Motsepe in Forbes top 100
PATRICE Motsepe, one of South Africa’s black billionaires, is showing South Africans that anything is achievable if you just want it badly enough.
Motsepe, who as a boy was sent to boarding school in Aliwal North in Eastern Cape, far from home in Hammanskraal, just north of Pretoria, was named by Forbes as one of the top 100 greatest living business minds of the century.
He stands alongside other greats such as Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Oprah Winfrey and Elon Musk, to name a few of the more famous.
The list will be officially released on Thursday. It honours those who did not come into their wealth through inheritance, corruption or political affiliation but by building their fortunes from scratch.
He is the only South African on the list, although Musk was born in South Africa and has spent some of his childhood here.
Asked whether he considered himself one of the top 100 greatest living business minds today, Motsepe said: “It’s a great honour but I recognise there are many greater minds more deserving than I am.”
The majority of those who made the list were part of the Giving Pledge campaign, he said. The Giving Pledge was launched in 2010 by Buffet and Gates to persuade the rich to commit to giving half their wealth to charity. About 170 pledges have been made.
Motsepe said “ubuntu” was the common quality among people on the list, because the most successful entrepreneurs were humble human beings.
They all shared “the values of hard work, sacrifice, determination and motivation, but also a commitment to the wellbeing of the communities you come from”.
He added that even a sustainable business relied on these qualities and that his main aim was to build a world-class company with a “peculiar obligation” to make a contribution to the poor.
“I never aimed to focus on any domestic or global achievement,” he said. “My main aim was to create companies that are globally competitive.”
He wanted every young girl and boy to look at the Forbes list and say: “If these two South Africans can make it, I can make it as well.”
Motsepe, who started out in mining, is now expanding his businesses into the financial services sector as well. He recently listed African Rainbow Capital on the JSE. — BDLive