1. CITY PRESS, 12 OCTOBER, 2014 5
business
I
nternationally acclaimed interior architect Maira
Koutsoudakis works in an aesthetic heaven, her Hyde
Park boutique office loft reflecting the unique style
that graces island resorts, African safari lodges and
her Life restaurants.
We meet at Life Grand Café at Hyde Park Corner
in Joburg. She’s clad in a svelte, black, leather skirt and black
stilettoheels.SoonI’mtrottingtokeepupasweflashthrough
the shopping centre and up to her eyrie.
She orders coffee and it arrives with two cakes, and her
mother’s mouthwatering cinnamon and clove biscuits.
Koutsoudakis does nothing by half measures.
She zips me around her studio, where her designers are
working on projects ranging from private islands, resorts,
luxury lodges and restaurants, to commercial and
residential.
The projects are in the Seychelles, London, Botswana,
Namibia, Madagascar, Mozambique, the Democratic
RepublicofCongo(DRC),Spain,Greeceand,ofcourse,South
Africa.
I tell her it makes me giddy just listening to the list of her
designfootprints,andherchuckleisunaffectedandgenuine.
I download a list of her company’s awards, which include
Condé Nast Traveller UK’s Best of the Best in the world, the
BBC’s Best Eco-Resort in the World, and numerous awards
for hospitality and product design.
Maybe her signature print is best exemplified by North
Island in the Seychelles, where George Clooney and his new
bride, Amal, are honeymooning. Brad Pitt suggested it after
the Brangelina clan spent a holiday there.
It is rumoured Prince William and Kate spent part of their
honeymoon there too.
Certainly, the world’s glitterati jet off there to luxuriate
inthestarksimplicityofelegantdesignsthatfusewithnature.
Organic aesthetic is how Koutsoudakis describes it.
“When we were approached to build the lodge, we created
wooden stools from road-clearance projects. We were ‘doing
green’ in 1999 at a time when South Africa hadn’t even heard
of energy-saving bulbs,” says Koutsoudakis.
When she could not afford a splendid Italian chair for a
project, “we made our own, inspired by the nature of the
area”. By the time North Island was complete, Koutsoudakis
was only 27 years old. Since then she and her team, which
includes her business partner and engineer husband John
Koutsoudakis, have created extraordinary lodges.
One is made from sandbags in Namibia’s Damaraland,
there’sacamponstiltsintheOkavangoDelta,andtwoluxury
ecocampsforthePlattnerandBuffettfoundationsintheDRC.
“It aims to save the gorillas and the rainforest,” she says. She
climbed a palm tree to gaze at the forest canopy “for
inspiration and to imagine how the gorillas see it”.
No wonder her work has been exhibited internationally
inthetwoDesignMadeinAfricaexhibitions,andattheNorth
meets South exhibitions in Paris, New York and Stockholm.
Furthermore, her studio’s projects debut this month at
the acclaimed Triennale Design Museum in Milan before
moving on to Brussels, Helsinki and Paris.
She’s also had a solo show – Essence: The work of Maira
Koutsoudakis – at the University of Johannesburg’s gallery
and her designs are featured in the permanent collection
of the Saint-Etienne design museum in France.
“I knew, even as a girl, that I’d be an interior architect.
When my friends made doll’s clothes, I made houses.”
But life was tough back then. Her father died when she
was13monthsold,leavinghermother,whohadarrivedfrom
Greece aged 17 with few skills, to bring up two daughters.
“She was a sales representative who used her culinary
talents to create menus for the mines. She was in her 40s
when she started her own business, ultimately feeding more
than 115 000 people a day,” says Koutsoudakis.
Her voice is rich with pride about a mother who never
remarried and told her girls “always rely on yourself”.
It’s an ethos Koutsoudakis clearly imbibed because, while
she was studying three-dimensional design in interior
architecture at what is today UJ, she simultaneously did a BA
Honours in history of art and English literature at Unisa.
Her thirst to learn more took her to the Domus Academy
inMilantocompletepostgraduatestudiesindesigndirection
in 1996. There she joined practising professionals from all
over the world and they were lectured by the likes of Renzo
Rosso – the genius behind Diesel jeans.
“I also learnt the business side of design and how to use
creative tools to make something even greater,” she says.
“Here at Life we change people’s mind-sets about how to
travel while simultaneously saving the environment.”
By 1999 Koutsoudakis had opened “South Africa’s first
lifestyle emporium at Mandela Square”.
