Johannesburg -The pitfalls of working for your dad are well known – researchers have found that if your father’s leadership style is too domineering or meddling, it’s likely to stifle your ability to breathe new life into the business with fresh ideas and initiatives.
On the other hand, “keeping it in the family” can be a win-win story that really sets you on the path to success. The key is having a relationship defined by mutual respect, say two people who work with their dads.
MPHO MOLEPO
Mpho Molepo is best known for his role as Fats in the e.tv soapie Rhythm City. His father is Arthur Molepo, a veteran TV and theatre actor best known for his role as Busang in the SABC1 soap opera Generations. Arthur is also in Rhythm City, as the crooked local government official Sydney Shabalala.
Mpho grew watching his dad perform. “When I was three I first saw him on stage, at the Market Theatre where he was acting in Dikichining. It was weird, because he was wearing a dress,” he laughs.
As a boy, Mpho would cut out every newspaper article about “my dad”, and it was Arthur who gave him his first job. “I played guitar for a TV doccie. I was still at school,” Mpho recalls.
Yet Arthur didn’t really want his children to be part of that world. “He didn’t like to see me in the Newtown precinct with other theatre people,” says Mpho.
Still, he was born with talent, and Mpho can’t imagine doing anything else. The father-son duo have acted together many times over the years, and occasionally Arthur is Mpho’s director.
They are working together on a play titled Mama, I want the black that you are, about albinism. Arthur wrote the play, and is directing it, while Mpho is producer.
“I’ve been doing this for 20 years, often with my father, so by now it feels totally natural to work with him. I don’t see him as my dad when we’re working. He’s a hard task master, but I respect him for that. I’m always on time for rehearsals, and he has always cautioned me to be careful of the work I choose in this industry, to not just do anything that comes my way.”
Not that they don’t fight. Being artists, they occasionally differ sharply on how a role should be played, and disagree especially on the choice of music.
“We come from different theatre and music worlds. He says I come from a ‘kwaito theatre style’, and he will disagree with what I write for a character, saying ‘who speaks like that?’ I want to phrase things my way, and he wants it his way.
“But he’s not a shouter. Sometimes he just has to say one word and I don’t answer back. Still, these days we are much better at finding middle ground. The point is, we respect each other, and he trusts me to do my best,” says Mpho.
Arthur is so passionate about his work that he’ll sometimes phone Mpho late at night to bounce an idea off him. “His brain is always working. I’m like that, too. When I have a big project on the go, I can’t think about anything else – so no, we don’t manage to separate work from our personal lives,” laughs Mpho.
The hardest part of working with his dad, says Mpho, is being compared with him. “The pressure comes from the industry, not from the relationship. People expect me to be exactly like my dad, but it’s better now that I’ve become established as an artist in my own right.”
Arthur and Mpho see each other about twice a week – Arthur lives in Bez Valley and Mpho in Alberton – but they speak almost daily. Sometimes they meet at the Anglican Church in Soweto.
Mpho says they constantly share books and music. “I’ll work with my father for as long as I can. He’s my mentor and my best friend. He’s been my point of reference my whole life, and always will be. I am very proud of him.”
TAMMY FRY
Tammy Fry is the eldest daughter of Wally and Debbie Fry, co-founders of Fry’s Family Food, the Durban vegetarian meals and products firm. Tammy is the marketing director of the company, while her sister Hayley creates new vegetarian products. Their husbands are also involved in the business. The youngest Fry sister, Stacey, has joined the team and is learning the ropes.
Tammy has been a lifelong vegetarian with as much conviction as Wally about eating only “cruelty-free food”. She has not worked for anyone other than her father. “When I was 4 years old, I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said I wanted to be an office worker. Well, I do work in an office, but I never thought it would be for my dad,” she laughs.
Their first real collaboration was in sport. An ardent karate practitioner of 27 years standing, fifth dan Wally Fry was Tammy’s karate “sensei” (coach), and he was a good one apparently, as Tammy is also a fifth dan and last year won the SA Japan Karate Association national championship’s female open kata title.
“I wanted to develop a career in sport, but I was advised to do a business degree in any event, so I enrolled at Unisa for an honours degree in marketing and economics. At the time, Fry’s was a new business, with no marketing strategy, so while I was studying I started working part-time for my dad,” she recalls.
Her desk back then was in the weighing warehouse of Fry’s, and her laptop would get “covered in flour”.
“My dad has always believed we should work for everything we get, so I’d spend time cleaning floors, packing products, documenting everything, then eventually, setting up our website.
“I was paid according to the work I did, so if it was cleaning, my dad would pay me a cleaner’s wage.”
While her sisters lock horns with their father occasionally, Tammy says she has had an excellent, mostly conflict-free relationship with him because “I know how to deal with him, how to use other strategies to get my point across”.
He is not patriarchal in his business style – “he has a totally open-door policy and has never put himself on a pedestal” – so respect for him comes easily, she says.
As for mixing family and business, Tammy says it’s unavoidable. “I don’t know how others do it. The Fry family talks work all the time. It’s a passion, it’s our lives,” she says.
She has encountered snide remarks about nepotism, she admits, “so you feel you have to work harder to prove that’s not the case”.
Depending on the context, Tammy calls Wally “dad”, “Wally”, even “Mr Fry”. In reality, he’s her “dad, mentor, friend and sensei”.
“My dad’s an inspiration and I share his values. He’s a perfectionist and so am I, and we’re passionate about the same things. That’s what makes this union work so well.”
Will she work with her father always? “Yes, I can’t see myself ever working for anyone else.” - Pretoria News