Aupa Indongo hailed as business icon

‘DON’T avoid paying taxes.’
This was the message of Frans ‘Aupa’ Indongo, godfather of entrepreneurship in Namibia, on Tuesday evening when he was honoured on his home turf for receiving one of the biggest business accolades in the region: Ernst & Young’s Lifetime Achievement Award for Southern Africa, part of the group’s World Entrepreneur Awards.

The 75-year-old business mogul received the award in person at a gala event in South Africa last week.With it, he joined the ranks of South African business icons like Raymond Ackerman and Anton Ruppel.Ever humble, Indongo on Tuesday evening told aspiring young entrepreneurs that they shouldn’t start a business to become rich. ‘Build a business to build national wealth in which you too can share’, he said.In addition to paying tax on time, hard work, passion, discipline, order and respect for customers are pivotal, Indongo said. More sound advice from the man who started as a migrant labourer and developed into a tycoon: ‘Don’t squander your profits.’Indongo is in a league of his own, peers and professionals agreed at a cocktail function at the Ernst & Young complex in Windhoek. Not only did he found the Indongo Group, he diversified it into a mighty company with interests in fishing, hunting, property, the car industry, the hospitality industry and investment in financial investment instruments.In a letter of congratulations read at the event, Founding President Sam Nujoma described Indongo as a ‘master businessman’ with a ‘razor-sharp memory’ and a ‘brilliant business brain’. Indongo is a humble family man with an ‘unfettered love for his country’, Nujoma said.Gerrit Fourie, managing partner of Ernst & Young, said the criteria used for the award included whether an entrepreneur succeeded against all odds in unchartered territory, and whether he is a pioneer, champion and role model.’It is almost as if these criteria were written for Dr Indongo,’ Fourie said. ‘It was almost unfair competition [for the other nominees],’ he said.

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