HERMAN MASHABA

Despite what can only be described as disadvantaged start, determination and hard work helped Herman Mashaba accomplish more than simply overcome adversity and hardship. He worked through two poorly paid clerical-type jobs, went on to find his calling in sales, and then started a successful hair care business – becoming one of South Africa’s most-admired and successful black entrepreneurs in the process.

While this exceptional journey of accomplishment sounds easy in summary, it was beset with far more trials and setbacks than this implies – and required a clear vision and determination to succeed that few possess.

Born on 26 August 1959, in the remote village of Ramotse, near Hammanskraal in northern Gauteng, Mashaba was largely brought by his sisters while his mother worked long hours as a domestic worker.

His near-poverty-to-riches story begins in earnest in 1980 at the University of the North (now the University of Limpopo) near Pietersburg. A centre of activism against Apartheid, political unrest put the second-year Bachelor of Administration student’s studies on hold – but when classes resumed, Mashaba decided not to return.

He worked briefly at Spar in Pretoria from late 1980, and then for a furniture manufacturer, before embarking on a sales career selling everything from dining crockery to fire detection systems and insurance. It was during his time as a sales rep for SuperKurl that the idea to start his own hair care manufacturing business was born.

With the help of former SuperKurl colleagues turned business partners, his wife, Connie – and a R30 000 loan – Black Like Me was launched on Valentines’ Day in 1985. Starting out in a 200 square metre factory in Ga-Rankuwa in the former homeland of Bophuthatswana, their new perm lotion was an instant success.

Black Like Me’s business loan was paid off within seven months, and by 1990 their brand and product range was so successful they had built their own premises in the black township of Mabopane in northern Gauteng.

But disaster struck in November 1993. Fire gutted the Mabopane factory and insurance did not pay out for the building contents, leaving Mashaba to personally finance his “rise from the ashes” and set up his third factory, this time in Midrand.

In July 1997, the proud father of two daughters – Khensani and Rhulani – sold a 75% in Black Like Me to Colgate Palmolive, but bought the business back in 1999. Mashaba, who has a strong work ethic and plans never to retire, was glad to back and the helm.

Black Like Me launched their products in the UK in 2001 and in 2002 Mashaba formed a BEE company, Leswikeng Minerals & Energy. Early in 2004 he resigned as CEO of Black Like Me and sold a 49.9% interest in the company to Amka Products in 2005.

The largely media-shy Mashaba could boast an impressive list of awards and directorships if he was so inclined. He is currently executive chairperson of Lephatsi Investments, a company he founded a few years ago, operating in the mining, construction and the logistics sectors. He is also CEO of Leswikeng Minerals & Energy, deputy chair of Growthpoint Properties and chairperson of Stocks Building Africa.

Topping his numerous business, marketing and entrepreneurial awards is a recently awarded honorary doctorate in business administration from the Central University of Technology.

Ever mindful of his humble beginnings, Mashaba has also paid the role of the philanthropist. His company took corporate social responsibility seriously, offering bursaries to needy students and paying for funerals of political activists.

He joined the youth-development focused Field Brand Foundation as a patron 15 years ago and is currently its chairman. The foundation uses music to create life-changing opportunities for children from underprivileged backgrounds, including international exchange programs.

A jazz and classical pianist himself, in his spare time, Mashaba also helped to establish (and sponsors) Black Like Us, a joint venture with the Watercolour Society of South Africa and the Manor Gallery in Fourways. The initiative fosters business and entrepreneurial skills in visual artists from the townships. The non-profit organisation has helped numerous artists to improve their careers, including internationally recognised Abe Mathabe and Sam Maduna.

In 2012, Mashaba published his autobiography Black Like You, which much like everything else Mashaba has touched, has turned into a best seller. Co-written by Isabella Morris, it is a compelling story of survival, love and success, ending in a triumph over adversity. It leaves one open to the possibility that they too could be successful – regardless of their personal situation.

Mashaba hopes it might motivate one or two entrepreneurs in the making. If nothing else, it will inspire you.

ROELOF BOTHA

South African-born actuarial scientist, Roelof Frederik Botha, has switched careers and successfully made a name for himself as one of the leading venture capitalists in the cutting-edge high-tech hub of Silicon Valley in the US.

He was CFO of PayPal when the secure payment system was sold to Ebay for USD 1.5bn in 2003 and was the first to back the video-sharing site YouTube as venture capitalist at Sequoia Capital. YouTube was sold to Google for USD 1.65bn in 2006 effectively turning a USD 12mn investment by Sequoia into a USD 450mn profit.

