It was December 2004, and Desmond Makondo had turned his photographic business, Digitally on the Move CC, into a profitable concern in the three years since he had walked away from Hewlett-Packard’s (HP) offices with a camera, two printers and no idea what to do with them. He had acquired a number of regular corporate clients and was photographing various events including golf days, corporate functions, conferences, graduations and more.

“We cannot just sit by and do nothing!” said Sebastian Olofsson to his uncle, Dan Olofsson, a Swedish IT billionaire and owner of a private game reserve in Hluhluwe (northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa). It was February 2003, they were both at the reserve and Sebastian had just returned from a guided tour of the vicinity that had exposed him to the dire poverty in the area and the human suffering there caused by HIV/AIDS.

Dale Hefer, managing director of ChilliBush Marketing and Communications had started ChilliBush five years previously, operating from her Johannesburg garage. The business had proven remarkably successful, with billings exceeding R1 million after her first year of operation and reaching more than R18 million by 2003. However, Hefer knew that ChilliBush had to attract the big brands if they were to reach the billings target they had set of R36 million per annum by 2006.

In October 2016, the management team of Women in Wine – South Africa’s first wine brand to be owned and controlled by black women – gathered to prepare for the annual meeting of company shareholders. Operating conditions locally and abroad over the preceding year had once again proved extremely challenging, and chief executive officer (CEO) Beverly Farmer felt the firm needed decisive action to improve its fortunes.

James van der Walt, founder of SolarTurtle, looked out of his office window at the people sitting in the common area of Stellenbosch University’s LaunchLab. Van der Walt’s mind was, however, far from the LaunchLab’s collegial environment that afternoon in May 2018. SolarTurtle had not been growing fast enough to make the company self-sustaining, and the current finance model for franchisees had proven to be unsustainable. Van der Walt wondered whether the introduction of the BabyTurtle and the MiniTurtle, the company’s newest products, would improve the growth rate of the company. 

In September 2014, Calum McCracken, chief executive officer (CEO) of Next Generation Network Telecommunications (Pty) Ltd (NGN Telecoms), met with his partners to discuss the company’s Kenyan dilemma.

Not for the first time since opening his company’s demonstration facility in the Stellenbosch Technopark, Professor Vivian Alberts – chief executive and co-founder of Photovoltaic Technology Intellectual Property Innovations (PTiP) – stood back and admired what he saw. Twenty years had passed since this academic physicist began working on thin-film photovoltaic (PV) technology. He believed it had the potential to make a significant impact on South Africa’s energy problems and to capture a share of the international market.

It had been difficult for Barbara Queally to go back to “school”, but she knew deep down that she had lost touch with her authentic self as a businesswoman and leader. The Women in Leadership course at Wits Business School (WBS), which ran from June to August 2016, revealed some uncomfortable truths for Queally. She realised, especially, that her listening skills were low, and she had all but lost the ability to empathise with others.

It was late afternoon in June 2016 and Barbara Queally, founder of Garden Morris, a company that specialised in chocolate products, confectionary ingredients, gifting and packaging, had just finished the first module on a leadership course for women at Wits Business School (WBS). This had been an intense day emotionally for Queally. Having received the results of an emotional quotient (EQ) test that she had completed prior to coming on the course, as she packed up her things an uncomfortable realisation was dawning on her – that her management style had been way too authoritarian.

By 2007, the South African business environment had changed significantly. After 1994, democratisation had led to an abundance of business opportunities in South Africa, which foreign firms were keen to exploit. This only served to increase the competition faced by local companies, and Black Like Me was no exception.