Herman Mashaba

Herman Mashaba was born in 1959 in Hammanskraal, South Africa, and grew up under apartheid laws that restricted where Black South Africans could live, work and own property, and that shaped every part of ordinary economic life. He worked for a period as a sales representative for a hair care company, a job that exposed him closely to the cosmetics trade while also exposing him to the daily indignities and restrictions apartheid placed on Black employees and entrepreneurs.

In 1985, with a small loan and working initially from his kitchen, he started his own hair care manufacturing business, later named Black Like Me, at a time when apartheid law made it legally difficult for a Black South African to register certain kinds of company or access ordinary business credit on the same terms as white applicants. He built the business by focusing on affordable hair care products aimed specifically at Black South African consumers, a market segment large international cosmetics firms had mostly ignored or served poorly.

The business grew steadily through the final years of apartheid and into the post-1994 democratic era, becoming one of South Africa's most recognised Black-owned consumer brands and giving Mashaba a public platform as an example of Black entrepreneurial success achieved despite, rather than because of, the system he grew up under.

He later became involved in South African politics, serving as mayor of Johannesburg and founding a political party, arguing throughout that removing bureaucratic barriers to small business formation was essential to reducing the country's poverty and unemployment.