Botha is currently ranked 26^th on the Forbes Midas List of the top 100 influential Internet investors, and was ranked 23^rd and 22^nd in 2007 and 2008 respectively.

Born in 1973, Botha spent six years in Pretoria before moving to Hout Bay in Cape Town with his family, which includes three brothers and a sister.

Botha, who has not had his favourite kudu biltong “for a long time”, attended Jan van Riebeeck High School in Tamboerskloof and actively participated in both rugby and chess. He excelled in academics and was the top student in the Cape Province for his matriculation year in 1990.

With his obvious flair for mathematics and figures, Botha went on to be the top actuarial science student at the University of Cape Town where he graduated with a Bachelor of Business Science with majors in actuarial science, economics and statistics in 1994, at the age of 22. He was the youngest person to qualify as an actuary in South Africa.

Botha became a Fellow of the Faculty of Actuaries in 1996 and worked as a management consultant for McKinsey & Company in Johannesburg for two years before leaving for the US in 1998 to study for his MBA at Stanford University.

He graduated from Stanford Business School in 2000, walking off with three MBA awards, including the Henry Ford Award as valedictorian of his year.

While still completing his MBA, Botha was recruited by fellow South African and co-founder of PayPal, Elon Musk, and joined PayPal as its CFO in 2000.

He also met his Singaporean wife at Stanford. They were classmates.

When PayPal was sold in 2003, Botha, joined Sequoia Capital and embarked on a remarkably successful venture capital career.

Botha says Michael Moritz, a partner at Sequoia Capital has had the biggest impact on his business life. “He led Sequoia’s investments in Yahoo, Google and PayPal. He supported me as a young CFO at PayPal and then invited me to interview at Sequoia Capital. I never thought I would be in this career given that I don’t have an electrical engineering or computer science background,” said Botha.

Focusing on services and software investments, Botha has invested in instant messaging start-up Meebo, global money transfer site Xoom, local business review site Insider Pages, and lighting and technology firm Luxim, amongst others.

For Botha, who lives by the motto: “You’re only as good as your next investment”, the biggest thrill in his daily work is meeting an interesting new company and hearing a compelling idea from an entrepreneur.

In contrast, the hardest part is calling a business back to let them know that Sequoia has decided not to invest in their idea.

“With investment being tighter since the global financial crisis this means that companies need to demonstrate a stronger edge in their value proposition. The return on investment and payback periods also need to be more compelling before a company can win capital support,” said Botha.

With the long-term goal to leave the world a better place, Botha aims to help Sequoia invest in market-leading companies that will transform the world and leave a legacy.

“I helped build PayPal into a global force. The company serves almost 100-million users around the world and has an annual turnover to USD 2bn just ten years after it started.

“YouTube is used by more than 350-million people around the globe every month. Both these companies have had a worldwide impact and I want to replicate those experiences. The natural consequence of this goal is that we generate handsome financial returns for our investors,” said Botha.

When not working, Botha likes to indulge in soccer, watching rugby, and little things that keep him close to his Afrikaner heritage (he is the grandson of former South Africa foreign affairs minister, Pik Botha), such as making biltong.

Although he has little time for reading anything other than science journals, Botha says his all time favourite read is Duiwelskloof by Andre Brink.

HAPPY NTSHINGILA

Happy Ntshingila’s rise to fame as an advertising guru is the bedtime story that most wannabe South African advertisers grow up on. In 2006 the charismatic marketer went from managing director of HerdBuoys McCann-Erickson to Absa group’s marketing executive, and since 2008 he has sat on Absa’s board as Executive Director: Marketing and Communication.

Chosen as South Africa’s Marketing Person of the Year in 2007, Ntshingila is responsible for Absa’s government relations and the Absa Group’s communications and public relations, BEE, corporate social investment, marketing and customer experience.

Born in Soweto in 1960, Ntshingila graduated from the University of Fort Hare with a Bachelor of Arts in communications in 1983. He began his career the following year, starting out in Durban at the Unilever Group in sales and marketing.

In 1985 he took the opportunity to move back closer to home to keep an eye on his mother, who had taken ill, and took a position at IBM, first as an editor, then as media liaison, and finally as a communications specialist.

Working at IBM was the closest Ntshingila, the eldest child with two sisters and a brother, got to his childhood goal of being a hardcore journalist.

He then moved to Tiger Brands where he worked in public relations for King Korn before joining to Oglivy & Mather as an account manager. There Ntshingila worked on brands like Joko tea, Royco, Mrs Ball’s Chutney, Tastic Rice and Steers.

