Witsies around the world

50 years of an international MBA

Tom Lewis (MBA 1972) reflects on the amazing cards he’s been dealt from “a little mountain cottage” in Tyrol in Austria.

Tom in Brittany at the Carnac Stones.

Heather Dugmore

When Tom Lewis was approached to be interviewed for WITSReview, he agreed but said it was “with some trepidation – I never enjoy talking about myself ”. He doesn’t need to; others do it for him, such as Hans- Paul Bürkner, chairperson of the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), one of the world’s largest consulting firms.

In an article in the Harvard Business Review, Bürkner said the best approach to managing people he ever got was from Tom, who headed several of their offices in different parts of the world.

Bürkner described Tom as a natural diplomat with the ability to get to the heart of what team members are good at and what they are not. “On one of our earliest projects together, Tom was responsible for a remarkably mixed team: we had one person who was strong on organisational issues but incredibly weak with numbers, another who was a computer on legs – superb with analytics, much less so with anything else – and so on. At the time, I assumed it was better (or certainly easier) to build a team of people with similar strengths.

“Tom had a different approach,” Bürkner continued. “He turned that diverse set of individuals into a high-performing team, letting each person use their strengths to their best advantage. As a result, team members developed a deep appreciation of each individual’s skills, and that increased our investment in the group effort.”

Tom joined BCG in 1975 at the age of 27 and recently retired, but continues in an advisory role from the Munich office. Apart from his first three years with BCG in Boston and a short stint in London, his life took shape in Munich. He moved there in 1978, met and married his Bavarian wife Helga, had two sons and set up home in the town of Grünwald, just south of Munich, where they still live. Grünwald is situated between the beautiful Isar River and a large forested area.

“I never stop reflecting on the amazing cards I’ve been dealt in life,” says Tom. “I grew up in Zimbabwe, where my Welsh grandparents had settled in the early 1900s. After leaving school I studied agriculture at the University of Natal with the intention of joining our family farm. But in the early 1970s, with the independence war consuming Zimbabwe, it became clear that I needed something else to fall back on. The Wits Business School, which opened in 1968, was beginning to make a name for itself. I gained admission in 1971 and graduated with my MBA in 1972. It’s incredible to think it was 50 years ago.

“I remember, very vividly, the elegant building and tiny campus at 2 St David’s Place, Parktown, where our small class of perhaps 15 spent endless and extremely intensive hours in class and group work. The course work was so rich and demanding that there was very little time for anything else. But the purpose of those two years was to get a world class education in business, finance and management and this was achieved. It was my MBA from Wits that qualified me for a position in Rhodesian Breweries which would normally not have been available to me at the age of 25.”

During his time there, the parent company, South African Breweries, commissioned BCG to do a study of its portfolio. Tom participated in this work, and BCG offered him a position. BCG’s policy back then was only to hire MBA graduates from the Harvard and Stanford business schools, but once again his Wits MBA paid off.

“It was a huge wrench for me to leave Africa and I was politically active in Zimbabwe in favour of democracy but I was of the view that it was not going to end well. It wasn’t until settling in Munich that I started to feel this was where I could make a new home. Bavaria and nearby Austria have a beautiful countryside, picturesque towns and farming villages, many lakes and, of course, the Alps. Helga and I were fortunate enough in the mid-1980s to be able to buy a little mountain cottage in Tyrol, Austria, which is less than two hours’ drive from our home. Hiking the countryside and the mountains is probably our single most frequent leisure activity.”

Tom’s career with BCG allowed him to experience the world “in all its richness”, as he puts it, through postings from Munich to the Nordic countries, Hong Kong, Seoul, Milan, Rome and Dubai. He enjoyed working with and learning from clients who were open to new ways of doing things. “I initially served clients both in Germany and in the Nordic countries and would commute from our home in Grünwald on a weekly basis.”

