Conversations, With And About Gino Stefanutti

By Chrissi Maria

The subject of this book is Gino Stefanutti - founder of, and recently retired chairman of Stefanutti Stocks, one of South Africa’s top listed construction companies. Gino’s motivating story begins as a poor but happy youngster in Italy in 1947, and continues over decades as he grows to become an incredibly successful businessman on the African continent. He believes that if you do things right, the rest will follow and measures his success not by social standing or financial achievements, but rather by his accomplishments over time.

He has inspired many people he has come into contact with, and has the ability to inspire many more who may read these pages - especially those who are not afraid of pursuing their dreams, and of putting in the hard hard work it takes to realise them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chrissi Maria
• Release date: Jan 11, 2016
• ISBN: 9780620669344

Chrissi Maria

Chrissi Maria has written three books as well as numerous magazine articles focusing mainly on the construction industry, as well as many human interest articles featuring South Africans from all walks of life. In addition to ghostwriting she also undertakes a large variety of copy writing projects for corporate clients and agencies. Chrissi was born in Germany, raised in South Africa and has lived and worked in Europe, before settling down in South Africa again. She loves to travel and is fascinated by people and their stories.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

The subject of this book is Gino Stefanutti – founder of, and recently retired chairman of Stefanutti Stocks, one of South Africa’s top listed construction companies. Gino is a man who has inspired many of his friends, colleagues and associates, and I believe he still has the ability to inspire many who may read these pages, especially those not afraid of pursuing their dreams and the hard work it takes to make them a reality.

Gino’s attitude was that not much was impossible, and because he was passionate about what he did, his end game was not money – his financial success was just a by-product of doing what he loved, and doing it well. Money and status do not make a man. Respect is earned and not commanded and I take a dim view of people who define their success by their social standing and/or achievements – be aware that these alone can be short-lived and turn into a heap of ashes.

Most of his decisions were based on the potential for long-term growth rather than the opportunity to make a quick buck and walk away with a heavy pocket. He made a lot of personal sacrifices along the way, put his own assets on the line, invested his time and energies in the bigger picture, leading from the front whilst creating a sense of inclusivity across the ranks that resulted in an army of loyal colleagues, associates and friends.

He refers to ‘window and mirror’ maturity in leaders, whereby leaders will point out of the window to apportion credit to factors other than themselves… Or when things go wrong they will not blame circumstances or other people for set backs and failures – they will point at their reflection in the mirror and say: I am responsible. It is a refreshing approach, and to his credit, his style of leadership within his company certainly produced results.

Often society looks at success stories and assumes that they just happened over night, forgetting that the result we see more often than not started a long time ago. If we are curious enough, we start to engage in conversations on the matter, trying to establish what are the ingredients contributing to these success stories. Whether it is a financial, sporting, musical, scientific or philanthropic success story – the journey required to get there probably entailed much self-sacrifice, energy and dedication on the part of the ‘successful ones’.

Gino’s story begins in Italy, but this book is not a chronological account of his life. It focuses on key events and topics that kept coming up in conversations about and with him – and these form the basis of Conversations, with and about Gino Stefanutti.

Gino is a determined man who tackles whatever he does with enthusiasm. He has a remarkable zest for life, endless self-confidence, and a wicked sense of humour – all of which cannot but rub off on you when you are in his presence.

I hope you enjoy looking in on these conversations.

Chrissi Maria

Chrissi Maria

Conversations,

with and about

GINO

STEFANUTTI

CHAPTER ONE:

ROOTS

"A few years after we opened the Johannesburg Stefanutti & Bressan offices Gino and I were driving to a site and I asked him how, despite his great success and wealth, he still maintained such a humble outlook. Not being a great talker whenever the subject turned to himself, he simply replied: It’s important to never forget your roots and never to elevate yourself above others. That statement will stay with me forever."

