Nando's Founder Backs South African City Rebranding Play Worth Millions
Advertising executive's rebranding initiative attracts backing from Nando's founder to reshape investor perception.
Robbie Brozin, founder of Nando’s, spent six hours in a New York conversation with Melusi Mhlungu before deciding to back him. The subject was South Africa’s potential. The conviction that emerged was straightforward: a creative mind repositioning a city’s story could move investment, tourism, and economic participation in ways that infrastructure spending alone cannot.
Mhlungu had built that creative mind at one of New York’s leading advertising agencies, earning a dollar salary from Brooklyn and accumulating award-winning campaigns. He walked away from it. The decision to leave a lucrative American career to confront Johannesburg’s narrative crisis, a city internationally associated with crime, poverty, and service delivery failures, is not a conventional return on investment calculation. His reasoning, though, is precise: “I believe that I was put on this earth to serve through my creativity. I thought, maybe it’s time for Africans and South Africans to be part of fixing South African problems.”
His initiative, Jozi My Jozi, challenges standard urban recovery models at their foundation. Infrastructure and enforcement come later. Perception comes first. The organization operates as what Mhlungu calls a “superconnector,” identifying work already underway in Johannesburg’s inner city and linking practitioners to the platforms and channels needed to sustain it. Projects like Main Street Sundays convert portions of the central business district into car-free zones, giving residents a different physical and psychological experience of the city.
The economic logic is embedded in that approach. Brozin put it plainly: “If you lead with human dignity, by making the invisible people feel visible, you can actually fix the city from the inside out.” Dignity and visibility, in this framing, are economic inputs rather than social luxuries. A city where residents feel pride participates more fully in commerce, entrepreneurship, and civic life. A city perceived as broken discourages all three.
Mhlungu’s own origin sharpens his perspective. He grew up in the rural hills of Nkandla in KwaZulu-Natal, moved to Johannesburg as a young person, and absorbed the city as both inspiration and problem to solve. His advertising training taught him to read narratives as economic forces. The 1997 Apple campaign urging people to “Think Different” serves as an implicit reference point in his thinking. That campaign launched when Apple was hemorrhaging money and its viability was openly questioned. It shifted perception enough to alter the company’s trajectory entirely. Today, one in three people carries an iPhone.
The parallel is deliberate. Mhlungu wrote an ode to Johannesburg that includes the lines: “Some may look at our city and think we have no way forward. Guess what? We will make one. Because that is who we are, that is what we do, that is what we know.” The piece functions simultaneously as creative statement and economic argument. Narrative precedes recovery.
He does not minimize what Johannesburg is up against. He reframes it. “There’s opportunity in the brokenness. I think most people don’t see the opportunities and the beauty that lie in all this chaos.” This is not denial of dysfunction. It is a deliberate refusal to let dysfunction become the city’s only investable story. For entrepreneurs, capital allocators, and residents deciding whether to commit time and resources to the city, that distinction carries real weight.
Meanwhile, Brozin’s assessment of the moment signals something about the limits of conventional leadership. “It’s time for the crazies to wake the nation. We’ve tried with politicians; we’ve tried with business leaders.” A creative director treating perception, connection, and visibility as economic levers represents a different kind of intervention entirely.
More information about Mhlungu’s work is available at https://www.forbesafrica.com/entrepreneurs/2026/07/13/opportunity-in-the-brokenness-the-south-african-working-to-restore-pride-in-the-city-of-johannesburg/
The experiment is live. Whether a narrative shift can precede and enable material recovery in a city as structurally complex as Johannesburg is still unresolved, but the economic cost of the city’s current story, told to every potential investor, tourist, and entrepreneur who looks away, is already measurable.
Q&A
What is Robbie Brozin's connection to this initiative?
Brozin, founder of Nando's, spent six hours in conversation with Melusi Mhlungu before deciding to back his Jozi My Jozi initiative to reposition Johannesburg's narrative.
What is Jozi My Jozi's core operational model?
The organization operates as a 'superconnector' that identifies work already underway in Johannesburg's inner city and links practitioners to platforms and channels needed to sustain it, with projects like Main Street Sundays converting portions of the central business district into car-free zones.
How does Mhlungu's background inform his approach?
Mhlungu built his career at a leading New York advertising agency earning award-winning campaigns. His advertising training taught him to read narratives as economic forces, drawing parallels to Apple's 1997 'Think Different' campaign that shifted perception and altered the company's trajectory.
What economic argument underpins the narrative-first approach?
Brozin frames dignity and visibility as economic inputs rather than social luxuries. A city where residents feel pride participates more fully in commerce, entrepreneurship, and civic life, while a city perceived as broken discourages all three.