“I really enjoyed advertising. It just gelled with me,” says Ntshingila.

In 1991, after four years at Oglivy & Mather, Ntshingila and two partners, Peter Vundla and Dimape Serenyane, started their own advertising agency HerdBuoys. “We didn’t have any clients. Just a serious belief in ourselves and our abilities,” says Ntshingila.

Ntshingila adds that the trio had the difficulties faced by all business start-up, plus additional barriers to entry as the first black owned and managed advertising agency in the country. He says they had to work twice as hard to prove their worth – and they did just that, and more. HerdBuoys went on to change the landscape of advertising in South Africa.

HerdBuoys’ rags to riches story is so colourful and intriguing that Ntshingila has written a book about it. Black Jerusalem tracks the events and people who shaped HerdBuoys. With characteristic wit and flair, Ntshingila give a no-holds-barred account of working through the night, pretending to have an office, and buying a TV minutes before a crucial presentation. It’s fast paced, irreverent, and conveys Ntshingila’s energy and determination which is an important ingredient in his recipe for success.

By 2005 HerdBuoys had merged with McCann-Erickson and was ranked amongst the top 10 advertising companies in the industry. HerdBuoys made ads for South African Breweries, Coca-Cola, Vodacom, General Motors, and Telkom to name only a few.

Ntshingila, who heads to the gym to work off the stress, concedes that the hardest challenge he’s had to face has not been with a client or an intimidating presentation in a packed boardroom.

Ntshingila says it was the death of his mother in 1989. “A part of me died too – at the time I did not know how to cope,” he says. His work suffered and he lost all motivation until he eventually took stock of his life and decided to turn a bad situation around. This was an important life lesson for Ntshingila and he says he’s always been able to walk into tough situations since then knowing he has the strength to deal with it.

He has brought his strength, love for life and abundant energy to Absa.

For Ntshingila the great thing about the banking industry is the diverse range of people it deals with. You can go from talking to students, to putting out a totally different message for the money markets, and then communicate with people who’ve never had a bank account before, he explains.

His work is exciting and challenging. “There is also a lot of innovation happening in the banking industry with the shift to mobile payments and Internet banking,” says Ntshingila.

The global economic crisis has had an impact on Ntshingila’s work. As with many other businesses, his marketing budget has been cut. The budget is still “quite hefty” but the focus is now on achieving more, with less. There’s also been a changed in the communication focus with the message being one of prudence. We’re emphasising savings, debt counselling and budgeting, he says.

MAC VAN DER MERWE

Self-made South Africa multi-millionaire, Mac van der Merwe, is the antithesis of one’s expectations of a man who has made it big in the hospitality, tourism and wine industry. He’s affable and easy to speak to, humble and looks no different from you and I.

The middle son of a poor white South Africa family, Van der Merwe grew up near Vereenging just outside Johannesburg, ironically not far from the Riviera on Vaal, one of the five-star properties he now owns.

The 61-year-old says that his first meal outside his family home was at age 19 or 20 at the restaurant at the Riviera on Vaal. Little did he realise then, that he would buy the hotel in December 2003 and turn it into a top class tourist destination.

As with most successful businessmen, Van der Merwe showed an entrepreneurial bent from a young age. His first ‘businesses’ at age eight was charging friends one pence a time to view pictures on his View Master. Van der Merwe soon graduated to selling bicycles and says: “I was always busy with some sort of scheme, buying and selling, creating opportunities…”

Van der Merwe graduated with a mechanical engineering degree, despite his claims of not being a good scholar, and debuted in business with a car dealership in 1982 which he expanded to seven branches. He says he was driven by the fact that he did not want to battle like his parents.

He then opened an engineering firm providing support engineering for the steel industry and grew this into a company with three branches which he listed on the JSE as City Investment Holding in 1996.

Van der Merwe also invested in the IT industry, but his Midas touch came to the fore when he and two other partners purchased the President Steyn gold mine in Welkom from AngloGold.

The mine was sold five years later – and was the deal in which the quietly spoken Van der Merwe literally made his millions.

Not wanting to retire Van der Merwe then started a family-owned business, the Zorgvliet Group, in which his wife, two daughters and son are involved. This started with the opportune purchase a Stellenbosch wine farm Zorgvliet in 2002, followed by the Riviera on Vaal (bought for sentimental reasons) and then two adjacent private game reserves in the malaria-free Limpopo Waterberg - Ka’Ingo Private Reserve and Spa and Dinkweng Safari Camp.

