Date: Thursday, 8 September 2016

Time: 17:30 for 18:00

Venue: Senate Hall, Hatfield Campus, University of Pretoria

RSVP on or before 26 August 2016 by clicking here. Please note that owing to the limited number of seats available, your prompt response is necessary to avoid disappointment.

* Sipho Nkosi (CEO of Exxaro) and Thomas Garner (CEO of Cennergi) have produced a reprint of a biography of Hendrik van der Bijl which was first published in 1948, shortly prior to his death. The SAAE has received a request from them for the book to be launched at this year’s Hendrik van der Bijl Memorial Lecture. Thomas Garner is a graduate of the University of Pretoria and was elected a Fellow of SAAE this year.

Historical material on Hendrik van der Bijl is very scarce and this biography has been out of print for a very long time. This reprint is therefore an important contribution to the history of South Africa and especially to the history of the development of industry in South Africa. Messrs Nkosi and Garner will do the launch jointly.

About the presenter:

Mr Koos Bekker is the Non-Executive Chairman of leading emerging markets media and e-commerce group, Naspers. He built the company as CEO, initially of the electronic division since 1985, and, since 1997, of the whole of Naspers. The company operates in 130 countries and is listed on the London and Johannesburg stock exchanges. It has the largest market capitalisation of any media company outside the USA and China, and is larger than any in Europe (see www.naspers.com).

Mr Bekker obtained his LLB degree at the University of the Witwatersrand. In the 1980s, he received an MBA degree from Columbia University in New York, where he researched the then-nascent industry of pay television. Immediately after graduation, he and a few young partners created a pay television business in South Africa with shareholding by local newspaper groups. In 1986, M-Net was one of the first pay television ventures anywhere outside the USA.

Since then, the group has grown into one of the most successful media groups in the world. Together with partners, it created the mobile telephony group MTN. Later, it entered the internet.

Today, Naspers has partnerships in various e-commerce groups in Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia, as well as interests in Tencent in China and Mail.ru in Russia. It manages pay television in 48 countries across the African continent, as well as some consumer magazines, newspapers and book publishers.

Mr Bekker is a past winner of the South African chapter of the Ernst & Young World Entrepreneur Award. He also received the Sunday Times Lifetime Achievement Award. He and his wife are fascinated by gardening and own and manage the renowned Babylonstoren farm in the Cape. 

Click here to view this invitation in PDF format.