Consulting for Nordic companies was a pleasure and a great learning experience, he says: “They’re very open to new ways of doing things and weren’t at all defensive about how things were done in the past. It was pleasurable working with sophisticated senior executives who were almost always focused on moving the company forward and not on internal politics.”

In 1996 he moved to Hong Kong to look after BCG’s expanding Asia Pacific region, including greater China, Japan, South Korea, Southeast Asia, India, Australia and New Zealand. “It was a fascinating six-year period for me and my family as we were exposed to this huge expanse of the world with very different economies, industrial structures and cultures,” says Tom. “China and India were just opening to more liberal economic policies. At the time, the Chinese stateowned companies were extremely bureaucratic and resistant to change. Indian companies were more sophisticated, but also very bureaucratic and inwardly focused. In Southeast Asia and Korea – the Asian Tigers – companies were receptive to outside management advice.”

Between postings, Tom and Helga returned to Grünwald. “Germany works very well because it has structure, rules and a strong work ethic, but at the same time, the society today is open and cosmopolitan, and one of the most liberal and environmentally focused democracies.”

Tom explains that Germany was able to achieve this in the post-World War II era as a result of the carefully-designed institutions put in place to prevent a breakdown in democracy happening again. “Politics in Germany today are generally sensible, respectful, middle of the road and stable − not something one can say about too many countries around the world,” he says. The economic model seeks to reconcile free market capitalism with adequate social policies. “Large corporations are subject to laws which ensure adequate worker representation and the corporate sector in general subscribes to a stakeholder approach rather than focusing only on shareholder value. This is particularly true of the medium-size family-owned companies which are the real driver of Germany’s strong economy.”

Tom didn’t return to Africa until a few years ago. The last trip he made before being grounded by the pandemic was to Zimbabwe, where one of his brothers still lives. He remains deeply attached to southern Africa. “I have very many happy memories, especially of life on our farm and of the bush and its wildlife. I keep in close touch with the people with whom I was politically involved. The country has, tragically, pursued a disastrous political and economic path; infrastructure and institutions have been eroded, and the agriculture sector demolished, yet it remains a beautiful country and the vast majority of people are wonderful.”

Which leaves the final question: does Tom consider himself African or German? “Inevitably and pragmatically in most respects I’m now German. It’s the language I speak most of the day and the country has given me so much. But the first 27 years of my life in Africa were profoundly formative for me and remain an important part of my makeup.”

Simonne Horwitz

Sharing a taste of home

Dr Simonne Horwitz’s first opportunity to see the world came while she was at Wits. Based in Canada since 2006, she, in turn, offers her students the opportunity to experience South Africa.

Heather Dugmore

"I was a real nerd, so debating is my team sport. I love the ability to think on your feet and create different arguments, including putting yourself in the shoes of someone whose thoughts “I’m and ways go against your own,” says Dr Simonne Horwitz (BA 2000; BA Hons 2001), a history professor at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada.

“While at Wits I was a member of the Wits Debating Union. It shaped so much of who I am. I experienced what it’s like to be part of a global network as I travelled internationally for the first time to attend the World Universities debating championship in the Philippines and Australia.

“There is still a strong Debating Union at Wits and a lot of the debating students have gone on to do amazing things.” Two examples she cites are Trudi Makhaya (BCom 2000, BCom Hons 2001, MCom 2003) the economic advisor to President Cyril Ramaphosa, and Steven Budlender SC (BA 2000, LLB 2002), renowned for his constitutional law cases.

She says her Wits education set her up well to win a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University in 2001 to do her master’s, followed by her doctorate. “Emeritus Professor Peter Delius was my mentor in the History Department at Wits and he encouraged me to apply for the Rhodes Scholarship. I pledged that if I received it and became an academic, I would dedicate my career to making a difference to the lives of my students.”

As a first generation university student, she was terrified about going to Oxford, especially when she found herself in a class full of Ivy League peers. “But thanks to the grounding I got at Wits, I discovered I could hold my own academically.”

