Women of the Year 2004 finalists
13 July 2004
The first black woman to head a South African medical faculty, the first woman editor of a major South African newspaper, a Catholic nun whose Aids hospice has won international recognition, a women who saved a private hospital from closure, the organiser of the country's first beauty pageant for the disabled ... meet the 29 finalists of the 2004 Shoprite Checkers / SABC 2 Women of the Year Award.
This year's finalists, selected from over 1 000 nominations countrywide, also include a woman hailed as one of the most powerful marketing agents in the country, two Harvard graduates, the pioneer of children's theatre in South Africa, and a teenager whose invention saves the precious resource of water.
Since its inception nine years ago, the Shoprite Checkers / SABC2 Women of the Year Award has involved thousands of South Africans in a search to identify and pay tribute to the country's most outstanding women - women who have not only achieved success
in their own fields, but who have also made a difference in their communities and inspired others to follow their lead.
This year, the award grows to include a ninth category - social services - while for the first time an overall winner will not be announced. Instead, the award will change in title to honour nine winners in nine categories - each winner receiving R10 000 in prize money, and all of them sharing the title of 2004 Shoprite Checkers / SABC 2 Women of the Year.
With the country celebrating a decade of democracy, the 2004 award, say the organisers, "is a reminder of the distance that the women of South Africa have travelled over these 10 years in order to reach their goals and make a difference within their communities".
Previous winners have served as role models for others to emulate and have, without exception, made major contributions to the country's pressing national issues.
The finalists
ARTS & CULTURE
Joyce Levinsohn
Gauteng-based Joyce Levinsohn, a pioneer of children's theatre in South Africa, established Children's Theatre Productions in 1976, and has staged thousands of performances for underprivileged schools, children's homes and institutions.
Levinsohn believes that the performing arts communicate in a universal language which
builds bridges across cultural, economic, racial and religious divides. In 2001 she received a lifetime achievement award from the Arts and Culture Trust.
Levinsohn uses children's theatre as a vehicle to foster the growth of language, literature and life skills. Since 1989, as executive director of the Johannesburg Youth Theatre Trust, she has facilitated theatre-in-education life skills programmes addressing social issues such as substance abuse, HIV/Aids, sexual molestation and family violence.
Masingita Masunga
Gauteng-based Masingita Masunga overcame the disability of cerebral palsy to establish an organisation that motivates men, women and the youth. Her company, Tinyungubyiseni Talent Promotions, has given physically disabled people throughout South Africa an opportunity to make valuable contributions to society.
Tinyungubyiseni staged the country's first beauty
pageant for the disabled, the Miss Confidence SA competition, and promotes "Nyeleti - Star Beyond Limits", a music competition for people with disabilities.
The organisation conducts projects countrywide, including workshops and training, soccer tournaments, motivational talks and schools tours, to raise public awareness about people with physical disabilities and to reinforce the fact that disability does not mean inability.
Susan Harrop-Allin
Promoting music as a powerful force for healing and change, Gauteng-based Susan Harrop-Allin's belief in the role of arts and culture in transformation and development led to the founding in 2000 of the EYETHU Soweto Music Project, which teaches young musicians and integrates them into different communities as well as youth orchestras.
Harrop-Allin initiates, manages and fundraises for national music development projects with The
Youth Orchestra Company and the Dedel'ingoma Creative Arts Healing and Apollo Music Trust.
BUSINESS ENTREPRENEURS
Sabina Khoza
Sabina Khoza, one of South Africa's top poultry farmers, takes her knowledge to the community via the Fair Deal Education and Production Training Centre, which she initiated on her Fair Deal Poultry Farm at Zuurbekom near Soweto. The first group of trainees completed their course in November 2003, and close on 100 farmers, the majority of whom are women, have graduated from the centre prior to starting their own small businesses.
Khoza entered the business world in 1988 with just 10 chickens and very little knowledge of farming. Now producing 150 000 birds annually, she has been the recipient of numerous farming-related awards, including Female Farmer of the Year.
She is currently serving her second term as
president of the Gauteng Provincial Farmers' Union, and is secretary-general of the National African Farmers' Union.
Nunu Ntshingila
Nunu Ntshingila is one of the highest-ranking black females in advertising, chairperson of one of the top three creative agencies in the country, chairperson of the Association for Communication and Advertising, and a board member of the Media Development and Diversity Agency.
