Bike riding, fly fishing, collecting art, music, enjoying friends and following rugby

Ronald Ennik looks relaxed for a 50 something unemployed executive. As my partner and I walk up the stairs at Orient, I can see him and his willowy, former model wife, Jodie, settled back in their chairs like a couple on holiday. Which, in a way, they are.

Ennik set up the Pam Golding Properties office in Johannesburg in 1989 and established it as the dominant estate agency in Gauteng. Founder Pam Golding gave him free rein. It was inevitable, therefore, that problems would arise when her son, Andrew, took over as group CEO a few years ago.

Golding took SA’s top estate agency brand, built up by his mother, and corporatised it, building a professional management team around himself at the Cape Town head office. Eventually, the suits with their policies and rules started to erode Ennik’s autonomy. He and Golding tried to resolve things.

But in February, Golding announced they couldn’t agree on certain issues and had decided to part ways.

“It was as simple as that,” says Ennik.

He and Jodie invite us to try Orient’s special cocktail, while we order our food. Jodie insists we order the crystal salad rolls to start. They both order duck, bang bang for him, barbecue for her. “We like the casualness and the inventiveness and quality of the food,” says Jodie.

Ennik hasn’t been able to answer my question: what does he do now?

“I’ve had some amazing offers but I’ve decided to be careful and take my time deciding,” he says. “I’m not quite sure why I have that attitude. It’s a bit of an adventure. I’ll definitely stay in real estate,” he adds. “I get a kick out of teaching people and helping them grow, and particularly working with bigger groups. So I’ll probably end up at a medium-size organisation.”

But away from the suits, I say.

“I’ll miss him not wearing suits,” says Jodie.

Ennik’s adventurousness doesn’t surprise people who know him. His German mother divorced his Dutch father in the late 1950s, before Ennik was a year old. “She was adventurous,” he says. “She decided that South America was a land of opportunity, so we left Germany and went there, first to Bogota, then Lima and finally Montevideo.”

Ennik’s mother had arranged to have lunch with a family friend, a German ship owner. “She wasn’t at the restaurant when the ship owner arrived. He made some inquiries and heard that a young woman and a baby had been abducted to a bordello outside the city.”

The arrival of the duck interrupts the story. Ennik orders a glass of wine and the rest of us water. But we want more of the story.

“The ship owner rode on horseback out to the bordello,” continues Ennik. “He contrived to slip my mother and me out of a window, onto his horse, and galloped back to Montevideo. He put us on one of his ships sailing that night to Cape Town.”

Ennik’s maternal grandparents were close friends of Johann Graue, owner of the Nederberg wine estate. Mother and son ended up on the estate, where she and Graue’s son, Arnold, fell in love and got engaged. “But he died in a flying accident a week before the wedding,” says Ennik.

His mother eventually remarried and moved to Johannesburg, where Ennik was schooled at King Edward.

He started teaching at St Martin’s in Jo’burg south but got adventurous and started a fishing operation on dams in the Free State. He gave this up to become an estate agent and started his own businesses before being offered a merger with Pam Golding Properties.

Jo’burg is where the Enniks intend staying. “We like it,” says Ennik. “We love the thunderstorms and the restaurants. And people are more sociable here.”

Besides, they’ve just completed and moved into their dream home in Parkwood. Jodie owns a fashion business and Ennik has a group of buddies who’ve been close since school days.

“I suppose wanting to stay in Jo’burg limits my options,” says Ennik. “But I’m feeling buoyant. Everything’s cool.”

Source: Financial Mail