Trailblazing Soweto businessman Richard Maponya laid to rest

“They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.”

This is an extract from When Great Trees Fall, the poem by legendary American poet Maya Angelou. It was located right at the end of the programme for Richard Maponya’s funeral service on Tuesday 14 January; an ode to the legacy the man had carved out for himself.

The business mogul, who died aged 99 on 6 January 2020 after a short illness, was laid to rest at Westpark cemetery, next to his wife, Marina Maponya.

Hundreds gathered at the University of Johannesburg Soweto campus’s Imbizo Hall to pay their final respects to the pioneering giant who carved a path for himself, as well as many others that followed him.

“Fifty years ago, the very idea that a black person could build and own a shopping mall in a black township, where young black men and women could socialise, eat, buy books and watch movies, would have been dismissed as a fantasy,” said President Cyril Ramaphosa in his eulogy at the service.

“And yet, Richard Maponya did it.

“Fifty years ago, if it had been said that a black husband-and-wife team could build a business empire with interests in some of the most important sectors of our economy, it would have been laughed at.

“And yet, Richard and the late Marina Maponya did it.”

Ramaphosa was one of a plethora of dignitaries and family members who graced the Imbizo Hall stage, at the edge of which stood the businessman’s coffin, draped in a South African flag.

The stage was littered with hundreds of flowers, almost an analogy of the now blooming garden of success borne of the seeds that Maponya had, with great difficulty, sown decades ago.

One by one, the likes of Mangosuthu Buthelezi, Sam Motsuenyane and Felicia Mabuza-Suttle took turns sharing anecdotes of how Maponya had impacted on them. Songbirds such as Judith Sephuma and Sibongile Khumalo were there to lend their voices to the celebration of Maponya’s life.