“In business and life you have to work hard, you have to have integrity and you have to choose your partners carefully,” Wits University chancellor Dr Judy Dlamini – one of SA’s most successful entrepreneurs – says.
This week, Nelson Mandela University’s faculty of business and economic sciences awarded her an honorary doctorate at its graduation ceremony.
“I am most grateful to Nelson Mandela University, the only university totally led by women,” Dlamini said.
Dlamini practised as a medical doctor for several years before pursuing a business career, as the founder and chair of the Mbekani Group, which she launched 22 years ago.
Today it includes a wide range of companies, including surgical equipment, facilities management, security, commercial property, and luxury fashion retail.
Her message to all the graduates was: “We find ourselves in an environment where too many people are lacking integrity and who are only about serving themselves.
“If you operate like this, sooner or later things will go bad and you will have to account for what you have done.
“Rather conduct yourself with integrity from the outset, and treat yourself and others with respect, because then there can be no skeletons and no risk of destroying your reputation and legacy.”
She said this philosophy should extend to the people with whom they do business.
“Choose your partners carefully. I say this with experience after having made a bad investment a while ago by partnering with people who turned out not to be clean business people.”
Dlamini also encouraged all graduates to nurture their self-belief, which is a major theme in her life.
“I grew up in Westville, near Durban, at a time when it was a crime to have my complexion.
“Yet I was raised by parents who encouraged me to pursue my education and who told me I could be anything I chose to be.”
Dlamini’s late parents – Rita (born Ngwane) and Thomas Dlamini – refused to be broken by the apartheid system.
She, in turn, makes it her mission to convey to all African graduates, students and pupils that they, too, can be anything they choose to be.
“A lot of positive stories, stories of successful people don’t have an African face. We need positive African stories to build a positive mindset in the African child from the youngest age. We also need ordinary people to know how important their contribution is.
“I believe it is the woman and man in the street who have the power to change the status quo. I don’t believe in big names, I believe in ordinary people doing what is right. And there are a lot of those.”
Dlamini is a strong proponent of empowering women, which, she says, starts with a quality education from the earliest age and goes all the way through to challenging persistent stereotypes and prejudices about women leaders.
“If you stick to stereotypes about who can lead, you will have a mediocre leadership.”
She said all men, particularly those in leadership positions, needed to contribute to changing the status quo and proactively partner women in removing barriers.
“Women make up half of the world’s population and human capital, and the world at large can only start to flourish when 50% of the population achieves full equality.”
Dlamini’s latest venture is a partnership with her chartered accountant daughter Nkanyezi Makhari. It’s a specialised debt fund for medium-size businesses on the continent, she said.
“Medium-size businesses are often family-owned and they would rather opt for debt funding than equity as they don’t want to relinquish ownership.”
On the education front, Dlamini is co-founder of The Sifiso Learning Group, with her husband Sizwe Nxasana, a leading businessman and one of the first black chartered accountants in SA. It is named in honour of their late son, Sifiso.
The group promotes gender equality from the youngest age, and opened its first Future Nation Schools in 2017. It now has three pre-schools and two high schools in Gauteng.
“We integrate the different subjects in projects they work on to solve problems, and they learn about entrepreneurship, coding, leadership and African history.”
Dlamini was installed as chancellor of Wits University at the beginning of December.
She is “very encouraged about how Wits has transformed demographically and at the same time academic excellence has continued and advanced”.
“We need to celebrate our Africanness and our intellectual contribution to the world. We need to celebrate the beauty and diversity of our looks, complexions and beings.
“The process has started but I believe I will see this significantly advance in my lifetime.”
Dlamini’s latest book, titled The Other Story, comes out in February 2019.