Phakathi takes over from outgoing president TC Chetty. Phakathi said last Thursday at the 38th annual Sapoa convention in Durban that the association had to take the lead in facilitating members' training on the objectives and implementation of the property charter.

The property and construction charters were signed earlier this year.

Sapoa has more than 800 members, including commercial property owners, listed property companies, banks, developers and property managers.

Said Phakathi: "One of the pillars of transformation and economic empowerment is ownership, and I strongly believe that ownership of property by blacks will facilitate other pillars of empowerment, and not the other way around. Transformation of the industry will mean real transformation of the economy of SA.

"We need to guard against the practice of massaging numbers to meet charter targets without genuine empowerment. So I see Sapoa initially making sure that the essence of the charter, beyond the numbers, is widely understood."

Phakathi has extensive experience in the property field, having worked at Eskom as national head of commercial property development.

Phakathi's commercial property department was responsible for the development of Eskom offices worth R110m from 1997 to 1999.

In 1999 Phakathi was appointed a corporate finance consultant to Eskom Holdings and was made a director of Motraco, the Mozambican electricity transmission company that supplies electricity to the Mozal aluminium smelter in Maputo.

He is a member of the African Real Estate Society and the South African Institute of Black Property Practitioners.