Riyaz Patel
South African business icon, Richard Maponya, has died following a short illness.
Maponya was renowned for building a vast business empire despite apartheid-era restrictions.
“Dr Maponya passed away this morning after a short illness and it’s been a shock to the family. He was the kind of man who was working every day and he was still working at 99-years-old,” family spokesperson Mandla Sibeko said.
Maponya celebrated his 99th birthday on Christmas Eve.
President Cyril Ramaphosa sent his best wishes on Boxing Day, encouraging South Africans to “research the life story of this great legend.”
Trained as a teacher, Maponya started working at a clothing company in the 1950s selling garments to miners and rural people.
In 1956, he was granted a licence to sell foodstuff in Soweto after being denied a licence to open a retail store.
He set up the Dube Hygienic Dairy in Soweto and in later years also set up a butchery, a restaurant and two grocery stores in the area.
He also had a petrol filling station and operated a General Motors dealership before the US company disinvested in South Africa in 1987.
He became the first owner of a black-owned BMW dealership in Soweto in the 1980s.
The man dubbed the father of black retail in South Africa developed the multi million rand Maponya Mall in Soweto in 2007 on land he bought in the ’70s.
He successfully resisted various attempts by the apartheid government to take the land away from him.
Maponya also put together a group of black businesspeople, forming Kilimanjaro Holdings (Pty) Ltd, and put in a successful bid for a bottling plant in East London when Coca-Cola disinvested from South Africa.
In 2007, he was awarded the Order of the Baobab in Silver for his “excellent contribution to entrepreneurship despite oppressive apartheid conditions, and for serving as an inspiration to disadvantaged South Africans striving for business success.”
Maponya donated a car and drove Nelson Mandela following his release from prison, with Madiba reportedly telling him: “Richard, I’m just so angry that these people (the apartheid regime) has taken 27 years to see my point on view.”
Maponya was also a trustee of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund and was the founder and first president of the National African Federated Chamber of Commerce (NAFCOC).
