As I started my new venture with the solar geyser design, the first step was to create the tank. At this point, it only existed on paper and in my head. But I had a mandate from Clinton—a promise I’d given him: three months and 100,000 rand, including 20,000 rand a month for myself. That left me with 40,000 rand to pay for a new mold and all the tools I’d need.
I found a company out on the West Rand—I can’t remember the name now—but I took them a drawing. Luckily, I still had the skills I’d learned at university, so I was able to put together a decent technical sketch. They produced the mold for me.
Now, roto-molding is fascinating. The mold is like a hollow shell, and they throw polyethylene pellets mixed with a foaming agent inside. Then they put the mold into a machine that rotates it 360 degrees while heating it. The pellets roll around, sticking to the inside walls, and the foaming agent expands, creating a rigid, even coating. Once everything is evenly distributed, they cool the mold, open it, and out comes the finished structure.
In my case, the tank was about 60 liters, with a wall thickness of around 4 centimeters. It was rigid foam—really strong. You could throw it off the back of a truck, and it would bounce along the road unscathed.
Next, I fitted a polyethylene solar panel. Luckily, an old acquaintance of mine—Conrad Fuller, a friend of Bruce’s from school days—had a company installing pool panels nearby. He had all the equipment for sealing the manifolds and everything else. It wasn’t long before I had two prototypes ready.
I installed them on the roof of ZANet—remember that? The internet service provider Clinton and I used when we first started out, run by that mad bloke, William Stuckey. Clinton didn’t have a flat roof, but William did, and he kindly agreed to let us use it. I set up the two prototypes side by side and tested various configurations.
It wasn’t long before they were consistently reaching 40, 50, even 60 degrees Celsius on a good summer’s day. The next step was to put them through tests at the South African Bureau of Standards (SABS) to see if they could withstand freezing. Johannesburg might be warm, but winter nights can drop below zero. So I took one of the prototypes there, and they put it through 60,000 cycles of freezing and thawing. Not a single leak.
That was really encouraging. The cost price was around 300 rand per unit. Clinton asked, “Do you think you can retail these at, say, 600 rand? Is there a market?”
I said, “Well, let me try.”
So I took two prototypes, loaded them into the back of my Hyundai Getz hatchback, and drove to Diepsloot—a squatter camp in northern Johannesburg, near Fourways. Squatter camps, or informal settlements, aren’t places white people usually venture into. There’s no public infrastructure, no electricity, and safety is always a concern. But I set up my aluminium frames—I wasn’t going to just leave them on the ground—and filled the panels with water from jerrycans I’d brought along. As the water heated up, curious people started gathering.
“What is it?” they asked.
“Ilanga Manzi,” I said—“sun water” in Zulu.
They were amazed. The water was hot, and there was no electricity involved. One taxi driver—a minibus taxi, the kind that ferries 15 to 20 people along informal routes—stopped to ask about it.
“How much?” he said.
“600 rand,” I replied. “And I’ll install it for you.”
He looked at me and said, “You must be one very hungry white man.”
But that day, I sold and installed both prototypes—one on the roof of the local shebeen (tavern) and the other on the taxi driver’s house. I got their mobile numbers and followed up over the next few weeks. “Yes,” they told me, “when the sun is shining, we have hot water.” In a place with no mains electricity, that was a big deal.
Things were looking promising. Clinton told me to start scouting for factory premises, so I began looking around Kya Sands, an industrial area not far away.
Then, one day, I got a call from Tish. “There’s a guy here who wants to buy one of the solar panels,” she said. “He heard about it from Clinton. He’s got a place out in Magaliesburg and thinks it’d be perfect. He’d like to pay for it and take it.”
Naively, I said, “Yeah, sure, let him take it.”
Four days later, Clinton received a lawyer’s letter from Neil Hellman’s firm—some fancy practice in Edenvale. It was a cease-and-desist order, threatening massive penalties for patent infringement.
“Let’s go meet them,” I told Clinton. “I’m not infringing on anyone’s patents.”
I’ll never forget that meeting. Clinton and I went to this law firm in Edenvale, but Neil didn’t even show up. He sent two of his lackeys instead.
The lawyer proceeded to read us the riot act, accusing me of infringing on Neil’s patents.
I cut him off. “Absolute bullshit,” I said. “My mandate from Neil was to create a low-cost solar water geyser using polycarbonate with a black heating fluid. That’s what his patent is about. And it didn’t work. So I came up with something that does work—something that uses existing technology, with nothing patentable in it. It’s cheap, it’s effective, and I took it to Neil first. He wasn’t interested, so I built it myself.”
The lawyer shot back, “But you used skills you learned at CH Chemicals.”
“I have a degree in aeronautical engineering from Wits University,” I said. “I have a three-year diploma in mechanical engineering from Technikom Witwatersrand. Those are my skills. That’s what I used to create this product.”
They’d even brought the geyser they’d bought from Tish into the meeting room. I went through every component, pointing out how it was all just practical, common engineering sense—nothing patentable.
I gave a hell of a speech that day. When I finished, there was silence. Then the lawyer looked at me and said, “I don’t give a fuck.”
I blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“I don’t give a fuck,” he repeated. “The Hellman family has instructed me to litigate you as long as necessary. This product will never see the light of day, and that’s the way it is. Meeting over.”
Clinton and I left. We went to a nearby barista, and he said to me, “You’ve done everything you said you would. You delivered the prototype on budget and ahead of schedule. It works. It’s a great product. But I just can’t take on the Hellman family. I don’t have that kind of firepower. Even if we won, they’d bankrupt me in the process.”
He had other businesses by then—his wife’s NuAngle Medical, his own ventures. “I’m sorry,” he said.
I didn’t blame him. I had no hard feelings, and I knew he didn’t either. But Neil had killed the project. And that geyser could have benefited so many people.
Years later, I visited South Africa again. I took the Gautrain from O.R. Tambo Airport into town and saw this massive low-cost housing development. Row after row of roofs had evacuated tubes from China installed. I thought, “Oh, my God. The first Johannesburg hailstorm, and they’re all gone.” And sure enough, that’s exactly what happened. Millions of taxpayer rands wasted—whereas my little geyser wouldn’t have lost a single unit.
But Neil Hellman made sure it never saw the light of day. He’s probably one of the shittiest human beings I’ve ever had the misfortune of meeting.
So there I was, March 2005, jobless. I certainly wasn’t going to get a reference from CH Chemicals. I was in a bit of a bind.
I got online and started searching for jobs—project manager roles, anything that fit my skills. That’s how I came across an ad for a small company in Bryanston called Management Planning Systems. They had a vacancy for a sales manager for a project management software product called PSNext.
I answered the ad, got an interview, and just like that, a whole new chapter of my professional life began.