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Slabbert gets down to some real businessFREDERIK VAN ZYL SLABBERT
EVEN though it is 12 years since Frederik van Zyl Slabbert left parliament, he is still usually thought of as a politician. This month he became Slabbert the businessman when he was appointed chairman of JSE-listed Adcorp Holdings, which has a market capitalisation of R560-million. Slabbert has been a non-executive director of Adcorp since 1994, when Khula - the black investment trust he co-founded in 1990 - became an Adcorp shareholder. Now he takes over the chair from John Barry, who becomes deputy chairman. Barry will focus on acquisition opportunities while Slabbert will work with group managing director Henri Staal looking at the profit centres. "I move from being adviser to decision-maker," he says of his promotion in the Adcorp ranks.s, admitting a fine distinction between being an executive chairman and his role - "a chairman with executive functions Adcorp is involved in recruitment advertising, placement, training, public relations and research. Slabbert dropped a bombshell on SA politics when, in 1986, he resigned from parliament because it had, in his view, become irrelevant. He began a career in commerce by lecturing at the Wits Business School and engaged in political consultancy. In 1987, he made the historic journey to Dakar, Senegal, with a group of mainly Afrikaners when 10 days of talks were held with the then banned ANC. This followed the forming, with Alex Boraine, of Idasa ( Institute for a Democratic Alternative for SA). As Slabbert notes: "Idasa got people talking but it did not pay for the groceries." So, alongside one white - Jurgen Kögel - and three blacks, Khula was formed as a pioneering black economic empowerment vehicle. "Mzi Khumalo, Don Mkwanazi and I went on the old dog 'n pony roadshow around SA's financial institutions," he recalls. "While we were politely received, they were not exactly grabbing their chequebooks, so we abandoned the idea and formed Khula as a private investment company with a black majority shareholding." In 1993 Khula entered a tender process with CTP Caxton for a contract to print directories. The tender was won. A year later, with the help of CTP Caxton, Khula bought a 15% stake in Adcorp Holdings and Slabbert joined the Adcorp board. On the outlook for corporate SA, Slabbert notes that Gear's major points align SA with a global economy. "But when people hear that the deficit will be less than 4%, they hear a fancy way of saying no money will be spent on government departments; when they hear privatisation, they read retrenchment. Every piece of economic reform bears a political cost that affects all of industry."
With Khula largely unbundled, Adcorp now seeks a new empowerment partner to take up to 20% of the group's equity. The Adcorp share price has been from R30 to R14 to R20 this year alone. Slabbert was born in Pretoria in 1940, schooled in Pietersburg and matriculated determined to become a Dutch Reform Church minister. He studied Greek, Latin and Hebrew, and sociology "as a soft option". But a year of theological disagreement resulted in his departure from the seminary, and indeed the NGK, and he took a job lecturing sociology at Stellenbosch, Rhodes, Cape Town and Wits, being appointed professor in 1973. He stood for parliament in 1974 on a Progressive Federal Party ticket: "I was tricked into it; everyone assured me I couldn't win the seat but I did." Slabbert has expanded his social role into one of regional facilitator through the George Soros-backed funding organisation, Open Society Foundation of Southern Africa, which identifies and backs worthy projects in nine African countries. He also sits on the boards of several JSE-listed companies such as Wooltru, Investec and Radiospoor. His wife Jane manages a cottage industry in Swaziland. Slabbert has two children from a previous marriage.
Julie Walker
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