fbpx

JBP full logo black

icon ecomm1 icon newsletter1 icon fb1 icon twitter1 icon instagram1

The Stellenbosch Mafia: Inside the Billionaires’ Club


Pieter du Toit


About 50km outside of Cape Town lies the beautiful town of Stellenbosch, nestled against vineyards and blue mountains that stretch to the sky. Here reside some of South Africa’s wealthiest individuals: all male, all Afrikaans – and all stinking rich. Johann Rupert, Jannie Mouton, Markus Jooste and Christo Weise, to name a few.

Julius Malema refers to them scathingly as ‘The Stellenbosch Mafia’, the very worst example of white monopoly capital. But who really are these mega-wealthy individuals, and what influence do they exert not only on Stellenbosch but more broadly on South African society?

Author Pieter du Toit begins by exploring the roots of Stellenbosch, one of the wealthiest towns in South Africa and arguably the cradle of Afrikanerdom. This is the birthplace of apartheid leaders, intellectuals, newspaper empires and more. He then closely examines this ‘club’ of billionaires. Who are they and, crucially, how are they connected? What network of boardroom membership, alliances and family connections exist? Who are the ‘old guard’ and who are the ‘inkommers’, and what about the youngsters desperate to make their mark? He looks at the collapse of Steinhoff: what went wrong, and whether there are other companies at risk of a similar fate. He examines the control these men have over cultural life, including pulling the strings in South Africa rugby.

 

Pieter du Toit, who was a Stellenbosch ‘inkommer’ during high school, is an award-winning journalist and assistant editor at News24. He has written about politics for a decade and a half and is the co-author of Enemy of the People (Jonathan Ball, 2017). He is a former editor of HuffPost South Africa.       

Category:  Current Affairs
ISBN:  9781776191390
Publisher:  Jonathan Ball Publishers
On sale:  March 2021
Format:  Paperback
eBook ISBN 
BUY ONLINE:
Takealot reseller loot
EB logo Protea
 RW.JPG Balakudu 
 Graffiti Logo.PNG Raru