6 WOMEN WHO MAKE US PROUD TO BE SOUTH AFRICAN

Six South African women who inspire us to be part of the future of this turbulent, fascinating, opportunity-rich country.

PROF MAMOKGETHI PHAKENG Vice chancellor of the University of Cape Town

This was the message that went out to new students at the University of Cape Town (UCT) via Twitter back in February this year – from their first female vice chancellor, fondly known on social media as the Fab Academic or Deputy Mother, Professor Mamokgethi Phakeng.

Phakeng has a PhD in Mathematics Education and is an internationally acclaimed National Research Foundation-rated researcher who is passionate about research and education. In 2004 she founded NPO Adopt-a-Learner, which provides financial and

‘Always remember why you’re here. Make sure you hit the ground running from day one of lectures and don’t remove your foot from the pedal until you’re done with your degree. With love, Deputy Mother.’

educational support to students from disadvantaged areas to acquire higher education qualifications. Her achievements could fill a book, but perhaps the most noteworthy is receiving the presidential silver Order of the Baobab in 2016 for excellent contributions in the field of science and representing South Africa on international stages.

Phakeng has taken a hands-on approach as VC, visiting lecturers, attending student events and even popping into residences to see how students are living. And she puts her money where her mouth is: in 2018, she pledged 10 percent of her salary to fund black postgraduate students and cancelled her inauguration ceremony to cut costs. ‘It’s not consistent with my values to spend money when there’s such a shortage of it,’ she said at the time.

PHUTI MAHANYELE-DABENGWA Co-founder and executive chairperson of Sigma Capital

‘Begin where you are, doing what may seem relatively small, and soon, together with likeminded people, you will build something that is far greater than what you thought possible.’

Born and raised in Soweto, Phuti Mahanyele-Dabengwa lost her mother as a teenager but never forgot her parents’ commitment towards her education. At 17 she moved to the US to study, obtaining a degree in Economics in 1993 and in 1996 an MBA from the UK’s De Montfort University.

Despite her impressive credentials it took her a while to find a career that felt like the right fit. ‘I left a management job here to take an internship in New York because I wanted to learn about investment banking,’ she says. ‘It didn’t make sense to many people but I wanted to learn to put deals together.’

Mahanyele-Dabengwa joined Fieldstone Private Capital Group as an intern and worked her way up to vice president, later transferring to the company’s SA office before becoming the head of Project Finance-South Africa at the Development Bank of Southern Africa.

In 2004, then-businessman Cyril Ramaphosa saw her potential and poached her to head up a division of investment holding company Shanduka. As CEO she made significant business moves, doubling the firm’s net asset value to R8 billion in five years and acquiring McDonald’s SA. She also gives back, still serving as a board member for the Shanduka Foundation’s Adopt-a-School project (now called the Cyril Ramaphosa Foundation), which focuses on providing infrastructure at needy schools. It is no wonder that she was named one of the 50 Women in the World to Watch by

The Wall Street Journal in 2008 and became Forbes Africa’s Businesswoman of the Year in 2014.

In 2015 Mahanyele-Dabengwa left Shanduka to start her own company, Sigma Capital. ‘I’ve always wanted to run my own business,’ she said then. ‘South Africa is the one place, as a black person, where you have the opportunity to do that.’

Her advice for aspiring corporate titans? ‘View yourself as a businessperson. People treat you the way you treat yourself,’ she says. ‘If you come in feeling at a disadvantage, you are already at a disadvantage.’

SARA BLECHER Film & TV producer and director

‘When I made

Ayanda I felt there was a dearth of female role models on TV or in films for my daughters. There were hardly any women grappling with the realities of being a complex and multifaceted being.’

Filmmaker Sara Blecher is always on the lookout for uniquely local stories to tell. ‘For many years South African filmmakers have felt the need to shape their films to appeal to foreign audiences,’ she says. ‘We tried to emulate Hollywood rather than explore our own voices. This diluted the integrity and power of the narratives and diminished what is unique and compelling about them.’

As a female director she struggled to find work and often had to create projects to secure her place in the director’s chair, which is why her work, although varied and diverse, tends to be rooted in personal experiences.

‘In many ways, I’ve made all three of my feature films for my family,’ says Blecher.

‘Otelo Burning was made for my children, who were born just as apartheid was dying. It’s a story about what freedom costs, but

perhaps more importantly, about what happens when you actually get freedom. This is something I really want them to understand.’ She made Dis Ek, Anna [It’s

me, Anna] for her mother, who was abused when she was a little girl. It tells the story of an abused child who decides to murder her abuser. ‘It’s a courtroom drama that unpacks the moral and legal implications of her actions in a country where one out of every three women has been abused,’ she says. ‘In a country like ours, with such a horrific history of violence against women, having female perspectives represented on screen isn’t a luxury but a necessity.’

Blecher snagged CNN’s African Journalist of the Year award in 2003 for her documentaries Kobus

and Dumile and Surfing Soweto, while 2011’s Otelo Burning won 17 international awards and was named one of the must-see African movies of the 21st century by CNN. Coming-of-age tale Ayanda received eight nominations at the Africa Magic Viewers’ Choice Awards in 2016, and won for best script and makeup. Her latest project, Mayfair, a multicultural gangster thriller, has garnered rave reviews worldwide.

