<h2>Q&amp;A With… Busi Mabuza</h2>
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<h4>IDC Chair Busi Mabuza on diversity and development.</h4>
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<h4>There are many female executives at the top at the IDC; how is the organization driving gender to resolve challenges in the African economy?</h4>
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<li>The pleasing part is that the more we improve, the more we see opportunity to get better. Just over half of our staff complement at the IDC is female. We have focused on nurturing talent in a fair and equitable manner. The CEO [Geoffrey Qhena] pays specific attention to promoting equity in the management and executive levels of the organization. My interest is to also ensure that our professional level, which is our natural leadership pipeline, continues to be representative.</li>
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<h4>How does the IDC develop female entrepreneurs and ensure they contribute to the economy and nation-building?</h4>
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<li>The funding of women-owned business is one of our specific corporate key performance targets which we monitor and report on. This has focused everybody’s mind and is an integral part of our conversations at board meetings. We recently hosted a conversation session with women entrepreneurs specifically focusing on manufacturing. Management is now synthesizing the very constructive inputs received. We aim to be an accessible funder and to be one of the first ports of call for entrepreneurs requiring funding in our areas of focus.</li>
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<h2>Zama Luthuli</h2>
Past the tight security at the Industrial Development Corporation’s (IDC) stately headquarters in Sandton, Johannesburg, and up a couple of floors, we meet Zama Luthuli as she steps out of one of the glass-enclosed offices. She is slender, in a striped skirt and killer heels; one could have easily passed her off as a model.
Luthuli laughs when you suggest this. She has considered becoming a model and owning her own makeup and clothing line, she admits, so we are not far from the truth.
At 40, this self-confessed fashionista is the IDC’s youngest executive. As Divisional Executive: Corporate Affairs, she holds a critical role. This is evident when she points to the files she has in front of her, of entrepreneurs the IDC has developed. She speaks animatedly about them. This job, clearly, is more than a job for her.
“I see it as a contribution to the continent,” she says, which makes the long hours and lengthy Exco meetings worthwhile.
“It’s something bigger than us, it’s about other people. We work long hours, we get so tired but we look at people’s businesses and see the impact in their lives, and then the long meetings no longer matter.”
The IDC is a 75-year-old national development finance institution in South Africa set up to promote economic growth and industrial development.
Luthuli was only 37 when she assumed an executive role for the first time, in her previous job, at PetroSA. She joined the IDC in July last year, working with four heads in marketing, CRM, CSI and facilities management. Her work is in perfect alignment with her goals.
“A woman’s role is in the kitchen? A woman’s role is in bigger kitchens nowadays, [kitchens] that make stuff, create stuff and create employment,” says Luthuli, referring to the umpteen factories and industries that women lead today.
It’s a far cry from when her mother struggled to send her to university. Born in KwaZulu-Natal, Luthuli worked very hard in order not to disappoint her mother, and graduated in communications.
Thereafter, she says she was always fortunate finding employment.
That’s also because she was willing to take risks. “I always knew I wanted to be in a corporate environment.”
But she has a piece of advice for young people. “If you want a job, make one,” she says.
“With challenges, you learn, you grow, you adjust. There will be a woman who has been there before, so rely on her skills. It’s important to have a mentor. You need to understand the lay of the land, understand the organization.
“And always look for a business opportunity in what you do while you are employed. There are so many creative ideas we encounter on a daily basis. Whilst you are working, work on your dream, work on an idea, have a back-up plan.”
What are some of the most offbeat entrepreneurial ideas Luthuli has seen come her way?
“We find quite a few blueberry farms in South Africa!” she offers.
A single mother, with two girls aged 13 and nine, Luthuli says it’s important to rely on support systems. She took up an MBA degree after the birth of her children. But in the end, it’s about finding what works.
“Balance is something you create that’s relevant to your own situation and environment. Balance is also taking into account your own personal journey at a given time.”
The articulate executive says she has gone through enough pain and loss in her life that she knows it’s teaching her something every day.
“Our challenges may be different but let’s not dim our lights, let’s help each other,” says Luthuli, and you know that’s exactly what she’s doing at the IDC, lending her creative energies and late hours for Africa and its people.
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<h2>Lizeka Matshekga</h2>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-32014 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/IDC-046-1024x681.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="681" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IDC-046.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IDC-046-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IDC-046-600x399.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IDC-046-768x511.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />
Ten minutes into the interview and it’s easy to tell Lizeka Matshekga is a soft-spoken powerhouse. While that may sound an oxymoron, this is a person with enough years in the financial services industry and multiple accolades in her trophy cabinet.
“I don’t want to call it success,” says Matshekga, with a quiet confidence.
“I am hungry. When you have hunger, you keep growing. I am hungry for information and knowledge. It has nothing to do with success. It’s really about wanting to know more every day.”
Matshekga has been with the IDC for 10 years, and is the Divisional Executive of Agro, Infrastructure &amp; New Industries.
With a master’s degree in Development Finance from the University of Stellenbosch, an honors degree in Financial Analysis and Portfolio Management from the University of Cape Town, and a BCom degree from the University of Western Cape, she has had 22 years in the financial services sector, in areas such as investment banking, treasury, turnaround and restructuring management, BEE financing and post investment management.
Last year in November, at the IDC, Matshekga scooped four awards, the most anyone won that year.
From Gugulethu, a township in the Western Cape, she stumbled into finance studies quite by accident.
“I wanted to be a scientist or doctor. I applied for BCom by mistake. My mother asked me to try it for a week, and I loved it! It was in my destiny.”
Matshekga’s mother, now 68, was a domestic worker who raised the children on her own.
“I had no access to bursaries. It was my twin sister’s biology teacher who helped me get the R1,000 ($73) registration fee for my BCom. It’s people like that I am grateful for today because he saw something in me. That’s the seed I needed.
“I always have this notion that your circumstances do not define your future. Almost every black child has faced poverty in childhood. In Gugulethu, most kids didn’t have hope. I was hungry to make a difference.”
She came to Johannesburg, which further fueled the hunger in her. Matshekga worked with Standard Bank Corporate Merchant Bank, and was with the National Empowerment Fund for three years. She joined the IDC and “has not looked back since”.
“I have been through the entire investment cycle at the IDC,” she says.
In 2011, she was asked to head up forestry within the IDC. She had never been exposed to the sector or been “a deal-maker”, so she thought: ‘how do I start?’
The unit was at its lowest in terms of performance when she took over, going up to “Top 5 in operations in the front office” by the end of the year, remaining that way for a while. Soon, Matshekga was also asked to take over the green industries sector, now called industrial infrastructure. Her mantra?
“I create an environment for my people to feel they are adding value and can be creative. It’s not my way or the highway&#8230; I also don’t limit myself to my focus area, I always look for things beyond my zone.
“I always tell youngsters at the IDC that your mentor needn’t be a senior, your mentor could be a peer. When you have friendships, let it add value. Don’t be shy to ask a team member. There are no stupid questions. You always come out of that engagement empowered.
“I always use the tested approach,” she says. “The IDC has invested so many development tools in ensuring where I am today.”
She is passionate about the new emerging industries of the future, and believes it will be her legacy.
A mother of three children, aged 16, 11 and three, Matshekga puts in enough late nights, knowing the larger purpose of her work. Thankfully, she says she has a supportive husband, which helps as her diary is more hectic than his.

