Jul 17, 2026 · 58 min · 12 segments
In 1980s South Africa, a well-known resident of a small Northern Cape town, launched a scheme many believed would be their ticket to the soft life. But it wouldn’t be long before people outside of the…
Nicole EngelbrechtHostI guess it's only fair to say at the outset that I'll be telling you a lot about what one specific individual, Adriaan Nieuvoot, has done and is alleged to have done over pretty much his entire life.
In terms of criminality, I'll tell you exactly where Nieuvoot has been convicted of something and where he hasn't, and in the latter cases, where the schemes he was involved in were officially declared illegal, and you can take from that what you will.
Adriaan Nieuvoot would have been born in the mid to late 1940s, and he was born in an area which would go on to live and deliver many of his schemes.
Nieuvoot was well known in the Namakwaland, and many described him as charming and very easy to get along with Adriaan didn't finish matric, although he would later tell a journalist that he'd made a good stab at grade 11.
They traveled along the coast, catching crayfish and selling them out of their car.
They'd made a decent income out of that until he'd been banned from doing so by local authorities.
His time in the sea had given him another idea though, and soon he was harvesting sea bamboo, a large species of kelp from the shoreline.
Nieuwoudt said that he'd read about how beauty products could be made out of kelp, and he and his wife started experimenting.
Nieuwoudt was given a license to harvest the kelp, but this was soon canceled.
He claimed that it was because someone else that had been involved had been dishonest.
As I tell you more about the other ventures Adriaan Nieuwoudt was involved with, you'll likely start to see the same trend that I did.
While it's not unusual for a serial entrepreneur to have lots of businesses that don't work out until one strikes it big, all of the ventures Nieuwoudt got into had two things in common.
They seemed to just skate on that edge of legal versus illegal, and when they didn't work out, it was never ever his fault, according to him at least.
After the kelp beauty product venture went south, Nieuwoudt called on his contacts in the Namakwaland and started a livestock transportation business, moving farmer's sheep from the Namakwaland to Cape Town.
Simultaneously, he was exporting crushed crayfish shells to Germany, where they would be processed as protein sources for animal feed.
These ventures seemed to bumble along for a while until 1984 when Nieuwoudt had a new idea.
It harkened back to his kelp beauty products business, but the legend he created as a backstory was much more endearing and a little exotic.
As Nieuwoudt tells it, he'd been admiring the beautiful skin of one of the older women in his family.
Sources jump between whether it was his grandmother or his aunt, and he'd wondered what her secret was.
Then he said he'd started thinking about the story of Cleopatra and how she would bathe in milk to retain her beauty.
So he said he started thinking about the power of milk as a beauty product, particularly in a sour form, and that led him to a brilliant idea.
Now I will say that currently there's very little real data to show that milk or cultured dairy of any kind has any long-lasting benefits for the skin.
I guess it's only fair to say at the outset that I'll be telling you a lot about what one specific individual, Adriaan Nieuvoot, has done and is alleged to have done over pretty much his entire life.
In terms of criminality, I'll tell you exactly where Nieuvoot has been convicted of something and where he hasn't, and in the latter cases, where the schemes he was involved in were officially declared illegal, and you can take from that what you will.
Adriaan Nieuvoot would have been born in the mid to late 1940s, and he was born in an area which would go on to live and deliver many of his schemes.
Nieuvoot was well known in the Namakwaland, and many described him as charming and very easy to get along with Adriaan didn't finish matric, although he would later tell a journalist that he'd made a good stab at grade 11.
They traveled along the coast, catching crayfish and selling them out of their car.
They'd made a decent income out of that until he'd been banned from doing so by local authorities.
His time in the sea had given him another idea though, and soon he was harvesting sea bamboo, a large species of kelp from the shoreline.
Nieuwoudt said that he'd read about how beauty products could be made out of kelp, and he and his wife started experimenting.
Nieuwoudt was given a license to harvest the kelp, but this was soon canceled.
He claimed that it was because someone else that had been involved had been dishonest.
As I tell you more about the other ventures Adriaan Nieuwoudt was involved with, you'll likely start to see the same trend that I did.
While it's not unusual for a serial entrepreneur to have lots of businesses that don't work out until one strikes it big, all of the ventures Nieuwoudt got into had two things in common.
They seemed to just skate on that edge of legal versus illegal, and when they didn't work out, it was never ever his fault, according to him at least.
After the kelp beauty product venture went south, Nieuwoudt called on his contacts in the Namakwaland and started a livestock transportation business, moving farmer's sheep from the Namakwaland to Cape Town.
Simultaneously, he was exporting crushed crayfish shells to Germany, where they would be processed as protein sources for animal feed.
These ventures seemed to bumble along for a while until 1984 when Nieuwoudt had a new idea.
It harkened back to his kelp beauty products business, but the legend he created as a backstory was much more endearing and a little exotic.
As Nieuwoudt tells it, he'd been admiring the beautiful skin of one of the older women in his family.
Sources jump between whether it was his grandmother or his aunt, and he'd wondered what her secret was.
Then he said he'd started thinking about the story of Cleopatra and how she would bathe in milk to retain her beauty.
So he said he started thinking about the power of milk as a beauty product, particularly in a sour form, and that led him to a brilliant idea.
Now I will say that currently there's very little real data to show that milk or cultured dairy of any kind has any long-lasting benefits for the skin.
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