Caz Johnson from NCINCI NDIQALA was the third-place winner of the 2025 Bellville Connect Level Up Business Programme, and represents a new generation of business leaders focused on systems, community upliftment and sustainability.
Raised in a family that always found a way to make things work, Caz’s early career in admin and operations shaped his natural inclination toward structure, problem-solving and people. Those foundations would later become essential to growing NCINCI NDIQALA, a family-founded recycling and waste-management company with a powerful lesson behind it.
Small Beginnings: A Family Business Built From Survival
NCINCI NDIQALA, meaning “Small Beginnings”, was born in 2014 during a time of immense hardship. After both of Caz’s parents, Jerome and Wendy Johnson, were retrenched, the family had to create something from nothing. With a borrowed bakkie and sheer determination, they began collecting cardboard to feed the household.
What started as necessity soon revealed a gap: many communities and businesses lacked reliable, compliant and accredited waste-management solutions. By 2019, Caz stepped in to help formalise and scale the business, setting the foundation for the high-impact company it is today.
Waste, Recycling & Real Community Value
Today, NCINCI NDIQALA is a specialised recycling and waste-management company offering:
- Recycling collection and processing
- Hazardous waste services (specifically oil-can drainage and separation)
- General waste removal
- Buy-back services for hospitals and institutions
- On-site labour support for recycling operations
- Auction and disposal services for second-hand goods and scrap
The company’s purpose and mission is simple but powerful: To turn waste into opportunity for environmental impact, job creation and building value chains that include youth, small collectors and local communities.
Their long-term vision is to expand hazardous-waste processing across the Western Cape, setting a new standard for compliance, transparency and service delivery while growing into multiple municipalities.
Learning, Adapting & Building Systems That Scale
For Caz, entrepreneurship has been an intense learning curve. One of his biggest learning curves?
You can’t rely on hard work alone.
“The business landscape changes so quickly. You need structure, documentation, SOPs, accountability and the right people in the right roles to keep up, adapt and grow at the same speed,” he reflects.
He also learned the value of the right aligned partnerships. “Not every opportunity is worth taking, and not every partner aligns with your values, no matter how attractive the offer seems.”
Looking back, he says that he would have formalised systems and controls earlier, and sought help sooner. “When you operate in survival mode, you don’t always think about things like audits, reporting tools, pricing models, financial controls or compliance. But those things are what allow you to scale confidently.”
“There is more support for SMMEs than we realise, but pride and fear can hold us back.”
Growth Plans: Expanding Across the Western Cape
With it’s strong foundations now in place, NCINCI NDIQALA is entering a strategic growth phase. Over the next 24 months, the company aims to:
- Scale its hazardous-waste processing facility, launching the second version of its custom drainage equipment to increase safety, compliance, and processing capacity.
- Expand into additional municipalities outside of Cape Town, securing more government and private-sector contracts.
- Grow its customer base by onboarding two new clients per month with a newly established West Coast route.
- Strengthen internal operations through SOPs, staff training, and enhanced admin capacity.
- Access strategic funding and equipment such as a granulator, wash plant, forklifts, and improved site infrastructure.
These plans reflect a business moving confidently toward long-term sustainability.
Impact That Matters
Asked what drives him as an entrepreneur, Caz proudly says: “Impact. Seeing how our business has changed our family, given people jobs, and created opportunities in communities that are often overlooked keeps me going. I’m driven by the idea that small beginnings can create massive impact when you stay consistent, honest, and committed.”
Stand-out highlights for him and the company include:
- Securing their first major tender in 2020 after years of setbacks
- Becoming accredited with the ROSE Foundation for hazardous-waste processing
- Opening their hazardous-waste workshop and increasing monthly processing volumes
- Winning 3rd place in the Bellville Connect Level Up Programme
- And, the biggest highlight for Caz: seeing staff members grow into leadership roles
These are the wins that matter most.
A Mindset Built on Adaptability & Responsibility
For Caz, the entrepreneurial mindset means being able to adapt without losing direction. It’s the ability to solve problems when the resources are limited, remain calm in uncertainty, learn continuously, and see opportunity where others see obstacles.
It also means being willing to take responsibility — even when it’s uncomfortable.
Advice for fellow South African entrepreneurs building businesses
Caz offers three sage pieces of advice:
- Start small, but start properly. Structure your business early: contracts, pricing, reporting, compliance, systems.
- Build relationships, not transactions. Your network will open more doors than your marketing budget ever will.
- Stay consistent. Growth is slow before it becomes fast. Small daily actions compound into big results.
From Small Beginnings to Big Possibility
NCINCI NDIQALA is proof that small beginnings can grow into meaningful impact when resilience meets structure, and when community sits at the heart of the mission.
Caz Johnson’s leadership reflects this perfectly — guided by purpose, strengthened by systems, and driven by the belief that waste can become opportunity, and opportunity can become change.
From a borrowed bakkie to an accredited recycling and hazardous-waste operation, NCINCI NDIQALA stands as a reminder that small beginnings often lead to the biggest transformations.
