Hitting the sweet spot
SA Mint MD coins it
Her formative years with her grandparents teaching her values shaped Honey Mamabolo to become a leader and have a deeper understanding of gender issues and responsibilities.
Mamabolo, 46, is the MD of SA Mint Company, which produces coins for the SA Reserve Bank. She took the position six weeks before the beginning of the hard lockdown last year.
Born in Polokwane, Limpopo, Mamabolo spent the first eight years of her life with her grandparents – the late Job and Manana Thobela – in Brakpan, on the East Rand. She observed how the elderly couple worked hard and swapped roles to ensure that she was taken care of. Her parents also played a huge role in building the leader she is today.
Her grandfather was an insurance broker, which meant he could manage his diary and ensure that he took care of Mamabolo. Her grandmother, on the other side, was a factory worker who had to catch the train as early 4am and return after dark. Her grandfather would cook and prepare clothes for her when she returned from school.
Her grandparents instilled a love for education, something that would shape the course of Mamabolo’s life.
By the time she started Grade 1, she could read, write and count without attending any crèche.
“I learnt the principles of honesty, integrity and respect for people. I have kept these principles. If we don’t have leaders who are ethical and driven by basic principles of integrity, we will collapse the institutions we run and the country,” Mamabolo said .
It was this upbringing that planted the seed in Mamabolo that there are no jobs for men or women.
As a child, Mamabolo moved to Polokwane before returning to Gauteng to complete her matric at Fourways High School, but she still identifies herself with Lebowakgomo, about 60km from Polokwane.
Mamabolo studied chemical engineering, a male-dominated field, at the University of Pretoria and became one of the first black female students to complete the qualification in 2000.
However, her first employer was not an engineering firm but Nedbank. At that time, banks needed people to improve efficiencies within their processes. She said the sector wanted people with “lean manufacturing principles” to automate banking services and make them quicker.
She then worked in retail banking for seven years, her last bank being Absa. In 2007, Mamabolo took a sabbatical and lived in Ghana for three months. She lived in a Liberian refugee camp where she started an NGO called Vision Awake Africa for Development, which she still supports.
On her return to SA, she joined an energy consulting firm, Energy Solutions Africa, which advised the government on liquid fuel policy, donor fund management and renewal energy. This led to her move to the Industrial Development Corporation where she worked as an energy specialist before leading a chemical company in KwaZulu-Natal, which led to her current position.
SA Mint is a contract manufacturer of coins such as R5, R2, R1 and cents for the SA Reserve Bank, and some of the Southern African countries and overseas economies. The company is owned by the Reserve Bank and does not manage the circulation but ensures that there are enough coins in circulation. It also produces investment coins such as the Krugerrand and a range of limited-edition collectable coins in premium precious metals.
“We are just a factory... My role is to ensure that I supply on time, in full and at the right quality,” she said .
But Mamabolo sees herself as a leader doing more than just producing coins. She is passionate about transforming society and producing better young leaders. At the heart of this pursuit is growing strong families.
“If the foundation is not in place, it meants we have no grounding moral and ethical principles to guide us...
The primary caregiver [parent] is the first one that models how a child must behave... If the family structure is not right, we are exporting a child into society, and expecting teachers who are secondary caregivers to play our role,” she said.
“Families also shape the way children relate with the opposite sex. It is in families that boys can learn how to treat girls, and genderbased violence.
“In the households
when we bring up the boy and girl child, do you make your daughter wash the dishes while your son is watching television? Those are subconscious biases.
“Do you make your son do the garden while your daughter does the dishes... and not all of them participating equally? It starts there.
When a friend or colleague at work speaks ill about women, do you laugh? Very quickly we go to the physical violence and femicide. That is the graduation of these small things that we did not address as a society.”
‘‘ I learnt the principles of , honesty, respect