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Business
On The Move
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People
skills make house-building
easier
Mzwekhaya Lituka spent a decade
and a half as a labourer on construction sites, but now people are
queuing up to work for him. |
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A childhood
spent in Lady Frere, Eastern Cape and 15 years working on
construction sites and in security would not normally be considered a
good background for learning people management skills. But
that is
just what Mzwekhaya Lituka appears to have taken from his work
experience so far.
Coming from a poor background in the Eastern
Cape he struggled to complete his education, visiting Cape Town during
holidays and taking casual jobs as a labourer. Although he
tried to
complete Matric part time he eventually dropped out at Grade 10.
Mzwekhaya
landed up working as a security guard on night shifts and taking
labourer jobs in the daytime. He also volunteered as a Police
Reservist until holding down two jobs became too much of a
struggle. During his time as a labourer he also gained skills
in
building and plastering.
He came to The
Business
Place Philippi
looking for assistance in starting his own construction business,
because he had seen that small companies could get sub-contracting work
so wanted assistance in starting this. He registered his close
corporation and then attended the workshops offered at our branch,
sometimes coming to workshops straight from a night shift.
Because
of working nights he contracted someone on a commission basis to go and
get contracts for him for his construction business. For the first few
jobs he was only earning R3,000 per fortnight which needed to pay five
other people.
So his strategy was to be very transparent and
actually show the other workers the bank statements so that they could
see the money coming in and that he shared it equally between
everyone. Because of this he gained a lot of trust and word
spread that
Mzwekhaya was a good person to work for. So more people came
to work
for him.
Mzwekhaya says some of these skills were learnt from attending
the workshops at The
Business
Place Philippi.
His
turnover has increased, first to R15,000 per fortnight then to R37,000
per fortnight, but he is still applying the same principles of
transparency and sharing. He finally gave up his security night work at
the end of 2008 so that he could focus on his construction business.
Mzwekhaya
is currently employing 62 people on three sites, 10 teams in plastering
and painting and three teams in building. He manages to get
quite large
contracts, whereas often sub-contractors get one or two houses at a
time, he gets more, foundation to roof. |
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