“WHY on earth would I want to go to South Africa or work for you?”
The London manager of one of Europe’s prestigious hotels, Carlton Towers, retorted to a South African guest who unexpectedly offered him a plum job at a hotel chain located in the African country.
‘Twas late 1971 and a fortnight after the visitor had caused a ruckus in the lobby of the hotel over his displeasure with its laundry service. The encounter would mark the commencement of a lengthy association between the Englishman and a figure who’d become known in the hospitality industry as the ‘Sun King’ – a controversial and charismatic magnate, the manager, as well as author of this riveting memoir, would go from being a long-time confidante of, to becoming an adversary of!
The Durban-born son, and only boy, among four siblings (the eldest of whom, who had to assume the mother role of raising him after their mother had died not long after his birth in 1935) of a Russian Jew father who had emigrated to South Africa from Lithuania in 1927 – during his youth, ‘the heaven-sent boy’ would help out at the small kosher hotel in Durban his dad owned.
He’d initially venture into the hotel industry by leasing a Durban hotel named the Astra in 1962, whilst still a partner at the auditing firm, Wolpert and Abrahams.
Yet the real story of the University of the Witwatersrand accountancy graduate’s career would commence with the development of the then “must-visit” The Beverly Hills hotel at uMhlanga Rocks outside Durban.
At the time, the aspiring hotelier only had R25 000 of his own savings towards its design, construction and furnishing – which convinced prospective investors who were impressed by his willingness to also risk everything he had in the venture.
In his words, “Raising the funds was easy” since he pitched to numerous company directors who happened to be Wolpert and Abrahams’ clients, as well as banks he’d been associated with through the auditing firm.
Described as a control freak of note who hated not being in control, he’d be on site everyday throughout construction of the 72-room hotel. (Despite knowing little about paths of construction, he would effectively become his own site foreman – where he either came to loggerheads with workmen or frequently cajoled workers into finishing tasks by enticing them with rand notes in the back pocket of his jeans.)
‘His dream’ would be unveiled on December 6, 1964 with a splash of the biggest fireworks display ever beheld in South Africa at that time – with images of the getaway, the opening razzmatazz and the glamorous invitees splashed all over the front pages of every newspaper in the country and beyond!
But it’d be a joint venture, at the accountant’s instigation, between himself and South African Breweries – which resulted in the formation of Southern Sun in 1969 – which would propel him into the upper echelon operator he’d become world renowned for! According to terms agreed upon, inter alia, Kerzner would be entitled to 10% ownership in all properties under the new stable, in return to his matching SAB’s enormous investment with 10% of his own.
Owing to his obstinate nature, the deal was advantageous for him since he didn’t have the amount of capital to embark on both the construction of new properties and acquisition of a hotchpotch of existing ones.
The partnership – with him owning the managerial contract for its operations – would promptly embark on the building and acquisition of impressive portfolios located across South Africa which, et al., included: the 300-room Elangeni Hotel (opened in 1971 on Durban’s Marine Parade); the 200- room Beacon Isle (completed in 1974 at Plettenberg Bay along the Garden Route); as well as acquisitions such as the Sabie River Bungalows (located adjacent to the Kruger National Park), and the then brand-new 203-room Elizabeth Hotel in Port Elizabeth which was part of competitor, Cape Hotels’ stable – all of which would fill in gaps in Southern Sun’s coverage of the country. (Many years later, the partnership would come to an acrimonious end when the SAB chairman, Meyer Kahn, elbowed Kerzner out.)
The tome’s author, Peter Venison writes that what the accountant under discussion, viz Sol Kerzner, had going for him in evolving into a property developer, was being a “convincer” whose ability to persuade others stemmed from a self-belief in his own judgement, a trait Venison could attest to since he did leave the UK with his family to take up the hotelier’s job offer – arriving in South Africa to a ‘baptism of fire’ when he had to fire Kerzner’s assistant manager, a cocky Frenchman, on his very first day in office, a show of muscle which left the honcho mumbling expletive-riddled wonderment: “This guy’s got f – – ing balls, firing someone that I f – – ing hired. That’s f – – ing impressive. And, not even phoning me to give me a f – – ing heads-up. F – – k!”
Not that Kerzner himself was an angel when it came to the firing trigger, as evidenced in an incident involving the devil-tempered hotelier demonstrating to the Englishman “how you f – – ing negotiate in South Africa, my boy,” when he diffused a strike by most of the African staff at the Elangeni by threatening to not only fire them en masse if they hadn’t returned to their posts – but that they’d no longer have a job there or at any other of his hotels! (Upon learning that Venison couldn’t resolve the dispute, Kerzner had promptly flown to Durban from Joburg so as to confront the strikers.)
There’d be the suicide of Shirley, his second wife and mother to the couple’s two children, as well as the loss of his eldest son Butch in a helicopter crash in the Dominican Republic in October 2006 – incidents which a lifelong friend of Kerzner’s would put into perspective thus: “If tragedy was a burden to Sol, hard work was the antidote, and he always said, ‘You just gotta box on’”, regarding the erstwhile varsity welterweight boxing champion (a sport which enabled him to defend himself from random beatings for being a “bloody Jew”).
Of the women who’d be in his life who included, Maureen, his first wife and mother of his three children, the then Miss World, Anneline Kriel who he married in 1980 and Heather, whom Kerzner secretly wed in 2000 a mere week after he’d announced that the couple “have no plans to marry” – Shirley had been the one love of his life.
SOL, the title of this read, is a behind-the-scenes glimpse on a national treasure who: was warned by his surgeon that “you will die” if he didn’t quit smoking or drinking (at the time, Kerzner puffed and quaffed through three boxes of Peter Stuyvesant cigarettes and a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label whisky everyday) after he’d suffered a serious heart attack in 1975; had to momentarily elope from South Africa because of his embroilment in the George Matanzima bribery scandal; formed a friendship with Nelson Mandela, which played a crucial role in South Africa’s political transition in the early 1990s.
The self-made ‘dream maker’ who: sold Chief Lucas Mangope ‘a dream of Africa’s Las Vegas in the form of Sun City; staged the WBA heavyweight world title fight between Gerrie Coetzee and the African-American Big John Tate at Loftus Versveld, which the US anti-apartheid campaigner Reverend Jesse Jackson attempted to scupper; was the matchmaker of the would-be Bjorn Borg versus John McEnroe tennis showdown at Sun City, Arthur Ashe dashed; conceptualized the Million Dollar Challenge at the Gary Player Country Club; became Africa’s entertainment tsar by enabling acts from Frank Sinatra to Queen to perform at Sun City’s Superbowl; Venison worked with on iconic projects such as The Palace of the Lost City (whose guests include Muhammad Ali, Michael Jackson, Naomi
Campbell, Tiger Woods, et al) and the Atlantis in the Bahamas.
Publisher, Melinda Ferguson said: “I’ve been keeping this book a very well-guarded secret for a number of reasons. This is a huge book for me because it’s the first ever published biography of the incredible entrepreneur, Sol Kerzner.
I am very proud to have worked with author Peter Venison, who was Sol’s right-hand man through many successes and storms.”
A trade paperback, SOL is published by Melinda Ferguson Publishers.
Available at leading bookstores countrywide, it retails for R350.