The recipient of the 2004 Financial Mail AdFocus "Agency Leader of the Year" award, Ntshingila started her advertising career as an account manager at Ogilvy in 1988. Her career includes roles as acting general manager of SA Tourism, communications director of Nike SA, and client service director at Herdbuoys, prior to her role as chairperson of Ogilvy Johannesburg.
Ntshingila has contributed extensively to industry training, and played a key role in the establishment of
the Mamalu Consortium.
Bev Moodley-Pryde
Bev Moodley-Pryde is regarded as one of the most powerful marketing agents in South Africa. As the investment, marketing and communications manager of the Gauteng Economic Development Agency (GEDA), Moodley-Pryde helped to raise R1.5-billion in new investments in the province in 2003, leading to the creation of more than 2 500 sustainable jobs.
As Gauteng earns 10% of Africa's total gross domestic product and contributes 33.9% to South Africa's GDP - with Johannesburg alone responsible for 11% of the total - Moodley-Pryde's efforts are important not just to GEDA and Gauteng, but to the country as a whole.
COMMUNITY
Nomthunzi Joyce Mali
Faith healer Nomthunzi Joyce Mali is a community builder who has
assisted with a number of projects in the impoverished Zigodlo Village near Debe Nek in the Eastern Cape, giving hope to orphans and street children, promoting spiritual healing and helping to reduce crime through a number of youth development projects.
Mali's projects have offered hope and a more positive outlook to community members through developing and furnishing schools and churches in her area. She has also founded two successful gospel groups and facilitated the building of a gym.
Mary Lwate
Mary Lwate, founder of the Good Hope Community Organisation in Lebanon near Winterveld in the North West, has developed a number of beneficial community projects in one of the country’s most impoverished areas.
With only a grade four education, Lwate started the Good Hope Community Organisation in 1997 in order to care for abandoned and abused children. Her extended family has grown
from 18 girls to over 170 children aged between several months and 20 years.
In addition to caring for the children, Lwate ensures that they attend school and teaches them skills such as baking, dressmaking and knitting. The children have formed a soccer team, netball team and drama group, and have won three prizes for their singing.
Lwate's projects have drawn the interest of international organisations such as the Taiwan Buddhist Compassion Relief Fund, which donated a home for the children and has paid for school fees, and an American organisation that supported one of her beadwork projects.
Maria Mello
Maria Mello, founder of the Makotse Women's Club, a women's organisation operating from Makotse village in the Capricorn district in Limpopo - an area characterised by high poverty, unemployment, illiteracy and teenage pregnancy.
The Makotse Women's Club engages in
sustainable community building projects focused on baking, gardening, HIV/Aids awareness, managing the elderly and crèche development. It has created jobs for around 40 community members, and has reached some 35% of the area's population.
Beka Ntsanwisi
Beka Ntsanwisi, a presenter with community-based radio station Munghana Lonene FM in Limpopo, uses her voice on the airwaves to assist disadvantaged people in the area.
More than just a radio show, her gospel radio programme is regarded as a lifeline for the poor and needy, and her response to the needs of community members knows no bounds.
Ntsanwisi has facilitated projects that include the building of the Pfukani Bakery and a care centre for the disabled near Giyani. "Mama Beka" has also helped women to start their own brick- and fence-making business, Tiyimeleni Va Manana (Work for Yourselves, Mothers) in
Makumeke.
EDUCATION
Letticia Moja
Professor Letticia Moja, the first black woman to head a South African medical faculty, is a brilliant academic and leader who believes in the need for training black doctors. Moja stepped into her role as dean of the faculty of health science at the University of the Free State in January 2004, having been vice-dean of the faculty from 2002. She headed the gynaecologic oncology unit at Ga-Rankuwa Hospital in Pretoria from 1997 to 2002.
Moja is passionate about harmony while maintaining cultural differences, and is held in high regard by a broad cross-section of colleagues young and old. She also serves on the Medical and Dental Board and the Health Professions Council, representing women's issues and minority groups.
Kelebogile Dilotsotlhe
Harvard science graduate Kelebogile Dilotsotlhe, one of the few women worldwide to head up a science centre, is the CEO of Gauteng's new Sci-Bono Discovery Centre. Aimed at making every learner in Gauteng science-literate, the Sci-Bono centre focuses on exciting programmes for learners and educators which help translate work from paper to practice.
Dilotsotlhe also serves as chair of the marketing and promotions sub-committee of the MTN Science Centre, on the advisory board of the School of Maths, Science and Technology Education at North West University, and on the board of the South African Quality Institute.
