AN extract from Out of Africa – the memoir about Danish author Karen Blixen’s sojourn in Kenya – in which she expresses her reluctance to “live someone else’s idea of how to live… and find out one day that I’m at the end of someone else’s life”, purposed Galeshewe-born Thebeetsile Ikalafeng not only to adopt the Dane’s credo, but also to “do things his own way” so as to spearhead a brand-led African revolution towards the realization of the ‘African renaissance’ Thabo Mbeki issued a clarion call for, and the ‘Africa Must Unite’ agenda Kwame Nkrumah inspired.
The eldest child of a nurse raised by his maternal grandmother, the ‘resilient like a diamond’ Kimberley native grew up a self-proclaimed de facto leader who was the ‘number one student’ with the top marks from the ‘number one school’ (the Roman Catholic Christian Brothers’ St. Boniface) before quitting the University of the Witwatersrand with just a final year of studying for a degree left, so as to study at a US varsity, at which he garnered a degree in marketing and a postgraduate MBA in record time!
He is the teetotaler (“I wasn’t cut out for these habits – I was on too much of a natural high already”) who once hosted a dinner for fellow Kimberley natives who had made a name for themselves in Johannesburg such as comedian Desmond Dube, actress Gail Mabalane, fashion designer Thebe Magugu, and Idols producer, Proverb, et al).
At some stage in his evolving outlook, he was the dapper GQ style suits-dresser who commenced his working life on New York City’s main corporate street, Park Avenue – only to return to his native country as one of the ‘first blacks’ who heeded Madiba’s call to return to build the new South Africa.
One of the ‘poster men’ of post-apartheid South Africa, in his role as a marketing director, Ikalafeng would propel NIKE South Africa to the multiple award-winning and number-one brand in the country!
He was the marketing maverick notorious in corporate circles for doing things his own way and whose being deemed ‘unemployable’ inspired him to found Brand Leadership, the pan-African brand agency he established to reach out to the diverse African consumers by driving Africa-focused branding and leading the African renaissance.
The agency’s task was to assist governments, state-owned enterprises and the African continent to build relevant and sustainable brands – an endeavour which it embarked upon, with brandings in categories such as financial services, public sector, higher education (which included UNISA and the University of Botswana, et al), telecoms (i.e. Telecom Namibia) and politics (which included assisting Raila Odinga’s campaign for the Kenyan presidency).
Putting a vast distance between his career endeavours and his wanderlust, Ikalafeng, the author of, The Traveller: Crossing Borders and Connecting Africa – pinpoints discovering, during a 2013 magazine interview, about a president of Samsung Africa and some of his staff having been to every African country, as one of the moments which inspired his intentional African journey.
He’d initially embark upon emulating the Asian’s feat by volunteering onto the Trek4Mandela expedition which summited Mount Kilimanjaro on July 18, 2015 – with his replication of the feat on July 15, 2016 (to mark the milestone the Earth went around the sun for the 50th time in his life), marking a deepening of his ambition to put Africa on top!
With the wanderlust bug done having bitten, those back-to-back feats would prompt him to embark on an adventurous journey around the globe which he was determined to turn into an exhilarating ride to the end! He wrote that the next adventure was always waiting – with nothing ever scheduled, anticipated or planned.
Venturing that he made a bold commitment that he’d not claim to be an African until he had set foot in every country on the continent, Ikalafeng would, inter alia: visit every African destination on then president Thabo Mbeki’s bucket list (which he revealed in a speech he delivered at Africa Travel Indaba in 2003) which included the route Emperor Menelik II took in 1895 to reach Adwa, to defeat an Italian army and preserve Ethiopia’s independence; bid a path to the quadripoint, the only place in the world where four countries (viz, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Zambia) converge; trek to the Virunga mountains in Rwanda and Uganda in search of the rare mountain gorillas; skydive above the sand dunes in Swakopmund, Namibia where the sea converges with the desert; consume the scorching tongue-splitting pepper soup (the country’s version of Ghanaian goat light soup – and an extension of the ongoing jollof rice stand-off between the West African nations) in Nigeria; witness aides of a head of State he’d had a meeting with, delaying an airline’s departure so as to ensure it didn’t leave sans him, and disappointingly, experience being thrown out of the South African embassy in Equatorial Guinea with the terse reason that “you don’t have an appointment.”
Mentioning that he adopted as his mantra, Fela Kuti’s words that, “I must identify myself with Africa – then I will have an identity”, to date, Ikalafeng has been to every African country – on a brand-led journey to contribute to a better Africa.
Additionally, he’s also been to more than 120 countries, including to every continent in the world – from the North Pole in Greenland to the South Pole in Antarctica. Among his adventures’ yarns, he recounts a guide rescuing him from near tragedy by grabbing him in the nick of time when he almost fell 500 metres down one of the steepest parts of the Americas highest peak, viz, Mount Aconcagua in Argentina – which he failed to summit – after having taken up the challenge of an acquaintance to, “let’s do the Seven Summits.”
Ikalafeng’s anecdotes intersect family ties, career excellence, wanderlust, history, Afro-optimism, et cetera, encapsulated in a saying of his Tswana heritage: “Go tsamaya ke go bona” (to journey is to discover).
A trade paperback, The Traveller is published by Tafelberg.
Available at leading bookstores countrywide, it retails for R360.
