October 19 2026 13:35
Picture supplied by the University of the Witwatersrand
Sabvest Capital CEO Chris Seabrooke has made one of the largest private gifts to a South African university in history, handing over JSE-listed shares worth about R204.4m to fund a new arts and culture precinct at Wits University in Braamfontein.
The gift, from the Seabrooke Family Trust to the Wits Foundation, will cover the bulk of the estimated R341m capital cost of the Wits Cultural Precinct. The university will fund the balance.
The five-year development is set to transform the university’s south-eastern edge in Braamfontein into a public hub for the arts, performance, heritage and creative innovation. Wits said it aimed to contribute to the wider regeneration of Johannesburg’s inner city.
This is a significant private-sector investment in one of Joburg’s most closely watched urban renewal nodes, at a time when Braamfontein is trying to reinvent itself as a mixed-use, student-driven district.
What makes the donation unusual is its form. Rather than writing a cheque, the Seabrooke Family Trust handed over 1.4-million ordinary shares in Sabvest Capital, the JSE-listed investment holding company Seabrooke has led for decades. Seabrooke has made a pretty penny investing in numerous companies through Sabvest Capital.
The shares were transferred off-market on 22 September 2026, and the transaction was disclosed on the JSE’s stock exchange news service (SENS) platform the following day. No money changed hands. The R204.4m value is based on Sabvest’s share price of R146 on the day of the transfer.
The university has said that, by arrangement with the trust, the Wits Foundation can sell the donated shares through block trades or in the market over the project’s estimated five-year term. That gives the university the cash it needs to pay for construction as the project progresses, rather than all at once.
Peter Bezuidenhoudt, director of the Wits Development Office, said Seabrooke’s contribution would account for R200m of the R341m project cost, with Wits covering the rest.
Wits communications manager Shirona Patel described it as the university’s largest share donation to date, and the first share donation of that scale it has received from a private entity.
What it means for Sabvest
The gift has a modest effect on the Seabrooke family’s position in Sabvest. Seabrooke is a discretionary beneficiary of the trust that made the donation. The trust’s economic interest in Sabvest falls from 42.6% to 38.8% as a result of the transfer.
Control of the company is unaffected. Sabvest’s filings show the trust holds voting control through an unlisted Z share rather than through its ordinary shares. Giving away 1.4-million ordinary shares therefore reduces the family’s economic stake without weakening its grip on the group.
Since the Wits Foundation may sell the shares over five years, Sabvest investors will be watching how that stock is released. Selling through block trades, as Wits has indicated it may do, allows large parcels of shares to be placed with institutional buyers without flooding the open market.
By South African standards, the donation is substantial. Compare this with the Motsepe Foundation giving R30m spread across all 26 of the country’s universities in 2023. Seabrooke’s gift to a single institution is nearly seven times that amount.
It also builds on an existing relationship. Seabrooke, who completed an MBA at the Wits Business School in 1985, previously funded the Wits Chris Seabrooke Music Hall, which opened in March 2022 as the university launched its centenary celebrations.
That hall was described at the time as the only purpose-built live music hall with modern acoustic design in Johannesburg. It was built on what had been a neglected, ivy-covered patch of pavement where some of Joburg’s first gold miners once lived.
What will be built
The Wits Cultural Precinct will be anchored in the Faculty of Humanities and the Wits School of Arts. It will bring together existing and new facilities, including:
- the Wits Art Museum
- the Jack Ginsberg Centre for Book Arts
- the Chris Seabrooke Music Hall
- a new Digital Arts building
- an additional floor for the Wits School of Arts
A later phase will consolidate Wits’ music facilities, potentially creating a future home for a symphony orchestra. It will also add new exhibition and foyer spaces, fine arts facilities, the Wits Theatre Amphitheatre, and a new building and rooftop extension that will open up the Wits Theatre Complex.
The university plans to include restaurants, coffee shops, bookshops and other lifestyle spaces. The aim is to draw the public in, not just students and staff.
Construction is due to start on 1 January 2027, according to Moneyweb’s reporting.
Opening Wits to the city
Wits Vice-Chancellor and Principal Professor Zeblon Vilakazi said the project reflects “the university’s commitment to Johannesburg and its belief that universities have a role to play in the social, cultural and economic life of their cities”.
