Johannesburg - T.J. Strydom’s language is racy, pacy. It reads like the work of a writer on a mission, the purpose of which is to tell a story, worthy of telling. It is the tale of how one maverick businessman made oodles of money for himself and those who risked all to back him.
And make it he did, by the bucket load, by the billions. Koos Bekker’s Billions. Many of Bekker’s ilk like the founders of Nike (Knight), Amazon (Jeff Bezos) and, to an extent, Facebook (Mark Zuckerberg) had Daddy Dearest to run to have their dreams bankrolled. Bekker had no such familial backing. Perhaps he had better – the head honcho of a major publishing house Naspers at the time, Ton Vosloo.
Add to that the Nationalist Party (NP) connections that smoothed the way. Die Groot Krokodil PW Botha was a newspaper reader, Die Volksblad being his favoured read. But the political cushion does not take away from the genius of Bekker.
From Hoer Volkskool in Heidelberg, Bekker had exhibited a precocious promise to succeed and it was no wonder he’d return years later to the high school in his sleepy hometown to gift it with his director’s fees of R2, 1 million.
From university at Stellenbosch, which alma mater he warned against degenerating into another ‘bush college’, Bekker was always forward-looking, one of the verligte Afrikaner business leaders who foresaw the eventuality of a black President even in the early years of NP rule.
Armed with a junior degree from Stellies, an LLB from Wits, and an MBA from Columbia University in New York, indeed the world was an oyster for Bekker, who was headed to scale business heights, with the support of his broadcaster wife, Karen. He had left South Africa never to return but when he caught a whiff of the success of Pay-TV in the US, he returned home and with the unstinting backing of Vosloo at Naspers, there was very little in the way of hurdles for Bekker.
South Africa first took note of the beautiful business mind of the boy from Heidelberg with the launch of M-Net, the Electronic Media Network that would give the public broadcaster a run for its money, with the advent of pay television on our shores.
Then he’d cement his savvy business nous with the move to set up, among others, MIH, MTN, and M-Web. He made money, lots of it and, as is the nature of business, he lost some of it. But there was more going for him than against him. How could he not succeed? When he joined Naspers, he insisted on being paid ‘like an entrepreneur, not an employee. He took shares in the business, not a hefty salary, a corner office and the related perks. If he did not make money for the shareholders, he took nothing home. As a result, he suffered major financial setbacks.
And then, there was something called Tencent, that would change the business landscape forever and propel the boy Christened Jacobus Petrus Bekker in 1952 to the front of the queue of global corporate giants and, for his troubles, make him a dollar billionaire.
Just for seeing an opportunity, he made it big. Bekker saw the huge potential presented by the advent of the Internet and pounced.
Years later, he’d continue to see other gaps. The stake in Tencent, the Chinese technology company, remains among what are arguably the smartest tech investments of the 21st century, Strydom writes.
The money in this book, in Bekker’s portfolio – his billions, is made up of figures that the author describes as, “the sorts of numbers that make investment analysts gasp”.
A financial treatise is by nature as dull and grey as the suits (and shoes) of the captains of industry. Not Strydom’s writing, specifically on this project. It reads like it was intended to be enjoyed. In literature, it is said that when a work reads this easily, a lot of hard slog goes into the writing.
A book like this is to be read and re-read, then, repeated. Kudos to Strydom! Be warned: if you indeed go on to read this, you’d want to emulate Bekker and make for yourself a life and legacy like his!