Against All the Odds, Black Businessman Works His Way to Success in South Africa

He is a model of solid, middle-class well-being: He lives in a six-room house, drives a new Japanese car, wears smart suits and is planning a trip to Europe in November.

James Ngcoya is also black.

He is one of the black South Africans who have clawed their way out of the poverty shared by most of the country’s 25 million blacks and who can match the bank balance of many of its 5 million whites.

In the land of apartheid and white privilege, this is no mean feat.

Struggle in the Beginning

“When I started it was a struggle because I had nothing,” Ngcoya said in an interview in a posh Johannesburg hotel where he stayed during a recent visit from his native Durban.

“I never dreamed I would buy a car,” Ngcoya, 51, said of his early years, recalling that his first job as a clerk paid him the equivalent of about $10 a week.

He also remembers with bitterness the harsh days of strict apartheid racial segregation when, for example, whites casually pushed blacks off sidewalks.

Those memories have left Ngcoya with mixed feelings about whites, and he is adamant that he would not live in a white neighborhood even if apartheid allowed him to do so.

Different Cultures

“I personally would not like to have a white man as my neighbor--our cultures are so different,” he said.

Ngcoya gives the government credit for its slow reform program, which has scrapped some apartheid laws but left intact others, such as the Group Areas Act that decrees where people can live according to the color of their skin.

Ngcoya insists that he has no interest in politics but it is clear from his views that he is conservative, almost as far from militant black nationalism as the whites who are trying to suppress it.

“I strongly feel that the government is moving in the right direction in South Africa, although the changes are slow,” he said.

Reasonably Content

As he spoke, a totally different atmosphere prevailed just a few miles away as delegates to a congress of black trade unions sang freedom songs and chanted slogans of the African National Congress guerrilla movement that is trying to end white rule.

Ngcoya says he is reasonably content with the present system because he has been able to use it to his advantage.

After trying various jobs he began driving a taxi in 1971 in Durban. His choice was a good one because the demand for taxis has grown phenomenally in South Africa.

Millions of black commuters rely on taxis, most of which in South Africa are mini-vans, to take them from their townships to their jobs in the “white” cities.

Lucrative Business

In the early 1980s, the government tried to ban the mini-vans, saying they were a traffic hazard and they violated municipal regulations. But the taxi business was becoming so lucrative to vehicle manufacturers that they persuaded Pretoria to back down.

Ngcoya not only expanded his business to a fleet of taxis and began earning a healthy income that he would not disclose, he became a leading figure in the black taxi-driving fraternity. He now heads an organization called the Southern African Black Taxis Assn., which groups 45,000 taxi owners.

The association--and Ngcoya--have been in the news recently because the organization has been negotiating to buy South Africa’s biggest bus company, Putco, which serves black commuters.

The South African government may have misgivings about such a major state-subsidized company passing into black ownership, but economic analysts said putting Putco under the control of people like Ngcoya, who have made good in a society where the odds are stacked against them, could be an effective move since they would be seen by the black clientele as managing a black company.