Willie Meyburgh, CEO, Stefanutti Stocks

My story begins on 26 November 1947 in the small, peaceful village of Gemona, nestled in the northeastern mountains of Friuli in Italy. It was a cold, late-autumn day, just over two years after the Second World War had come to an end, leaving most of Europe deep in the throes of a post-war depression. The luxury of a centrally-heated hospital, with attending physicians and nurses fussing over mothers in labour, was non-existent and my mother gave birth to me, a breech baby, in the confines of our cold stone-walled house, with only a midwife and one of her sisters to assist.

Our family’s detached home was built adjacent to my grandmother’s stone farmhouse which enclosed two sides of the central courtyard. The third side was a high stone street wall with a two leaf steel gate, large enough to allow farming carts access. The pig sty and the outside toilet were back up against this stone wall. The fourth side of the courtyard was open to the fruit orchard and the vegetable garden. Our home was small and consisted of two bedrooms, a kitchen, a scullery and a parlour that served as the dining room and was sparsely furnished with a gramophone, a sideboard and a small table and chairs.

After losing her husband in the Second World War my grandmother lived alone in the main stone farmhouse and, as was typical of the times, the stables for the cows, with the hay barn above, was attached to the main farmhouse. The cow dung pit was located outside, behind the stables, and nothing ever went to waste, because the pit was emptied once a year to fertilise the fields prior to the planting season. My grandmother, like many others at the time survived through subsistence farming. Our family benefited from the fruits of her hard work and agrarian skills in cultivating her two-hectare smallholding that yielded seasonal crops.

Her four cows gave us milk and cheese, her chickens and rabbits supplied us with the necessary protein, the vegetable patch and the fruit orchards with the necessary vitamins, and the vineyards with wine. Of course we didn’t own anything like a fridge or freezer, so the pigs were slaughtered in the winter months so that the meat could be processed and stored in the cold cellar and we could enjoy the delicious seasonal salami and sausages. We lived a simple feudal lifestyle, but wanted for nothing.

Across Italy Friulians have always been known for their hard work and for creating their own destiny, rather than waiting for others to shape it – my family was no different. Motivated by the Europe-wide post-war depression, my father Sergio, a bricklayer by trade, started looking for work abroad and applied to an Italian company that was recruiting for projects it was undertaking in Australia.

In January 1952 he boarded the MS Achille Lauro in the port of Genoa – destination of Australia – and so began his three year stint earning a living abroad that enabled my mother to support the two of us back home. The money he sent back allowed us to buy all the ‘luxury’ items we could not produce ourselves, including fresh bread on a daily basis, an occasional pastry, the odd visit to the butcher, pasta, clothing and other basic essentials needed in the house.

Following my father’s return from Australia in November 1954, and after spending six months in Italy, he applied for a work permit to work in South Africa where an Italian/South African joint venture was in the process of constructing a large industrial cellulose plant in Umkomaas, on the Natal South Coast. In July 1955, after being thoroughly vetted by the government of the day for any unsavoury political affiliations, and a month before my brother Loris was due, he became one of the hundreds of Italian skilled immigrants to leave their mother country and board the MS Africa in search of a better life in South Africa.

On 8 July 1956, a year to the day of my father’s departure, my mother, Loris and I set sail from Venice on the MS Africa that was carrying many Italian families, some of whom were, like us, on a free passage to South Africa. The ship had three classes of accommodation and we must have been accommodated in the third class section, as we were sharing a dormitory situated below the water line with other mothers and their children. As children so easily do, we formed bonds and alliances with other children on-board and I imagine that the combined screeching, crying and stamping emanating from the dormitory and passage outside must have driven the adults mad. It most certainly must have been unbearable for my poor mother, who was horribly sea sick for most of the three-week voyage, leaving me, an eight-year old, to look after my 11-month old brother. It was a miracle that he arrived in Durban harbour on 13 August 1956, to be safely placed into the arms of my father who was eagerly awaiting our arrival. The long trip to our new home was almost over, and after a thirty-mile drive from the harbour, we arrived in Umkomaas to begin our new life in South Africa.