IDC-039

Going Above And Beyond

There is a new buzzword in town. Everywhere you go, businesswomen and top exe-cutives are complaining about their inability to maintain a quality work-life balance.
With the world economy still struggling, many executives, and indeed employees at all rungs, have felt the need to demonstrate their commitment to the company. They often do so at the expense of other priorities in their lives, such as family time and the things they do for fun.
Reports show that women, especially mothers and wives, feel part-icularly hard done by. They feel that their office hours demand a lot from them, and because of this, they are unable to meet the demands of their husbands and children.
It does not help that men – so goes the narrative – are reluctant to do their bit at home. They just sit on the couch and watch sport on television, forgetting that their partners have had a hectic day of their own running businesses.
While I have some sympathy for women who have to navigate this struggle, it really feels to me like the novelty of this problem is a tad exaggerated.
Everyone who works or runs a business necessarily needs to sacrifice something if they are to be successful. If it is a career or a business, then hobbies or time with family might have to suffer.
That is life. It is has been like that for a long time.
If in doubt, maybe these women should ask their domestic workers how they do it. In fact, they could ask their grandmothers, or even their own mothers. They could ask rural women or others on the factory floor how they get it right.
Just because business schools have not dedicated time and scholarships to how the night shift office cleaners, the domestic workers and the farmhands are able to manage working long hours and raising children – often for less money than their bosses spend on a pair of Jimmy Choos – does not mean they do not struggle with balancing work and life.
What some of these women forget while they are networking at business conferences is that there is another woman in their homes. And that this other woman is ensuring that the house is clean and that the children are bathed and fed.
If they were really serious about this work-life balance, they would be paying their domestic worker more because she obviously cannot be helping her own children with their homework when she is busy with the boss’s brats.
If someone is walking your dog, running your household and supervising your children’s feeding habits, chances are that their own children and household are being neglected.
Like the CEO, the poor domestic worker must also go home and be a mother to her children and a partner to her significant other. They too struggle, because invariably they have less of a support system than their bosses.
To use the catchphrase: their work-life balance is out of balance. Yet they carry on instead of making a big song and dance about it. They do not throw tantrums, because despite their low station in life, they understand implicitly that a working life requires certain sacrifices.
It is not because their own husbands and children deserve less love than those of their bosses.
I am sure that the idea of carrying a child on one’s back while getting on with the business of living did not come from a seminar on how to handle the work-life balance. Someone just threw a baby on her back, found something to keep the child from falling off, picked up a hoe and went to work tilling the fields. The trend caught on and has shown itself to be highly effective, even though it has yet to feature in business schools’ research.
Corporate and businesswomen who complain about a poor work-life balance must just snap out of it. Life is tough and it does not get any better as you climb the ladder.
It has nothing to do with being a woman. Instead of looking for symp-athy, they should try to be creative about using their time effectively.
We all have 24 hours in a day and unless you plan better, it does not matter whether you are a man or a woman, the CEO or the tea lady, you will keep ending up at the wrong end of the work-life balance.
So here is a tip for all those women stressing about how to find the right work-life balance. Pretend that you are an avant-garde employer. Take the employee you have forgotten is just as much a woman as you are out for a drink and ask her how she manages.
Who knows, the outing may just make you avant-garde instead of you faking it.

Tag: Executives

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Going Above And Beyond

Balancing business and pleasure