The South African billionaire building luxury estates around the world
Koos Bekker has been steadily building a series of luxury estates around the world, ranging from Franschhoek to Amsterdam, the UK, and Italy.
This expansion has been partially funded by the sale of billions of rands worth of Prosus shares. His stake in Naspers remains untouched.
Bekker was instrumental in creating these two companies, which we know today, and in turning Naspers from a media house into one of the world’s largest technology investors.
Prosus, created to house Naspers’ offshore investments, is the largest technology investor in Europe and holds a stake in Chinese giant Tencent worth more than $140 billion.
Naspers and Bekker are best known for this incredibly successful investment. The Cape Town-based company paid $34 million in 2001 for a stake in Tencent that is now worth more than $140 billion.
Bekker is also responsible for some of the country’s most well-known brands, including MultiChoice and M-Net.
His shares in Naspers and Prosus are the main reason Bekker’s net worth stands at $3.1 billion (R56.9 billion) in 2025, according to Forbes.
However, in the past two years, a family trust linked to Koos Bekker has sold over R6 billion of shares in Prosus.
In March 2023, Bekker’s family trust sold 2.5 million Prosus shares, worth R3.4 billion, to finance building operations at hotels in various countries in which he holds an interest.
This was followed up with his family trust selling a further R2.9 billion worth of shares in Prosus in December 2024 to specifically fund building operations at his hotels in South Africa, the United Kingdom, and Italy.
There is speculation that this sale is to partly pay for the construction of Blou in Keurboomstrand, which is to be created out of the Bekker’s holiday home.
Property broker Ash Müller revealed that Blou will only have eight self-catering cottages, a sauna, and a swimming pool.
Müller also said that the current booking calendar states that you need to book for a minimum of three nights to stay at Blou, costing an estimated R33,000 for a one-bedroom cottage.
Blou will be the latest addition to Bekker’s luxury estate offerings around the world, which are outlined in further detail below.
Babylonstoren
Babylonstoren, founded in 1692, is one of the oldest working Cape Dutch farms in the Winelands region just outside Cape Town.
The estate is positioned around a sprawling garden inspired by the historic Company’s Garden in Cape Town. For centuries, this garden supplied ships sailing between Europe and Asia with vegetables and fruit.
It also makes a playful nod to the mythological Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
In recent years, Babylonstoren has become a renowned establishment in the Boland region, with the Simonsber, Du Toitskloof, and Franschhoek mountains as a backdrop.
After Bekker purchased the estate in 2007, his wife, Karen Roos, extensively renovated and restored it, which now includes luxury accommodations and award-winning restaurants.
Roos commissioned French garden architect Patrice Taravella to plan the garden’s layout. The planning alone took two years, and the planting twelve months.
The garden is divided into 15 sections, including vegetable patches, orchards of fruit and nuts, fragrant indigenous plants, ducks and chickens, bees for pollinating, a prickly pear maze to wander through, and a palette of trees of historical or botanical significance.
Babylonstoren’s buildings have also been incredibly restored, with the traditional H-form house, storerooms, gabled henhouse and pigeon loft, wine cellar, stables and workshops remaining to this day.
The Babylonstoren Farm Hotel and cottages offer an authentic farm stay in various cottages, a manor house, and a family house.
These all offer modern farm luxury with every indulgence considered – the perfect base from which to explore the garden, spa, restaurants, Tasting Room and Farm Shop.
The Newt in Somerset
Following Babylonstoren’s success, Bekker and Roos turned their attention to the home of the country estate – the United Kingdom.
Constructed on a 2,000-acre working farm, The Newt is located near Bruton in Somerset in the south-west of the United Kingdom.
Six years in the making, the Hadspen House and the Emily Estate were originally bought by the couple as a private home.
“‘My husband wanted an agricultural location close to London, which is hard to find,” Roos told House and Garden at the time.
“I’d read a lot of English literary classics set in this part of the country and had fallen for Bath. We chose this area because it felt familiar somehow. When we found Hadspen, it seemed perfect.”
Roos and Bekker summarily reimagined the old Georgian manor house as a hotel in time for its opening in 2019.
As with Babylonstoren, the focus is very much of the 300-acre garden, which is surrounded by farm and forest.
