NETJETS EU VOLUME 10 2019

spotlight Leif

spotlight Leif Rahmqvist, previous page, started his eponymous foundation in 2013 and it now helps local children learn vocational skills be perhaps his greatest adventure. Or that, in a remarkable tale, it would involve tending to the daily needs of some 150 children. “Buying all that land in South Africa was a big decision,” Rahmqvist concedes, “not least because it was at the time that Mandela was promising a new, peaceful life in Africa, which I trusted, even though everyone else [who was of European ancestry] seemed to be running back home. I was certainly the only Swede there trying to buy land, and it wasn’t cheap.” But it was the beginning of a personal social and conservation project of a kind that would, for many, be life-defining. Rahmqvist consciously wanted a remote plot without physical boundaries – so the wildlife could roam free – which ruled out, for example, most of the estates closer to Johannesburg. “I wanted somewhere that felt like the real Africa to me,” he notes, and settled on a plot around Alldays, a rural town of some 10,000 people in the Limpopo province, a place with only very basic education and limited healthcare. Once acquired, he began to install infrastructure, build waterways and a number of small houses, aiming to do what he could with his own company’s money – as well as that of a few private donors – to improve standards for local people, including employing them in various estate management roles. “There was never any intent to earn money from the land,” he says. “It was a place for me, for friends, for naturalists, for any people who 12 NetJets

“With the orphanage, I feel I’ve made an actual small contribution to humanity” © RAHMQVIST FOUNDATION CENTRE want to look after the land and the people on it. It was to be my own little place in nature, so to speak, to be one of the most amazing aspects of my life.” That, at least, was the intention. But it was not all plain sailing. This being South Africa, the shadows of race, poverty and corruption are always looming close by. Other white landowners in the region, Rahmqvist says, questioned his presence, having expected him to buy the land and then retreat to the city. “I think there was some jealousy, because suddenly I was the biggest landowner in the region,” he laughs. Relations were strained: “Now there’s respect for each other,” he says. It was in 2013 that things really changed for Rahmqvist. The insolvent local authority decided to close the only drop-in centre for orphans in the area – guardian-less children was a problem that was rife thanks to high unemployment, alcohol abuse and HIV infection, he explains – because, astonishingly, they wanted to repurpose it as an office. Rahmqvist stepped in. “They were basically saying that they didn’t care about the children,” he says with exasperation. “So I decided I’d have to build my own drop-in centre.” Architects were called in from Sweden and, by the summer of 2014, the Rahmqvist Foundation home, with rooms for 30 children, plus facilities to feed another 150 every day, was up and running. One might imagine that the local authority would have been rather pleased with this free solution to their problem – not least because, as Rahmqvist stresses, “to see the children living alone here, abused, hungry, it’s really a terrible thing.” But, “because there’s a lot of corruption in Africa,” he says, “they basically tried to take over the home’s bank accounts, to take over the orphanage. Again, this wasn’t with the interests of the children at heart. It was a case of saying, ‘You, a white guy from Sweden, what are you doing here? Why are you involved in our business?’ They didn’t understand that I was trying to help.” Rahmqvist stood his ground, taking over the running of the orphanage personally. He hired security guards. And the local authority backed down. Indeed, the orphanage rapidly went into a period of expansion, with Rahmqvist adding a vocational skills school, luring expert seamstresses, hairdressers, chefs, bricklayers, bakers and the like from Sweden to pass on their skills. To date it has provided some 100 children with certification they can then take to Johannesburg in search of work, and, potentially, a very different life to the one they might otherwise have faced. It’s also meant a very different later life for Rahmqvist, now 76, as well. Sure, work requires that he sometimes has to travel – for which purposes he became a NetJets Owner recently, appreciating above all the opportunity to save time, to work without distractions while on board, as well as the security that flying privately affords. But essentially he is based in South Africa, a long way from the cooler climes and spick and span society of Sweden. As a man who has spent most of his professional life following shifts in the office environment – most notably the advent of the computer – now he benefits from the digital revolution by feeling free to work anywhere in the world. “I can be in the middle of Tanzania and still run my company,” he says. “That said, my work life now is all about delegation, be that to a headmaster at the orphanage school or to my kids back in Sweden. That gives me a lot of free time, which you need if you want to try to do many things rather than focus on one. Of course, work has its satisfactions: the process of building a business is an interesting one. But with the orphanage, I feel like I’ve made an actual small contribution to humanity, because it’s gone beyond just sending money to help some or other cause. If I had just one or the other, I think my life would feel empty.” When the kids ask of his background, where this place called Sweden is exactly, Rahmqvist uses it as a chance to offer a useful life lesson, which he hopes they take on board. “When the Rahmqvist business started up, my parents thought it would always be a small one, because it started with very little money,” he tells them. “But, without any other resources, it slowly grew, from one step to another, to be one of the biggest businesses of its kind. The point is that it can be done. And children need that sense of possibility, especially if they come from absolutely nothing.” orphanage.rahmqvist.com NetJets 13