At age 15 I entered and won Miss Ga-Rankuwa. The next year I entered Miss North West, but I didn’t win that one.
That did not stop me from pursuing this passion, though.
At age 16 I entered Miss City Press and made it to the top five. After that, I started dreaming about entering Miss South Africa when I was old enough. But this wasn’t enough. So while I was building my career in pageants, I was also looking for other ways to make even more money.
At just 15, I took a taxi all the way from Ga-Rankuwa to the Pretoria CBD to look for a job during the school holidays.
As I listened to the radio, I thought about which shops I would go to first; I knew I wanted to work in fashion.
I went to a shopping centre in downtown Pretoria called Sammy Marks Square and visited every single clothing store with my two-page typed-up CV in my bag.
I went to shops such as Mr Price, Truworths and Foschini, but I was turned away wherever I went.
I didn’t give up, though. During the next school holidays, I again asked for taxi money to go and look for work at the same shopping centre. Again, none of the stores hired me, but I left my CV at a few of them.
A few weeks later, I was at home when I got a phone call from Truworths. Someone hadn’t pitched for her shift, and it was a busy December weekend. ‘Can you come in on a casual basis and help out?’ the caller asked.
‘Absolutely!’ I said.
I ended up working there throughout the rest of those school holidays, and when school started again, I continued to pick up shifts over the weekends.
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My family was lower middle class or, as I called it, ‘average’, at a time when most black people regarded being at this level as fortunate.
In retrospect, it was, but at that time I just thought it was normal.
Mama Moipone worked as a cashier at a resort and my father worked as a machine operator at BMW. But in my early teens my mama left her job and became a stay-at-home mom, leaving my father as the only breadwinner.
She cleverly managed and stretched my dad’s salary in order to provide for us all. My father worked hard, leaving early and getting back late in the evenings.
My job helped to stretch my family’s finances because I bought my own clothes and other necessities.
It felt amazing to be able to do that, and I was the envy of everyone.
The year I turned 16, though, my father was retrenched, and everything changed.
It felt as if a thief had come in the night and stolen our most important possession from us – our security. It felt like the end of life as we knew it, and I was afraid of what was to come. I felt hopeless, as I was old enough to understand the reality of what had happened, but not yet old enough to take on a full-time job.
I overheard many worried conversations between my parents. They shared their concerns with us, as we always talked openly about money in our house.
My parents, who had always been in control of their finances, were suddenly in dire straits.
But then, something really unexpected happened – my stay-at-home mom found a way to save the day. Forced by circumstances, she realised she had to fight for us, and a lioness emerged.
She started by selling cold drinks from our home. Then she added amagwinya (vetkoek) and sphathlo (similar to bunny chow).
Eventually, she started tapping into social events such as stokvels and was one of the pioneers in helping local stokvels to raise money, also by organising jazz sessions.
In short, she became an entrepreneur overnight.
Because of her, we had food, electricity, money for transport and school fees while my dad was out looking for a job.
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My siblings and I learned about strength by watching my parents pick themselves up.
There is no pleasure in seeing your children struggle to the point of lacking food. This is why my mother and father did everything in their power to provide for us in a new way.
Mama Moipone became the leading financial provider while continuing to respect my father. Then she expanded. She managed to take her small businesses of selling cold drinks on the streets to owning multiple spaza shops around Ga-Rankuwa.
Next, she bought land in Ga-Rankuwa Zone 7 on which to build our dream home. I listened carefully to her plans. ‘It has to be a house with six bedrooms,’ she told me, ‘one for your father and me, and the other five for you and your siblings. I intend to keep my promise that each of you will have your own bedroom.’
Next, because she wanted to learn about building and build our house at the same time, she started a construction company. All this while running all her other businesses as well.
So she built our dream home with her own construction company over a period of two years. It was, as promised, a massive six-bedroom, double-storey house.
This is how my interest in property was kindled. I had watched Mama Moipone build her own house from scratch with the money she had made and saved from the spaza shops, stokvels and jazz sessions, and I could see the freedom and security it gave all of us.
I wanted that for myself one day.
Mama Moipone’s success had a huge impact on me and how I pursued opportunities. There was no stopping her.
As I moved on through high school, she even went back to school herself and got two teacher’s degrees, teaching science to Grade 12 learners and adding a teacher’s salary to her income stream.
So, when she got back from school, she got busy with her businesses – the construction company and the spaza shops. Crazy, right?
This is an edited extract from Winning the Property Game: Lessons From an Executive Property Mentor by Koketso Sylvia Milosevic, published by Tafelberg. The recommended retail price is R320 and the book is available on takealot.com and at bookstores nationwide.
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