Join Nyimpini Mabunda on his journey from his childhood in an apartheid-era homeland to the CEO’s office at one of the world’s leading businesses.

In a career spanning Procter & Gamble, Nando’s, Diageo and Vodacom in South Africa, the UK and Uganda, Mabunda actively sets out to always improve his business acumen and leadership skills. Constantly in learning mode and infused with positive energy, Mabunda’s path offers insightful lessons and practical advice for anyone who wants to succeed in their career, build and lead a business.

This is your toolkit to take you the top!

A crisis means change. And for any business owner, change means opportunity.

There is nothing new about a crisis stalling or wiping out a business. The COVID-19 pandemic that has hit businesses globally does not feel any more or less devastating to the business owner than if their business was affected by the sudden loss of a dominant client, a trade war, burst water pipes halting operations, intransient employees or their product no longer being relevant to the market.

In Reset, Rebuild, Reignite, the second book from Pavlo Phitidis, his starting point is not how to avoid crises because some are inevitable. Instead, he shows how you can use any crisis to reset your business to get relevant, rebuild it to scale, and reignite it to accelerate growth by capitalising on the change and opportunities that any crisis brings with it.

Stories of business owners who have successfully turned crisis to their advantage are underpinned by Pavlo’s practical, action-oriented insights, tactics and strategies that will have you reading with a highlighter in hand, and will equip you to tackle any crisis that affects your business.

CEOs can build up a business from nothing or turn around a company that is on the verge of bankruptcy. Inspiring with their relentless drive, strong leadership and innovation that can turn whole industries on their heads, they are the dynamos of our economy.

What is the X factor that ensures a CEO’s success?

KC Rottok Chesaina seeks to uncover the unique personality traits, business acumen and leadership values that have turned CEOs into captains of industry. Based on extensive research and focused interviews with the leaders of some of South Africa’s top companies, including Vodacom, Bidvest, Capitec Bank, RMB, Dis-Chem, Discovery Health, Nedbank, Sanlam, Momentum, Curro, Exxaro, Harmony Gold and MTN, Chesaina’s book takes you to the heart of corporate South Africa.

With real-life examples, The CEO X factor shows that reaching the top is about much more than money – it requires a very specific kind of character, straightforward strategies, a true focus on people and a value-driven approach.

This book offers 50 innovative ways of looking at your business as a long-term, dynamic, progressive entity. Here you will find 50 ways to ditch the atrophying forces and create an exponentially achieving, high-performance culture in your organisation.

Some rules help us, but some don’t. Do you know which to ditch? And do you know how to create a dynamic, learning culture that doesn’t rely on blind bureaucracy? Elon Musk did it with Tesla and Space-X. Pixar does it too. The Israeli Defence Force and US Navy SEALS have been doing it for decades, and their results have been astonishing.

In a world of exponential organisations, rule-bound dinosaurs will fall and fade. But you don’t have to.

They’re your rules. Break them!

Too many South Africans are excluded from the benefits of the international marketplace. This book aims to change that, by showing how to grow your wealth through simple, sustainable investment principles, and how to harness the fundamental drivers of global growth.

Drawing from a career providing international investment solutions to global clients, David Joshua addresses the most common and costly blind spots individual investors have, and lays out the key fundamentals everyone can learn to transform their financial future.

This book provides the tools to understand:

• Why South Africans have a unique mindset when it comes to investing, and why what you think you know about investing might be wrong because of it.
• The power – and necessity – of investing in global assets rather than only in South Africa.
• How to harness global growth and generate compounding, Einstein’s ‘eighth wonder of the world’.
• How and when you should exchange your rands for hard currency.
• What your financial goals are, and how to invest in the best solutions to meet them.
• How to manage yourself when managing your investments.

This book aims to bring global best practice to South African investors, addressing the specific challenges South Africans face when investing to secure their financial future.

A practical and theoretical manual for real estate practitioners.

During many years in practice, the author has identified the most common problems and known pitfalls associated with the industry, which are highlighted in this text. Thorough knowledge of the contents of this book will enable the practitioner to handle calculations related to the time value of money with confidence.

The manual will be equally useful to students of real estate and financial theory.

Containing practical examples together with appropriate solutions, this guide uses a conversational style in order to appeal to a broad cross-section of the investing public and helps navigate the volatile South African share market.

