"BEE pits black against white": The trailblazer who says empowerment got it wrong — Sam Montši

Defying Barriers is the memoir of a man told by his own government to vanish — and who turned the threat into a business empire spanning two countries. In this interview with Irakli, businessman and author Sam Montši recounts how a 1987 order to "disappear" from military-ruled Lesotho drove him into apartheid South Africa, where he joined the mighty South African Breweries. There, he says, "I was the first Black general manager in the SAB Group at the time. And white people, sadly, were not used to having a Black person overseeing them. So some of them behaved in an unfortunate fashion, and I had to get rid of one of them." Montši explains the operating instinct behind a portfolio that broke barriers from fishing to shipbuilding — "a business needs to move, and move fast" — and reflects candidly on succession, recalling how his son Arif joined him: "Dad, I'm coming to work with you. I'm not coming to work for you. I'm not going to carry your briefcase." He reveres Nelson Mandela as a nation builder — "we were lucky to have him when we had him" — but delivers a stinging critique of Black Economic Empowerment, charging that it "has pitted the Black man against the white person, rather than getting them to work together," and that requiring white firms to take on Black partners is "in a sense, suggesting that Black people cannot create these things themselves." Montši also shares the leadership philosophy that carried him from a Soweto childhood to West African boardrooms: "for you to shine, you must make the people that work directly under you shine." He outlines in detail the journey of crossing boundaries others said could not be crossed — and what it means to now hand the family business to the next generation.