Adv Thuli Madonsela Chief Patron of the Thuli Madonsela Foundation

❝I want women to succeed as entrepreneurs. But I also want to see a business that seeks to solve society’s problems, with principled leaders who treat their staff well.❞

Advocate Thuli Madonsela admires many women for their entrepreneurial spirit, but – ‘without diminishing the achievements of others’ – she singles out Jane Raphaely and the Wiphold (Women’s Investment Portfolio Holdings Limited) women. Of media mogul Raphaely, whom she met at an event, she says, ‘I could just sense that she was sitting back and letting others shine. You wouldn’t have known that she was at the centre of things. But if you read her book, you see how quiet dignity and grace helped her to achieve.’

Louisa Mojela and Gloria Serobe started Wiphold as BEE gained traction. And, says Thuli, they didn’t go the tenderpreneurship route; instead they took the route of working really hard. But what she particularly admires is their motto of ‘lifting as you rise’. While they’ve been adding value for themselves, they’ve also been investing in students and small businesswomen in rural areas. When you take other people with you, you might not rise like a shooting star – that’s easier when you’re carrying only your own weight. But it’s not sustainable.’

Another true source of inspiration for Thuli is her brother. ‘When everyone rushed into tenderpreneurship, he didn’t. He is an accountant who really focused on doing things the right way. He never went beyond his means – he moved back to Soweto so that he could use our house as a base for his operations; he drives a basic car. And that comes from what he saw in my father.’

Their father was a small trader who expanded into the back rooms of garages – without borrowing a cent from the bank. His approach, Thuli says, was to look after the cents so the rands looked after themselves.

Despite the current woes of our economy, Thuli sees South Africa as the perfect environment for entrepreneurship. ‘South Africa is under-explored – a sleeping giant, due to exclusion from the world because of apartheid. There are far more opportunities here than in countries that have always operated in a globalised environment. We have challenges, but then again, entrepreneurs are problem solvers. Even the energy crisis is an opportunity – there’s potential to make money out of green energy. Hopefully somebody will invent a quiet generator!’ she jokes.

As you’d expect from a woman regarded as the moral compass of our nation, Thuli has much to say about integrity and best practice in business. ‘It’s about sustainability. If your practices are unethical you might have temporary gains, but in the long term it could hurt your business. Businesses must understand citizenship: you can’t degrade the environment via corruption or collusion in price fixing. A poisoned environment will come back to hurt you – and your children! People need to treat each other fairly, justly and professionally; if that doesn’t happen, it becomes a dog-eat-dog world, which ultimately is an unstable world.’