A decade on, she focused her energy on opening four Life
Collection stores and Life Grand Café restaurants in Hyde
Park, Waterfall in Midrand, in Pretoria and in the Seychelles.
She and her husband are also involved in property
development here, in Europe and in the Indian Ocean
Islands.
“It sounds hectic, but I insist on balance in our lives. For
my last milestone birthday we took our two children, aged
fiveandseven,andourextendedfamiliesofftoNorthIsland,”
says Koutsoudakis.
Her Life design studio is already working on two new
businesses in Joburg’s burgeoning Newtown precinct,
“which is spearheading the inner city’s revival”, says this
lively, new-world spirit.
See Women on Wealth on CNBC Africa, DStv channel
410, at 9.15pm on Wednesday for more interviews with
winning women. Follow the Twitter conversation #WOW410
and visit www.citypress.co.za for all our
Winning Women profiles
Maira Koutsoudakis,
CEO of the Life group of
companies and Life
Interiors, Architecture
and Strategic Design,
has spun a web of
simple but striking
beauty over everything
she has touched, writes
Sue Grant-Marshall
Business tip
Find a mentor, someone you admire and trust.
Mentor
My mother, even though at the time I didn’t
realise she was my mentor. There was always a
gaping hole where my dad should have been.
Business book
Paul Arden’s It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s
How Good You Want to Be. It’s so inspirational I
buy it and give it away. The Meaning of the 21st
Century by James Martin is also a must-read.
Inspiration
Nature. It’s my partner in all my designs.
Wow! moment
Taking my family to North Island for one night
after I had worked on it for 15 years.
Life lesson
Do one thing that scares you every day. Some
things scare me a lot and that’s good.
Little
pink
Book
A Life of
DESIGN
TOP OF THE
WORLD
Maira
Koutsoudakis
PHOTO:
ELIZABETH
SEJAKE
WINNING
women
DEWALD VAN RENSBURG
dewald.vrensburg@citypress.co.za
The National African Federated Chamber of Commerce and
Industry (Nafcoc), which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year,
hopes that it can return to its former glory as a significant
contributor to the black economic agenda.
The role played by the organisation over 50 years has been
captured in a new commemorative book commissioned by
Professor Kwandiwe Kondlo of the University of Johannesburg.
The book demonstrates how, long ago, most of the major
components of what is now called BEE were conceptualised and
pursued – only for them to still remain ambitions decades down
the road.
The creation of a bulk-buying company that would help Nafcoc’s
core of small-scale traders compete with the supermarkets has
literally been on the agenda for all the organisation’s 50 years.
This year it is still being proposed as the solution to the two
major threats Nafcoc’s trader constituency faces – supermarkets and
competition from apparently better-organised immigrant traders.
Nafcoc formulated the original version of today’s major BEE
targets in 1990.
These have proven to be hopelessly overambitious and included
30% black board representation at all JSE-listed companies and 40%
black ownership of shares traded on the JSE by 2000.
Nafcoc envisaged preferential procurement from black suppliers
in the private sector, at least among JSE-listed companies, totalling
50% by 2000.
Nafcoc also spearheaded ambitious attempts to create black-
controlled companies using capital contributions from its
membership all over the country. Among these were the original
African Bank, forerunner of the microlender that spectacularly
went bust this year.
Kondlo’s book treads a mostly uncontroversial line. It judges
Nafcoc’s frequent willingness to accommodate and work with
apartheid authorities as pragmatic moves that have to be seen in an
overall tradition of anti-apartheid activism.
It also portrays the confusing split of Nafcoc into factions headed
by former presidents Lawrence Mavundla and Joe Hlongwane as a
settled affair.
The bizarre feud, however, continues with both Nafcocs holding a
50th anniversary gala and both making pronouncements on it on
their respective websites: nafcoc.org.za and nafcoc-sa.co.za.
Mavundla was re-elected as Nafcoc president last month, claims
one of the Nafcocs.
Importantly, new Small Business Minister Lindiwe Zulu went to
speak at Hlongwane’s Nafcoc gala in Durban, not the Mavundla gala
a week earlier in Johannesburg.
With African Bank this year collapsing under the weight of its
nonperforming unsecured loans and undergoing a R10 billion
bailout, Sam Motsuenyane, a former Nafcoc president, has been
calling on black billionaires to buy the bank out of white hands
while it is at rock bottom.
