Chipo Ncwana — The Prince of Platinum

How Arthur Mashiatshidi set his family up for life

Lifestyle influencer Chipo Ncwana has taken local Instagram and Twitter by storm in the past 2 years with his beautifully captured and aesthetically pleasing videos of the trips and excursions he takes with his friends. Many of us have been glued to our phones, watching as he does fine dining and other cool kid things with his friends.

I write this, not to scorn the so-called “sbwl generation” but to contextualize the content we consume on social media and use Chipo as an example of the fact that we do not all start off on the same footing therefore cannot all achieve the same things at the same age.

Many black South Africans have felt largely betrayed by the democratic order and it’s inability to restore their economic dignity. There is however a small section of black South Africans who got their more than fair share of the post-1994 economic pie and Arthur Mashiatshidi is one of them.

From humble beginnings in Tembisa, Mashiatshidi started his working life as a gardener, making R10 per job in 1977. He started formal employment working as an underground mine laborer only to come back to mining as a high-flying executive years later. The exact dates are unclear however Mashiatshidi got a scholarship to study a BSc at Wharton School of Business in the University of Pennsylvania, United States. This must have been in the mid to late 1980s. He completed his studies and returned to South Africa to pursue an MBA at the Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town which he completed in 1993.

At the dawn of democracy in 1994, Mashiatshidi was at the prime position to be welcomed into the corridors of corporate South Africa which had previously systematically excluded black people. With an international business degree and a local MBA in hand, businesses must have been lining up to hire the bright, qualified and hard-working black finance professional.

Having began his corporate career in the mid-1990s, by 2003 Mashiatshidi was the founder and CEO of Decorum Capital Partners, a private equity firm that specialized in investing in exploration, development, and expansion capital for early to later stage exploration businesses. It is unclear if he had worked in mining in the years prior to the founding of Decorum Capital however this is most likely due to the specific focus of the firm on mining.

Company records show that he was a director of Decorum from 2003–2008. According to a 2003 KPMG Report, the fund managed up to R564 million in assets. For a fund run by a black CEO in 2003, this was a big deal and he must have made a healthy amount of money from the fund.

When Mashiatshidi left Decorum in 2008, he was an established and respected businessman and corporate leader. During his time at Decorum and for two year after that, he sat on various boards as a non-executive director including; Thebe, Unipalm Investments and SA Coal Mining Holdings. Most interesting to me as a radio fanatic is that Mashiatshidi served as the Chairman of the board of Kaya FM.

Anyone who sits on these many boards and has this kind of access to the corporate world, understands the importance of investing, knows what to invest in and has the connections to ensure that they yield a good return from their invested capital. It is uncontested that Mashiatshidi had all of these and therefore was able to plan his finances such that he could take full advantage of the mining market.

Keeping in the industry he knows best, the now corporate giant joined Wesizwe Platinum Ltd as the Financial Director (FD) in 2010.

In the same year, he became CEO of Wesizwe Platinum until it was sold to a Chinese company in 2011. He then transitioned to the board of the company where he did not sit for long. Although Mashiatshidi did not spend a lot of time at Wesizwe Platinum, he is touted as being an influential figure in the world of mining — not only for the work he did at Wesizwe Platinum but also at Decorum Capital and other mining related companies he was involved in.

After Wesizwe Platinum, he went on to establish the New Africa Mining Fund which invested in mining exploration ventures — an industry he knows all too well.

At the time of his passing in February 2012 at the very young age of 51 after a short illness, Mashiatshidi was a name to be reckoned with within the mining and mining exploration industry and was a respected professional across the corporate landscape.

It goes without saying that anyone who played so heavily in the mining and business scene would have made sure to structure their finances such that his family is set up for life. It is not public knowledge what shares Mashiatshidi had, what investments he made and what his family still holds today. But, looking at the social profile of his son there is no doubt that he made sure that his family is taken care of for life.

Following in his father’s footsteps, Chipo attended Drew University in New Jersey where he obtained a Bachelors Degree in Economics (Cum Laude) and has established his own business — not in the mining sector though.

I have no doubt in my mind that Chipo is both bright and a hard-worker in his own right. Obtaining a Economics degree cum laude in a foreign country is not a walk in the park. That said, he also has financial backing of parents who have, through a mix of hard work and luck, ensured that he has a very comfortable life for a long time. I single out Chipo out of his siblings purely because he is the most visible of all of them.

Countless studies and even Facebook Inc’s own internal research has revealed that envy is one of the biggest ‘side effects’ (for the lack of a better word) of social media, particularly Instagram. Chipo and his friends have every right to make the content they make as they do not force anyone to consume it. However, the next time you watch one of Chipo’s mini vlogs on Instagram or Twitter remember that you only know a fraction of his life and that there are many other factors unknown to you and I that allow him to live the life he lives and afford the things he affords.

There are many people who at 25 do not have what Chipo has, not because they are less intelligent or hard working but simply because life hands us all very different cards.

When consuming lifestyle content on social media (this is also a call out on myself), care not to belittle yourself or ask yourself disparaging questions such as “what am I doing with my life?”. Remember that you do not know these people.