It was the first time she had lived away from her family home in Parkview and she found it difficult initially. “But once I settled in, I loved every moment of it. I love meeting people from all over the world and I loved college life at St Antony’s. I met my two best friends on my first day at Oxford; one from the US who had lived in Russia and the other from Holland. I built such strong networks there and I regularly call on those networks for advice and partnerships; they are like family.”

She completed her DPhil at Oxford in 2006, writing her dissertation on the history of what is now Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto. The dissertation became her first book, Baragwanath Hospital, Soweto: A History of Medical Care 1941-1990 (WUP, 2013).

In 2007 she headed for Canada, where she had been offered a two year postdoctoral research post at the University of Saskatchewan (USask). “My research was a comparison between indigenous policy in Canada and apartheid South Africa.”

Simonne found her feet as an academic at USask and she’s been there ever since.

“I love the university and the opportunities here, and my dollar income helps to support people in South Africa, but I do miss it every day; it’s my home. I have kept my South African citizenship as it means everything to me and I cannot wait to return for my sabbatical in 2022 and be part of Wits’ centenary celebrations.”

Saskatchewan is a province of just over one million people and the university is based in Saskatoon, a city with a population of about 300,000 people, of whom 26,000 are students. “I love the students, I find them fascinating, they don’t realise how talented and brilliant they are because they come from a modest culture – many come from small towns and rural farming areas – and they don’t see themselves as intellectual. They work hard and they want to learn about the rest of the world.”

One of the ways in which Simonne has lived up to her promise of making a difference to the lives of her students is through her ‘Taught Abroad’ trips to South Africa.

“Just as I had never travelled internationally before I went to Wits, many of my students have never travelled outside Canada. In my classes they want to know about Africa and that’s how I started organising the ‘Taught Abroad’ trips to South Africa.”

Since 2010 she has brought a group of her students to South Africa for six weeks every second year to do a course on the history of South Africa. “It’s a highlight for me to bring students who would never have the opportunity to travel and experience life in a country with a totally different culture, history and social makeup to Canada.” The trip is costly and many of the students cannot afford it, so to fund it they apply for grants, and Simonne puts in money from awards and grants she receives. She had a trip organised for 2020 but with COVID-19 it had to be cancelled.

Last year she received an award for her commitment to internationalisation at USask. “Simonne’s trips to South Africa have been so meticulously organised that they have helped change the way all Arts and Science Study Abroad courses are now developed,” said Dr Gordon DesBrisay, Vice-Dean Academic in the College of Arts and Science at the time. “In fact, if a faculty member steps forward with a new idea for student study travel, they are handed a copy of the pre-departure trip handbook Simonne authored, outlining everything a student who has never travelled needs to know.”

The Taught Abroad trip to South Africa is credit bearing and academically rigorous. Students effectively do a year’s worth of work in six weeks, visiting more than 30 historical sites where Simonne arranges guides, guest lectures and seminars from some of the top academics in the country, several from Wits. The students are given academic texts, novels and autobiographies exposing them to South African perspectives, and they take part in numerous religious, activist, sporting and education events.

The group is based at a backpackers’ in Emmarentia, and spend most of their time in Joburg, Soweto and Pretoria. “I love the vibrancy of Joburg, I love driving among the taxis. I love that people are loud and fun. I know Joburg has a dangerous side but there is a life and vibrancy that you don’t get anywhere else in the world. When I get off the plane I love it as I’m home.”

The group also visits the Pilanesberg Game Reserve to experience being on safari and at the same time look at how land was taken away from people to create the park.

“The idea is to give the students a real sense of the complex history of South Africa. I try to introduce them to as wide a range of people as possible. Wits campus is an important part of the trip and they meet the academics whose books they have read, including Emeritus Professor David Coplan (PhD 1980) from social anthropology, retired mathematics education lecturer Jessica Sherman (MED 2012) and Professor Noor Nieftagodien (BA Hons 1994, MA 1995, PhD 2000) from the Wits History Workshop.

