A black man's unpaved road to S. Africa's middle class

He soon decided there was money to be made from the legions of tourists arriving in Johannesburg. After taking a tour-guide course, he went to a bank for a loan to buy a minivan. The cool response: Show us the deed to your house, and we'll give you a loan. Since blacks had only recently been allowed to own property, he figures the white bankers knew he wouldn't have a deed. He was reduced to carting tourists in his ancient blue Opel sedan. On slow days he would even round up his family and take them on tours. "He loves showing people around," says Johanna, Willy's wife.

Soon he saved up enough money to buy a rattletrap minivan. "I missed so many jobs because it broke down on my way there," he remembers, laughing. Busted fan belts. Overheated engine. So many problems. He did finally buy a small house - and marched triumphantly to the bank, deed in hand. But they would only give him a loan for 50 percent of the price of a new van - at a 25-percent interest rate. After badgering them every day for two weeks, they finally relented, giving him a loan for 75 percent of the price.

Even still, he moans, by the time the loan is retired, "I'll pay for the car three times." But now his company - Willy's Tours and Safaris - is growing. He's got three Volkswagen vans and is saving up for a 20-seater bus.

Others have risen up in different ways. The government's Black Economic Empowerment program is a voluntary affirmative-action plan for corporations. It has transferred much wealth to the top 12 million blacks, says Sampie Terreblanche, emeritus economics professor at the University of Stellenbosch. But corporations have "no responsibility to the unemployed," so the 22 million living in poverty haven't been helped much. Neither has the ANC helped, he says, because it's become "a middle-class party." He expects class-based unrest to grow in coming years.

Ngobeni agrees there's a problem. "So many people have good ideas," he says, driving among Soweto's tin shacks. "They make a business plan, and go to the bank - but they can't get funding." He figures low-interest government loans would be a big boost.

But his 20-year-old son, Platus, figures anyone who works as hard as his dad will succeed. As a tourism-management major in college, he has big plans for Dad's business: "a fleet of big buses" and investing in resort properties.

With youthful impatience, he dismisses those who bemoan the lack of opportunity. "They can sit back and say, 'Oh, the legacy of apartheid is keeping me down.' " He says that's ridiculous. "There's been 10 years of freedom, for goodness sake."

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