Want empowerment, seek it, own it
BUSI Pepu’s journey to her own business has been one filled with bumps and bruises, determination and eventual reward and triumph.
Pepu, the owner of the Hlunga Group – a business with primary interests in human resources, consulting, industrial psychologist services and talent management – has had many stumbling blocks on her journey to the top.
Growing up in rural Vryheid, Pepu, 47, used to cross rivers to get to school. On rainy days, she said, she would tuck her uniform in her bag to stop it getting wet and walk through the river in her normal clothes to ensure she did not miss school.
When she eventually made it to university, where she studied towards an administration degree at the then-university of Durbanwestville, she was a student by day and a hairdresser by night.
Pepu, who now holds two master’s degrees – one in business administration and the second in industrial psychology – said her business helped to solve problems for other businesses.
Founded in 2003, Pepu’s Hlunga Group – which also has interests in the property space – has been through painful times, with a number of retrenchments of staff in the past 15 years.
Pepu said though the experiences were painful, hard lessons were inevitably learnt.
In 2009, she had to retrench all four members of staff they employed just a year after the business made its first million rand in profits. The business had quickly gone into the red after under-costing clients unwittingly, poor planning and due to the economic crisis, she said.
The business recovered and by 2012, it had 12 employees and now hires 30, with branches in Bloemfontein, Johannesburg, Richards Bay and a satellite branch in Mthatha.
The business is headquartered in Durban’s Point Waterfront precinct.
Pepu has supervised 10 interns and her ultimate goals are global, to “build capacity for Africa and Europe”.
Skills deficit
“We want to build a research unit and make a meaningful contribution to society.
“We have all this work we have collected which nobody knows about and we want people to draw from that,” she said.
Pepu added that South Africa did not have an unemployment problem, but instead, there was a skills deficit.
While working at Transnet, Pepu was responsible for recruitment. “To get 10 cognitively qualified people, you need to speak to at least 100.
Our quality of development might not be sufficient.”
And what has she learnt in her time in business?
“I have realised that empowerment comes from within a person. To me, empowerment is for people who want it, people who have a drive for it. Those who want empowerment, seek it, own it,” she said.
“And as a black business, sometimes you want to have social responsibility to others, while other businesses work and make the money first and then they embark on social responsibility initiatives,” she said.
Pepu was the guest speaker at the launch of the 2018 Entrepreneur of the Year awards in Durban.