And, while the senior Tshabalalas operated their butchery on 200sqm premises back then, the two cousin sisters are continuing their grandparents’ legacy in partnership with the OBC group, in a modern 700sqm shop – more than twice the original space.

Meanwhile the pair are lapping the prestige of being OBC’s first women franchisees – and much more so for being trust by the family with the responsibility to preserve their grandparents’ legacy – a seed business which became the springboard for the family’s expansion in the later years into housing development business, taxis, petrol filling stations, a cinema and land acquisition. This is OBC’s fourth franchise in Soweto, a group that boasts 90 stores built over 30 years of its existence.

“We simply proud to carry on with our grandparents’ legacy,” says Khethiwe. “We will strive to inculcate the same values instilled in us by them during our young days helping in the family businesses, and that is, to treat our customers with care and respect as well as always prioritise them. Our grandfather used to remind us that: the customer is always right”.

The franchise has created 36 job opportunities for locals – a policy which Khethiwe says formed the backbone of the conceptualisation of the project from the start, and one that was strictly emphasised to the developers, Abland, and its sub-contractors, throughout the different phases of the project.

“It’s not been easy as we have been dealing with misinformation about the prioritisation of job opportunities to locals, especially in our Mofolo neighbourhood, which ourselves have strictly adhered to”.