Masakhe 02_DIGITAL PAPERTURN - Flipbook - Page 15
LEGENDARY PROFESSIONALS
V
uso Majija’s story
begins with desire.
Growing up in
Mthatha in the 1980s,
the world of big
retail was a distant
place. Major purchases required
a long drive out to East London.
Closer to home, in the Ngangelizwe
township, he watched a new housing
development rise, a place for “young
professionals, for nurses and doctors”.
Later, after moving to Cape Town as
a young boy, he remembers the sheer
scale of the Ottery Hypermarket and
the bustling Kenilworth Centre. Even
as a kid, the buildings were more than
just buildings for Majija; they were
symbolic of a world he wanted to
understand.
His initial dream was to be an
architect, but he admits he “knew he
couldn’t draw.” A civil engineering
degree from Cape Tech led him to a
job at Africon, designing roads and
infrastructure around Durbanville.
It was there that he noticed a
fundamental divide. “There was a
divide between engineers and the
developers,” he recalls. The engineers
executed the plans; the developers
had the vision. “I thought to myself,
that is where I want to be.”
Driven by his background, Majija
was focused on figuring out “How
[to] bring retail to underserved
areas?” He found a company whose
mission mirrored his own, Resilient
Properties. They focused on
decentralised nodes and underserved
communities, and through a family
friend involved in the company, his
CV made its way to the CEO. An
interview followed, and he was in.
Majija’s formal education in the
field began in the early 2000s, in the
nascent Property Studies program at
UCT. A friend had told him about the
new degree. “There were very few
people in the class,” he remembers,
noting that only six graduated in his
initial cohort. The course touched on
every aspect of the industry: property
law, valuation, and finance.
After three years in the industrial
and commercial division, he became
the centre manager of Jabulani Mall in
Soweto, and later, an asset manager.
It was his time here, on the ground,
interacting with every roleplayer, from
the architects to the tenants to the
project managers, where he slowly
learnt every facet of the business. In
2017, after completing an MBA, he
was made an Executive Director.
Majija’s greatest mentor was his
late uncle. “He was the man who
taught me to dream”. The uncle, who
had been arrested in Botswana for
political reasons during the struggle,
saw a country full of possibilities. “Our
family has too many teachers,” he
once told a young Vuso. “You must
become a doctor.” Vuso understood
the message wasn’t about a specific
profession. “What he meant was that
I should be ambitious, that I need to
focus on something. He would always
say, ‘Dream big.’ And so dreaming big
became my North Star.”
For much of his career, Majija
has been, as he puts it, an “outlier.”
ISSUE 2
13
DECEMBER 2 025
