Another recent Sowetan triumph is the Maponya Mall. With more than 180 tenants and 1.5 million monthly visitors, it’s Soweto’s first major upmarket retail space. It was built by Richard Maponya, an entrepreneur who bought the land in the 1980s and waited patiently for the political and economic landscape to change so that it could be built and that it could be supported by the locals.
It opened in 2007, a gorgeous space that looks along its middle like a sleek international airport terminal, with a selection of food purveyors, department stores and some upscale shops featuring goods that place design at a premium.
The parking lot was full of cars, as the video shows. Shopping, it turns out, is the international language.
Ray Lewis heads up the tax consulting business, Tax Therapy, based in Boulder and San Francisco. Ray writes about everything from finance, taxes, business and technology to sports, travel, politics and music.
He was formerly a technology consultant at The New York Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer, and served as a faculty member of The Sawtooth Writers Conference in Stanley, Idaho, an annual event dedicated to teaching fiction and poetry to gifted teenagers.