“Running a course and trip like this requires me to be available all the time,” says Simonne. “I am the instructor, guide, organiser, problem solver, social worker, provider and intercultural interpreter. But it is so worth it. Many of the students who attended the course have stated that their experiences in South Africa changed how they see the world and what they want to do with their lives.”

BUILDING BRIDGES

Simonne worked with her synagogue and the mosque in Saskatoon to sponsor a Syrian family to immigrate to the city in 2016. “We all contributed to their settlement financially and we worked closely with them to help them feel welcome, for example I often helped the kids with their homework,” she explains. “It was a wonderful experience for the Moslem and Jewish community, pulling together for the same cause, and we have all become good friends and built important bridges.”

Since 2010 Simonne has brought a group of her students to South Africa for six weeks to do a course on the history of South Africa.

Nondo Sikazwe

Tokyo calling

Nondo Shikazuwe is the Japanese name for Wits architecture graduate Nondo Sikazwe (BArch 2012; BArch Hons 2014; MA 2016), who has been living and working in Tokyo for the past three years.

Heather Dugmore

"I love being here because there are not many people like me, from southern Africa, and it’s really stimulating to be in tech design in Tokyo," says Nondo. He’s a user experience (UX) designer with the international design consultancy ACO.

“As an international professional, you are seen as someone with a different perspective, and if you have fresh, innovative ideas, and are able to present them with confidence, people will listen to you and push creative concepts forward.”

He has learnt to communicate and write in Japanese and says he is slowly learning the intricacies of Japanese language and culture.

“In Japan you say whether you can or can’t do something or if you like or don’t like the situation at the end of a discussion. In American and Western society, it’s the opposite, there is a stating of your position up front, which is considered aggressive in Japanese culture.

“I’m also learning all about the nuances in the greeting bow. At a formal business meeting, the degree at which you bow is all important. When I meet a client for a formal meeting, I bow at about 15 degrees, and when they are leaving the building, I bow at about 45 degrees and wait until the elevator closes. Do this incorrectly and you might put off the client.”

In the digital space, he says, the Japanese terms used in the industry are very different from the English equivalent, and it’s an ongoing challenge to adapt to them.

It’s not his first time in Japan; he completed an internship with an architectural firm called Kengo Kuma, and was fascinated by what it was doing with technology. He was then awarded a Japanese government scholarship to do his second Master’s in engineering at Chiba University, focusing on UX design, which he furthered with studies at Stanford University. He loved Japan and after working for a while in South Africa, he returned and joined ACO – a division of the global technology company Monstarlab.

“In Japan, my skills are well recognised as there aren’t that many people who are both an architect and capable of designing digital city services. I mainly do digital service development applications and websites and research into smart cities and new technologies such as augmented reality.” In South Africa, he worked in Cape Town with local government on a “digital twin city” – a digital replica of the city. This can be used to understand and manage aspects of city functioning like the electricity load of a building or neighbourhood.

He used this skill to develop an app for the informal economy in his home country, Zambia. “I love working with communities and the idea was to link the informal economy to digital services designed to help them grow their customer network and trade with each other. But it was tricky because people in this sector are seen as a nuisance by the government and they are afraid it will lead to being taxed.”

ACO Tokyo’s team is predominantly Japanese and has a high percentage of women in senior positions. “It’s still not that common in Japan and people often comment on it. I really enjoy working with women. I have three sisters and I’ve seen them struggling to achieve their rightful place in their careers. I listen to what women go through and it helps me to behave better as a man, son and brother in society.”

Another departure from corporate tradition, he explains, is that ACO Tokyo doesn’t have the obligatory Friday night drinks session, which is still company culture in some of the large corporates. “Anyone who is in their fifties and sixties in Japan accepts this as a norm, just as it used to be the norm for women to wear high heels in big multinational companies. Gender discrimination in traditional Japanese companies is still an issue.”

