South African tycoon Japie van Niekerk buys a mall nobody else wanted in the Kalahari

Japie van Niekerk has bought Kalahari Mall in Upington, completing what his company calls one of the largest shopping centre transactions ever concluded in the Northern Cape.

New Africa Developments, which van Niekerk owns and runs as chief executive, closed the purchase after the Competition Tribunal cleared it unconditionally in June. It is the company's first asset in the province.

Neither side has disclosed the price.

The mall serves Upington, the towns around it and shoppers who cross the Namibian border to reach it. Managing director Robin Houghton said it stood out as a high-quality regional asset with sound fundamentals and a significant position in its market, pointing to its trading performance, national tenant mix and established customer base.

Upington is a long way from where most South African retail money goes. The town sits on the Orange River in the country's most sparsely populated province, roughly 800 kilometres from Cape Town and 400 from the Namibian border, in an economy built on agriculture, logistics, renewable energy, tourism, cross-border trade and mining in the surrounding region.

That is precisely the kind of place van Niekerk has spent two decades buying into.

He specialises in shopping centres in rural areas and small towns, the markets listed property funds have historically avoided because the numbers look thin and the logistics are difficult. His pitch is that isolated communities have no convenient access to national retailers, and that a well-placed centre in a town with no competition can hold a dominant position no city mall ever achieves.

Bushbuckridge in Mpumalanga is where he proved it. New Africa Developments committed more than a billion rand to the area, opening Dwarsloop Mall in 2017 and Acornhoek Mall the following year.

Acornhoek took three years of litigation to build. A company called Acornhoek Plaza Share Block, whose shareholders included the financial services group Sanlam, brought a case that delayed construction until New Africa Developments won it with costs. Van Niekerk said at the time that the people of Bushbuckridge had been denied development, local economic upliftment and job opportunities for more than three years, with dire consequences for the community.

He started in property more than twenty years ago and co-founded New Africa Properties before setting up New Africa Developments, which he runs from Pretoria with a staff of around 22.

Retail is not the only thing he owns. Van Niekerk also owns Cheetah Plains, an 8,500-hectare private game reserve in the Sabi Sand next to Kruger National Park, which operates as one of the more expensive safari lodges in South Africa.

The plan for Kalahari Mall is to spend money on it. New Africa Developments intends a substantial investment over the next year, covering an extensive refurbishment, reconfiguration of several tenant premises and a possible expansion of the gross lettable area.

Van Niekerk described the approach as active ownership rather than passive property management. A successful shopping centre has to work at several levels, he said, with retailers able to trade successfully, customers finding it convenient and relevant, and the centre staying connected to the community around it.

He also said he does not intend to change what already works. Kalahari Mall has a strong position in its market, he said, and the company sees its role as building on that rather than altering the fundamentals that made it successful.

Houghton argued the wider case for the sector. Well-located retail assets with sound fundamentals have shown their resilience, he said, and when actively managed and delivering real value to the communities they serve, they remain compelling long-term investments.