Case study

• Herman Mashaba• Title: Managing director of Black Like Me• Age: 39• Education: Matriculate, local school in rural village of Ramotse• Quality time: Golf, Tennis, Traveling and time with his family

Put an obstacle in front of Herman Mashaba and he will climb over or through it. Whatever it is, he will get past it, and he will extract every bit of learning he can from it. Nothing has been handed to Mashaba on a platter. He has got where he is today through sheer willpower and hard work. Mashaba founded Black Like Me, SA’s only indigenous black hair care and beauty company, in a corner of Garankuwa 13 years ago. Despite severe setbacks, it has grown phenomenally. And it is still going places. Last year the multinational Colgate-Pal-molive bought majority of shares in Black Like Me. Mashaba stayed on as managing director and his next challenge is to break into the international market. Today, Black Like Me is the best-known beauty brand in SA. A spontaneous aware-ness survey in January showed that 76% of respondents knew of Black Like Me. The international giant, Revlon, scored 55%.

BT met Mashaba on the fifth anniversary of the fire which destroyed his thriving Garankuwa factory. He is bitter that an official investigation is still to be launched into the fire. The factory was utterly destroyed and many if Mashaba’s staff wept when they saw the devastation. “I told them that although the factory was gone, we still had our name and we would go on,” he says. Within two weeks Mashaba had found the company’s present premises in Midrand- and he started again. Mashaba’s education came from rough and tough gambling dens and the political hotbed of the University of the North in the late 70’s. He says he is not ashamed that he financed himself through school by his gambling proceeds. “I saw my friends going off to work as gardeners on weekends and I saw how they were humiliated. The system took away their dignity and my choice was to stay away. It was risky in those dens. It was all about survival of the fittest.” Mashaba was never very active politically at university, where he was studying for a B Admin.

However, he shot to the forefront of student protests after chairing a meeting and, during his second year of study, au-thorities closed the university. Mashaba left and never returned. He found a job as a despatch clerk in Pretoria in 1980, but stayed only seven months. “It was a hostile environ-ment and I came face to face with appalling racism.” He moved on to another Pretoria company, also as a dispatch clerk, and spent 23 months there in his ‘longest salaried job’. Mashaba had, however saved enough money to buy a car. Have wheels, will fly. He began selling everything from insur-ance to dinner services. But his battle now was with the influx control laws, which limited his movements and hence his job prospects. “I became an expert of ducking and diving the police”, he says. At this time, hair salons were beginning to mushroom and with one day’s training under his belt, he sold hair products, quickly building up a solid customer base.

Despite battling against the pass law, Mashaba had been named top sales person by the time he decided to leave and go on his own 19 months later. He broached the subject with chemist Johan Kriel and Black Like Me was born in Garanku-wa. “We made the products in the evenings and sold them during the day”, he says . Sales took off and soon he was able to employ extra staff. Today the Midrand operation employs around 150 people. And Mashaba is proud that his company “which stated in the township is now a part of a multination-al”. Mashaba has won a number of awards, from businessman of the year to best emerging affirmative action company. He is married to Connie and they have two children, a daughter, Nkhensani, four, and a son, Rhulani, one.