Few, if any of the immigrants spoke English, although after having worked for three years in Australia my father’s broken English gave him a bit of a head start. I was fluent in Italian and Friulian (the local dialect of about 8o per cent of the immigrants), but six months of patient schooling by a group of nuns at the Saiccor village, sowed the seeds of the English language… To be totally honest though, being amidst a large Italian settlement ultimately meant that English was confined mainly to the classroom and my English language skills only really began to improve when I went to boarding school in 1965.

My mother, who had grown up in a small village surrounded by generations of friends and family connections took quite some time to adjust to our new way of life in South Africa. The one consolation that kept her going was that just prior to coming to South Africa my father had promised her that we would only spend three years in South Africa before returning home. They eventually moved back to Gemona permanently in 2000 – I’m sure those were probably the longest ‘three years’ of her life!

Once the excitement and novelty of going to Africa had worn off, I also found myself longing for my little hometown of Gemona but that soon wore off with all the distractions that our new life presented to me.

My parents enrolled me at the local Umkomaas Primary School, after which I spent two years at Kingsway High School in Amanzimtoti. Every day after school, after dropping off my schoolbag at home, I would attend to my fledgling canoe-building business, expending my energy and steadily improving carpentry skills on building the canoes my mates had pre-ordered and paid for. My scholastic results were indicative of my lack of dedication to my school work. In 1965, when my parents moved to Mtunzini with my one-year old brother Mauro and a now ten-year old Loris, I was shipped off to St Charles College¹ in Pietermaritzburg, where my father felt I could be overseen and supervised in a boarding school environment.

∞∞∞

Three of my most vivid memories from my time at St Charles include being expelled, setting the prefect room’s couch alight and our Sunday afternoon foefie slides on the banks of the Umzindusi River.

You may be wondering how I managed to get myself expelled, but in my defence it was truly a complete and utter injustice. On one of our free weekends in 1966 my parents were abroad and rather than stay at the school, I decided to visit some of my friends in Umkomaas. I caught a lift to Umkomaas on Friday afternoon with the intention of returning to Pietermaritzburg on Saturday and staying the night with a classmate called Jos Robson. At the eleventh hour Jos told me that I couldn’t stay over at his place as his mother was running a home for girls and there wasn’t a bed available – and so I found myself in ‘Maritzburg without a place to stay. My only option was to go back to school, drop off my kit and make the most of what remained of my free weekend. I showered, changed and went back to town to watch the movie Ferry Cross the Mersey.

On my way to town I caught up with three schoolmates who had bunked out and were coincidentally off to watch the same movie. After movies we ate something at the Log Cabin in Alexander Park and then leisurely made our way back to school, taking a shortcut through the forest that lines the Scottsville racecourse. It was after midnight when we arrived back at the school grounds that were pitch dark, apart from the odd security lights dotted across the grounds. On approaching our dormitory we skulked between the shadows of the trees, on high alert for any insomniac Marist Brothers patrolling the grounds for young lawbreakers. Once we thought the coast was clear we made a beeline for the verandah that led to our dormitory only to collide with our Principal Brother Connell, also nicknamed ‘Dad’, who had been pacing up and down the length of the verandah while waiting for us. He was quite out of breath and I will never forget his words: If you people are crooked, it’s not my fault. You are expelled, report to my office in the morning. And with that fond ‘goodnight’ and a somewhat anxious giggle, off we went to bed.

The next day we reported to Brother Connell’s office where we were interrogated one at a time. I gave my version of events and when asked told him that my parents were overseas. I don’t think he bought my story that they were abroad, as he instructed his secretary to locate them in order to ask them to come and collect me immediately. I stood my ground and told him: I’m going nowhere, I am staying, this is a travesty of justice! I believe he tried more than once to get hold of my parents, but to no avail – they really were abroad. In the meantime, the weeks went by and I continued attending classes, playing rugby, and generally life went on as though nothing had happened. ‘Dad’ however had managed to contact the parents of the other three, and within the week they were removed from school. This hullabaloo was brought to the attention of the Parent-Teacher Association and there was a strong representation by members who felt the principal had entirely overreacted, and pressure was