Nando’s founder Robbie Brozin is bringing his creative energy to resurrecting downtown Johannesburg, South Africa’s de facto commercial capital, which has seen the same inner-city exodus as other major global centres.
Brozin is the force behind a new initiative called Jozi My Jozi which aims to rejuvenate what was once the thriving heartland of the city.
“The energy we put in to fix Joburg has to come from the inside out,” Brozin tells Business Day.
“You can’t fix it from the outside by throwing money at it. This has to be creative-led; it has to be led by the crazies,” he adds, explaining Jozi My Jozi is using the “same model” Nando’s used. “We don’t have a plan, but because we are creative, we are creating as we go along.”
This isn’t the first time Brozin hasn’t had a plan and made it up as he went along. When he went for lunch one day with a friend at Chickenland, a Portuguese restaurant in the south of Johannesburg, he fell in love with the peri-peri chicken it served. So he bought the business in 1987 with his friend, Fernando Duarte, and named it after Duarte’s son, Nando.
Brozin’s remarkable story of success is built on two values: people and creativity. He is a brilliant businessman who jokes he “just sold chicken”. But he has a unique style that is as much creative as it is irreverent. His love of that particularly tasty flavour of peri-peri chicken has turned Nando’s into a worldwide phenomenon and global brand. It has always been known for its sense of humour and is iconic for its creative, irreverent adverts.
Nando’s is uniquely South African. As a country, we’re prouder of it than we ever were of Elon Musk. Former US president Barack Obama joked there is a “Nando’s just a couple of blocks from the White House”. Prince William, the future king of England, is also a fan: “I like Nando’s. Everyone likes a Nando’s.”
As a businessman Brozin has been honoured by every institution, including Harvard Business School, with richly deserved accolades. In the way masters are venerated in Japan, Brozin is a “living treasure” in SA. Like all successful businessmen with heart, he is now ploughing all that unique, creative business energy into resurrecting his hometown “from the inside out”.
Brozin helped launch Jozi My Jozi in 2023, hoping to reverse the innr-city decline. “If we lose Joburg we lose South Africa,” he said at the time. “We can’t afford that. No-one can.”
What is remarkable about Jozi My Jozi is that it seeks to be a catalyst, to show what remarkable things are already being done. Instead of the focus being economic, it is rooted in the creative industries that have flourished without any macroeconomic or government support.
If we lose Joburg we lose South Africa.
— Robbie Brozin
Brozin’s belief that creatives are fuelling an (albeit small) economic revolution is borne out in the number of new businesses that have sprung up, often in unlikely places. Restaurateurs, musicians and creatives have started co-working spaces, music venues, restaurants and public art installations that have been transforming the city from the inside.
This is the remarkable philosophy Jozi My Jozi is trying to highlight about these independent businesses. Last year it launched a marketing campaign called Babize Bonke to “make the invisible visible”, as Brozin puts it.
The city has such a vibrant creative community, Brozin believes, and a bunch of creative entrepreneurs are transforming the city without help from anyone else.
“There are people doing great stuff already,” he tells Business Day. “How do we highlight their work, connect them to people and help amplify their message?” Most importantly, how do you help them “grow at a faster speed than they already could do”?
“They are the visible that are invisible. The whole campaign is how do we make it visible,” he says.
People seldomly think of creatives as entrepreneurs. But they are. It takes as much entrepreneurial belief and flair to start a music venue or co-working space or restaurant as it does a medical aid or property business.
Moving to (literally) greener pastures is what several of the Babize Bonke creative entrepreneurs say would make their businesses more profitable and easier to run.
Nandi Dlepu, who runs the Mama KaShaka and Friends co-working space, says: “Our business would thrive in Parktown, Rosebank, Sandton”, but she wants to do it in Braamfontein. Her creative space hosts anything from music-related events to a chess club.
“Nandi Dlepu is a visionary cultural curator and connector who has built a devoted following,” says Laurice Taitz, a former Sunday Times journalist whose passion for the city set her off on her own creative and entrepreneurial journey. Taitz founded Johannesburg In Your Pocket, a travel and cultural website that is experimenting with generative AI to enhance visitors’ experiences of Jozi.
Similarly, Julian Riberio left a 30-year career in advertising to open a restaurant downtown named for his grandmother Sadie. When all his friends kept insisting he should become a chef he joked: “I’m running the biggest ad agency in SA, when am I going to squeeze this in?”. But he went to culinary school at age 51 because he wanted to open Sadie’s Bistro.
Another entrepreneur who often goes unmentioned is the founder of Jozi My Jozi, Melusi Mhlungu, who Brozin convinced to return from a stellar advertising career in New York to start the initiative.
“I’ve never created a brand from nothing,” he says. “Luckily, this was one of the easiest brands to create. The people of Joburg were inspirational.”
More importantly he asks: “How can we make it world famous for going from the City of Gold to the city with the people with a heart of gold?”
Love Jozi is another well-known creative brand, as is fashion label Black Coffee.
In the 2010 Unhinged: Surviving Johannesburg documentary Brozin was asked about his attitude to life: “Make a real difference. Don’t make a difference like a half-cocked difference. You gotta make a real difference.”
There’s no mistaking Brozin has made that difference not only in his life, but in the life of a country. And now a city.
• Shapshak is editor-in-chief of Stuff.co.za. Jozi My Jozi’s creative entrepreneurs can be seen on YouTube.
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