When I started my first investment in 2011, I started it at the back of the Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) Act, I ticked all the boxes
1. Young ✅
2. Black ✅
3. Woman ✅
that white owned entities needed to earn BEE points on. I focused on 2 key elements, Enterprise development and Owners Equity.
Enterprise development
1. I approached white owned law firms to draft all our agreements for FREE, in exchange they got BEE points
2. So, YWBN had access to free legal services
Ownership
1. YWBN together with other partners own 26% shareholding in Namlog as a BEE partner
When the time came for the YWBN Mutual Bank license application my mind had already shifted to “black people should not invest in white owned entities that we know nothing about but create their own companies”, so the strategy was totally different.
At that time when you sent an email to the South African Reserve Bank to enquire about the process of starting a Bank, they had a generic response that referred you to the big 4 audit firms, to me this approach didn’t make sense at all, why the bid 4 audit firms whilst you’re just on information seeking exercise 🤷🏽♀️
I refused, then the idea was to ensemble our own YWBN team but the problem is we didn’t have money to pay them. This Team had to be majority black people, this was extremely important to us.
As the vision carrier my role was to sell the vision to each one of them that I met, when I say God didn’t play here, I mean He totally showed up.
My story was simple, we don’t have money to pay you now for the work you’ll be putting in, we are asking you to work on risk (meaning if the license is declined we don’t pay you but if the license is approved, we will offer you shares and pay you). Many agreed others left along the way because reality is, bills have to be paid, people can’t work for FREE, they have families to support.
Well, I personally don’t live by this reality, especially when you do have the time to spare.
Whilst other bank license applications are costing over R100 million the YWBN Mutual Bank license cost sweat and tears with zero budget, we call it a Miracle project.
All the YWBN CFI shareholders had to do was to operate the CFI profitably and compliant with all laws and regulations.
When there were tactics to delay our application in the hopes that we financially run dry, they didn’t understand that we started the bank on zero budget, our pockets were already dry, our vision to see a Black Owned Bank in our lifetime was overflowing, they couldn’t suck it all out even when they tried, we had nothing to lose. This was our only plan, NO PLAN B!
So, the YWBN team worked for 9 years without getting paid for a dream bigger than themselves, a dream that will see Afrika’s economic reawakening, no amount of money can buy this kinda sacrifice.
I cannot wait for the world to meet them 💜💜💜
That’s awesome