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09/07/2004:

"South Africa's new black billionaires"

by Rory Carroll in Johannesburg

Cruising into the Johannesburg River club for a round of golf, lifting off in helicopters for weekend retreats, sipping champagne at black-tie functions: they are South Africa's new randlords.

They spend long hours in towers of steel and glass running financial empires, but it is when they come out to play that the public get a glimpse of South Africa's first black rand billionaires, men who have zoomed from modest means to mega-wealth in a few years.

They are saluted by some as models of what is possible in the post-apartheid era; condemned by others as the embodiment of crony capitalism, which enriches a few and leaves many in poverty.

Full Article : guardian.co.uk