Opportunities for black South Africans were scarce when Herman Mashaba was growing up in the 1960s. He was born in a poor village in a nation ruled by an oppressive apartheid regime. Yet by his early 20s, he had founded Black Like Me, which grew into one of the country's most popular cosmetics brands.
Today, he works from a modest office with a view over the affluent Johannesburg district of Sandton. This is where he runs his investment company, Lephatsi Investments. Boxes of his recent autobiography, Black Like You, sit on the floor waiting to be signed.
Mr Mashaba is one of small number of prominent black entrepreneurs who succeeded during the turbulent years of white minority rule despite the systemic and brutal discrimination endured by blacks. That group includes figures such as Richard Maponya, labelled by some as "the father of black retail", who overcame apartheid's hurdles to set up businesses, including clothing and dairy enterprises, in Johannesburg's infamous township of Soweto. In 2007, he opened Maponya Mall, touted as one of the country's largest.
South Africa's first democratic election in 1994 marked the demise of apartheid. But as the nation prepares to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the historic transition, frustration almost overrides hope for Mr Mashaba as he considers the next generation of black entrepreneurs. One of his main gripes is that rigid labour laws on dismissal and wages are not conducive to start-ups, and he is leading a legal action against them (see box).
His stance puts this champion of capitalism at odds with many in the traditionally left-leaning ruling African National Congress and its partners in the governing alliance - the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the Communist party. Among them are officials who argue that the labour laws are needed to protect workers' rights as the government struggles to narrow the yawning gap between haves and have-nots. The ailments are partly a legacy of apartheid, with the corporate sector in Africa's biggest economy still dominated by whites.
The ANC's policy of black economic empowerment (BEE) is intended to help redress the imbalances, but it too has been tainted by controversies. Many business leaders complain about South Africa's rigid labour laws and, while it is the highest-ranked sub-Saharan African state in the World Economic Forum's global competitiveness index for 2012-13, the country is ranked 113 out of 144 in labour market efficiency.
In response to the legal action, taken by the Free Market Foundation, with Mr Mashaba at its head, Cosatu argues that the labour rules protect workers from exploitation.
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> But Mr Mashaba is not persuaded. Unemployment in South Africa stands at 26 per cent, a figure that is double for young adults. "What's a minimum wage to that guy at 30 [who has] never worked? . . . A minimum wage to that guy is nothing," he says. "We actually forget that there are just under 8m South Africans [who are] desperate, poor, uneducated." Mr Mashaba is no stranger to struggle in pitting himself against the political establishment.
Born about 30km north of Pretoria, his father died when he was two and his mother spent much of the time working away from home as a maid, leaving his sisters to provide a guiding hand. He grew up streetwise and strong-willed, including dabbling in soft drugs and gambling to earn some cash. But he was also dedicated to education as a means to independence and, despite his wild-child traits, earned a place at university.
Two years into his degree course a student boycott took hold, the army surrounded the university and it closed. He chose not to return and considered joining the anti-apartheid armed struggle, but instead started work in a supermarket warehouse.
His entrepreneurial break came when he joined SuperKurl, a white-owned company producing hair products for blacks. Within a year he was its top salesman and his eyes had been opened to going it alone.
"The hairdressing salons were opening up all over, they were mushrooming everywhere, and I realised this is the industry that's going to be there forever," he says. "I was living in an environment where, if I did not really take charge of my own personal destiny, then I was leaving it to people that . . . had no interest in my life."
He launched Black Like Me in 1985 with three partners - a black businessman who lent R30,000, which he repaid in just seven months - an Afrikaner chemist he lured from SuperKurl and another friend.
"Ducking and diving" to avoid the police as he traversed the country, often violating laws that restricted the movement of blacks until 1986, he clocked up 10,000km a month in his Toyota Corolla.
By the early 1990s, Black Like Me was employing about 180 people, but disaster struck in 1993 when the factory burnt down. After rebuilding it, Mr Mashaba sold a 75 per cent stake to Colgate-Palmolive in 1997 for an undisclosed sum (by then the other partners had sold their stakes). At the time, Black Like Me was generating an estimated R50m-plus in annual sales.
But the partnership failed to flourish and, two years later, Mr Mashababought the company back. He sold a majority stake to Amka, a South African company, in 2005, retaining 20 per cent through a family trust.
In the 2000s, he branched out into other investments, benefiting from BEE to build his investment portfolio. Lephatsi Investments has holdings in financial services, property, bullet- proof technology and IT. Mr Mashaba declines to reveal exact figures, although he says Lephatsi has assets of between R800m ($78m) and R1bn. But it is Mr Mashaba's drive to reshape the economic environment that is his passion.
Mr Mashaba complains about the poor state of education and a sense of "entitlement" among South Africans. "People are just really waiting and waiting for government, because that's what our politicians tell them every day - that they will do it for them," he says.
He is also critical of BEE, although he admits that he has benefited from the system, which is tainted by a perception that it has helped only a small, well-connected group. He recalls debates in parliament around the policy in the early 2000s. "That's when I realised: 'Herman, with or without you, this is a reality. Do you want to be left out?'"
Now, however, the point for black business leaders such as Mr Mashaba, who have expressed disquiet about BEE and other issues, is the fear that policies are hampering new businesses.
Mr Mashaba points to the experience of Zimbabwe, which he sees as an example of how things can go wrong. "I don't want what I've worked for the past 30 years just being destroyed by a wrong political direction," he says. "Now, do you expect I must sit back? No, if I've got to lose my money . . . I'm going to lose it fighting," he says. "And today I can use the courts."
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