BUILDING RESILIENT ECONOMIES FOR ALL. RIGHTS EQUALITY AND EMPOWERMENT.

In the apartheid era, black women were dealt a double whammy of a disadvantage by fate. They were black. They were women.

They had it so tough that the 1956 cohort decided on the march to Pretoria in an effort to lighten their load by eschewing the use of the dompas. But it proved to be just one small victory – only minus one problem, in the greater scheme of things.

In the post-1994 dispensation, one would have thought that their plight would be eased since political power now changed hands from the repressive white old order to the new progressive blacks.

But alas, it was not to be. Black women still labour under the yoke of their blackness and gender. The ogre of gender-based violence (GBV) tops the list of the basket of pain that South African women of all hues have to contend with.

A closer inspection of the landscape of opportunity open to black women reveals a sadder state of affairs. The boardroom is still inaccessible to the large majority of the sistas.

Of course, the black woman – the mother – is still queen of the SME world. She still wakes up in the wee hours of the morning to go put her wares on display for the posse of workmen at construction sites to come buy her fat cakes, hot plate of food, coffee and many other nourishing nibbles.

She still punches above her weight in industry. This is her nature, despite the many obstacles strewn in her path.

From her meagre earnings, she’s still able to fund her children through university even without aid from National Students Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS).

The stories of women who go out to conquer the world always make for good reading. Think of the storied tale of the Maluleke sisters – Tsakani, Basani and Refilwe.

Tsakani is Auditor-General, a position she’s held since 2020; Basani is the first black female CEO of African Bank and Refilwe holds a senior position at Adrian Gore’s Discovery.

Their story is shorthand of the black child – taken out of the township by caring parents because of the fear of the danger wrought by Apartheid in local schools. Theirs is not a fluke but proof of what women are capable of, given just a sliver of opportunity.

The Malulekes are a vote of confidence in the ability of our women, who face all sorts of hardships on their way to the top.

In this edition we feature a line-up of the kind of woman who is unashamedly capable of leading big business into the future. Their individual stories attest to the truism that if you empower a woman, you empower the nation, not just an individual.

Perhaps it has to do with their maternal instincts but women have this knack for mentoring and one sleeps easy knowing that the future is in good hands.

Women multiply. Just as they are able, as if by magic, to turn groceries into a warm meal and a house into a home, women leaders groom proteges and those who will take after them.

The women in this edition are most likely to be feminists but theirs is not the peripheral sort confined to be equals of men. They know something else – that they are better. Their horizons are stretched farther than making Paula earn the same salary as Paul. The former aims to pay the latter’s salary!

Today, the man in charge is a woman. She’s not in a dull grey suit of the Afrikaner MD of old but in chic business wear and red bottom stilettos!

As our women rise, they will pull us all up.