Nomxolisi Matyana
Nomxolisi Matyana has dedicated her career to promoting correct usage of one of the country's most precious commodities, water.
Matyana is a programme manager of the 2020 Vision for Water and
Sanitation Education Programme, which includes the South African Youth Water Prize Competition, and co-ordinated the country's first annual Baswa Lee Metse (Youth and Water) Awards.
Nomxolisi was one of the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry's first community development officers, and was responsible for the entire Eastern Cape province, where she established functioning community structures for the management of water resources.
Now deputy director in the department, her efforts have elevated the importance of water-related issues to see the inclusion of water and sanitation as part of Curriculum 2005.
HEALTH
Joey le Roux
Joey le Roux, the first woman to be appointed twice in the top management role of Pretoria hospitals, turned a private hospital into a facility that educates and empowers the local community, while saving the jobs of
those working at the hospital.
Faced with having to close the hospital and retrench its staff, as group HR manager of Pretoria Gynaecological Hospital, Le Roux took up the challenge of making the hospital more relevant to the community. She instituted a special care package for mothers-to-be without medical aid that gave them the same standard of healthcare at the hospital at a reduced rate, enabling hundreds of mothers to deliver their babies at the private hospital. The project reduces the burden on state hospitals and gives mothers the benefit of a smaller private institution.
Le Roux's initiative doubled profits at the hospital in the 2002-03 financial year.
Le Roux has also implemented programmes to increase awareness of breast and cervical cancer among women, feeding programmes for malnourished children, literacy courses and dietary awareness programmes.
Shereen
Usdin
Harvard graduate Dr Shereen Usdin, a medical doctor and public health specialist, is the co-founder of Soul City, a locally and internationally acclaimed multimedia initiative that uses popular media to promote health and development. Soul City reaches over 82% of the South African population, educating people about HIV/Aids, tuberculosis, maternal and child health, substance abuse and gender violence.
The multi-award winning initiative, one of the largest health education projects of its kind, has grown into one of the country's largest NGOs and employing over 50 people.
Usdin consults internationally on health, gender and human rights issues. She is a co-founder of the Alliance for Children's Entitlement to Social Security, and a member of the steering committee of the SA Gender Based Violence and Health Initiative. She helped establish the Stop Women Abuse Helpline, and is the author of "The No Nonsense Guide to HIV/Aids".
Ruth Maoela
Ruth Maoela, HIV/Aids co-ordinator with the Bethesda Aids Action team, takes her nursing skills and home-based care initiatives to rural areas in the Jozini area of KwaZulu-Natal. Since 1999 she has travelled hundreds of kilometres daily to educate and train home-based caregivers in a special 10-day course designed for women with only primary school education.
Maoela has developed a network of 150 home-based caregivers, founded on female volunteers but extending to traditional healers and leaders as well as ministers of religion.
A believer in the importance of making Aids and HIV patients feel part of the community, Maoela facilitates awareness projects that focus on bed-bathing and feeding, prevention and treatment of mouth and bed sores, factual information about Aids, and caring for those with the disease.
The qualified nurse insists she can be more effective in the
rural areas rather than being a "bedside nurse", and her projects make a huge difference in the rural areas of KwaZulu-Natal, caring for 90 clients, offering counselling at nine voluntary and testing sites, and caring for over 1 130 orphans.
MEDIA & COMMUNICATIONS
Ferial Haffajee
Ferial Haffajee became the first woman editor of a major South African newspaper when, aged 36, she took over the editorship of the Johannesburg-based Mail & Guardian (M&G) in January 2004. In the year South Africa celebrates 10 years of democracy, Haffajee's appointment to this campaigning investigative paper, born during the height of the anti-apartheid struggle, is a triumph for gender equality in South Africa.
An advocate of calm leadership, Haffajee reports a two-thirds female contingency in the M&G newsroom, and aims to nurture more investigate journalism in the
M&G on sensitive gender issues such as the rate of rape and sexual violence in South Africa. Writer of "The Little Black Book" while still at the Financial Mail, Haffajee is currently compiling a women's version, to be released in October.
Pelonomi Makau
Pelonomi Makau took on the enormous task of saving a community radio station in the rural area of Taung in the North West, and has since seen its transmission area increase from a 30km to an 80km radius that incorporates the Taung, Jan Kempdorp, Hartswater, Reivilo, Vryburg, Warrenton and Christiana areas.
