13 November 2009
analysis
Johannesburg — THE letters come addressed to "Mr Mosa" because no one imagines that a woman would run Tshimo Ya Tlago Construction . Little do they know the chief is a woman, and she is only 20.
When Soweto's Mosa Moeketsi started Tshimo Ya Tlago three years ago she was 17, just out of school and had joined her mother's small construction company out of frustration.
Three South African universities told her she would have to do a bridging course because she did her schooling according to the British system, and universities overseas were expensive -- she needed a full scholarship but did not get one.
"I was 17. I said, 'Okay. What am I going to do?' ... I decided to join my mom's construction company and I got them their first contract," she says.
In order to do so, Moeketsi spent about three weeks investigating water reticulation -- about which she knew absolutely nothing -- starting with a dictionary search and graduating to reading papers on reticulation online.
Then she was asked to help supervise the building site.
"It was in Soweto, so I was comfortable with that, but I was nervous because I didn't know what I would do (on site on the first day), how dirty I would get or how long I would work. I knew that in construction you work 10-hour days, not eight," Moeketsi says.
A short while later, in April 2007, Moeketsi started Tshimo Ya Tlago.
"I like doing things by myself, then I have full authority, and there were fights between my mom and her business partner. I didn't want to be part of that, and I wanted to discover the industry by myself," she says.
That same year Tshimo Ya Tlago won the Alexandra Business Leader of the Year Award, a collaboration between The Business Place Alexandra and Standard Bank to reward small business owners who had been operating for at least six months.
Three years later Moeketsi has achieved all three of her Tshimo Ya Tlago goals and is already searching the horizon for new challenges.
"I have a short attention span ... There is a three-year plan for Tshimo Ya Tlago, there was one from when I started it. In five to 10 years we need to be a lucrative company, ready to be listed on the AltX, but our three- year plan was to have our own office space, permanent staff and a R1m (per annum) turnover. We have reached them all," she says.
Having done this, Moeketsi is looking at actually making her deadline to start studying by 21, and for a plot of land in Soweto on which she can build her next project -- a restaurant and career guidance centre.
"There is no career centre in Soweto. The youth are not motivated and the youth is the future. If we don't motivate them, who will run the economy?" she says, without a hint of irony.
Moeketsi's voice has an undertone of wistfulness when she explains that she had to get an architect to design her restaurant-cum-career centre. It comes as no surprise that architecture is what she hopes to study next year; via correspondence so that she can continue working.
"I still want to work. I want to earn a living, make a profit ... (Starting your own company) is a rougher road. You don't get paid at the end of the month every month, but you have more reasons to wake up every day. I am more fulfilled. I make changes in people's lives (through giving them jobs), in the economy, by adding to the employment rate," she says.
Moeketsi says she didn't consider that she was very young, or that she knew nothing about water reticulation when she wrote that first tender proposal. She just did it, and it was only afterwards, when Tshimo Ya Tlago was up and running and she was the youngest person at every conference and presentation she attended, that she realised the sheer chutzpah of her actions.
"It was only then that it dawned on me ... I am the youngest, but that puts immense pressure on me. I constantly have to prove myself," she says.
Proving herself has been something Moeketsi has had to do throughout the years she has run Tshimo Ya Tlago .
At first construction workers "didn't even listen to me . I had to respect them first, before they would respect me. I had to show them I could actually pick up a 50kg bag of cement ... I had a guy who was about 56 working for me. That's my mom's age. I had to show him, 'Look, unfortunately, I am your boss and you work for me. If you don't, no work, no pay'."
She also had help from one of her employees, Rasta Mothupedi, who was closer to her age but had been in the industry for five or six years.
"He went through the same stuff, so he knew where I was coming from. He was young and wherever he went he was a team leader," she says.
Tshimo Ya Tlago, which was a finalist in last year's Black Business Quarterly awards, got its first international contract this year -- a R1,6m project training Burundians how to use brick-making machines. It's a far cry from the first contract to rectify about 120 "RDP houses" in the Vanderbijlpark area, for R30000.
"I knew there was a place called the Vaal in SA, but I didn't know where it was. I had to learn all about Vanderbijlpark and the township where we worked, Bophelong. We did plastering and fixed the roofs," says Moeketsi, who now has a management diploma in plumbing.
The diploma was acquired while Moeketsi was still working for her mother's company.
"They sent (me) and I went and I scored the highest points in the class. That's how I found out, okay, I think I can do this, I must have a knack for this."
Moeketsi started Tshimo Ya Tlago with the aim of focusing on plumbing, seeing as that's what she knew, but the first contract had nothing to do with plumbing. That was okay, she learned.
Back then the company, which she started with R1000 in her purse, had between 15 and 25 temporary staff, and the three-month RDP houses contract; now it employs nine permanent staff and 16 people in all, and Moeketsi was voted one of SA's top 100 successful young entrepreneurs for last year.
She's fighting in the small contractors' corner.
"The established construction companies undermine the smaller ones. They forget they were small once too. They think, if one (company) pops up today, there will be 10 more tomorrow. We need their help and it is the quality of the work that counts, at the end of the day. That's what I told (companies such as) Group 5 the other day."
Moeketsi has no plans to sell Tshimo Ya Tlago, just to hand it on to a new MD when she gets her restaurant-career centre off the ground. She wants to provide a space in which youngsters can work (at the restaurant) while planning their futures.
"It's going to be fun. Building from scratch is fun," she says.
Tshimo Ya Tlago has just won a mentorship with Raizcorp, an established business "incubator" company.
"That's one of our big successes," says Moeketsi.
The youth are not motivated and the youth is the future. If we don't motivate them, who will run the economy?
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I am impressed by this performance! we the youth of today really need mentors but where are they? the are too busy to attend to us, the next moment we are in the realms of affairs then they realize that they had the chance to better shape the world. I congratulate our heroin for the courage she took to master her trade. sometimes unemployment is a good omen. necessity, they say is really the mother of invention. AFRICA WOMEN WAKE UP!
I am impressed by this performance! we the youth of today really need mentors but where are they? the are too busy to attend to us, the next moment we are in the realms of affairs then they realize that they had the chance to better shape the world. I congratulate our heroin for the courage she took to master her trade. sometimes unemployment is a good omen. necessity, they say is really the mother of invention. AFRICA WOMEN WAKE UP!