Nondo says everyone works long hours in Japan: “Most people work from 10am to 8pm and then your commute home adds to this. It takes me 1.5 hours on the train to get to and from my office, and that’s considered a short commute as most people spend two hours travelling to work every day. Many also work on Saturdays.” His office in downtown Tokyo is in an area called Ebisu – a trendy business and social precinct. His apartment is in Chiba City on the outskirts of Tokyo.

Nondo's office is in downtown in an area called Ebisu, which is a trendy business and social precinct.

“One of the most fascinating things I’ve done here is to explore the architecture of the city with my older Japanese friends. I’ve met incredible people here in their seventies and eighties. One is an architect in his seventies, Susumu Suzuki, with whom I hang out. We talk about buildings and life.”

During his time in Japan, Nondo has travelled to South Korea, which shares Japan’s vibrant tech culture, and to Thailand and Myanmar – parts of which felt familiar as you see people doing all sorts of jobs in the streets, and the atmosphere is loud and energetic like downtown Johannesburg, whereas Tokyo is dead silent; there is no noise, no street hawkers and no little shops on the pavements.”

About Japan, he says people tend to base their perception of it from the media portrayal of its pop culture. “Pop culture is only one aspect of the society in the same way that the Big Five is only one aspect of Africa. To gain an in-depth understanding of Japanese aesthetics from a Japanese person’s perspective, I recommend a book called In Praise of Shadows by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki.”

Nondo’s long-term plan is to remain in Tokyo. “It offers a great international platform, the Japanese people with whom I work are very dynamic, and outside work I am part of Safecast here. It’s an international, volunteer-centred organisation focused on open citizen science for environmental monitoring, including air quality but notably to help detect radiation. It was established after the Fukushima nuclear disaster. It’s such an amazing group of international thinkers and it pushes me further as we combine forces to develop incredible technologies.”

One of his goals is to bring more Japanese people to southern Africa and to build a network in architecture, urban design and technology between colleagues in Japan and South Africa. “This year I’ll be visiting my department at Wits to discuss this. Wits has very talented students who can tap into Japan and vice versa. I also want Japanese people to think beyond the Big Five and poverty in Africa, and start experiencing the talent and great things happening on the continent.”

Witsie Clive Nates

It's been an incredible ride

Witsie chartered accountant Clive Nates (BCom and BAcc 1982) lives between South Africa and the UK, where he is chairperson of Lincoln City Football Club.

Heather Dugmore

How he became the chair of a UK football club is “a long story”, says Clive. “When I was a kid living in Johannesburg I fell in love with the game. If you were a crazy football fan, in addition to South African football you chose an English football club and mine was Everton. I followed all the leagues and in 2002 Everton had an alliance with Lincoln City, so I carried on following Lincoln. The worse they did, the more I supported them, as I like to support the underdog. I landed up becoming director and ultimately chair of the club.”

He also played football from a young age. “But I didn’t have the ability to play at any decent level; I played for a social team and with friends every weekend until the age of 35, when l needed to focus on my work and family.”

Clive grew up in Yeoville, where his parents managed the Courtleigh Hotel. “It was an exciting time in Yeoville with all the clubs and restaurants, and we would spend free time in Rockey Street and Hillbrow.”

There wasn’t much free time as he did his BAcc at Wits part-time. To fund his studies he worked as an articled clerk at Hersowitz, Poplak and Josset, a small firm that did the audit for the hotel.

“I always enjoyed numbers and I enjoyed working. I discovered I was good at auditing and after graduating I joined another firm of accountants in Parktown North, Myers, Tennier & Co.” He also took to the stock market and decided to get into the investment industry, moving to Liberty Asset Management in 1988.