A sequential guide that takes the entrepreneur from inception of an idea to success and all the way to exit. Lindile details the milestones of growing and evolving a business in a journey that is by no means linear.

This playbook reveals a path to the desired destination of every entrepreneur who uses it, where the entrepreneur can define his or her own formula of success, from the very first inkling of an idea and turning that into a reality. Lindile push-starts the entrepreneur using a strategy he calls Rapid Deployment to monetise ideas by turning them into reality. It is a model that can move an idea from zero to a hundred in a matter of days. Fast implementation allows the idea to go through an entire life cycle in a short space of time. Most importantly, it forces the budding entrepreneur to start.

This playbook outlines the importance of investing in oneself.

A successful exit is determined at the point of entry. The entrepreneur must take full control of how the journey ends or evolves. This guides the decisions that the entrepreneur makes as he or she starts and grows the business. Ultimately, entrepreneurship requires consistency, resilience, adaptability, mental strength and acute awareness. All of this must be rooted in mindfulness. Although mindfulness is not something taught in business schools, it is an essential element of success.

At its very core, The Young Entrepreneur’s Playbook is for anyone with an idea to bring to life, something of value to provide, challenge to move past, aspiration to chase after and willingness to do something about it. This is a playbook of how to get it done, all the while embracing failure as an important part of the process but ultimately a useful tool to expedite the very outcome that you seek.

Where is South Africa going now? And where will South Africa be in five years’ time? Much has been written about the country’s past, but is enough thought being given to its future? Is South Africa in danger of again losing its way, given its pressing socio-economic challenges?

Prominent economist Raymond Parsons has drawn together a powerful collection of expert thinkers, economists and analysts who tackle these issues head on as well as offering timely solutions to several of South Africa’s most pressing problems, drawing key lessons from the past in crystallising what South Africa needs to do to create a better future.

After the so-called ‘lost decade’ under the Zuma administration, South Africans had high hopes that President Ramaphosa would deliver on his promise of a ‘new dawn’. Yet despite high expectations that the country would finally turn the corner and settle onto a path of stronger inclusive growth and better governance, socioeconomic conditions have deterioriated. Growth remains negligible, unemployment has worsened and the fiscus is under considerable strain. Will SA be able to break out of its present ‘growth trap’ without falling into a ‘debt trap’?

The country is also facing global headwinds in the form of volatile market conditions, shifting geopolitics, and a fast-changing and disruptive technological landscape which threatens to leave all but the most well-prepared behind. So how must the different strands of policy – ranging from purely economic issues to broader questions around education and the rule of law – now knit together to create a bigger, stronger and better SA economy in future?

If the vision of a well-functioning society is to be realised, policy uncertainty about the road ahead must be generally tackled at the highest level to facilitate job-rich growth. And business and civil society, in its turn, must take a long-term view of South Africa’s future and commit energy and resources to bringing about change which is both productive and transformational.

Recession, Recovery & Reform will offer compelling new insights into how South Africa can unlock its potential in the years ahead. The publication of this title a month ahead of the ANC policy conference in June 2020, at which President Ramaphosa’s political and economic ‘track record’ will be widely assessed, ensures it will be a must-read for all who are concerned about South Africa’s well-being and who are willing to believe that a ‘new dawn’ is indeed possible.

How do you teach the grace and quiet confidence that comes with the permission to be yourself? How do you teach someone to know what to do when they don’t know what to do? That kind of leadership cannot be taught. It must be experienced and understood, and it is a profoundly personal and dynamic journey.

Leading with Humanity is an invitation to take the first steps on the inside-out journey of understanding what it is to become and be a leader – discovering who we are meant to be in a world obsessed with what we do. Drawing from great thinkers and leaders through the centuries – and decades of personal leadership experience – Peter Laburn’s Leading with Humanity combines time-tested philosophical notions with proven research principles into an authentic guide for anyone striving to be a better human being, and thus a better leader, in business and life.

Living as a human being is challenging in a world that encourages and incentivises us to operate as human doings.

Do you dream of a future free of financial stress? One where you can afford to start your own business, travel or retire comfortably? In Make Your Money Work For You, investment specialist Anthea Gardner shows you how to ‘sweat your assets’ and grow your wealth to achieve these dreams – and you won’t even need a degree in accounting.

