Righting the wrongs

The organisation has been a vital tool in alleviating poverty for rural SA women

In the 25 years since Zanele Mbeki founded the WDB Trust, she has learnt a lifetime of lessons. Perhaps the most important lesson of all during her years in microfinance is that if you put development resources into the hands of the poor, they’re able to change their own lives — the premise that informs the trust and all it does for rural women living in poverty.

As Mbeki is well aware, poverty is not caused by the poor, but is the result of the overall strategies adopted by society, policies, institutions, development frameworks and legal and regulatory instruments. Women hardest hit Poverty affects the most vulnerable people in any society — primarily women and children.

“The face of poverty is female,” Mbeki says, adding that if poverty were to be eradicated entirely, it would create a monumental change in the lives of women.

In the 25 years that Mbeki, together with the team of talented and fearless women she has drawn together, has been dispensing loans to poor rural women, she has come to learn that women account for the largest percentage of the very poor.

That said, it is also the women of society who are willing to make the effort to undergo the onerous procedures to apply for credit and who will sacrifice more to get their families out of poverty. In addition, money that is channelled via women into a family brings more benefits. Mbeki says if the goals of economic development are to improve the living standards of the poor, alleviate poverty and provide jobs, it makes sense to target women. Qualitative studies implemented by the WDB Trust mirror the results shown by other microfinance institutions: women who have participated in microfinance programmes have better self esteem, they are respected within their families and their children have a higher nutritional status as well as better access to education. They are also healthier, able to make improvements to their homes, create employment within their communities as well as generate savings, thereby creating assets. Launch of the WDB Trust Mbeki is driven by the fact that poverty in SA should not be a marginalised issue, but a major challenge that should be addressed by every segment of society.

It is this thinking that led Mbeki (together with Lerato Matlhare, Nomhle Gcabashe, Nomsa Ngakane, Mantombi Cheela and Nana Tlou and others) to draw up a business plan in 1991 to create a poverty-focused lending programme aimed at poor rural women. “There were no financial projections in our business plan. We even had difficulty in defining poverty and who was poor,” Mbeki says.

Despite their relative inexperience in this field, the women presented the business plan to a select group of black business leaders before it was circulated to potential donors. The proposal was welcomed and donors encouraged the women, promising to provide them with financial support, advice and help in kind.

Notable at this time was the unsolicited donation the trust received from Vusi Ngubeni of Bristol-Myers Squibb, who donated R20,000 on the spot.

That money was instrumental in launching the trust, enabling it to issue its first 50 loans and forcing the organisation to get up and running — by opening a bank account, addressing issues around governance such

‘‘ TO ERADICATE POVERTY AND BRIDGE THE GAP BETWEEN GENDER, RACIAL, ECONOMIC AND DIGITAL DIVIDES — WE SHOULD COMMIT TO MAKING A HUGE INVESTMENT IN THE POOREST WOMEN OF SA ZANELE MBEKI