From a struggling waitress to one of South Africa’s top CEOs

Jackie van Niekerk is the CEO of the property developer Attacq, which has a portfolio of major properties such as Waterfall City, the PwC Tower, the Cell C Campus, and the Mall of Africa.

Van Niekerk is one of the most notable figures in South Africa’s property industry. Her journey to the top was filled with hard work, sacrifice, and a willingness to learn.

Jackie van Niekerk was born in Port Shepstone, KwaZulu-Natal, and attended school in Pietermaritzburg. Growing up, she faced many challenges.

Her mother died when she was only 15, and she described herself as coming from a “broken home” on the Why All Business Is People Business podcast.

After that, it was a challenge for her to get through school. Once she completed school, she found herself at a crossroads.

“I just had to make a choice. What am I going to do? Am I going to work, or am I going to go study?” she explained.

Although she had always been very ambitious and even dreamed of becoming a doctor when she was young, she didn’t have any financial support to attend university.

However, she knew that she wanted to better herself. So, she made the difficult choice and decided to work to put herself through university. She described this decision as the greatest investment of her life.

Those years were incredibly formative for her. Not only did she have to work to support herself while studying, but she also had to learn about budgeting, taking care of herself and dealing with loneliness.

“But sitting back now, the time investment into me as a person, the growth, the formative development that I got out of those four years was just so incredible,” van Niekerk said.

“I had to make it work, and that was a phenomenal investment into myself. It gave me a grounding that helped me.”

“Those days, I didn’t understand it, but these days, I absolutely understand why it was such a phenomenal investment in myself.”

Van Niekerk studied a general BCom, specialising in accounting, tax, cost, management accounting, and internal auditing at the University of Pretoria. Although she enjoyed her degree, she knew she didn’t want to be an accountant.

“I knew I did not want to be an accountant. I did it as holiday work, and I despised it. I couldn’t see myself doing that,” she said.

“I figured out that as a waitress, I would make more money than an articled clerk. So, I waitressed, and I got a job offer from a property developer while serving coffee as an assistant. I said, ‘I’ve just finished varsity, where do I sign up?’”

She started working for a small property developer in the residential space doing “skivvy” work.

“I was driving around picking up contracts, taking them to the transferring attorneys, and taking the notes and the minutes,” van Niekerk said.

“Being the skivvy, I was like a sponge,” she said. She explained that taking notes and minutes was one of the most valuable learning experiences of her career since it taught her the profession’s lingo, how things work, and how developments get put together.

Eventually, she got the itch, and she wanted to learn and do more. Van Niekerk found a three-month contract as an asset manager at Abland.

“They said three months, you’re in or you’re out. So I worked my but off to get this contract to a permanent work contract.”

She was in the office from 5 in the morning until six every night until finally, they offered her a full-time position.

“I remember the day of thankfulness when they put the full-time contract on my table and said, ‘You’ve got the full-time role now’.”

She said she was “so incredibly thankful for this opportunity because I think in those three months, I realised you’re part of something bigger.”

At Abland, van Niekerk was one of the first employees of Pivotal Fund.

“There were a few small assets in the fund, and I had the privilege of learning from Thys Neser and Dave Savage. As Pivotal grew, I was growing with it in the commercial property industry,” she said.

“I just loved every single moment of the whole process of building assets and then developing that out and getting them into the fund running the cash flows. So we really started from ground zero.”

She continued to grow Pivotal Fund, raising an unlisted R150 million while climbing through the ranks at Abland until she eventually became its CEO.

While she was still on maternity leave with her first child, she called one of the founding members and told him that they should list the fund.

The property developer Attacq had listed in 2013 and was receiving excellent traction, and van Niekerk believed there was a fantastic opportunity for them as well.

So, in December 2014, with an eight-month-old baby sitting on her lap, they listed the company on the JSE.

“I was overwhelmed the morning at the JSE. I was sort of crying when I did my speech by just what we’ve achieved in such a short space of time.”

“We were very successful with the capital rise, the market was hot, and then we were part of a bigger fraternity of a listed company,” van Niekerk said.

However, a few years later, they got an offer from Redefine to merge Pivotal into Redefine. Although this was an incredibly difficult decision, she knew it was time to sell the company.

“That was probably the most difficult trial-tested year of my life,” she explained. “My dad passed away the same week we literally signed the agreement, so it was an emotional roller coaster.”

While this period was filled with uncertainty and corporate and emotional burnout, the timing of the sale could not have been more ideal.

It was also around this time that the CEO of Attacq, Morné Wilken, asked if she wanted to join the company.

“I said ‘Yes, I will join.’ And he said, ‘But, you don’t know what I want to pay you.’ I said, ‘I want to join.’”

So, she joined the company in 2017 as COO, and a few years later she got another call from a chairman on a Saturday asking if she wanted to be the CEO.

“I said yes. He said, ‘We haven’t discussed any remuneration.’ I said, ‘We’ll figure it out.’” “I’ve never been driven by money or fame but more by opportunity and learning.”

Van Niekerk still works as the CEO of Attacq today as the company continues to grow its retail, logistics and corporate portfolio across South Africa.

“My advice to my younger self or young girls is know what you want to be – or go and discover it,” she told MoneyWeb.

“Never give up. It’s not going to happen overnight. Certainly, if you look at me, you say, oh, but you were so young. It came with a lot of sacrifice and a lot of hard work. A lot of mornings, four o’clock in the office.”

“I cannot tell you how many mornings I’ve been at the office at four in the morning, working. So it’s the resilience, the courage. And then, as I said, it’s having your voice and finding your voice.”