By Thabang Mokopanele

Billion Group founder chairman and Rebosis CEO Sisa Ngebulana said on Friday tenderpreneurship represented "an ugly face of black economic empowerment" and set a bad example for young South Africans.

In an interview with Business Day, Mr Ngebulana, who listed the first black-managed and black-held property fund on the JSE on May 17, said that tenderpreneurs were holding the country back because their methods did not create new black enterprises and new wealth.

"Tell me how buying a stake in a company to increase its black ownership helps create employment and grow the economy? We need to inspire the young people of this country by having better role models — meaning people who create things from scratch.

"We still have a lot to do in creating a conducive environment for black enterprises that thrive and create employment ... we are not doing that very well at the moment," Mr Ngebulana said. It was a shame that tenderpreneurs were interested only in getting fees for the jobs they were meant to do but which they outsourced to companies that actually could do the job.

"These deal makers only collect fees and move on to other things, and in the process they are not learning anything or creating anything. There is no specialisation because they move from one sector to the next," he said.

Mr Ngebulana argued that the icons of black business should not be doing black economic empowerment deals because this did not create new wealth and new enterprises.

"We need a huge social transformation in this country in which the young people … celebrate private entrepreneurs who start enterprise that will thrive and compete with white business. I don’t blame white people for thinking that black people can’t do anything without being helped because currently that is the impression."

Rebosis has come about as a result of a successful initiative by the Billion Group that resulted in exceptional growth in the property portfolio over the past eight years, from the acquisition of its first commercial property in 2003 to the development of regional malls, culminating in a property portfolio with a value of about R4bn.

The Billion Group, established in 1999 by Mr Ngebulana, has grown its portfolio of office and retail properties since then through a combination of acquisitions and property developments to a portfolio of high-grade properties valued at more than R3,6bn.

Rebosis’s portfolio consists of 60% shopping centres and 40% office buildings, located in Gauteng and the Eastern Cape. Rebosis was incorporated in February last year and converted into a public company in November with a view to a separate listing of the Billion Group’s portfolio of office and retail properties.

Mr Ngebulana’s Billion Group, which is the developer and management company for Rebosis, said there were at least three projects in the pipeline to grow the portfolio.

He said the central government ought to do much more to support local authorities with regard to skills and revenue generation. Many property developers had walked away from the risk associated with dealing with local authorities, he said.

"Developers are visionaries who operate on risk and have to have certainty when it comes to projects.

"Without that environment being created we are going to lose a lot of entrepreneurs who could have otherwise created much needed jobs. An example is the difficulties we had to face in East London when we wanted to bring two projects which could have created jobs," Mr Ngebulana said.

"The local authority has basically lost over a R1bn investment, which we had to put aside because of challenges in dealing with different officials."

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Source: Business Day