ONE-ON-ONE WITH GEORGIE
TWENTY-five years after being crowned Miss South Africa, Amy Kleinhans-Curd remains on a winning streak because she hasn’t let a beauty title define her. Her core business, Private Label Promotions, has just undergone rebranding, Jan Harmsgat country house and farm is flourishing, Dial-a-Teacher is in its second decade, and thousands of underprivileged township children are thriving in her five Leap schools.
The year 1992 was certainly momentous for our country: Nelson Mandela was a free man; white people had voted for political reform in March; the Boipatong massacre occurred that June; a future swimming star, Chad le Clos, was born in April, and Struggle icon Helen Joseph died on Christmas Day.
It was also the year in which black beauty was finally acknowledged, when the first non-white Miss SA was crowned as democracy was about to dawn, which recalibrated plans for the newly qualified teacher from Cape Town, Amy Kleinhans.
Nobody could have been blind to the times, and Amy, who had studied African political history at university, was well aware of the significance.
“I knew 1992 was a pinnacle year for South Africa to showcase how it was embracing change, and it was wonderful to be at that spot to showcase to the world what the youth were thinking about,” she says.
At the Miss World contest in December, Amy controversially refused to walk with the apartheid flag, choosing instead a neutral, white flag carrying simply the Miss World logo, signifying peace.
She was placed fourth in the contest, but her sheer pluck made her the star of the show.
“I was in my hotel room, but the hostile phone calls just wouldn’t stop. I was so exhausted; I wanted to ignore the phone but couldn’t because I was waiting to chat to my parents.
“Just before they got through, a call came through and I knew Nelson Mandela’s distinctive voice. He wanted to congratulate me for being brave enough to make a stand by refusing to walk with the apartheid flag.
“He said, symbolically, it was so important to him that someone so young took a stand. So many of our generation didn’t understand what they had been through to fight for our country’s freedom.”
It was a fortuitous “teaching moment” for Amy, who came from a family of educators. After the Miss SA contest, though, life in the classroom didn’t appeal to her very much anymore, so she decided to shift her focus.
Learning curve
“I would have loved to get into the teaching/educational game, but the Miss SA competition gave me a broader audience, so I decided to combine business and education. It was a lovely learning curve for me, leaning into the entrepreneurial/NGO world and to bring corporate SA into the world of education. There’s more to education than just the teaching side of it.”
Her primary business now is call-centre based. “Private Label Promotions, or the PLP group of companies, looks after the HR base of our clients and their clients. The Dial-a-Teacher service is part of that smorgasbord of products available to our clients.”
The Dial-a-Teacher initiative grew out of the call centre, when Amy realised she had the infrastructure in place and could utilise it to assist pupils.
“I started the Dial-a-Teacher programme as an NGO. I wanted to give every child somewhere to call if they get stuck with their homework, if they have problems at school or have a problem with subject choice, whatever. Teachers have huge challenges, trying to look after 50 to 60 children in a class, and they can’t give that individual attention. And parents have moved on decades from their matric syllabus: they can’t help, or relate to the material at all, with their modern child in school.
“I wanted to afford every child in South Africa a telephone line where, if they get stuck, they can call someone. When I got tired of having to go back to my sponsors and having to revisit corporate supports, I decided to turn it into a commercial entity. I wanted to add a social responsibility of my own to my company.”
The Dial-a-Teacher service might be close to Amy’s heart, but Leap School is her baby. The schools give talented pupils from the township access to advanced education. ”We put them into the Leap Institute, which concentrates on advancing their maths and science skills.”
Leap, which is an NGO, “operate across five schools across the country’s townships. It scouts schools to find children with really strong academic potential in maths and science, which is what we are missing in South Africa.
“They take the cream of the crop and give them an intellectual environment to help them thrive into university-ready material. We also look for bursaries to take them into university. We have thousands of children in the programme.”
Growing farm
A more recent project is Jan Harmsgat in Swellendam, which she got involved with four years ago. The farm produces persimmons, pomegranates and pecans for the export market. It also has a 10-bedroom guest lodge. They do weddings and small conferences.
“Our international guests love the authenticity of being on a working farm and being able to look at our single-vineyard wines. The local market is also really interested in us – we do a beautiful pomegranate juice.
“It’s a growing animal and a moving target. It’s fascinating for me.”
With her fingers in so many pies, Amy says her first job – delivering the Cape Argus at the age of 11 – taught her the most valuable lessons in business.
“The most important job I’ve probably had was the sales environment, delivering the Cape Argus.
“You have to sell yourself, your product, grow your base of clients and keep them happy. The retention programme was very important. On Friday afternoons I’d have sweets in my bag and give them to the kids to pay for the week’s Argus fee as incentive. It’s how I still run my business: by incentivising people.”
Amy credits her industrious mother for teaching her about money.
“When I started delivering newspapers, she said to me: ‘You have to become financially independent as a woman. And the most important way you’re going to get there is by saving.
‘For every single amount of money you get, 10 percent you put away as a nest egg cushion. So there’s savings for your life, for your holidays, for your bike. It’s savings for your independence.’ It’s something I’ve taken through my life and I try to teach my children.”
On the silver anniversary of her Miss South Africa victory, Amy Kleinhans-Curd says that teaching might be in her genes but business is definitely in her blood.