Still happily married to his childhood sweetheart, Marietjie, Van der Merwe attributes a lot of his success to luck – making the right decision to buy the right asset at the right time – but was quick to admit that he has a considerable appetite for risk add that success is not achieved by default or even hard work, but by working your plan.

Van der Merwe’s current plan is build a hospitality network in South Africa, with the best that South Africa has to offer – and is clearly making his plan work. In addition he is pioneering the rollout of fractional ownership in South Africa with the Zorgvliet Private Residence Club.

It is through fractional ownership that Van der Merwe hopes to encourage people to invest in full title ownership of unique properties, while ensuring sustainable access and sound conservation management – part of the custodianship vision instilled into Van der Merwe by his hardworking father.

But Van der Merwe’s focus is on more than making money. He believes that success is relative and is comprised of more than the proverbial accounting bottom line. He ranks a happy close-knit family right up at the top of his achievements and “time-out” for Van der Merwe is spending quality time with Marietjie or his daughters, playing golf with his son and son-in-law, or driving his five grandchildren around on a quad bike.

Van der Merwe, who also completed his MBA part-time through UNISA, believes it is his responsibility to add value and as a result has also involved himself in several conservation projects including the release of cheetahs and relocation of leopard, as well as provided financial assistance to the Waterberg Academy.

Despite the fact that his staff have nothing but nice things to say about him, Van der Merwe, a self-confessed opportunist, says that he is not a good manager. “I give people a lot of rope, and if the don’t pull their weight I send them packing,” he says.

His secret ingredient of success is a willingness to share information and learn daily from others. “Not being territorial opens opportunities for exciting and productive partnerships and finding synergies,” says Van der Merwe.

GAVIN OPPERMAN

For Gavin Opperman, Absa’s Chief Executive of Retail Banking, a childhood dream of being a banker has turned into a life-long passion and involvement in the banking industry.

He currently heads a division that is responsible for roughly 40% of Absa’s income with more than 22,000 staff providing banking services to the Retail Banking Sector. It’s a job he views as a lifestyle and Opperman applies himself with characteristic energy and fervour.

“Banking is not for the feint-hearted. It’s not a 09:00 to 17:00 job,” says Opperman as he explains that many people remark at the long hours he spends at the office. “I have found my passion, and regard myself as very fortunate.”

Born in 1965 in the shadow of the Karee Mountains in the Karoo village of Carnarvon in the Northern Cape, Opperman grew up on his parent’s sheep farm outside Graaff-Reinet in the Eastern Cape Karoo, spending his formative years at boarding school at Union High in Graaff-Reinet.

After serving in the parachute battalion in the army for his national service, Opperman started his banking career 25 years ago as a clearance clerk with Standard Bank in Grahamstown. “I started right at the bottom,” says Opperman adding that his job involved clearing cheques with other banks on a bicycle.

Studying for his banking exams with the Institute of Banking while he worked, the second eldest of four children, with two brothers and a younger sister, Opperman also worked as a teller and did voucher filing, during his 10-year tenure with Standard Bank.

An active 44-year-old, who won provincial colours for sport at school and still goes cycling or running almost every morning, Opperman joined Absa in 1994 and has held various positions including managing director of Absa Bank (Asia) Ltd with offices in Shanghai and Hong Kong. He held this position for two years and learnt to speak Mandarin fluently.

A student of the University of Cape Town Business School, he also held the positions of managing executive for Absa Home Loans and was appointed group executive for Secured Lending in 2008 until his appointment to head up retail banking in January this year.

Opperman says he does not drink or smoke, but admits to two vices: a love for chocolate where quantity, not quality, is the motivating factor; and Harley Davidson motorcycles.

He has three Harley’s, in addition to a silver Porsche, and hits the open road whenever he gets a chance. Opperman says his father, Christiaan, dislikes the bikes, but they share a hobby of restoring vintage cars.

A lover of Italian food, Opperman describes himself as a perfectionist. “My house is squeaky clean, and I’m terribly, terribly driven. On a scale of one to ten, I’m a 12!”

“I have an abundance of energy and get by on a lot less sleep than most people. I believe that life is short and if you’re not living on the edge you take up too much space,” says Opperman who is single.

Opperman has an eclectic taste in music and likes almost everything except “Boeremusiek and country”. 

When it comes to the banking business he likes to deal in facts. “I like facts and make fact-based decisions,” says Opperman. He believes in listening to his customers and considers his management style task focused and strategic, surrounding himself with a good team who complement and support his own competencies.