Gardner makes the world of investing accessible by:

• Illustrating why it’s important to know the difference between saving and investing
• Explaining key terms, from ‘unit trusts’ and ‘retirement annuities’ to ‘compound interest’
• Clarifying the role of different players, such as financial advisors and asset managers
• Describing how easy it is to buy shares on the stock market

You don’t need millions to start. You can launch your financial future by investing just R100 per month. It’s time to take action and make your money work for you.

Network Marketing: Make Millions While You Sleep builds a strong case for network marketing as a viable business opportunity.

Pearl Maphoshe said that “My salary was not enough to satisfy my dreams, I started looking for things to do on the side to create multiple streams of income. I was introduced to this business in 2001 and it just made sense to me, I knew exactly how I was going to make money and how I was going to go up the ranks. Since July 2001 I have made multi-million rand in passive residual income.”

The Network Marketing business model has been around for many years and in that time it has continued to grow from year to year into one of the top 5 most lucrative industries in the world.

Freedom: A dream or a reality? With the onset of mobility and connectivity, you can pursue your career in network marketing from virtually anywhere that offers an internet connection! Want to live life as an adventure? Then Network Marketing is for you!

Personal Growth: You are going to grow. Be challenged. Overcome and Succeed. You will be empowered by the sheer fact that you are in control. And when you succeed, it will be because you and only you strived to do so.

Immediate Returns: With a minimal investment, Network Marketing is designed to make this an accessible option for anyone with an entrepreneurial spirit.

Network Marketing can bring you financial independence and freedom, creating a sustainable passive income stream by applying the techniques and secrets that is shared by Pearl Maphoshe in Network Marketing: Make Millions While You Sleep.

In the past few years, so many scandals have rocked corporate South Africa that crises seem to be the norm rather than the exception. In the glare of the public eye, with cameras, microphones and cellphones in their face, many leaders who excel in organisations suddenly become scared, confused and can even appear shady.

When Crisis Strikes looks at a variety of crises in the age of social media in South Africa and abroad, with examples of who got it right, who got it wrong and how they could have done better. The organisations range from schools to local companies to multinationals caught up in state capture claims and giants such as Boeing and BP.

The book provides ten simple and effective rules to help manage crisis situations. The practical advice in each rule is backed up by academic research that draws from public relations, marketing, management, leadership and psychology. It combines insights from a seasoned journalist and an accomplished academic to give you the advice and tools to ward off a crisis before it strikes and, if it’s too late, to resolve a situation quickly and with integrity.

Wegelin presents an introduction to everyday building construction as practiced in southern Africa, from drawing practice, contours and stormwater, materials science and properties, energy conscious construction, masonry house construction, foundations, construction in reinforced concrete, steel and timber, roofs, joinery and external elements. Topics are introduced with a historical review and are lavishly illustrated with photos, maps and drawings. This book introduces the relationship between construction technology and design, essential knowledge for architects, building designers, builders and even building clients.

Multi-award-winning Sylvester Chauke is a self-confessed Madonna-crazy, entrepreneur and founder of DNA Brand Architects. After an illustrious career as the national marketing manager for Nando’s South Africa, Sylvester joined broadcasting giant MTV Networks Africa as its director of marketing and communication. In 2012, Sylvester established DNA Brand Architects, a marketing and brand consultancy that works with some of the most revered brands on the continent including Vodacom, Pernod Ricard, SABMiller, Boardmans and Steers.

Being a change leader, Chauke has a unique approach, ‘stand against bland’, which has allowed him to stand out as a powerful creative and marketing force. His track record is undeniable and his reign as the country’s number one marketing maverick keeps teaching the rest of us why we must choose to Stand Against Bland.

This book illustrates the colourful career of a man often referred to as ‘the dancing CEO’ – due to his tradition of bringing dancing into the office – and also takes readers inside the mind of a man who has stood out, brilliantly and consistently, from the rest.

Tailored specifically to the digital world in the 2020s, this easy-to-read practical guide is packed with expert insights along with plenty of real world examples.

Weaving core digital marketing principles into a specifically South African context, you’ll learn:

• How to craft a digital sales strategy
• How to create a website
• The basics of search engine optimisation
• How to write emotive web copy that inspires action
• How to navigate the world of influencers and social media

Are you happy?

