TSHEPO MAHLOELE: An ode to Alwyn Wessels

Alwyn Jacobus Wessels is a name unlikely to be readily recognisable to many South Africans. For a person whose work over 42 years yielded a legacy rich enough to have touched the lives of Africans in no fewer than 15 countries on the continent, this low profile is somewhat out of kilter.

Then again, greatness is seldom loud. And in the Shakespearean framing of some being born great, others achieving greatness and others having greatness thrust upon them, Wessels went even further; he was born great, attained more greatness and bequeathed his greatness as a legacy to generations of Africans.

In keeping with the African adage that loosely translates to “great men will depart, but their praises will remain”, it behoves me to testify to Wessels’s greatness, and in so doing introduce you to one of SA’s greatest sons, albeit posthumously.

A natural question readers are probably asking is, “what’s this legacy that made Alwyn Wessels great?” The answer is multipronged and layered. But because as humans we are a visually stimulated species and respond best to what we see, it’s perhaps best to start with the physical, touch and feel infrastructure legacy that many interact with and benefit from daily, without ever getting to know the investment professionals such as Wessels who are often the propellers behind these developments.

Wessels was one of those investment and financing engineers who did most of the under-the-bonnet work that would eventually get the investment vehicle known as the Pan African Infrastructure Development Fund (PAIDF) going. This he did initially as Absa’s negotiator in the formative stages of the PAIDF, and later as the Harith General Partners’ CIO.   

Subsea cabling

The catalytic effect of the PAIDF and its follow-on fund, PAIDF II, on the socioeconomic development of countless countries on the continent is common cause, backed by irrefutable empirical evidence. It’s easy to point, for example, to the fund’s groundbreaking investment in Lake Turkana Wind Power, Africa’s largest wind energy project that contributes up to 14% to Kenya’s energy grid.

We can readily point to the Henri Konan Bédié bridge in the heart of Abidjan, Ivory Coast, which has unclogged the arteries of that country’s economy, allowing easier movement of goods, trade and services. We can, with the same ease, point to Main One in West Africa, which pioneered intercontinental subsea cabling to enable fibre connectivity to no less than 10 African countries.

The list is long, and includes the modernisation and upgrades that have revolutionised freight and passenger operations, thereby stimulating intra-Africa trade flows through the Zimbabwean side of the Beitbridge border post, a project in which PAIDF II is a big investor.

Further exhibits of the fund’s catalytic effect include its investment in the likes of Kelvin Power Station, which supplies a significant amount of electricity to the Johannesburg electricity grid, and Traxtion Rail, whose rail maintenance and rolling stock solutions are literally moving the African economy.

The returns realised by the fund’s investors and limited partners, many of them pension funds and development finance institutions seeking to grow their members’ and investors’ monies, form part of the intangible, nonphysical part of the PAIDF and PAIDF II legacy.

Giant footsteps

I outline this legacy in this manner not to pat myself or my team at Harith General Partners on the back, but to make the point that without Wessels as a trusted business partner, investment and financial engineer, negotiator and dealmaker, PAIDF, PAIDF II and by extension these projects, would have remained a dream deferred for a continent whose renaissance would have been conceived but never pursued with any vigour, at least in the infrastructure development sense.

By contrast, add Wessels to the equation, as well as the countless cohorts of investment professionals he has mentored and led since Harith and PAIDF were founded in 2007, and his giant footsteps on the African renaissance path are undeniable and indelible. Those footsteps can be traced in countless other jurisdictions whose capitals, commercial cities, highways, byways and countrysides Wessels has trod over the decades, negotiating, structuring deals, forging partnerships and unlocking logjams to enable completion and successful operation of the projects mentioned above and more. 

It is quite fitting that this man who, let’s face it, didn’t really fit the bill for your stereotypical pan-Africanist, would play such a key role in the continent’s renaissance and development. He was a pan-Africanist par excellence and believed in the continent’s potential to harness its resources to resolve its socioeconomic and developmental challenges.

His Pan-Africanism was not the only way through which Wessels shattered stereotypes. Our very friendship and business relationship spanning nearly two decades attested to what it means to not judge people by the colour of their skin or their background, but by the content of their character.

Never forget

Wessels proved that the often-cited excuse for failure to embrace our country’s transformational journey, which suggests that people are “a product of their time”, is exactly that, an excuse. An Afrikaner man born in Pretoria in 1957, coming of age in the late 1960s and ’70s, and starting his career in 1979, Wessels was anything but “a product of his time”. Never in our 18 years of friendship and doing business together did he ever give me pause to question his orientation and disposition. Instead, in him I found a trusted confidante, an ideas sounding board, and a deeply loyal friend and business partner. Countless cohorts of young African professionals found a mentor, an empathetic, kin, inspirational and witty corporate leader, for whom and alongside whom they would unflinchingly go to battle.

Wessels never sought fame or celebrity. But as fate and Wessels’ own works and personal touch would have it, his is a name we will never forget. It’s the name of a person whose fingerprints are likely on the paperwork through which the Anergi group was set up and now supplies electricity to at least 23-million customers across four African countries. It’s a name we will remember whenever Vumatel, a company in which PAIDF is a significant investor, passes another milestone of homes and business connected to the fibre network. Importantly for us at Harith, it’s a name we will preserve and honour.

Rest in perfect peace my dear friend, brother and confidante, and history-maker, Alwyn Jacobus Wessels.

• Mahloele chairs Harith General Partners.