Since taking up the reins at Vaaltar FM in 2002, Makau has combated internal resistance within the station against a woman in the role of station manager, and has successfully implemented new systems within the station, including employment contracts and incentive schemes, broadcast policies and presenter training.
With no
Government funding and only a 30km radius for broadcasting coverage, Makau lobbied local stakeholders and businesses to support the station in the interest of the broader community - their client base. She gradually involved government departments, advertising agencies and local municipalities to support the station, and negotiated with the Department of Communications and Sentech to increase the broadcasting radius to 80km.
Makau's radio station now includes community, business and government participation to the benefit of all. She is one of only 10 women heading up more than 100 community radio stations in South Africa.
Maserame Mouyeme
Maserame Mouyeme is the group managing director of FCB South Africa, one of the largest advertising and communications companies in the country. She has been active in the transformation and educational portfolios of the Association for
Communication & Advertising and the AAA School of Advertising, ensuring access, funding and training for previously disadvantaged South Africans.
Mouyeme assists talented young people by employing them as salaried interns at FCB. She has also been a major driving force behind the firm's black economic empowerment nitiatives, resulting in one of the largest equity ownership deals among advertising agencies in South Africa in 2003.
A chartered marketer, Mouyeme advocates female representation at top management levels and has promoted many women to directorship at FCB.
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Tebello Nyokong
Professor Tebello Nyokong is researching a ground-breaking new cancer diagnosis and treatment methodoloy - photodynamic therapy - that offers an alternative to chemotherapy, using a red laser light and the same dye used in blue denims,
harmless by itself and activated by exposure to light.
Nyokong is currently collaborating with Russian researchers to acquire a licence to commence South African clinical trials for photodynamic therapy, which has been approved in some countries abroad, and does not destroy hair or healthy cells or make the patient sick. The project would be a first for South Africa and the continent.
While she finds being a female researcher lonely, and often feels excluded from the primarily male academic fraternity, Nyokong continues to train, from her base at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, highly skilled chemists - particularly women - with the skills to move South Africa to the frontlines of scientific development.
Claire Reid
Eighteen-year old Claire Reid is a local and international award winner for her "Water Wise Reel Gardening" system, that cuts down water usage for growing
vegetables by a phenomenal 80%. Reid's invention offers a breakthrough for water conservation in rural areas in the developing world, and earned her the country's Women in Water Award for persons under the age of 35, as well as the 2003 Stockholm Junior Water Prize.
Reid's 2002 New Year's resolution - to plant her own vegetables at home, an expensive and futile exercise due to fertiliser and water costs, as well as the incomprehensible instructions on seed packets - led her to design a system for all Africans to understand and use, regardless of education, language or financial status.
Over 70% of the world's water is used in agriculture, and Reid's simple and effective seed-planting system, where seeds are encapsulated inside newspaper strips, cuts down water usage by reducing water leakage into the soil. The newspaper strips keep seeds moist so that they germinate without wasting water and
without being eaten by birds, and at the right depth for proper growth.
Sharon Biermann
Dr Sharon Biermann, a geographer whose research into sustainable urban development has brought local and international recognition, challenges the assumption that the compact city is always the most cost-effective and sustainable.
Biermann received the CSIR 2003 Top Achievers Award for her contribution to location and investment decisions for low-cost residential developments that fundamentally affect the quality of life of South Africa's urban population, where more than 40% of households are woman-headed.
Biermann's work on sustainable housing locations for low-income households at both national and urban settlement levels addresses the practical needs of women and their need to rise and contribute financially to society.
She has developed a bulk infrastructure potential cost
model, where potential costs are calculated on the basis of demand for services. Heer research is highly regarded and used by policy makers working on the National Housing Spatial Investment Framework and National Spatial Development Perspective.
Valerie Corfield
Professor Valerie Corfield has developed The DNA Detective and Design a Food initiatives, introducing the world of science, via workshops and kits, to educators and learners in disadvantaged communities, where the need for science advancement is the greatest.
Corfield especially promotes science with the aim of encouraging young girls to enter this field. Her workshops, sponsored by the Department of Science and Technology's Public Understanding of Science initiative, have been conducted as far afield as the Grahamstown Festival and National Science Week in both Limpopo and the Western Cape.
Her latest
government-funded schools science initiative focuses on custom-designing science kits for rural schools in South Africa.
As molecular geneticist at the University of Stellenbosch, Corfield is researching the molecular causes and functional consequences of inherited heart disease.