Are you fulfilled in your relationships?

Are you growing your business?

Are you inspired?

Are you passionate about your life?

Are you passionate about your business?

Are you radiating success?

Are you making a difference?

No? Then business coach, entrepreneur and motivator Jamal Sahib has the antidote.

In Start with the End in Mind, Jamal will lead you on a journey of self-discovery into you, the people around you, the mindset you bring to life and business, and how your preconceived ideas about leadership, fulfilment, expectation and responsibility can derail your dreams.

Using real-life coaching examples, coupled with the latest coaching techniques and insights, Start with the End in Mind will help you strip out imposed ways of thinking, enable you to crystallise your ambitions, deepen your understanding and appreciation of the people around you and guide you to a better, healthier, more fulfilling and impactful future.

Whitey Basson, remarkable business leader, is often hailed as a ‘genius’ by his peers. Basson became a legend when, in the most famous takeover deal in SA, he bought OK Bazaars for the nominal sum of a single Rand. In this authorised biography, the award-winning financial journalist Niel Joubert pieces together the complex, fascinating story of how Basson grew Shoprite from eight small stores valued at R1 million into the largest retailer in Africa, and the 35th largest retailer in the world.

Based on years of research, including many hours spent with Basson, Joubert traces his life in colourful detail, from a Porterville farm, to Pep Stores, to where he sets out to apply the 'Pep formula' to the unforgiving world of food.

Starting from a small office filled with boxes, Basson built Shprite via growth and acquisitions, swallowing Grand Bazaars, Checkers, and others before the famous OK Bazaars deal, and finally reaching his lifelong target of eclipsing Pick n Pay.

This book is the follow-up to How to Get a SARS Refund, which explained individual taxes. How to Get a SARS Refund for Small Businesses explains small-business tax and is written in easy-to-understand language. The practical examples in the book will allow those who have never studied the subject to understand the tax rules quickly and easily, and will provide aspiring entrepreneurs with extra confidence to take that first step on their business adventure. Current business owners will gain a better understanding of how their business operates.

The book covers different types of tax that a small-business owner may encounter, including income tax, VAT, pay-as-you-earn (PAYE) and dividends tax. The book details how different types of entities are taxed, such as a private company compared with a sole proprietor.

How to Get a SARS Refund for Small Businesses aims to bridge the current education gap that exists for entrepreneurs and small-business owners who were never taught about tax in school or at university.

From the early days of her career, the leadership approach taken by South African businesswoman Nosipho Siwisa-Damasane has been to work with what she found. She realised that to achieve success in an organisation one needs to be “on the ground” and to interact with those at shop-floor level. Equipped with determination and empathy, and bolstered by her father’s belief that she could do anything her brothers could, she faced down any potential prejudices against her because she was black and female, irrefutably showing those labels to be irrelevant in contemporary business.

Hers is an extraordinary story but, as she shows, it doesn’t have to be a unique story. Drawing from her own experience, she has formulated a leadership philosophy of valuing diversity and engaging employees as fully as possible.

It’s a template whose seven steps are clear and accessible, and its results empowering.

Written by thirty-five noted management and turnaround practitioners, consultants, and academics in South Africa, this book is based on the highly successful Wits Business School (WBS) program How to Manage a Turnaround and Corporate Renewal (MATCR). WBS was one of the first business schools in the world to introduce an executive education program in turnaround management. Many of the concepts and principles from the program can be applied to various non-business turnaround aspects of life. Therefore, the book is not only aimed at management practitioners, consultants, academics, and students, but also at staff experts, engineers, accountants, and lawyers in the private sector, municipality and trade union leaders, government, organizations linked to state structures, non-profit organizations, sporting clubs, and educational institutions.

It provides meaningful insights into the various processes of turnaround management and corporate renewal, including stages of a turnaround, rapid appraisal and detailed analysis, recovery plan development and implementation. Industry leaders evaluate aspects such as strategy, legal, the new business rescue legislation, finance, human resources, marketing, operations, stakeholder management as well as external and political factors. Tools and techniques that can be used to deal with many different turnaround challenges are explained in considerable detail, complemented by case studies written by people who have led successful turnarounds in South Africa.

