The accountant who bought a Ferrari

At the beginning of the musical Producers there is a scene where Leo Bloom decides to quit his boring job as an accountant and become a Broadway producer. The scene is accompanied by the lyrics: "I wanna be a producer / With a hit show on Broadway / I wanna be a producer / Lunch at Sardi's every day". Sol Kerzner made a similar decision at the age of 26, when he quit his job at an accounting firm and bought a small hotel, "The Astra", in the South African city of Durban.

Solomon Sol Kerzner (1935–2020) is the youngest of four children and the only son of Jews who emigrated from Russia to South Africa. His parents ran a chain of small kosher accommodations, so he still had the hotelier gene in his family. Sol was a multi-talented person - at the age of 12 he played with the Johannesburg Symphony Orchestra, and as a student he was also a very successful boxer.

My first encounter with Sol Kerzner's empire was in 2009 when, after the Miss World Pageant in Johannesburg, I went on a photo safari in the Pilanesberg National Park and visited the nearby Sun City. Sun City is in the territory of Boputatswana within the Republic of South Africa. Namely, the government in Pretoria, notorious for its racist apartheid policy, declared the independence of Boputatswana, which no one else in the world recognized. Namely, gambling was legalized in Boputatswana, which was banned in the Republic of South Africa, which enabled Sol Kerzner to build a gambling paradise there - Sun City. Until the end of the apartheid regime, entry into Sun City was only possible for black Africans through the "workers' entrance". It was a paradise for rich white people from South Africa, but also from all over the world.

In addition to four hotels, Sun City has an artificial lake and golf courses created by the famous Gary Player, who, like Sol, was born in South Africa. It is interesting that Player is still active at the threshold of his tenth decade of life - last year he designed a golf course in Luštica, Montenegro.

As the United Nations called for a "cultural boycott" of South Africa because of its apartheid policies, Sol Kerzner invited a host of celebrities to Sun City in Bhoputatswana, which was, like, an independent country. The Beach Boys, Cher, Ray Charles, Millie Jackson, Liza Minnelli, Frank Sinatra, Shirley Bassey, Olivia Newton-John, Dolly Parton, Paul Enka, Status Quo, Elton John, Boney M and Queen are just some of the eighties stars who performed at the 6.000-seat indoor arena in Sun City that decade. To the criticism of opponents of apartheid, the group Queen replied that they "play and sing to everyone who wants to hear them" and that they donated part of the proceeds to schools for the deaf, dumb and blind. However, in 2021, Queen drummer Roger Taylor said he regretted performing in Sun City: "We went with the best of intentions, but now I think it was a mistake!"

photo: Robert Choban

The project "Artists United Against Apartheid" launched in 1985 by Stephen Van Zandt, guitarist of the E Street Band, brought together 49 musicians who recorded the song Sun City in which they called for a boycott of concerts in this city.

However, this association with the apartheid regime in Pretoria did not prevent the enterprising Sol Kerzner from being hired in 1994 to look after the VIP guests at the inauguration of Nelson Mandela, the first black president of South Africa. Later, according to mutual recognition, these two titans of the 20th century will also become friends. That year he made his first big step outside of Africa – in the Bahamas he built the extravagant Atlantis Resort with 2.300 rooms, a giant aquarium and the largest casino in the Caribbean. Later additions made Atlantis another 1.100 rooms. When I visited it in 2017, the hotel was still grandiose but a bit "funky". After the Bahamas, Sol began to expand his hotel empire to other exotic destinations such as Mauritius, Maldives, Mexico and Dubai.

Last month at Nusret's restaurant in Dubai, the famous chef and owner happened to be here that very evening and not in one of his 15 other restaurants around the world. After cutting (and of course salting!) the steak in front of us, 41-year-old Nusret Gokce left, and our host Said bin Drai, husband of Jelena Jakovljević (a beauty from Žablja who represented Serbia in the Miss World competition in 1998), told us how Sol Kerzner opened his first hotel in Dubai. Namely, Said's father, the Minister of Protocol in the first government of the Emirate of Dubai, met Kerzner and persuaded him to come to the UAE and open a second Atlantis hotel on Palm Island, which has since become more famous than the one in the Bahamas. The project cost 2008 billion dollars in 1,5, when it was completed, the hotel has 1.500 rooms and the largest aquarium in the Middle East.

Recently, in Montenegro, in Porto Montenegro, a second hotel was opened as part of the Kerzner International company. In the same place is one of the world's most luxurious hotel brands, "One & Only", from the same company.

Sol had four marriages, all women were older than him, some quite so. With his first wife, Maureen Adler, he had three children, his second wife, Shirley Bestbier, committed suicide after the birth of his second child, his marriage to Annelyn Kriel, Miss World, lasted for five years, and his fourth marriage to Heather Murphy lasted for 11 years and ended in divorce. The eldest son, Howard, nicknamed Butch, was his father's pet. After completing his education at Stanford in the USA, in 2003 he became the director of Kerzner International and led the international expansion of the business. Donald Trump once called him a "great visionary". However, he died in 2006 in a helicopter crash in the Dominican Republic. The helicopter went down while 42-year-old Butch was surveying the site of the future hotel. Jeff Rubenstein, a longtime family friend of the Kerzners, later stated, "Sol never used the hardships and tragedies that befell him as an excuse for failure. If there was a tragedy, like the one with Butch, Sol worked even harder. He always said, 'You have to knock out the problem!'"

In 2009, Kerzner returned to Africa, this time in Morocco, and opened the 500-room Mazagan Beach Resort. The following year, Queen Elizabeth II honored Saul Kerzner with the prestigious title of knighthood. At the age of 79, he decided to step down as head of Kerzner International and sell a majority stake to the Investment Corporation of Dubai (ICD).

Although he was in the center of public attention all his life, surrounded by other rich people and "celebrities", Sol remained a family-oriented man. "My father taught us family values. No matter how busy he was at work, he always found time for us, his family. He answered our phone calls in the middle of business meetings, no matter how important they were. He was ready to fly halfway across the planet to get to his grandchildren's birthday party...", Kerzner's daughter wrote.

However, after the suicide of Jeffrey Epstein, Sol Kerzner's name was found in the "little black notebook" of this notorious sexual abuser and predator. Sol Kerzner died of cancer in 2020 at his estate in Cape Town.