Being execution oriented Opperman says he needs to work hard on his people skills. As a manager: “I’m as hard as nails!” But if his staff suffer a personal problem beyond their control then he goes out of his way. “I really care for people when the chips are down,” says Opperman.

He says the challenge he faces now, as South Africa moves out of a down cycle, is how best to position the leading retail bank to become a world-class bank. The recent evolution in banking has seen a significant change in customer requirements and resulted in more sophisticated services, and Opperman expects to see further change with new banking models being brought into play as a result of the global financial crisis as changes in regulation are introduced.

“We are only custodians during our term of office,” says Opperman who believes in succession planning and expects to pass over the reins somewhere between three and five years.

As far as his personal goals go, Opperman says he looks at his career as a game of golf: “At 44 I’ve finished the first nine holes… I’ve got another 20 years in me, and could not imagine retiring at 50.”

PATRICE MOTSEPE

Since his inclusion in the Forbe’s World Billionaire List in 2008 as the 503^rd richest man in the world, South African mining magnate Partice Motsepe, has attracted both admiration and envy, despite a drop to 559^th richest man in 2009 with more than $1bn drop in net worth.

While branding him as one of the new rich black elite to benefit from Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) and cronyism, critics ignore the fact that he turned from being a successful mining lawyer to a successful mining businessman, winning several business awards before the introduction of BEE.

They also ignore a family entrepreneurial background, and much hard work… and the fact that Motsepe’s uncle is the leader of a Tswana tribe known as the Motsepe tribe.

Motsepe was born in his mother’s hometown, Soweto, on Jan 28^th 1962. He soon moved to rural Hammanskraal, north of Pretoria, where the apartheid government had banished his father, Augustine Motsepe, close to his hometown.

There his father established a successful grocery store and went on to open a beer hall and a restaurant, giving Patrice an early induction into the business and life skills that have seen him achieve many firsts.

Named Patrice after Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the DRC, Motsepe was sent to boarding school to get a good education. He attended the Saint Joseph Mission School in Aliwal North for ten years and went on to complete a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Swaziland.

Fluent in Afrikaans, English and several African languages, Motsepe applied for, and received, permission to study at the then whites only University of the Witwatersrand and became one of the university’s few black law graduates.

He began his practice as an attorney at Bowman Gilfillan Inc in 1988, and in 1991 went as a visiting attorney to the US under the American Bar Association programme. After his return he became the first black law partner at Bowman and Gilfillan.

Specialising in commerce, Motsepe focused on mining and business law before his entrepreneurial spirit and expertise saw him start his own mining company.

In 1994 he founded Future Mining, which grew from operating out of a brief case, because Motsepe could not get start-up funding, into a successful contract mining company.

In 1997 he formed African Rainbow Minerals Gold Limited, which listed on the JSE in 2002. In 2002 Motsepe won the Ernst & Young best entrepreneur of the year award and was voted as South Africa’s business leader of the year by the CEOs of the top 100 companies in the country.

At that time Patrice said the most important elements in business were employee buy-in and applying innovative leadership to maintain a contented workforce. He said he regarded developing a relationship of trust as the 
corner stone of a happy working environment, and was noted for a low basic pay, but high bonus incentive structure.

The successful entrepreneur learnt his first business lessons while helping his father in the store – that of ploughing any profit back into the business.

Motsepe business model was to acquire low producing gold mine shafts on favourable financial terms and turned them into a profit with tight and careful management.

In 2003 African Rainbow Minerals Gold merged with Harmony, the world’s fifth largest gold producer. Motsepe was appointed to the African Rainbow Minerals board in 2003 and became executive chairman in 2004. He is also a non-executive director of Harmony, as well as deputy chairman of insurer Sanlam and a non-executive of banking group Absa.

An energetic businessman, Motsepe is married to a medical doctor Precious Moloi and has three sons. The eldest shares Motsepe’s middle name, Tlhopie (a derivative of Tlhopane which means the chosen one), and is followed by Kgosi and Kabelo.

Motsepe’s sister, Bridgette Radebe, is South Africa’s first black female entrepreneur and married to Jeff Radebe, minister of justice and constitutional development.

Motsepe, an avowed capitalist who only sees the positive aspects of our rainbow nations, is clearly following the lessons of frugality learnt early in life. The only sign of extravagance that the billionaire shows is that of owning a football club. An avid soccer supporter, he owns and is president of the Mamelodi Sundowns.

