TOM EATON | Hats off to those two die-hards who’ve stuck it out in Pretoria

The 2023 edition of the “World’s Wealthiest City Report” has revealed a genuinely shocking fact: there are two people worth at least R1.8bn who have chosen, apparently deliberately, to live in Pretoria.

But that’s not all. In another stunning revelation, it turns out that a “centi-millionaire” isn’t, as I hoped, someone who is worth at least one million cents. Disappointingly, to qualify as a “centi-millionaire” you need to have a minimum of $100m lying around, or roughly R1.8bn.

According to the report, there are 93 people in South Africa who qualify, along with five dollar-billionaires, meaning they are worth at least R18bn, or five porta-loos purchased by the Gauteng health department.

Of course, these sorts of numbers are as fluid and negotiable as a PricewaterhouseCoopers auditor after a lunch with the Guptas. I’m sure there are quite a few rand billionaires who keep their wealth very much on the down low, or who genuinely don’t know how much they’re currently worth, what with their money being diversified across a variety of asset classes such as couches, armchairs, settees, recliners, divans and so forth.

Johannesburg remains Africa’s most squillionaire-encrusted city, ahead of Cairo, Cape Town, Lagos and Nairobi. I must confess that Lagos is a surprise, given the number of Nigerian princes whose fortunes have been put out of reach and who need you, Beloved in Christ, to send R5,000 to help them access the funds; but what do I know?

The number of blinged-up Johannesburgers, however, has reportedly fallen by 40% over the last 10 years, presumably as they’ve started reading the writing spray-painted on the collapsed wall next to the exploded substation and the empty water pipe, and semigrated to the Cape.

The number of blinged-up Johannesburgers, however, has reportedly fallen by 40% over the past 10 years, presumably as they’ve started reading the writing spray-painted on the collapsed wall next to the exploded substation and the empty water pipe, and semigrated to the Cape. Either that or they lent Carl Niehaus money.

To be fair, however, Joburg isn’t the only South African city seeing an exodus of high-net-worth individuals (HNWI), who are defined by the Henley & Partners report as someone with at least $1m (R18m) liquid and free to invest. Pretoria’s mink and manure set has dwindled by 35% over the same period (apart, obviously, for those two mega-billionaires who don’t seem to know that other cities exist), while Durban’s has shrunk by 6%.

The beneficiary of this capital flight has, of course, been the Cape. Cape Town’s share of HNWIs has increased by 10%, the Winelands’ by 18%, the Garden Route’s by 22%, while the Whale Coast has earned its name by upping its quota of whales by a whopping 25%.

I know we’re supposed to hate the ultra-rich, but I can’t help thinking about all the industries those 98 people are helping to prop up: the lawyers and tax experts, both here and in the Cayman Islands and Panama; the pharmacists; the therapists and psychiatrists and rehab centres for their children; the public relations firms they hire when their children stop going to therapy or tie their sheets into a rope and escape from the rehab centres; the pit crews for their ride-on lawnmowers; the people who milk their ferrets so they can have fresh ferret milk with their muesli every morning; the English literature PhDs they consult to choose the best and most important books to line up as décor on their solitary bookshelf ...

I know. This is the point where people living pay cheque to pay cheque rush to the defence of the super-rich and tell me that jealousy is making me nasty. And it’s true, at least a little bit. I’d love to be given $100m. But the reason I’m not genuinely envious of our billionaires is that I know what they had to do to make it, and there’s not enough money in the world that could persuade me to do the work required to be a billionaire, like starting an insurance company or running a mine or being Cyril Ramaphosa.

Call me a slacker, but I know myself, and I know that if I had to spend just one week going to meetings where people talk about shifting the needle on low-hanging fruit by pivoting away from known unknowns and taking this offline to action the aforementioned — or, in the case of Ramaphosa, just hugging myself and rocking slowly backwards and forwards — I would start using my vast wealth to make me feel better, which means I’d quickly end up face down in a jacuzzi containing so much cocaine it looks like a flat white.

No, the billionaires are welcome to their dosh. And to those two in Pretoria: is there someone we can call?