Chris Seabrooke, chief executive of investment group Sabvest Capital, has donated 1.4 million Sabvest shares to fund a R341 million Cultural Precinct at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in Braamfontein, Johannesburg. The project was announced this week and is expected to take five years to build, according to BusinessTech and the university’s own announcement.
## How the donation works
The shares were held by the Seabrooke Family Trust and have been donated to the Wits Foundation. Wits has the right to sell them through block trades, which are large transactions negotiated outside the open market, or on the market over the estimated five-year life of the project. The proceeds are expected to fund most of the R341 million capital cost, and the university will co-invest the balance.
The gift was valued at R204.4 million, about $12.6 million, on the day the shares were transferred off-market, on 22 September 2026, at a price of R146 a share, according to Billionaires Africa. Because Wits will sell the shares over several years, what the precinct ultimately receives will depend on where the Sabvest share price stands when it does. Billionaires Africa noted that the gift is nearly seven times the Motsepe Foundation’s combined 2023 grants across all 26 South African universities.
Seabrooke, a Wits alumnus (MBA 1985), retains an economic interest of just under 39% in Sabvest after the donation, putting his net worth at about R2.1 billion, BusinessTech reported. Billionaires Africa put the trust’s economic interest at 38.8% after the gift, down from 42.6%, with control secured through unlisted Z shares.
## Who Seabrooke and Sabvest are
Sabvest Capital describes itself as an investment group that targets industrial and service businesses, usually unlisted, which it co-invests in with family, management or financial partners. The group’s shares were listed on the JSE in 2020 after a restructuring, and it took full ownership of Sabvest Limited, which had been listed since 1988. BusinessTech gives Sabvest’s market value as R5.5 billion.
Seabrooke has also served as chairman of the State Theatre of South Africa and as deputy chairman of the inaugural National Arts Council of South Africa.
“The arts have an extraordinary ability to bring people together and to change the character of a place,” he said. “Our hope is that this investment will enable Wits to create a precinct that belongs not only to its students, staff and academics, but to Johannesburg.”
## What will be built
Phase one covers the Wits Art Museum, the Jack Ginsberg Centre for Book Arts, the Chris Seabrooke Music Hall, a digital arts building and an additional floor for the Wits School of Arts. Phase two consolidates music facilities, adds exhibition and foyer spaces and Fine Arts facilities, refurbishes the Wits Theatre Amphitheatre and adds a new Wits Theatre Complex building with a rooftop extension. Restaurants, cafes, bookshops and other lifestyle venues are also planned, according to the university.
The precinct sits on the south-eastern edge of the Braamfontein campus and is meant to connect with the Joburg Theatre, the Market Theatre, the Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct and the Constitutional Court. It anchors the Faculty of Humanities and the Wits School of Arts, bringing Digital Arts, Film, Fine Arts, Music and Theatre and Drama together.
Vice-Chancellor Professor Zeblon Vilakazi said: “The Cultural Precinct is about opening Wits to Johannesburg and creating spaces where students, artists, scholars and the public can meet, create and exchange ideas.” The university and the city, he said, “have grown together for more than a century”.
For Braamfontein traders, the plans that are confirmed are the restaurants, cafes and bookshops inside the precinct and the public-facing edge of the campus. Neither Wits nor Seabrooke has said how those spaces will be let or run. Related coverage is in SME & Entrepreneurship and Funding.