At its launch, The Newt offered travellers the opportunity to partake in The Great Garden Escape, a partnership with Great Western Railway, to give people a taste of Somerset and an escape from London.
This escape is a one-day adventure to the countryside. Departing from Paddington Station, travellers are whisked away in first class to the estate to experience country living without having to book an overnight stay.
Entry to the garden costs around £40 (R929) per person. Further payment secures one with a guided tour from the Head Gardner around an estate dating back to the 1600s.
The Newt also hosts the annual Chelsea Flower Show, where guests are, of course, sufficiently supplied with Babylonstoren wines.
A one-night stay in March in a single room goes for £855 (R19,872).
Vignamaggio
Vignamaggio is a historical estate located halfway between Florence and Siena, founded out of an ancient settlement in the 1400s.
The estate sprawls over more than 400 hectares, with vineyards, vegetable gardens and ornamental plants.
As with the other estates, Vignamaggio is a working farm and still produces some of the finest wine in Italy, over 600 years since it first began.
The estate has not always been in such good condition, falling into severe disrepair after the Second World War.
Vegetation grew up, and the grand house, with its chapel, magnificent frescoes and outbuildings, fell into a decline that lasted until 2017 when restoration began.
Today, the villa is an upscale B&B and winery that bills itself as “The Birthplace of Mona Lisa” as Lisa Gherardini, the subject of Mona Lisa, was supposedly born at Vignamaggio.
The estate has also significantly diversified its produce outside of wine to olive oil, vegetables, and hospitality, which is in line with the other farms owned by Bekker and Roos.
Roos fell in love with Taravella’s work at Babylonstoren, so she commissioned him once again to expand the gardens and diversify the estate’s agricultural activities.
This has transformed Vignamaggio from a traditional wine farm into a modern agricultural estate, with an Italian hotel, three private villas, and four apartments.
Over-Amstel Boerderij
This farm, first built in 1894, is situated on the Amstel River in the Duivendrechtse Polder, a region near Amsterdam.
Once again, Bekker and Roos underwent an extensive restoration process on the site and turned it into a working farm.
The estate offers a farm with a garden, a cheese factory, a farm-to-fork restaurant, and a boutique B&B in its historical front house with two rooms.
The Duivendrechtse Polder near Amsterdam has a rich history. In the 12th century, it was converted from marshland into working farmland.
The first farmer constructed dikes and drainage channels to drain the marshland, creating fertile farmland that still benefits Over-Amstel Boerderij today.
Over-Amstel Boerderij was built in 1894 on the embankment on the east side of the Amstel. It has a robust farmhouse and a wide front.
The farmhouse features unique ceiling paintings and a rich interior, which aligns with the area’s characteristic history, with wealthy families moving from the city to the Amstelland countryside.
As with The Newt in Somerset, Bekker and Roos found this estate perfect for those who want to stay near a major city while enjoying country living.
The Story of Emily
Located in St Ive, Cornwall, The Story of Emily is well out of Bekker and Roos’s wheelhouse, as it is not a working estate, farm, or hotel.
Rather, it is the restored house of Emily Hobhouse, who famously defied the British Empire to expose the horrors of concentration camps during the Anglo-Boer War.
Branded a “hysterical woman” and “traitor”, she refused to be silenced, saving thousands of Boer women and children.
She didn’t just speak out – she published damning reports, led social reforms, and single-handedly challenged an empire at war.
The house today contains the Rectory, first designed and constructed between 1852 and 1854, where Emily and her siblings grew up.
Living on the estate until she was 34 years old, the Hobhouse family was firmly part of the landed elite and had numerous servants.
One would never have foreseen that Joseph Chamberlain, Secretary of State for the Colonies, would, in years to come, say, “The Empire was not threatened by a hysterical spinster of mature age,” in reference to Emily.
Nor that she would become such a festering wound in the side of Lord Herbert Kitchener while the Anglo-Boer War was raging that he would call her: “That bloody woman!”
The Story of Emily offers travellers the chance to travel back in time to follow Hobhouse’s story and reveal how she would have grown up during the Victorian era.
The home now also includes the aptly named The Restaurant, which cooks traditional South African food using ingredients grown in the nearby garden.
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