2011 GIL AWARD RECIPIENTS
Entrepreneurs Honored at GIL 2011: South Africa
By Margaret Marshall-Hagan
Editor, eBulletins
Frost & Sullivan
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Dr. Richard John Maponya
 Dr. Richard Maponya established his first business in the early 1950s, after applying persistent pressure and eventually convincing officials to consider giving him a license to sell foodstuff. Through the legal partnership of Mandela/Tambo, which made representation on his behalf, Maponya was finally issued a General Dealer’s License.
Maponya and his late wife, Marina, opened Maponya’s Dairy Products in Soweto. Though restrictive laws of the time prohibited black people from engaging in certain business interests, he continuously sought new business opportunities within the purview of the permitted trading interests. This facilitated Maponya’s establishment of other retail businesses including Maponya Supply Stores, a general dealer including a greengrocers, butchery and eating house; Mountain Motors, the first motor franchise—a GM dealership—in Soweto (later closed down when GM disinvested in South Africa); petrol filling stations; the largest supermarket in Soweto; a BMW franchise; Bottle Stores; one of two car-for-hire operations; bus service; and a funeral parlor, among others.
When Coca-Cola disinvested in South Africa, Maponya organized a group of black business men and formed Kilimanjaro Holdings (Pty) Ltd. which successfully bid for a bottling plant in East London. He also successfully bid for one of the first cell phone service providers in SA. Additionally, his development of Maponya Mall, a regional shopping centre, is said to be the largest private investment in Soweto and has become a symbol of hope and a catalyst for further development in Soweto and many such areas.
His achievements include the National Order of the Baobab; honorary doctorates from University of Johannesburg and Tshwane University of Technology; the prestigious Ernst & Young Award: A Dream in the Making; the Financial Mail Little Black Book Lifetime Achiever Award; and Sunday Times Top 100 Companies: Lifetime Achievement Award. He is trustee and founding member of The Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund; founder and past president of the National African Federated Chambers of Commerce; founder and former chairman (for 14 years) of the Johannesburg African Chamber of Commerce; founder and member of Black-Chain Limited, a black-owned supermarket group; and founder of Afrimet, a wholesale business designed to leverage the buying power of black retail entrepreneurs. He is on the boards of Telkom Limited and CODESA I & II and was instrumental in establishing African Bank Limited with the objective of creating a financial institution that supports the needs of black entrepreneurs and consumers. He is chairman of Kilimanjaro Holdings, a wholly black-owned Coca-Cola bottling company and the first black company to be listed on the Johannesburg Securities Exchange (JSE).
Wendy Luhabe
 Wendy Luhabe’s meaningful business career and social entrepreneurship have been said to bridge the gap between women and the economy.
A social entrepreneur since 1991, with 10 years in corporate marketing of a luxury brand, Wendy’s portfolio includes positions with Vendome SA; the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC); the International Marketing Council (IMC) responsible for Brand South Africa; and as director of the JSE. She is a trustee of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award International Foundation; designed to equip young people for life; a patron for Junior Achievement South Africa, an organization that develops entrepreneurial capacity; a founding board member of the Patrons for Student Sponsorship Program, which has helped more than 500 academically distinguished South African students from low-income families access private school education; a Chancellor of the University of Johannesburg; a board member of the International Institute of Management Development in Switzerland; and a member of the International Advisory Board of
ESSEC Business School in France.
Wendy is the recipient of two
honorary doctorates in commerce for her
pioneering contribution to the economic
empowerment of women. She is currently assisting
an entrepreneur with starting a global movement
of entrepreneurship scheduled to launch in 2011.
During the past 15 years, Wendy has received international recognition from the World Economic Forum in Switzerland as a Global Leader for Tomorrow; the Osaka Junior Chamber in Japan as an Outstanding Young Person; Leadership in Practice by Unisa Business School in South Africa; and Woman of Worth from the Jewish Achievers Awards in South Africa. She is featured regularly in various media (Sunday Times, Financial Mail) as one of South Africa’s most powerful women.
Mark Shuttleworth
 A South African entrepreneur, Mark Shuttleworth is most well-known for his First African in Space Mission, where he traveled as a cosmonaut member of the crew on the Soyuz mission TM34 in April 2002.
Just as noteworthy, Shuttleworth is the founder of the Ubuntu Project, a popular Linux-based operating system that is freely available worldwide for desktops and servers. Ubuntu was founded in 2004 for consumers and large-scale enterprise deployments. The system is used for personal, PC-based applications to heavy industrial applications including massive cloud computing environments, national police forces, banks and schools in the Amazon.
As CEO of Canonical (2004 – 2010), the company behind Ubuntu, Shuttleworth led design and product strategy for the company. Canonical provides commercial support for the free Ubuntu operating system and builds many of the unique elements of Ubuntu for desktop, cloud and server deployments.
Passionate about the triple thrust of cadence, design and quality in open source, Shuttleworth believes that free software can become the de facto world-standard for building and experiencing all computer software. His current focus is primarily on design, championing the idea of design-driven development and finding ways to bring design thinking into the open source process. He is also the founder of numerous other projects including Thawte, a company specializing in digital certificates and cryptography; HBD, an investment company; and The Shuttleworth Foundation, which funds innovative thinkers to bring about change in society.
Shuttleworth studied Finance and Information Technology at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.
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