Word: kerzner
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When South African Hotelier Solo mon Kerzner speaks, he comes across more like a New Jersey dockhand than a powerful executive. He talks machine gun-style, from the corner of his mouth, with an accent sounding a bit like Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront. Yet the former college boxer's pugnacious manner suits his controversial role in business. Kerzner, 48, is southern Africa's casino king. In a country so morally conservative that movie theaters are closed on Sundays and Playboy magazine is banned as the work of the devil, Kerzner has succeeded in assembling...
...Kerzner put himself in the spotlight last month when he carried out a series of deals that parlayed his local hotel interests into virtual monopoly control of casino gambling in all of southern Africa. The transaction sparked indignation from religious groups when it became known that the South African government, through its Industrial Development Corporation, was an unwitting owner of about 9% of Kerzner's new conglomerate of 13 hotel-casinos. The government's role seemed to put Kerzner's big deal in jeopardy, but last week Lady Luck came through for him once more. To avoid...
Because all forms of gambling except horse racing are prohibited in the white apartheid portion of South Africa, Kerzner's casinos are springing up in the new black homeland states, which are nominally independent. His flagship is Sun City, a glittering $140 million oasis built in the homeland with the virtually unpronounceable name of Bophuthatswana. The state has a population of 1.4 million and an average annual income of less than $500 a year. The resort's slot machines, roulette wheels and befeathered chorus girls attract as many as 50,000 visitors a day, mostly well...
Unlike most of South Africa, homelands like Bophuthatswana allow blacks and whites to mingle openly. Still, South Africa is in such bad odor because of apartheid that Kerzner has to pay platinum-plated premiums to get American entertainers like Linda Ronstadt and Kenny Rogers to brave possible censure for having performed at Sun City. Two years ago, Kerzner paid Frank Sinatra $2 million for nine shows over seven days, charging up to $85 per seat. Although such prices create a kind of economic apartheid at the resort since most blacks cannot afford admission, Kerzner argues that Sun City is beneficial...
...Kerzner, whose third wife Anneline, 28, is a former Miss World, got his start in the hospitality business when he persuaded his father to take out a lease on a dockside dive in the city of Durban. He turned the place into a swinging pub and used the profits to build the first hotel in a chain that became known as Southern Sun Hotel Group...