On his overseas travels he met his wife, Tali, in Israel. “When I returned to South Africa, she took a chance and came out to join me, and we got married in 1985. Today she is the director of the South African Holocaust & Genocide Centre.”

At the end of 1985, South Africa was going through a period of extreme turmoil and they considered leaving “but there was nowhere else we wanted to go”. So they decided to stay. “We’ve got our political issues and uncertainties but it’s a wonderful country; it’s my home. We enjoy the good and bear with the not so good. It’s also great that both our children, despite studying overseas, returned to pursue their careers in South Africa.”

After ten years with Liberty Asset Management, in 1998 Clive helped start the first hedge fund business in South Africa – Peregrine Capital – together with his Wits friend David Fraser (BCom 1989, BAcc 1990). “It was highly stimulating, but it is a 24/7 job. It takes over everything you think about and you have to be incredibly disciplined and mentally robust as you are playing with money and there is always the possibility of winning and losing. It’s a constant balance between risk and reward; if you take too much risk, you put the business at risk, and if you don’t take risk you don’t get the rewards.”

Clive retired from Peregrine Capital at the end of 2011, followed by a period of trading on global equity markets. After a few years of working on his own, he considered either going back into hedge fund management or ticking off the number one item on his bucket list: getting involved in a football club in England.

“Lincoln City was really battling and had been in the non-league for five years when I first got involved. I had no intention of getting as deeply involved as I did, but I discovered areas where I could help improve the club.”

This meant making several trips a year to the UK. “Lincoln is a pretty city with lots of restaurants and I’m a member of the Castle Hill Club, just outside Lincoln Castle, which has been around for hundreds of years as a fort and later a prison. It has a wonderful view of the city and the club is a great place to hang out, meet friends, and have a drink and pub meal.”

Back to Lincoln City FC, he says: “All clubs, like all businesses, need investment to progress, and I managed to bring more investment into Lincoln City. A couple of friends who are also football mad heard what I was doing and came in as investors. Most are South Africans, some living in the UK and one in the US. Together we have invested in excess of four million pounds in the club.”

One of the club’s South African investors is Witsie Sean Melnick (BCom 1990; BCom Hons 1991), Chairman of Peregrine Holdings.

“None of us are in this to make money. It’s for the enjoyment and excitement as we are competing against huge clubs; we all love football and we want to take the club as far as we can.”

It required making considerable improvements to the way the club was being managed on and off the field, including appointing a new CEO and injecting discipline throughout. “It’s hard work. The reward has been wonderful celebrations with the fans when we win a trophy.”

At the outset there were no trophies in sight, only the threat of extinction. In January 2015 things were so bad that their bankers were looking to withdraw their facilities as they thought there was too much risk in a club in the fifth tier of English football. But under new managers the club started a run of success. It became the first non-league team to reach the quarter finals of the FA Cup in more than 100 years.

“We played Arsenal in the quarter final in front of 60 000 fans and made significant gate and broadcasting money – some two million pounds. We held Arsenal off until just before half time but they went on to win five nil.”

Undaunted, the team kept building and were promoted to League 1 – the third tier of English football. The first tier is the Premier League, the second tier is the Championship League.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit and the season was curtailed in March 2020. This led to financial difficulties for football all round. “There were no crowds in the stadium for the 2020/21 season and we survived on a much lower budget, mainly relying on contributions from the directors and a bit of a rescue package from the Premier League. “The players had to adjust to not playing in front of fans, which removes all the atmosphere that makes football so enjoyable,” says Clive, who watched the games from South Africa through a live streaming service. The team continued to perform and reached the League 1 play-off final in May 2021, losing 2-1 to Blackpool.

He is now able to travel to the UK again and the hope is to remain in League 1 and aim for the Championship division – which they last played in 60 years ago.

The dream, of course, would be to get into the Premier League, but realistically, says Clive, “it is way beyond possibility” as it would require massive backing. “Having said that, we are deeply proud of where we have got in five years. It’s been an incredible ride.”