Ma Wiese's advice helps son weather tough times

It's amazing how many successful business leaders invoke the teachings of their mothers when asked about key aspects of their working lives.

Former McCarthy CEO Brand Pretorius ascribes his outward calm to a mother who he could not ever recall raising her voice in anger.

Christo Wiese, reputedly worth R100-billion (plus), puts his ability to see through political noise down to the values instilled in him by his late mother.

"She told me: 'Christo, there are those things you can fix and you must do all you can to fix them. The rest is out of your hands. You can't make the world right.'"

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The influential 74-year-old businessman, summoned two months ago by Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan to help turn the flagging optimism of South Africa's biggest foreign investors and give ratings agencies an excuse to keep the country on an investment grade footing, has built an empire navigating crises over half a century.

Perhaps we all have to take some lessons from the wise Mrs Wiese.

"These perceived crises don't bother me. When the Nats won in 1948, people left because they did not believe they could run a modern industrial economy. People fled in 1960 after Sharpeville; they gave their properties away, which gave the Ruperts the opportunity to buy [the wine farm] Fleur du Cap for a song.

During the Soweto uprising, I bought a business from someone who'd given up on South Africa. There were other opportunities after the Rubicon speech, the De Klerk speech unbanning political parties, and while some were hoarding food in the run-up to 1994, others saw opportunity."

Wiese, who is diversifying his business into Europe and the UK through a series of investments in retail and in gym group Virgin Active, acknowledges that the protests in Atteridgeville and Mamelodi sparked by the mayoral candidacy of former public enterprises minister Thoko Didiza are unsettling, but he refuses to see individual incidents as cause to be morose about the country.

"I have never been able to understand the benefit of being pessimistic," he told listeners to 702's The Money Show this week. "How does it help anyone?"

Wiese is driven by the belief that the global community wants South Africa to succeed.

block_quotes_start Property investors by their nature have to be optimists. It costs money to enter and exit a transaction block_quotes_end

There is a sense of frustration that politicians are not tackling issues of policy uncertainty quickly enough. The delayed Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act is a particular bugbear.

But he rates the ability of Gordhan to bring sufficient fiscal stability to bear to avert what many regard as an inevitable December downgrade.

Being an optimist in South Africa often requires that you do look both ways before crossing a one-way street. Wiese, who has built his business empire through arguably one of the most tumultuous periods in South Africa's history, doesn't like to see the violence but cautions against overreaction.

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Property investors by their nature have to be optimists. It costs money to enter and exit a transaction, and it often can take time to sell, particularly at the upper end.

South Africa's most expensive property yet to change hands was sold this week. The award-winning home, located along the sought-after Atlantic Seaboard, sold for R290-million, including furniture and artwork as well as two nice cars.

Its new owners would have paid transfer duty of more than R25-million - more than 90% of the country can hope to earn in a lifetime of toil.

A German couple invested in the region of €17-million in bricks and mortar in South Africa. Chances are their grandchildren's inheritances will not be too negatively affected should they be forced to write off the value of their purchase one day - but what they have done right now is express serious optimism .

Perhaps, like many investors with a sense of global perspective, they have seen an opportunity.

I wonder if they ever had tea with Mrs Wiese?

Whitfield is an award-winning financial journalist and broadcaster