Family and the meaning of legacy

Lately, I have been thinking about legacy.

This is an important word in the great SA lexicon of clichés, which includes, but is far from confined to “icon”, “stalwart”‚ “mover”, “shaker”, “disrupter”, “powerhouse” and the sort.

We often obsess about legacy when reminders of our mortality intrude on our daily social feeds and multiple WhatsApp groups.

“RIP so and so” presents an internal question of the nature of our contribution to our families, communities and careers. Panicked at our perceived lack of societal impact, we entertain misguided thoughts of eponymous charitable foundations and other knee-jerk reactions.

Our humanity, it seems, not only requires us to be seen and heard in the present, but in varying degrees of posthumous adulation.

I must hasten to clarify that what we seek isn’t merely a legacy — because by virtue of our existence, we all have one — but a good one. The kind that settles nicely on to obituaries and justifies the renaming of bridges and notoriously congested roads.   

Wanted at 20

Legacy, in part, was on display in early November at Tang Asian Luxury Restaurant in Nelson Mandela Square. The original member of the award-winning group of restaurants with sites in Cape Town and Dubai  hosted Business Day Wanted’s 20-year celebration.

We toasted proudly to still being at the apex of luxury lifestyle publishing and — with colleagues, contributors, commercial partners and friends old and new — nodded to aesthetic and editorial excellence, a combination that we hold sacred in these parts.

Our MC for the night, the comedian Simmi Areff — also the man who does the sterling work on our podcasts — kept the proceedings festive and reflective, with an undercurrent of the inherent dryness of the Wanted voice. Bassist Lucas Senyatso entertained us, before we got in as much dancing as we could get away with on a Wednesday evening.    

Row-G at 25

On the last day of the month, one of my favourite brands reached a similar milestone as Row-G, the bespoke tailoring brand, marked a stellar 2024, presented a new home in Upper Houghton.

With Row-G’s multi-decade consistency (25 years to be exact) in tailoring excellence, you would be tempted to believe its foundation lies in bold silhouettes, generous lapels and Loro Piana fabric; but the truth is, family is its true DNA.

Rahim Rawjee, founder and master tailor at Row-G, has always worked closely with his family on this and various other family businesses. His late mother was a great inspiration, which you will see on full display at Rawjee’s stately Upper Houghton showroom and home, with some of her exquisite pieces of furniture, textiles, saris and other objects dotted around a generous space that at once feels very intimate.

No more than 30 friends and clients old and new, sipped bubbly threw back fresh oysters and did not skip what looked like a dozen different desserts.

On a personal level, I got to catch up with an old friend and mentor, the brand maven Thebe Ikalafeng, who is in the throes of promoting his new book The Traveller, Crossing borders and connecting Africa, and Donald Nxumalo, the interior designer about to celebrate a decade in the interiors business.

Director of FNB Art Joburg and Row G Global brand ambassador Mandla Sibeko was also there, with his wife Naledi, and I had a great chat and an impromptu dessert tasting with trend analyst Dion Chang.

As I looked around the room at the many other accomplished individuals — in finance, broadcasting, design and culture — it was clear that their presence was no coincidence: a good legacy attracts kin.