Blecher also chairs the board of Sisters Working in Film and Television (SWIFT), an NPO that champions equal opportunities for women working in the film and television industry.

‘Working with SWIFT has been incredibly difficult but also rewarding,’ she says. ‘Perhaps this is normal when you’re trying to change the way a society treats its women and children.’

MAGDA WIERZYCKA Co-founder and CEO of Sygnia

Magda Wierzycka’s family fled communist Poland

in the early ’80s when the country fell into financial ruin. They found asylum in a crowded refugee camp near Vienna and spent over nine months in Austria before 1 Military Hospital in Pretoria recruited her parents.

Wierzycka was 13 when she first stepped onto South African soil, and although she spoke neither English nor Afrikaans, she was enrolled at Pretoria High School for Girls, where she struggled to fit in. Her parents were working

‘Don’t look to others for inspiration. Look inside yourself – that’s where true inspiration lies.’

in state hospitals (both were medical doctors but part of their immigration agreement stipulated that they couldn’t go into private practice) and had come to South Africa with nary a cent to their names. Wierzycka chose to study actuarial science at UCT because it was the only course that offered a full bursary.

She joined Southern Life as an actuary before moving to Alexander Forbes where she helped to set up their investment consulting division. Shortly after, Coronation Fund Managers recruited her to head up their Institutional/Retirement Fund business, after which she moved to African Harvest Fund Managers, where she became CEO.

‘We sold the company in 2006 after it became the largest majority black-owned asset manager in South Africa,’ says Wierzycka. ‘I took a small team of people with me and we set up [asset management company] Sygnia.’ Today her company manages more than R200 billion in assets and offers the lowest cost savings and investment products in the country.

The financial advice she lives by sounds simple enough: ‘Believe in the power of compound interest and start saving as soon as you can afford to.’ When she isn’t dishing out investment tips, she’s passionate about tackling corruption and holding businesses accountable by ‘unpeeling the onion layers put in place to hide the truth’. ‘Unless corporate South Africa fights for the restoration of law and order in SA, we’re heading down an economic abyss, with all South Africans becoming progressively poorer,’ she says.

HONOURABLE JUSTICE ROSHENI ALLIE Western Cape High Court judge

‘When we opposed apartheid’s unjust laws we didn’t just oppose them on the basis of racism, we also opposed them on the basis of sexism.’

Born and raised in Athlone, Cape Town, Honourable Justice Rosheni Allie has been politically active from an early age. Her father was a political activist, and in high school she joined thousands of fellow students to march the Cape Town streets in solidarity with what is now commemorated as Youth Day: the Soweto Uprising of 1976. By 1980, she had joined the Azanian Students Organisation.

While working towards her law degree, she assisted in setting up the Heideveld Advice Office Forum, a collective of students and community members that served the community by offering legal advice on housing-related issues, municipal bills, maintenance and consumer matters.

Allie opened her own legal practice in 1987. One of the first decisions she made was not to accept cases where she’d have to defend an alleged rapist – while she believes everyone is entitled to legal representation, that was a service she did not want to provide.

Allie was in private practice for 17 years before taking up a nomination for acting judge in the high court. She’s been serving on the Western Cape bench since 2004, where she works tirelessly to make South Africa safer for us all.

In 2018 she handed life

sentences to three of the four men convicted for the robbery, rape, and murder of 21-year-old student Hannah Cornelius. ‘That case received huge media coverage and was particularly gruesome. But Judge Allie says there are many similar cases involving black victims and cautions against the impression created that white lives matter more than others. ‘As a woman judge, I have made findings condemning gender-based voilence against all women. All lives matter to me.’

DR TLALENG MOFOKENG Medical doctor and sexual and reproductive health activist

‘Advocacy for women’s reproductive health and rights is an extension of what my life as a black woman has always been about.’

Known in social media circles as ‘Dr T’, Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng was born in Qwaqwa in the Free State and obtained her Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery in 2007. She’s the founder of Nalane for Reproductive Justice and runs private reproductive clinic DISA in Joburg. She also has radio slots on 5FM and Metro FM where she discusses sexual health.

When she’s not fighting for policy changes to improve medical conditions for women, the LGBTQIA community and sex workers, Mofokeng is sharing her knowledge: she has lectured on sexual rights and gender in West Virginia, US, and facilitates advocacy training at the University of KwaZuluNatal’s medical school and the University of Pretoria.

In 2016 the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation presented her with the 120 Under 40 New Generation of Family Planning Leaders Award and the Aspen Institute named her a New Voices Fellow in 2018. ‘Local experts and local communities are taking charge of their own futures,’ said New Voices Fellowship director Andrew Quinn. ‘These are the voices we should be listening for when we listen to the story of global development – because these are the voices that show the way forward on humanity’s greatest challenges.’

Mofokeng is no stranger to South African panels and debates concerning women’s health. ‘I envision a world where all people regardless of gender, orientation, geography, disability or economic status are at the centre of reproductive health agenda and service provision,’ she’s said.

She credits her mom, Agnes, with giving her the best sexual advice she’s ever received: ‘When you have sex, make sure it’s on your terms.’