Toasting female tavern owners
Scheme transforms women into business savvy shareholders
TWO female tavern owners in Tembisa have made huge strides in their businesses against all odds.
Nomthandazo Jane Makhanya – Gettie’s Tavern – and Joyce Mukhari – Ma-Joyce’s tavern – own shares in SAB Zenzele, a broad-based black economic empowerment scheme, and with dividends have been able to improve their businesses.
Makhanya was born and raised in Ecaleni, Tembisa, in the home in which she still lives. Jane, as she’s more popularly known, runs Gettie’s Tavern, the business she inherited on her mother’s death in 2005.
“My mother established the tavern. She was selling as a shebeen queen,” she says. In those days, her mother had to travel a long distance to buy a crate of beer, which she then sold on to her customers. “She sold warm beer,” Makhanya recalls.
Eventually, bottlestore owners noticed her mother’s hard work and started supplying her with alcohol to sell. But Jane’s mother often found herself on the wrong side of the law thanks to the strict liquor laws at the time, which banned black people from serving liquor, buying beer and even driving alcohol vans among other discriminatory measures.
“The police would come demanding a trading licence. We had no licence so they would take the alcohol,” Makhanya says. Her mother would then have to pay for the confiscated alcohol, as well as having to purchase new stock.
Luckily, the family received some assistance from SAB, Makhanya says. “There was a man called Justice Morupa, who was a rep for SAB. He liked us and assisted us in getting the licence,” she says. “In 1990 Getty’s Tavern became legal.”
In 2010, SAB representatives explained the concept of SAB Zenzele to her. By then, she’d been in charge of Gettie’s Tavern for five years. “They explained about an investment plan within SAB, then they explained how it worked and we understood,” Makhanya says, noting that she knew nothing about shares before then.
She invested what she could afford, which was R5 000 at the time. As part of the SAB Zenzele Holdings Limited trust, black owners of beer and soft drink retail establishments were allowed to purchase shares in SAB for a nominal amount.
The dividends she’s received over the years has helped Makhanya to improve her home and to help her children. She re-invests 80% of her dividends in an interest-bearing bank account and has instilled in her family the idea of investing in shares. “We now know how to invest,” she says.
Joyce Mukhari is the owner of
Ma-Joyce’s tavern in Phomolong, Tembisa. Before this, she was employed as a secretary. The company she worked for treated her very well, she says, sending her for training as a bookkeeper and helping her get her code 10 driving licence. “But the salary was not making me happy. I decided that I would never work for another person in my life. I wanted to be my own boss.”
In 2008, Mukhari went into the business of selling alcohol. “I did everything myself, but it was very difficult,” she says. “It was no fun at all until I was able to get my alcohol licence. SAB helped me with securing this licence. Today, it makes me very proud to sell while having a licence.”
Over the years, her business has faced several challenges. At times, she was unable to secure stock, or had to take out loans to pay for her stock. “I was not sure whether I should close it down or leave it open. People came forward with offers to take over my business. They offered to pay me monthly, but I had failed and risen with this business tirelessly.” So, she said, she carried on.
In 2010, SAB launched the SAB Zenzele share scheme which seeks to redress imbalances in the South African economy by rewarding key stakeholders, including employees and beer and soft-drink retailers, with shares in SAB – for a nominal amount, in the case of retailers. When Mawande Ntombela, the SAB representative , spoke to Mukhari of the opportunity prior to the launch, she was very wary. “I had no knowledge at all about what shares were,” she added.
“When Mawande brought the information about those shares to me, I took the paper and threw it away,” she said. Mawande, who’s now a sales manager at SAB, came to fetch Joyce on the day the offer closed. “I said, ‘Mawande, I don’t have money. I won’t be able to buy shares’. He pleaded with me to take my stock money and buy some shares. That’s when I saw that this guy was very serious, so I agreed.”
Mawande reminded her that the offer would be closing in a few hours. “I just collected some R5 coins along with R10 notes. I was carrying many coins – I think I had coins to the value of R2500,” she says. She was able to put together an equivalent amount in paper money. “That’s when I rushed and went to buy shares. When I saw the results, I don’t want to lie, I am still happy today,” Mukhari says of receiving her dividends from SAB Zenzele. |