A plane flies overhead. As if on automatic pilot, Gidon Novick glances out his second floor office window. In reality, he doesn’t really notice the plane. His thoughts are elsewhere. He is planning: considering possibilities, ideas that could work for the either kulula.com or British Airways Comair. “We are always trying to improve our service and stay true to our brands,” he says.

On June 23 2005, Keith Rankin, managing director of Avis Rent-A-Car Southern Africa, was preparing a proposal for the June 30 board of directors meeting. His concern was how to meet demand during the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup, given the severe space constraints at Johannesburg International Airport (JIA).

No.of pages: 8

In late 2017, Wits Business School MBA student, Bulelani Moyo pondered all the information he had gathered for a proposal he was considering putting to Jeff Miller, CEO of South African venture capital company Grovest, for investing in a new and innovative hotel concept in three locations on Cape Route 62 (Route 62), a tourist route covering parts of the Western Cape and Eastern Cape. He believed that there could be scope for a disruptive hotel model on that route. However, for such a hotel to be viable, it was crucial to target the right audience.

Having met in London with Sir Sam Jonah, chief executive of Ashanti, in September 2002, Bobby Godsell, chief executive of AngloGold, announced on 16 April 2003 that discussions with Ashanti regarding a proposed merger had commenced. By August 2003, merger discussions were proceeding as planned, when the shock entry of Randgold Resources as a competitive bidder forced Anglogold to reassess its strategy.

In February 2002, Johannesburg-based AngloGold Ltd lost its position as No1 gold producer to America’s Newmont Gold Corporation when Newmont outbid AngloGold in a merger deal with Australia’s largest gold company, Normandy Mining Ltd. Urgently, AngloGold had to find other ways of surviving the industry’s dwindling resources. Now, on the evening of 3 September 2002, Paul Dennison, AngloGold’s business development analyst, was considering the options for presentation to the chief executive, Bobby Godsell, in the morning.

No.of Pages: 21

On 20 February 2004, Ghana’s parliament approved the merger between AngloGold and Ashanti Goldfields Company (Ashanti) and, on 26 April 2004 − a year after Bobby Godsell announced that negotiations had commenced − the parties concluded the details of the arrangement. It was the largest such deal ever on the African continent, and was widely considered a triumph for Africa.

By May 2007, African Bank Investments Limited (ABIL) had, under the leadership of Leon Kirkinis, become one of the predominant players in the provision of financial credit services to the mass employed population of South Africa. Over the years it had worked very hard to attain the position of market leader in the microcredit industry (with an estimated 31% of total industry loans) using a focused cost differentiation strategy that had enabled the company to achieve the lowest cost to income ratio (27%) in the industry.

When Saambou Bank collapsed on 9 February 2002, 20twenty, its newly formed online banking arm, had only been in operation for six months. During the six months it had been in operation, however, 20twenty had managed to capture the hearts of 40 000 customers with its innovative approach and fanatical service ethic: so much so, that most of its customers did not leave when Saambou collapsed, but stayed faithful to 20twenty until a rescuer came along 18 months later.

Between 2014 and 2017 the management team of the South African division of global software company, Systems, Applications and Products in Data Processing (SAP), managed to exploit loopholes in the group’s integrity management systems so as to take advantage of the influence that members of the Gupta family had over state machinery and land lucrative contracts with state-owned enterprises, Transnet and Eskom. These activities might have gone undetected had they not been exposed by whistle blowers in mid-2017.

In October 2012, Dr Kenneth Ross, professional fellow at the Graduate School of Education of the University of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia and chairperson of the Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ) Scientific Committee, was busy analysing the combined results of the SACMEQ III research conducted on the 15 participating African countries. He had to determine which factors made a difference to the quality of education in primary schools in southern and eastern Africa.