SOCIAL SERVICES
Cookie Edwards
Cookie Edwards pioneered and co-ordinates the KwaZulu-Natal Network of Violence against Women, which played a major role in the New Domestic Violence Act of 99, the setting up of the Durban Family Court and numerous public safety outreach programmes aimed at improving the condition of abused women in South Africa.
Edwards campaigns progressively with the government and NGOs, and plays a major role in securing national and international funding to offer hope to abused women throughout the country.
Not only has she arranged
marches and training workshops on woman abuse provincially, nationally and abroad for the past 16 years, but her own home has served as a haven for abused women. Alongside her own three children, three previously disadvantaged girls (two foster, one adopted) have become proud young women in her home care.
Valentia Kadalie
Valentia Kadalie is a social welfare entrepreneur for the aged who has dedicated the past 20 years to making geriatric care an inspiring and fulfilling career.
Managing care for the elderly on a regional and national basis, Kadalie initiated the Olympiatrics, an annual sports day for seniors, which led to a national physical activity programme for seniors run by the Department of Sport and Recreation. She also started the Holiday Exchange Programme, which offers residents of old-age homes a free two-week annual holiday.
The City Mission's GH
Starck-Rehoboth Age Exchange in Cape Town, which Kadalie has developed over a period of 22 years, is the only comprehensive facility of its kind in South Africa, and the country's only day-care facility for people with dementia and Alzheimer's disease.
The project provides accommodation for 136 people and access to professional and rehabilitative services to some 150 day-care clients, and is regarded as a best practice model for the care of the elderly that can be replicated anywhere in the world.
Here, Kadalie and her team of 32 staff and 56 regular volunteers, half of whom are over 70 years of age, provide independent or assisted living, as well as frail, terminal and broader community care for the aged.
Priscilla Dlamini
Sister Priscilla Dlamini, with her own two hands and a R10 000 grant, converted old stables into a haven for the rejected HIV patients dying as
beggars in the vast sugar plantations constituting the KwaZulu-Natal hills.
Dlamini, a Catholic nun since the age of 15, has since received international recognition for her Holy Cross Aids Hospice in eMoyeni near Gingindlovu, Eshowe.
With no funding for modern medicines, Dlamini combined traditional healers' home remedies to treat opportunistic infections among her Aids patients, and her herb garden is now so renowned that healers from the Eastern Cape and Swaziland are buying her remedies.
Dlamini and her volunteer caregivers now receive funding from the Holy Cross Children's Trust in London to take care of an additional 453 child-headed households and 1 121 orphans, and provide home-based care for 2 011 people. Her hospice has become Spoornet's corporate social investment flagship in the region.
SPORT
Modi
Marishane-Nyaka
Modi Marishane-Nyaka, newly elected president of the SA Handball Federation and former vice-president of the now defunct SA Netball Association, is using her own experience of this once-forgotten sport in South Africa to revive it to one of the top sporting codes among young South Africans.
Currently providing national guidance to project implementers in rural and previously disadvantaged communities for the United Nations Office on Drug Control, she firmly believes in the role sport plays in developing SA's youth.
Marishane-Nyaka conducts training programmes and workshops on all-round sports involvement in rural schools nationwide to promote drug prevention therapy among the youth. Under the umbrella of Rainbow Interaction SA, she has taken learners to Moscow for team-building exercises through applied sport and non-verbal communication through body language skills.
Lindsey Carlisle
Lindsey Carlisle, 149-times captain of the internationally competitive SA women's hockey team, has represented her country at the Olympics and now shares her love of the sport as a coach and participant of the Southern Gauteng Hockey Association's "Schools of Excellence" programme, which aims to develop talented young players.
Carlisle left her career in graphic design to pursue her passion for sport, and since 1998 has regularly shared her love of and expertise in hockey with thousands of schoolchildren through coaching clinics.
From 1997 to 2002, Carlisle was the head coach of the Southern Gauteng Hockey Academy, which provides top coaching to Gauteng's most talented school and under-21 hockey stars - even male hockey players have joined the academy due to its high levels of training.
Mandy Adamson
Mandy Adamson has represented
South African golf as a professional woman player on numerous occasions, even though she was diagnosed with "chronic fatigue syndrome" during 2002. During her illness she devoted her time to making important changes to the WPGA and to compiling "A Beginner's Guide to Golf".
Adamson has played the lowest competitive round in the history of South African women's professional golf - at the Houghton golf course during the Nedbank Ladies SA Masters - and is currently ranked 25th in the world.
Source: Shoprite Checkers / SABC2 Women of the Year
 | 