In his speech at last week’s Nafcoc anniversary, Hlongwane
repeated the call, saying it might be time to return African Bank to
its “rightful owners” and turn it back into a real deposit-taking
bank. The bank’s rightful owners would be Nafcoc members who
provided the initial capital to register the bank in the 1970s.
In an extract below from Kondlo’s book, he details the struggle to
create the original African Bank, which fell out of black control in 1994.
A
t the inaugural conference of the National
African Chamber of Commerce (Nacoc) in 1964,
discussions focused on the feasibility of black
people establishing their own bank because of the
difficulty in accessing funds from white-owned banks.
The financial institutions often required collateral in
the form of fixed property before they would grant
loans, and because of the political system, the majority
of black people did not own properties.
As former Nacoc president Sam Motsuenyane puts
it: “This meant that most black people did not have
sufficient or appropriate collateral. Interestingly,
though, financial institutions were always happy
to take our money whenever we brought it in for
banking. They just did not bother about recycling
the money back into our communities.”
Nacoc engaged the services of a Hungarian
economist to determine what would impede the
establishment of the proposed bank.
He presented his report during the 1967 conference,
and his conclusion was encouraging. He indicated that
– as Motsuenyane said during an
interview – with determination,
with unity and with a real
commitment behind the effort,
and a willingness to make some
sacrifices, all the problems can be
overcome. At the beginning, the
project was not at all promising.
Only R70 in cash was collected at
the first meeting of Nacoc members
in 1964 and this became the
cornerstone of the bank to be.
Challenges to raise the money
persisted, despite words of
encouragement from Richard
Maponya, who said at the end of
the conference: “We the blacks are
18 million people in South Africa.
We just need to ask for R1 from
each person and then next year
when we meet we would have
R18 million in our kitty.”
The seventh Nacoc conference in
Mamelodi in 1971 concentrated on
the establishment of the African
Bank. It was followed by a special
conference in Mamelodi in 1972,
where concrete steps were taken to
open the Nacoc bank collection
account at the Church Square
branch of Barclays Bank in Pretoria.
During the 10th annual conference in the then
Umtata, in 1974, again the main focus was on
preparations for the establishment of African Bank.
By this time, it was already clear it was possible to
raise the R1 million required for the registration.
The pledge to provide training and funding support
from Barclays Bank encouraged Nafcoc (Nacoc’s name
had changed to Nafcoc in 1972) members to work
harder to raise funds and garner as much black
community support for the initiative as possible.
The Umtata conference was followed by a special
fundraising conference held in Welkom before the end
of 1974, which marked the culmination of a 10-year
campaign.
This conference was perhaps one of the most
successful and exciting held by Nafcoc, and a record
amount of more than R74 000 was raised in one day.
The names of the first directors were proposed and
confirmed: Dr S Motsuenyane (chair), Mr SJJ Lesolang,
50YEARS OF
NAFCOCRole played by the organisation over 50 years has
been captured in a new commemorative book
Mr PG Gumede, Rev EZ Sikhakhane, Mr AN Gadi,
Mr PS Monoa, Mr RR Mbongwe, Mr AM Khumalo,
Rev IL Shembe and Mr WS Tladi.
The name of the new bank was also formally
adopted: the African Bank of South Africa Limited.
After the conference, the long-serving treasurer of
Nafcoc, Mr SJJ Lesolang, was requested to carry the
substantial amount of cash collected to the bank in
Pretoria.
The collections continued until the R1 million mark
was achieved. In 1975, the first branch of African Bank
was opened in Ga-Rankuwa.
As Motsuenyane writes: “The great sense of
achievement which prevailed after the registration and
opening of African Bank in 1975 inspired and
emboldened Nafcoc members to initiate and embark
upon other projects.”
This is an edited extract from A Legacy of Perseverance
by Professor Kwandiwe Kondlo
READER GIVEAWAY
THE BIRTH OF
AFRICAN BANK
We are giving away three copies
of A Legacy of Perseverance,
courtesy of publisher KMM
Review Publishing, to our
readers. Write to
business@citypress.co.za, and
the first three readers to
respond will receive copies of
the book
We the blacks are
18 million people in
South Africa. We
just need to ask for
R1 from each
person and then
next year when we
meet we would
have R18 million in
our kitty
RICHARD MAPONYA
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: Perfection is achieved, not when there is
nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away
A Legacy of Perseverance
Kwandiwe Kondlo
KMM Review Publishing Company
121 pages; R225