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Working in a comfort zone has always been the least important thing in Seapei Mafoyane’s life. This explains how – in 15 short years – she’s moved from being in an entry-level job to becoming the CEO of Shanduka Black Umbrellas, where she has the challenge of growing South African entrepreneurs.
“Whenever I felt a sense of restlessness come over me in a job, I would make plans to move on,” says the dynamo as we sit in her light, modest office in a glass-and-chrome building in the heart of the Sandton CBD.
The effusive and friendly CEO has plans and challenges for South Africans as big as her welcome.
She points out of her fifth-floor window to “the richest square mile in Africa, yet our entrepreneurial activity is one of the lowest on the continent”.
She wants to change that – and fast.
“Research shows that 80% of small businesses in South Africa fail within the first two years of their existence. If you exclude white people from the figures, then there is a 90% failure rate among the black community.”
She attributes the lack of entrepreneurial spirit to its absence in our education system.
This is compounded by societal attitudes.
“If we qualify as an accountant or a scientist, and then start a small business, some believe we have failed. Being employed by a corporate has historically been regarded as a step up the ladder,” she says.
She has few words of comfort for those who claim they do not have the money to start a small business.
“The greatest misconception of entrepreneurs is the belief that they need funds to get a business going.
“No!” she exclaims. “They need a bankable concept that is so distinctive that it translates a customer’s ‘need’ to a ‘want’.”
She uses the example of Nkosana Makate, who recently won a prolonged legal battle against Vodacom over his “please call me” idea, which made the operator billions.
“He had a brilliant idea. The money was not pivotal to it,” Mafoyane says.
She urges budding entrepreneurs to “get up off your idea and make it happen”.
Mafoyane also urges aspiring entrepreneurs to get over the belief that their initial business concept is the only one that counts.
“They need to be malleable. Good concepts can be fine-tuned with reliable customer insights,” she says.
Next, she focuses her firm gaze on women, pointing out that only about 40% of incubated businesses at Shanduka Black Umbrellas are run by women “in a national population of 52% women”.
“We need to be more audacious, an attribute that is, unfortunately, lauded in men but denigrated in women. Nevertheless, we need to inculcate it.”
She points out that although times are tough, entrepreneurs throughout history have found opportunities. Shanduka Black Umbrellas is focusing increasingly on incubating small businesses “in small towns such as Mooinooi near Rustenburg, where we are enjoying great growth”.
Mafoyane might now work in the heart of big business, but she describes herself as a “small-town girl”. She grew up in Mafikeng in North West. There, she completed her A level exams at the International School of SA.
Instead of going to the University of Cape Town along with 80% of her classmates, she chose the University of Natal “to get away from my protective parents and to spread my wings. I couldn’t speak isiZulu, only English and Setswana.
“I was a dreamer with big ideas, boosted by my inspiring speech and drama teacher, Carol Ashman, who drew out the shy child within me.”
Mafoyane has a knack for figures and science, and graduated with a BSc in microbiology in 2000.
“I was not lucky enough to be hired by a big corporate during graduate-hunting week and I felt sorry for myself,” she candidly admits. But she soon landed a job with then relatively new Discovery Health, where she ended up as functional head of its Vitality programme.
“What an environment. They celebrate thought leaders, and I learnt from some of the best minds in South Africa.”
Six years later, she was looking for a new challenge.
She responded to Standard Bank’s call for non-bankers, and served from 2007 as its head of customer strategy in the credit division.
Four years later, the need to learn more “and add more value” saw her leave the bank. “In the strangest career move of my life, I accepted an SA Breweries offer to become their business performance and capability strategist.”
Mafoyane was in the middle of her Wits Business School MBA when she joined SA Breweries and completed it while working for the beer giant.
It was her MBA dissertation on black female entrepreneurs that saw her end up at Shanduka Black Umbrellas, “where everything that I had learnt in the past came to life”.
This CEO has two main passions, that of being an “uninhibited thinker and strategist, and making an impact in reducing unemployment in South Africa”.
