South Africa's white knight

[Sir X]

South Africa's white knight

Simon Austin | 10:32 UK time, Thursday, 6 August 2009


As the only white player in South Africa's starting line-up, Matthew Booth accepts he "sticks out like a sore thumb" every time they play.
This led some foreign observers to assume he was being booed by the predominantly black crowds at this summer's Confederations Cup, when in fact the complete opposite was the case.
The 6ft 6in central defender is a firm favourite with the fans of Bafana Bafana, who greet his every touch with loud cries of "Booooth!"
With the biggest season in South Africa's football history about to kick off, the 32-year-old is set to be the hosts' poster boy at next summer's World Cup, so expect to hear and see a lot more of him in the coming year.
In a country where football is played and followed mainly by the black population, Booth makes for an unlikely hero.
His upbringing in the white middle-class village of Fish Hoek on the outskirts of Cape Town dictated that he shouldn't even play football, let alone become a professional.
"We only played rugby and cricket at my all-white boys' school and those sports were almost pushed down your throat," he tells me.
"To play football, I had to go to a local club after school. It had an open-door policy allowing blacks and whites to play together, which was probably against the law at that time.

"It meant that from the age of five I was playing alongside black and coloured kids, when my schoolmates would never have come into contact with them.
"I was lucky that my dad encouraged me to play football, because he had loved playing the game when he was a kid."
Within minutes of talking to Booth, you quickly realise what a fascinating character he is. Not only does he speak Russian, post a regular video diary from the South Africa camp on YouTube and have a wife who is a former super model, but he has forthright, controversial opinions.
It's a refreshing change from some of the anodyne utterances we are used to hearing from players in the English Premier League.
For example he strongly argues that sport is still divisive in South Africa, when it should be a unifying force.

"Football has been construed as a black sport here in South Africa and that means it hasn't got the money it deserves," he says.
"Rugby and cricket are seen as the white sports and they get the money and the sponsorship."
While these "white sports" are played on "manicured lawns", Booth says black schoolchildren play football on "dirt and scrubland".
Booth is urging the South African government to invest more in grassroots football and to stop school sports being played along racial lines.
He wants them to ensure that black children are able to play rugby and cricket, with their white counterparts being encouraged to try football.
So it's easy to see why the imposing centre-half has become such a hero for the supporters of both his club side, the Mamelodi Sundowns, and Bafana Bafana.
Despite his upbringing in a leafy middle-class area, the townships have become a big part of Booth's life.
His wife Sonia Bonneventia grew up in Soweto, the massive township on the outskirts of Johannesburg.
They met when Bonneventia, who finished second in the 2001 Miss South Africa contest, was babysitting for one of his team-mates and they now have two young sons together.
"Our backgrounds are like chalk and cheese," he admits. "Soweto is very different from my upbringing in the suburbs, but I absolutely love it there.
"We visit all the time because it's where my wife's family still live and I go there on nights out with my team-mates. The atmosphere and vibe is unique and I would advise any tourist to pay a visit."
Bonneventia gained a business and marketing degree after retiring as a model and Booth says: "She has the beauty AND the brains - I'm not quite sure what she sees in me!"
Booth gained a host of new admirers with his no-nonsense displays during the Confederations Cup, playing a key role in South Africa securing fourth place in the tournament.
He has been described as an old-fashioned centre-half, imperious in the air and tenacious in the tackle, and had hoped for an offer from an English Premier League side after the tournament.
After playing on loan for Wimbledon for half a season in 2001 - "not a happy time because the club was in turmoil over the move to Milton Keynes" - he had always dreamed of playing for one of the big teams in England.
Sadly, the anticipated approach never materialised and he is now focused on helping the Sundowns improve on their disappointing ninth-place finish last season.
Booth is also grateful for having had the chance to play for seven seasons in Russia, for FC Rostov and Krylya Sovetov, during an exotic career.
The Sundowns kick off their Premier League season against the Mpumalanga Black Aces at their home stadium in Atteridgeville near Pretoria on Saturday.
It promises to be an interesting season, not least because Booth's new coach is the brooding, charismatic Hristo Stoichkov.
What does he make of the former Barcelona and Bulgaria legend so far?
"He's a no-nonsense coach, which was badly needed for the discipline of the team," he says.
"But at the same time he comes across as a players' coach and so far has got on well with all the players. His will to win as a player definitely comes out in his management."
The Sundowns are often described as the Chelsea of South Africa, thanks to the backing they receive from their wealthy benefactor, the platinum magnate Patrice Motsepe.
Despite being the most successful side in South Africa over the last 20 years, their form has been poor in recent times.
And difficult as it might be, Booth is determined to concentrate on each game this season, rather than looking over the horizon toward next summer's World Cup.
"A week is a long time in football, so a year is massive," he says. "That means I won't get too far ahead of myself, because otherwise I won't be in the World Cup squad, let alone the team.
"Playing in a World Cup in your home country would be the pinnacle for most players and it gives me such motivation."
If he can achieve that aim, be sure to hear loud cries of "Boooth" above the wail of the vuvuzelas in South Africa next summer.
* For more up-to-the-minute chat, you can follow me on my Twitter feed

[Sir X]

The World's Richest People
The Prince of Mines
Susan Adams 02.28.08, 6:00 PM ET
Forbes Magazine dated March 24, 2008

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Patrice Motsepe entered the mining business when South Africa ended apartheid. Today the onetime lawyer and avowed capitalist is the country's first black billionaire.