He said the university and the city had grown together for more than a century and that the precinct was about opening Wits to Johannesburg, creating spaces where students, artists, scholars and the public can meet and exchange ideas. He added that the arts could help bring new energy to Braamfontein and contribute to the renewal of the city.
Vilakazi said the ambition was to create a destination that attracts people to the area, increases contact between Wits and the public, and positions the university as a cultural anchor for Johannesburg, South Africa and the continent.
Seabrooke, for his part, said he hoped the investment would help Wits build a precinct that belongs to Johannesburg as a whole, not only to the university community.
“The arts have an extraordinary ability to bring people together and to change the character of a place,” he said.
He said the goal was to attract people to Braamfontein, support creativity and leave a cultural legacy for future generations.
The Wits School of Arts will sit at the centre of the precinct. Its disciplines, including Digital Arts, Film and Television, Fine Arts, Music, Theatre and Performance, Drama for Life, cultural policy and visual cultures, will form part of a connected creative ecosystem.
Professor Mucha Musemwa, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, said the art centre would “enliven Braamfontein and build bridges to new and historically marginalised communities”.
Professor René Smith, Head of the Wits School of Arts, said the school sees the precinct as a space that responds to changes in how the arts are taught and studied, allowing studios, seminar spaces and labs to function as a more public sphere.
The precinct will slot into a cluster of cultural and innovation institutions in and around Braamfontein. These include the Joburg Theatre, the Market Theatre, Sci-Bono, the Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct and the Constitutional Court.
That clustering is what makes the project interesting from an urban development perspective. Braamfontein has for years been held up as one of the inner city’s more successful regeneration stories, driven by student housing, office conversions, creative businesses and a lively weekend market and restaurant scene. But like much of the Joburg CBD, it continues to battle with infrastructure, safety and service delivery challenges.
A R341m anchor investment, with public-facing lifestyle elements and a steady flow of students, artists and audiences, adds weight to the area’s long-term prospects. Cultural precincts elsewhere in the world have often acted as catalysts for surrounding property, drawing in hospitality, retail and residential investment over time.
Innocent Mabusela, CEO of Jozi My Jozi, a civil society initiative focused on revitalising Johannesburg, has called the precinct “a catalytic investment”.
The city’s renewal depends on institutions, business, communities and government working together, and that the precinct could bring energy to Braamfontein, strengthen Johannesburg’s cultural ecosystem and spread the benefits of investment more widely.
The Cultural Precinct is one of several recent Wits investments aimed at opening its assets to the wider public. It follows the Wits Anglo American Digital Dome and the Brian and Dorothy Zylstra Sports Complex.
The university is home to museums, including the Origins Centre, the Wits Fossil Vault and the Adler Museum of Medicine. Further afield, the Wits Sterkfontein Caves were recently refurbished and reopened to the public.
Who is Chris Seabrooke?
Seabrooke is a Durban-born investor and financier who was Academic Dux of Durban High School. He completed economics and accounting degrees at the then University of Natal before his MBA at Wits.
He has served on the boards of 27 listed companies over his career, on the JSE, Nasdaq, the Luxembourg exchange and London’s AIM market. He is CEO of Sabvest Capital, which Wits says he founded in 1988.
Sabvest first listed on the JSE in 1988 as Sabvest Limited and has traded as Sabvest Capital since 2020. Its investments include stakes in mining services group DRA Global, through its Apex investment vehicle, and electrical distributor ARB.
Alongside his business career, Seabrooke has a long track record in the arts. He is a former chairman of the State Theatre of South Africa and was deputy chairman of the inaugural National Arts Council of South Africa and of Business and Arts South Africa. He has co-produced numerous stage productions and was nominated for a Tony Award as a producer of Meet Me in St Louis on Broadway.
Could we see similar structured donations?
The structure of the gift may prove as significant as its size. Donating listed shares rather than cash lets a donor give a large amount without having to sell the shares first. At the same time, the university gains a liquid asset it can draw down as construction progresses.
With South African universities under constant funding pressure and Johannesburg’s inner city in need of private capital, the Seabrooke gift offers a template for how wealthy individuals and families could back both education and urban renewal.
alistair@propertyflash.co.za
