User:Brendan.truter/Johan Marais

Johan Marais is a South African Herpetologist, author, founder, sole owner and managing director of the Fascination Books group (liquidated 2008).

Early Life
Marais was born in Benoni, Gauteng but moved with his parents to Durban when he was 3 years old. His late father was in the flexible printing industry as a machine operator and his late mother was a home executive. He has an older sister Nikki and a younger brother Nico. As a child Marais spent most of his time playing in the bush, fishing in the sea and in rivers, scuba diving and filling the role of a lifesaver at the Durban Surf Lifesaving Club. He also managed to spend a lot of his school holidays on farms belonging to relatives, largely in the Vryburg/Kuruman area and in Grootvlei/Balfour. His time in the bush in Durban and on all the farms resulted in some encounters with snakes and he developed a keen interest in snakes at a very young age.

He coped well with the academic aspects of school and started two businesses in high school – making leather belts which, through an exporter, were sent to Europe as well as a motorcycle sales and repair business. He was a prefect when leaving High school and passed with a university exemption but due to lack of funding he did not pursue a law degree at Potchefstroom University (now known as North-West University) in South Africa as planned.

His father was his role model and together his parents taught him to be independent from a very early age and to respect other people. Sadly his mother died the year after he finished school and his father passed away in 2006 at the age of 78.

Career
Johan Marais started off as a clerk for the South African Railway for three months. Then joining the South African Police for just over 2 years after which he moved on to the Durban City Police. This was followed by the Fitzsimons Snake Park and the Transvaal Snake Park, the latter for 3 years, then moving on to selling Life insurance and writing his first book – 'Snake versus Man, a Guide to Dangerous and Common Harmless Snakes'. For the following year he and Loekie Minnaar started a knock and drop newspaper in Heidelberg, Gauteng. He handled the business side of the newspaper as well as most of the photography. He was then approached to help set up and run the crocodile farm Kwena Gardens at Sun City, North West - one of the most advanced facilities of its kind in the world. While there he teamed up with Prof Gerrie Smith of the University of Pretoria and together they did research which resulted in a variety of technical papers that were published. They also got to present papers at conferences all over the world, including Zimbabwe, Thailand and various venues in the United States. After Kwena Gardens he joined Cango Crocodile Ranch in Oudtshoorn as a shareholder – a partnership which ended 5 months later. For the the next three years Marais worked on a massive project which involved creating an African safari park to be established in the south of France in a town called Hagetmau. It would contain mainly grassland mammals like Zebra, Giraffe, Kudu, Impala, a bird park with walk-through aviaries, a snake park, a crocodile farm and an authentic Zulu village with spear-makers and Zulu dancers. The project went very well but ran out of funds and was eventually liquidated. Marais then moved on to the position of managing director of Manyane Game Lodge and Crocodile Farm. Though his primary function was to farm crocodiles, he ended up spending 95% of his time managing 20 chalets and a very busy restaurant - this job lasted 3 years. Marais then took up a position of Sales and Marketing Director at Southern Book Publishers, the company through which he had published two books. He was retrenched some 18 months later. The then 36 year old Marais together with Usha and Mac Madhav, started a book shop called Fascination Books in Eastgate shopping centre, Johannesburg, selling books, cards and Chinese gifts. Usha and Mac Madhav financed the shop and they had a 50/50 partnership. Marais then purchased the shop from Usha and Mac Madhav which in 14 years grew to 35 shops country wide capturing a substantial share of the South African retail book market.

Memberships
Johan Marais was a member of the Crocodile Specialist Group of the Species Survival Commission of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature for many years and has been a member of the Herpetological Association of Africa for close on 40 years. He is also the chairman of SARCA (Southern African Reptile Conservation Assessment), a project that was funded by the South African National Biodiversity Institute and managed by the ADU of the University of Cape Town which ran over a 5 year period and involved looking at the threatened status of reptiles in South Africa, publication of the results still pending.

Hobbies
Marais is an avid fly fisherman, having fished in places such as Zimbabwe, Austria, America, Mexico, Mauritius and Kenya. He also enjoys photography, both of reptiles and in general.