On a brilliantly sunny Thursday in January, Patrice Motsepe, a vigorous 46-year-old with regal posture, is striding through a gleaming shopping mall on the Cape Town waterfront. Suddenly a crowd forms. A half-dozen employees from the Build-A-Bear Workshop ask for his autograph. Two giggling young women roll up their sleeves as Motsepe signs their arms with a black marker, smiling while admirers snap photos with cell phones. An older woman approaches Motsepe and nearly swoons, grasping his arm and laying her head on his chest as he pats her back and murmurs thank you in Xhosa, one of the six African languages he speaks.
All this is not for a movie star or entertainer but for South Africa's first black billionaire. Over 15 years Motsepe, preaching free market capitalism, turned a low-level mining services business into the country's first black-owned mining company, African Rainbow Minerals, with 2007 revenue of $875 million. Driven by the Asian commodities boom, ARM's share price has rocketed in the past year from $12 to $24, pushing the value of Motsepe's net worth to $2.4 billion. Motsepe, a lawyer by training, serves as ARM's executive chairman, with a 42% stake in the company. He also owns a 5.5% stake worth $295 million in Sanlam, a publicly traded financial services company outside Cape Town.
By billionaire standards Motsepe has a modest lifestyle. His three sons attend prestigious private schools, but he has only one home, in the affluent Johannesburg suburb of Bryanston, and no yacht or plane. His one indulgence is to own the Mamelodi Sundowns, a soccer team. It doesn't tarnish his star quality that he's married to one of South Africa's most glamorous women, a medical doctor turned fashion impresario.
But for all the adulation, in South Africa such success comes with a price: being labeled an oligarch. Even many blacks have complained that the country's 1994 transformation from apartheid to democracy has benefited only the elite few. The criticism stems from laws that require substantial black ownership in certain industries, including mining. A handful of politically connected individuals have grown enormously wealthy as a result. One of Motsepe's sisters, Bridgette Radebe, who's married to transport minister Jeffrey Radebe, heads a mining company and is said to be among the wealthiest black women in the country. "It's called crony capitalism," says Moeletsi Mbeki, 62, brother of South Africa's president and an outspoken critic of the race-preference laws. "It's an anticompetitive system."
Motsepe concedes he benefited from the system yet says that his success was no handout, as he began building his mining business before the laws started taking effect in 2005. He says, "The legislation came way after we did our deals."
Motsepe and his family were in a better position than most to take advantage of the end of apartheid. Born in the sprawling black township of Soweto (next to Johannesburg), where his mother had grown up, Motsepe is a member of a royal clan within the Tswana tribe. He is, in fact, a prince.
Motsepe's father, Augustine Motsepe, was a critic of the apartheid regime. Before his son Patrice was born, Augustine was banished by the government to Hammanskraal, a rural area north of Pretoria where the government thought he could do less damage (he named his son after Patrice Lumumba, head of the Republic of the Congo and one of the first black African postcolonial leaders). There he opened a grocery store and then a beer hall and restaurant. "People don't know that there were very successful black businessmen in the years of apartheid," says Motsepe.
Though one of Patrice's maternal great-grandfathers came from Scotland, the old government classified the Motsepes as African. The family had to pull strings to get their seven children admitted to an Afrikaans-language Catholic boarding school that was officially designated for so-called "coloreds," South Africans of mixed race. From age 6, Motsepe spent school holidays working behind the counter in his father's store, where he says he learned his earliest lessons about business. "Whenever my father made a profit, he always plowed it back into the store," Motsepe recalls.
He graduated from the University of Swaziland and then became one of the few black law graduates of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, designated whites-only by the apartheid government (Motsepe had to apply for an exemption to attend). In 1988 he joined Bowman Gilfillan, one of South Africa's largest corporate law firms, and in 1993 he became the firm's first black partner. Energetic and affable, Motsepe never wore his race on his sleeve, says Bowman partner and longtime Motsepe lawyer and confidant Neil Rissik.
Indeed, ask Motsepe about what it was like to grow up as a black man under the violent, racist apartheid regime and he responds with bromides. "The apartheid system was very bad for our people, very bad," he says blandly, switching quickly to the positive. "Only in South Africa could you have a change in government without civil war. If there wasn't the depth of love and caring among our people, this would not have happened."