Haven honours veteran member

BAY businesswoman Antonette Hamman has a passion for giving back to the community and after working for nearly 20 years with Yokhuselo Haven, a place for abused women and children, she has been voted in as chairwoman of the centre.

Yokhuselo Haven is the umbrella name for two shelters dedicated to women and their children affected by domestic violence – Prospect Hill Crisis Centre (PHCC) and The Haven.

The aim of the haven is to offer a place of safety to those in crisis, helping with rehabilitation through counselling and empowerment. “In the 28 years since we opened, Yokhuselo Haven has never closed its doors,” Hamman said.

“I started at Yokhuselo in 1997 when it was still at Prospect Hill Street in Central and called Mother of Hope and two years later I joined the managing committee. Mother of Hope was the front window of Yokhuselo Haven where social workers, policemen and everybody could go and women could report there and be taken to a place of safety.”

Hamman said she had told herself that once she did not have a nine-to-five job, she would find a charity and become more involved. “A friend of mine asked me to join her at a meeting and it was at Yokhuselo. I really liked what they were about and, being a woman, I appreciated what they were doing even more,” she said.

From former secretary to one of Nelson Mandela Bay busiest businesswomen – and now the first woman chair of Yokhuselo, Hamman is showing Bay women if you have a dream, you can achieve it with hard work.

Born in Port Elizabeth and raised in Heidelberg in the Western Cape, Hamman always dreamed of becoming a school secretary. “When I was at Hoërskool Langenhoven, I was a sport fanatic but I always knew what I wanted and was very fortunate to study a secretarial course at the University of Stellenbosch,” Hamman said.

She later worked as a bank teller before meeting her husband, Johan, on a blind date. They moved to Port Elizabeth in 1992 and Hamman worked as a legal secretary then as district sales manager for Justine Cosmetics before starting her own business seven years ago.

Today the team manager for Miglio Designer Jewellery has more than 100 agents working under her selling their costume jewellery and she won the Crystal Award for top manager for Miglio in 2013/14. She was also nominated for a regional business achiever’s award by the Businesswomen’s Association of South Africa a few years ago.

“My job is to train women how to be sales ladies, how to throw parties and functions and help people to build their own businesses,” she said.

Hamman, who has been married to Johan for 30 years, said time management was a challenge. “I’m lucky as I can ask my husband to start with dinner.

“He understands my side of the business and he’s got a motorbike that we ride on for getaways which helps us stay connected,” she said.