A diamond magnate. A luxury goods boss. A mining dealmaker. The richest people in South Africa didn’t stumble into money; they built empires in sectors that define the country’s economic DNA. Their stories are about bold bets, global plays, and, sometimes, a touch of legacy.
While few have access to billion-dollar mergers or resource empires, many modern South Africans are tapping into new ways to build wealth, from tech startups to forex trading accounts, which offer access to global currency markets with relatively low entry costs.
This article isn’t about trading strategies. Instead, we look at how South Africa’s billionaires built their fortunes to inform, inspire, and maybe even spark your next move.
Johann Rupert
Ask anyone to name South Africa’s richest person, and one name surfaces: Johann Rupert. His staggering fortune rose 39% to $14 billion as of early 2025. But Rupert didn’t get there by sticking close to home. He built his fortune as chairman of Swiss-based Richemont, the powerhouse behind brands like Cartier, Montblanc, and Piaget.
Richemont was born in 1988 when Rupert carved it out from the Rembrandt Group, his father’s tobacco empire. Today, Richemont is a global giant, with global sales topping €20 billion. Rupert still controls a significant stake indirectly through a holding company that links back to Remgro, which owns slices of everything from banking to healthcare in South Africa.
“The luxury market is resilient, even in a crisis,” experts say. And looking at the data, they may be right. The luxury industry rebounded strongly after the 2001 and 2009 financial crises and again after the COVID-19 shock in 2020.
Nicky Oppenheimer
At number two: Nicky Oppenheimer, with a fortune estimated at $10.4 billion. His story reads like a masterclass in timing. In 2012, Oppenheimer sold his family’s 40% stake in De Beers, the world’s most powerful diamond company, to mining giant Anglo American for $5.1 billion in cash. The move closed the chapter on nearly a century of family control in the diamond business.
Since then, Oppenheimer hasn’t exactly faded into the background. Through his private equity firm, Stockdale Street, he’s quietly invested in conservation, aviation, and start-ups across Africa. The family has also been involved in environmental and conservation efforts, such as the Diamond Route, which links conservation sites across South Africa.
So Oppenheimers moved from diamonds to development. Their wealth, though, remains firmly rooted in that initial sale, one of the smartest exits in modern South African business history.
Patrice Motsepe
Patrice Motsepe’s rise wasn’t inherited; it was engineered. The country’s first Black billionaire started as a lawyer. In the mid-90s, he leaped, founding African Rainbow Minerals (ARM). The timing was perfect. The government had just introduced the Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) program, creating opportunities for Black entrepreneurs to gain equity in mining and other sectors.
By 2002, ARM was a top-tier mining company, extracting everything from gold to platinum. Motsepe’s net worth now sits at around $2.7 billion. His investments are diversified, too, with holdings in financial services like Sanlam and digital bank TymeBank.
He also has a powerful influence outside boardrooms; in 2021, he became president of the Confederation of African Football. Not bad for a man who once sold shoes in his father’s spaza shop.
Koos Bekker
Koos Bekker made a single bet in 2001 that turned into one of the greatest tech investments of all time. As CEO of Naspers, he made a $32 million investment in a fledgling Chinese startup, Tencent. Two decades later, that stake ballooned into tens of billions.
Bekker turned Naspers, once a South African newspaper company, into a global tech investor. Its spinoff, Prosus, now trades in Amsterdam and holds Naspers’ international assets. His current net worth now reaches $3.4 billion. Betting on the right founders is a strategy that’s made Bekker one of South Africa’s richest investors.
Stephen Saad
Stephen Saad built a pharmaceutical empire out of Durban. In 1997, he co-founded Aspen Pharmacare, focused on affordable, generic medications. By the 2010s, Aspen was Africa’s largest drug company, with manufacturing plants from South Africa to Germany.
Today, Saad is worth an estimated $1.4 billion. Aspen’s key strength is licensing deals with global giants like Johnson & Johnson and GlaxoSmithKline, which gave the company the rights to produce and distribute medications across developing markets. In healthcare, relevance is resilience, and Saad proved that with Aspen during the pandemic and beyond.
Christo Wiese
Wiese sat at the top of the South African wealth list until 2017, when a multibillion-dollar accounting scandal at Steinhoff International nuked his portfolio. But Wiese is nothing if not persistent.
He built his name through Pep Stores and Shoprite, two of Africa’s biggest discount retailers. Even after Steinhoff’s crash, he clawed back part of his fortune through legal settlements and stock recoveries. His current net worth is estimated at around $1.1 billion.
Wiese’s legacy is still visible every time a South African walks into a Shoprite. He knew early on that the real money was in low-margin, high-volume retail for a price-sensitive market.
Wendy Appelbaum
Wendy Appelbaum, the richest woman in South Africa, inherited her wealth from her father, Liberty Life founder Donald Gordon. But she’s since charted her own course, turning toward philanthropy and agriculture.
She owns De Morgenzon, a high-end wine estate in Stellenbosch, and has become a fierce advocate for women’s health and education in South Africa. While her exact net worth is private, she sits on every credible list of South African multimillionaires.
Her work isn’t just on paper. She’s invested heavily in maternal health and cancer research, and has publicly called for more ethical capitalism in South Africa.
Wealth Built on Strategy, Not Just Circumstance
South Africa’s richest didn’t follow a single playbook. Some inherited wealth and made it grow. Others started with nothing and built it brick by brick. What ties them together is vision, a clear ability to see value where others didn’t.
They’re not just rich because they got lucky. They’re rich because they knew when to leap and how to land on their feet.