2020 has been an appalling year – one of the most difficult in living memory. A global pandemic, countries locked down, socio-economic catastrophe, international protests. Now more than ever, there’s a demand for vision and leadership in a time of crisis. Into the breach steps Mike Abel, founding partner of multi-award-winning agency M&C Saatchi Abel and one of the most prominent ad-men in Africa.

Launched in October 2010 by Mike and partners, M&C Saatchi Abel started out as an industry underdog amid the after-shocks of the 2008 financial crisis. No clients, no money, no offices, no furniture and plenty of established competition. They didn’t know it, but the decade ahead would also be one of catastrophic state capture and economic decline for South Africa. Today M&C Saatchi Abel is an African industry leader. Its high-profile clients include Nando’s, Standard Bank, Heineken and Takealot, and Mike Abel has the ear of the country’s most powerful business leaders and parliamentary ministers.

In Winning & Abel, Mike shares his lessons from the coal-face of business and leadership. Hard-earned lessons acquired in a business career that has seen him rise on the headwinds of perpetual challenges, amid economic and political chaos, to lead one of the most prominent advertising agencies on the continent. Lessons of hope and positivity that mark the tenth anniversary of the founding of M&C Saatchi Abel – and have never been more relevant.

In Precarious Battle tells how labour broking was defeated in the South African Post Office (SAPO). Labour broking has become synonymous with worker exploitation. By 2011, a third of SAPO’s workforce was employed through labour brokers. These ‘casuals’ worked alongside permanent employees, some for over a decade, but for a quarter of the salary.

David Dickinson shares the story of how labour broking provided cheap and compliant labour, and how the use of labour brokers in SAPO divided the workplace and the workforce. He charts the attempts of casuals to organise within the law and how their efforts were defeated at every turn. He describes the increasing ferocity of the wildcat strikes that followed and explains how eventually 294 casuals, the Mabarete, fought their own battle and ended labour broking.

This book reflects on how labour broking created misery for those trapped in precarious employment, how the Constitution failed casual workers and how the South African industrial relations system is unravelling.

Employment Contracts for The New World of Work deals with the employment contract in South Africa and the importance of this document as the foundation of the commercial relationship between the employee and the employer.

It describes the nature and relevance of the contract of employment, the essential components and conclusion of the contract, the legislative framework and aspects related to breaches of the contract, as well as repudiation and the termination of the contract.

The authors discuss employment issues as they relate to the ‘new normal’, including topics such as Remote and Hybrid Working, and the effect this has had on managerial control and authority.

Employment Contracts for The New World of Work provides practical assistance and information to the entrepreneur, business owner, front-line manager, trade union representative and official, who is, no matter how experienced, always in need of a quick reference guide and source of knowledge.

South Africa is a rapidly urbanising society. Over 60% of the population lives in urban areas and this will rise to more than 70% by 2030. However, it is also a society with a long history of labour migration, rural home-making and urban economic and residential insecurity. Thus, while the formal institutional systems of migrant labour and the hated pass laws were dismantled after apartheid, a large portion of the South African population remains double-rooted in the sense that they have an urban place of residence and access to a rural homestead to which they periodically return and often eventually retire. This reality, which continues to have profound impacts on social cohesion, family life, gender relations, household investment, settlement dynamic and political identity formation, is the main focus of this book.

Migrant Labour after Apartheid focuses on internal migrants and migration, rather than cross border migration into South Africa. It cautions against a linear narrative of change and urban transition.

The book is divided into two parts. The first half investigates urbanisation processes from the perspective of internal migration. Several of the chapters make use of recently available survey data collected in a national longitudinal study to describe patterns and trends in labour migration, the economic returns to migration, and the links between the migration of adults and the often-ignored migration of children. The last three chapters of this section shine a spotlight on conditions of migrant workers in destination areas by focusing on Marikana and mining on the platinum belt. The second half of the book explores the double rootedness of migrants through the lens of the rural hinterland from which migration often occurs. The chapters here focus on the Eastern Cape as a case study of a region from which (particularly longer-distance) labour migration has been very common.

The contributions describe the limited opportunities for livelihood strategies in the countryside, which encourage outmigration, but also note the accelerated rates of household investment, especially in the built environment in the former homelands.