I was born in Grahamstown and lived for most of my life in the Cape. I grew up in a little town in the Overberg called Caledon during my primary school life and lived in the beautiful Paarl Valley during my teenage years. After school, I worked for Barclays bank in Cape Town for about two years. After working in the bank, I joined De Beers Marine and was the Marine Superintendents clerk. My dream has always been to travel, so I joined Air Cape as an air hostess and flew with them for about 2 years. Just before joining Air Cape, I met the man of my dreams!

Maurice and I got married in 1987 and we had our first daughter in 1988. After her birth, I joined Court Helicopters and flew as an airhostess with them for about 1.5 years. I also participated in training airhostesses in George to fly to the oil rigs on the helicopters. After the birth of our 2nd daughter, I joined a friend and started a company that sold a clothing range on a party plan basis.

We moved to Jhb in 1990 for business reasons and we had our third daughter in 1991. During the next few years I was very busy bringing up our beautiful girls and helped Maurice with some office administration on a very small scale. We moved to a small holding in Honeydew and converted one of the cottages on the property into a small conference centre to accommodate the training programs that my husband designed and ran. We had our 4th daughter in 1994. His business grew and he needed to find larger premises from which to operate. After nearly two years, he found the site on which Cabanga is now built. Cabanga is Maurice’s brain child. He found a great architect and together they built Cabanga. After all the years of always using external conference facilities for his training, he knew exactly what people look for in a venue, so he used this knowledge to build Cabanga with all its small touches and personal attention to detail. We furnished it, decorated it and opened the doors in 1998.

Because Maurice’s business was growing and needed his full time attention, he asked me to run Cabanga. Luckily, with his great reputation, incredible business knowledge, training programmes and client base, we had a strong leg to start the business on. After a very short time, Cabanga started getting its’ own reputation for “great food’, “great service” and “great facilities”, the three things we still focus everything on. Some of the things that I have learnt whilst managing Cabanga through my mentor, Maurice:

It is really important to have a vision or purpose; not only for the company but for each individual employee. If we have a purpose then we can motivate and inspire people and ourselves. “purpose is the glue that holds a community together, drives teams to seek their potential, and provides the context in which individuals are able to apply their imagination and spirit”.

Once we have a purpose, we have to put it into a plan. By doing this, we will unblock potential and mobilize commitment. When people understand the plan and their specific role in it, they commit to making it happen – this is executing the plan.

Once the plan and purpose are in place; staff will need to be measured, assessed and feedback needs to be given about their performance. This is how we manage Cabanga and is the secret to our success. If you follow these principles in any business, it will be successful.

It is sometimes very difficult to balance home life with work but we have to do it. The only tip I can share is to try and leave challenges from work - at work and to put the “mommy, wife” cap on when you get home. Really not easy though when you have your own business!

I love food! I love cooking it, reading about it and definitely eating it! That has also been our secret at Cabanga. Because of my love for food and for variety in food, the challenge that I have implemented for the chefs is that they are not allowed to repeat a menu at Cabanga for 100 days! It sounds really difficult but there are so many different ways to cook chicken, lamb, beef or vegetables that within no time at all, you can come up with exciting and trendy flavours EVERY day!

My house and life is always filled with music. All my daughters have been blessed with beautiful voices and all love dancing.

I would spend my last R50 on a delicious entrée in a restaurant. My favourite restaurant on the West Rand is Bellgables Country Restaurant. I cannot live without my recipe books and have to read a least one new recipe every single day! My favourite way of relaxing is sitting around with a bunch of my girlfriends over a good bottle of Diemersfontein Pinotage, chatting and laughing.

My motto is: “Care about people”. If you care about people it will show in absolutely everything you do in your life!

Michèle Kerrigan
General Manager
Cabanga Conference Centre

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