Hotel tycoon Sol Kerzner brings billions back home

Agence France Presse

Richer, older, and with more celebrities in tow, South Africa's most infamous billionaire last month opened the One&Only hotel in Cape Town, featuring a 4,000-dollar a night suite with commanding views of the landmark Table Mountain and the ocean.

"It takes hotels to another level in South Africa," he told AFP in an interview. It's the latest jewel in a byzantine business empire reportedly worth at least two billion dollars, which he studiously avoids discussing. "We just don't talk the details and numbers," he said. Once the epitome of hedonism under calvinistic white-minority rule, the diminutive 73-year-old made his name skirting an apartheid-era ban on gambling by building the Las Vegas-style Sun City resort in the 1970s in an ostensibly self-governing black homeland.

Just about two hours drive from Johannesburg, the resort was a place where black and white could mingle and drew in performers like Elton John and Paul Simon. But the resort sparked international controversy as global opposition to apartheid grew in the 1980s, painting Kerzner as profiteering from the violently enforced system of segregation.

He's also been the target of a series of bribery investigations around the world, but never convicted. His gruff demeanour has only fueled an unflattering media image. He is known to make those crossing his path quiver in fear with his notorious temper, with the Daily Mail once reporting he liked to start meetings declaring "What the f..k's going on?"

Kerzner said he "doesn't care" about his image, which has softened over the years as he pulled celebrities into his circle and opened a series of larger-than-life resorts around the world.

"People have called me a perfectionist and that's what I expect," he said. "There shouldn't be a limit to one's imagination."

"For me, it's quite emotional. I always say in our business you can't afford to fall in love with your assets," Kerzner tells AFP of the journey back to South Africa.

He sold his stakes in South African hotels during the transition from apartheid.

Kerzner went on to build the Atlantis in the Bahamas and the Middle East's biggest hotel -- the outerwordly 580-million-dollar The Palm in Dubai. With properties from Mauritius to Mexico, Kerzner has been dubbed South Africa's Donald Trump.

Dubbed the Sun King after the name of his first hotel chain, Kerzner says his new One&Only hotel, is his best to date.