BUILDING FROM THE GROUND UP

It was supposed to be a custom-designed building in Soweto to show commitment to SA’S growing black entrepreneur base. Instead, the University of Johannesburg’s (UJ) new business school has set up home in an old glass skyscraper overlooking the main UJ Milpark campus.

What hasn’t changed, says school senior director Lyal White, is its desire to educate and mentor future generations of black business and leadership talent — though not to the exclusion of white students.

It’s more than a decade since UJ announced plans for a R500m school on vacant land near Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital. The university was already offering courses through the faculty of management it inherited from Rand Afrikaans University, but wanted to create a formal business school to match those at other state universities. The plan was to open the new institution in 2009.

However, financial constraints, loss of key personnel and changing UJ priorities delayed the process, and it wasn’t until 2017 that the Johannesburg Business School (JBS) finally got off the ground, literally, by moving into the multistorey former headquarters of insurer

Auto & General.

It’s nearly a year since White, previously associate professor at Pretoria University’s Gordon Institute of Business Science and director of its centre for dynamic markets, moved into his new job. But it’s only in the past few weeks that JBS has started to provide the executive education programmes that are the staple diet of most schools. It will be another two years before the school is ready to offer an MBA.

White knows he has to be patient. “It takes at least three or four years to establish a ➦