Forbes magazine and various other reports are rather scathing in attributing Motsepe’s wealth to BEE policies rather than his entrepreneurial ability. Motsepe, in turn, readily admits he has benefitted from the preferential policies for black entrepreneurs, but justifiably reminds people that his business success preceded the introduction of BEE. Motsepe points out that he did not receive a hand out; rather it was his hard work that saw him already in a position to benefit from the policies that were introduced.

KOBUS MEIRING

South African businessman, Kobus Meiring, is making a name for himself as a pioneer in the motor vehicle manufacturing sector, using alternative technology.

The Paarl-born mechanical engineer co-founded Optimal Energy in 2005, with Mike Lomberg, Jian Swiegers and Gerhard Swart, with the vision of leading the revolution in sustainable mobility through “imagineering optimal electric vehicle product solutions”.

Optimal Energy has produced South Africa’s first electric car, known as the Joule, designed for urban transport and minimal energy wastage.

The privately owned company was started with an investment from the Innovation Fund under the auspices of the Department of Science and Technology and Meiring brings years of managing scientific projects to his role as CEO, overseeing a rapidly expanding staff compliment of more than 70.

After matriculating from Paarl Boys’ High, Meiring, the youngest of three children, followed one of his childhood dreams – to become an engineer – completing his degree in mechanical engineering at the University of Stellenbosch.

He selected engineering over his other childhood dreams because the maturing Meiring viewed architecture as too arty and flying as too militaristic.

In his first job, Meiring, managed to combine his passion for flying and hobbyist interest in model aeroplanes with his work by securing a research and development position at Denel Aviation in 1988, focusing on aerodynamics and composites.

Two years later, Meiring who looks up to Richard Branson and Anton Rupert as role models, joined Denel’s Rooivalk helicopter and ACE turbo-prop programmes, managing the on-board systems development for both projects.

He worked himself up to manager of the Rooivalk Development Department in 1996 and Rooivalk Programme Manager in 1997.

The first of these specialist Rooivalk helicopters came off the production line in 1999 and have been in used by the South African Air Force 16 Squadron ever since.

Meiring, a lover classical music and jazz, moved to his current home town, Cape Town, and was appointed project manager of the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) project.

He ensured that SALT was completed within budget and on deadline for inaugurations in 2005.

As head of Optimal Energy, Meiring, who has been married for 20 years, enjoys the varied nature of his work. “Every day brings new challenges; technical, commercial, marketing, distribution…  and every aspect of the automotive industry get challenged in the process of establishing this new technology here in South Africa,” says Meiring.

He says that managing the Rooivalk programme until 1999 and then the SALT project - both big multidisciplinary projects done with very strict boundary conditions and using both local and overseas skills and suppliers - was excellent preparation for his role at Optimal Energy.

Driven to achieve Optimal Energy’s goal to establish the lead electric vehicle in South Africa and expand globally, Meiring, now 44, has a pragmatic management style. His preference is to: “Start with the big picture and the end goal in mind and always stay aligned to that. Surround yourself with the best people you can afford an encourage diversity.”

An avid reader with a varied taste in books from biographies to business to serious fiction, Meiring sees Optimal Energy as playing an important role as regards global warming: “Global warming is much more serious and more urgent than is generally perceived, even with all the publicity its getting.”

Meiring believes that the only way to get people to change their behaviour is to make it financially attractive to change, or to implement legislation – and suggests that both these measures should be implemented at government level in South Africa.

“Global warming is too serious to be handled in normal commercial ways or timescales,” he says, adding that government interventions would force companies to look at different ways of doing business and that the electric vehicle industry will be influenced positively and can cite numerous examples of where this has taken place overseas.

Meiring has just finished reading JS Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Mini: The True and Secret History of the Making of a Motor Car by J Garfield.

Despite the global financial crisis and it’s large effect on the global and domestic motor vehicle manufacturing industry Meiring is upbeat about the opportunities this creates for growth and change.

The global financial crisis is creating opportunities in all industries, but especially the automotive industry – something nobody would have guessed five years ago, says the father of father of three sons and one daughter.

Meiring says some automotive giants are fading, thereby creating space for start-up automotive businesses “to do things specifically aimed at new technologies, without being hampered by huge legacy investments.”

Given that the world’s finite energy resources are being used inefficiently and that urban transport plays a major role in energy wastage and climate changing pollution Meiring hopes, through Optimal Energy, to produce a zero emission transport solution with the highest wheel-to-wheel efficiency and minimal lifecycle footprint.