A brief history of time: the life of Robert Gumede, the South African billionaire rescuing Tongaat Hulett
Billionaires Africa | 19.06.2026 18:21
When Robert Gumede was seven years old, he was already working. Not because anyone told him to. Because his mother, a domestic worker who lived in her employer's home during the week, was not there, and because his grandmother's three-roomed house in Nelspruit held more than thirteen siblings and cousins who all needed to eat. He gardened. He caddied golf bags around courses he could not play on. He sold second-hand clothes with his mother on weekends. He learned, before he learned anything else, that survival was not handed to you.
