Isaac tore Cameroon’s Kathleen to shreds

DENNIS D. MUHUMUZA

The indomitable Cameroonian who won the respect of Zulu Corp bullies when she joined the team as Project Manager and led them to victory in business challenge No.4 suffered a knockout at The Apprentice Africa show on Sunday.

Kathleen Keumbou Ndongmo is a tough-speaking, dark, tall imposing woman in the mould of ex- Ethics and Integrity minister, Maria Matembe. Many had put their money on her and until Sunday thought she was immortal.

Hard to understand is why she didn’t fight for her life when the diminutive but poisonous Isaac tore her to shreds arguing that her interpersonal relations with people were irritating; that she got angry over trivialities and scared away customers.

The contestants were asked to organise an interactive sales event for a re-branded medicated soap called Tetmosol. They had to convince distributors to buy more at the end of which the team with more profits would win.

They met Mr. Richard Hargrave, the C.E.O of Jagal Pharma – the prime distributors of the said soap.

“The key to business is winning the respect of those that want to buy from you,” he advised. And informed them his company sells over a billion bars of Tetmosol annually.

It was time to go the field. The ‘negotiators’ set ‘shop’ at the Jagal Pharma centre and so began the dealing. It was interesting watching homeboy Deox Tibeingana haggling with the tough Nigerians, who, knowing him as a novice business negotiator, went for the kill. It worked that Deox asked his each of his members to sell 20 cartons of soap and the one with fewer sales would face the fire. They wanted the win badly enough and sold with singleness of purpose. Their credibility was however dented when a customer revoked his contract and took it to Matrix. He had been told the promotion was running for six months when it was actually two. The disgruntled man was tipped about the anomaly by the crafty Eunice. No problem though. Sometimes contracts are signed and cancelled in business.

Assessing the teams’ performance, Hargrave said he was impressed by Zulu’s confidence and persistence – “they were not afraid to push the business to close the deal” while Matrix were desperate and weaker.

“So this is about human nature; it’s about being light and much more attentive; customers felt loved,” while in the Matrix camp, they felt neglected, and some moved to Zulu when they could have gotten a better deal from Matrix.

So Zulu Corp made 21 million naira to Matrix’s 14 million. A warm Shobanjo congratulated them and thanked Deox.,“You’ve been project manager three times and you’ve won all. That’s very good.”

It was a bleak moment in the boardroom where the three losers were unsure who was leaving next. Shobanjo asked Isaac who between Eunice and Kathleen had let down the team, and the eloquent Nigerian sited the reasons in the third paragraph.

The fact that he had previously led two tasks successfully, and the other that Eunice sold 15,000 cartons of soap compared to Kathleen’s 10,000 meant the latter was sinking. So when Shobanjo asked if Eunice shared “Isaac’s opinion of Kathleen,” she sweated her answer but finally gave it in the affirmative.

It was over for Kathleen.

--Daily Monitor, May 31, 2008