Six leading South Africans, young and old, received awards for their success stories in commerce, industry and professional sectors from the Minara Chamber of Commerce at the NMJ Hall in Morningside, Durban, on Friday evening. In the presence of Shell South Africa’s chairman Bonang Mohale, KwaZulu-Natal’s MEC for Human Settlements and Public Works, Durban’s deputy mayor Fawzia Peer, American consul-general Frances Chisholm, platinum sponsors and 400 dignitaries and guests looked on as the recipients collected their awards and corticated were handed out all 18 finalists.

Young Entrepreneur Award went Riaz Moola for transporting the digital age to students. With academic qualifications in information technology from the United Kingdom’s academic institutions like Cambridge and Edinburgh, Moola returned to Durban and changed the digital landscape for young people with his IT firm Hyperion, one of the largest providers of open online education in computer science and software development in Africa. Before that Moola was snapped up by Google South Africa.

The other awards and recipients were:

Professional Achiever: Ahmed Jaffer, who reached the boardroom in 16 years after overcoming many challenges in his career that began at KPMG in 1980 and becoming a partner at one of the world’s largest firms. Jaffer is chairman of the board and head of power and utilities in Islamic Banking, partner at ENR and on the review panel at SA Reserve Bank.

Businesswoman: Prea Hassan, a business-minded advocate, who carved a niche for herself by driving women empowerment and focusing on gender inclusivity and equity as the founder and CEO of the Women of Africa (WOA) Investment Group in 2005, a service provider in the pharmaceutical, construction, logistics and energy sectors. She is a graduate of the University of Natal (LLB) and Gordon Institute of Business Science.

Businessperson: Naseem Alli, managing director of leading menswear brand, Shadows, listed as one of KZN leading brands in the clothing retail industry. With his business skills and ability to meet the customers’ fashion needs, Shadows has registered milestones by securing the rights of many leading brands.

Business Entity title went to 27four Investment Managers (Pty) Ltd, a leading women-owned, independent multi-manager company with a comprehensive and innovative range of expertly constructed multi-manager product solutions that caters for the varying needs of local and global retirement funds and individual investors, and also offers mainstream multi-manager products, alternative fund of hedge funds, Africa fund of funds and a suite of Shari’ah compliant products.

Community Builder: Abed Karrim is the hard-working project coordinator at the Al Imdaad Foundation, which focuses on facilitating and providing disaster relief and poverty eradication across South Africa. He also volunteers his time at the Ladysmith Dawah Network and was the guest of the Saudi King of the Custodian of Haram Programme.

Lifetime Achiever Awards were presented to Kay Moonsamy and Swaminathan Gounden, remaining survivors of the 1946 Passive Resistance Campaign against the colonial-era Ghetto Act that restricted the movement and migration of Indians in South Africa. VOC