Business
Phuti Mahanyele and Shanduka Group- Catering to Africa’s Middle Class
“The market has taken a certain view and we are saying we believe in these assets,” Ms. Mahanyele says, flashing a warm and confident smile. She notes, however, that South Africa’s resource sector is becoming more challenging. “It is more costly to mine, the dynamics in the labor relations are changing, and of course we see volatility in the sector,” she says, but adds that South Africa is what Shanduka knows best.
Ms. Mahanyele is one of a generation of South Africans brought up straddling different worlds. Growing up in Soweto, a black township on the edge of Johannesburg, she would make a two-hour bus ride to one of the country’s few mixed-race schools. During apartheid in the 1980s, state inspired segregation meant that whites and blacks did not live together.
She says Black Economic Empowerment has helped redress some of the historical legacies that saw the majority of South Africans excluded from the country’s economy and hindered access to good education, but the program is imperfect.
“Whilst we need people to be owners of equity and capital, not everyone can be a businessperson,” she says. “We are still a long way away from where we would like to see the country, in terms of race relations.”
Ms. Mahanyele went on to university in the U.S. at Rutgers University and got an MBA in the U.K. at De Montfort University. After working for a small investment bank and South Africa’s development bank, Ms. Mahanyele chose to join Shanduka rather than work for a larger investment bank.
The company has grown from the days where the young team would sit around a table making “quick decisions,” she says.
“We were young with business dreams… Now we are a lot more corporatized,” Ms. Mahanyele says, adding the company has hired a lot more deal makers.
