Seventy years after more than 20 000 women marched to the Union Buildings to protest apartheid pass laws, women leaders are still asking what it takes to turn hard-won access into real power. The question was raised during a Women's Month conversation that brought together women who entered the workplace in very different South Africas, from the 1970s to the present day.
At From the Union Buildings to the Boardroom Conversation, hosted by A Seat At The Table Connect Board Mastery, speakers reflected on the women who fought before them, the barriers they faced in their own careers and what they now owe to the women coming behind them. While much has changed since 1956, the discussion made it clear that getting women into positions of leadership is only one part of the work.
Opening the event, the host reminded guests that many women in the room had been the first in their families to attend university, enter corporate South Africa, become executives or start businesses. But, she said, being the first should come with the responsibility of making sure that someone else does not have to fight the same battle alone. “Being the first is an achievement, but our responsibility is to make sure we are not the last,” she said. That idea of passing something on became one of the main themes of the evening.
Former minister Ayanda Dlodlo, who delivered the keynote address, began by remembering women whose stories are often missing from conversations about leadership. Dlodlo, who grew up in Soweto and later spent years in exile, said she wanted to dedicate her address to three women and a man from her unit who were killed in Piet Retief in 1988. She also remembered a friend and fellow comrade who was assassinated in Eswatini when her child was only three months old. “These are the stories of the women that I think we need to continue to tell as we traverse this journey of leadership, hope, communication and resilience,” Dlodlo said.
For Dlodlo, the story of women's leadership in South Africa cannot begin with the famous 1956 march. She argued that the women who marched to the Union Buildings were part of a much longer history of African women who led communities, resisted oppression and exercised political power.
She pointed to figures such as Queen Mmantatisi, Queen Modjadji, Queen Nandi and Queen Labotsibeni, who she said should be remembered alongside the women of 1913 and 1956. These women, Dlodlo argued, show that African women's leadership existed long before women were welcomed into formal political and corporate structures. “The story of women's leadership in Africa did not begin in boardrooms. It did not begin in parliaments. It did not even begin in democratic South Africa,” she said.
Dlodlo's own story was also shaped by a period when the possibilities available to Black women were heavily restricted. Born in Soweto, she later went into exile and received military and intelligence training in Angola and Russia. She went on to serve as a minister in three South African administrations and held senior positions in institutions including the World Bank.
Looking back at that journey, she said she had come to understand leadership as a responsibility rather than a reward. “Leadership is not about power. It is about responsibility,” she said.
For Dlodlo, that responsibility includes making it easier for the next woman to enter the room. She said women who reach positions of influence should not become so focused on protecting their own place that they forget the people who are still trying to get through the door. “The true purpose of leadership is not to make yourself important but to make other women believe that they, too, can become important,” she said. That message was reflected in the panel's shared experiences.
Futhi Mtoba, a chartered accountant and former chairperson of Deloitte South Africa, spoke about entering the accounting profession in the 1970s, when there were very few Black chartered accountants in the country. She remembered Wiseman Nkuhlu, the first African chartered accountant in South Africa, as an important example for young Black professionals who were entering a profession that had largely been closed to them.
Mtoba said she initially planned to study economics because she wanted to become the governor of the South African Reserve Bank. Her career took a different direction after she encountered Black graduates in the Eastern Cape who were working towards becoming chartered accountants. She eventually moved to Johannesburg, where she experienced what she described as a major culture shock.
Clients questioned whether they should have a Black auditor, while some senior executives used openly racist language towards her.
But Mtoba said she was not alone. Black trainees from different accounting firms would meet every Saturday to study and support one another. Women working across different parts of corporate South Africa also built networks to help each other deal with the challenges they faced. “You cannot fight these battles alone,” Mtoba said. “Built-in support structures are everything.”
Lerato Mangope, who entered the finance industry in the 1980s, recalled facing a different but equally direct form of exclusion. She said she had been politically conscious from a young age and became interested in financial markets to understand economic power and its effects on people's lives.
When she told a lecturer that she wanted to become an analyst, she was told that Black people were not allowed in that space.
Instead of accepting the response, Mangope said it made her more determined to enter the industry. Once she was in the corporate treasury, she found herself dealing with white male executives who were reluctant to work with her.
Mangope eventually realised that the position she occupied gave her leverage. She controlled investment flows and used that power to push financial institutions to take transformation seriously.
“If a bank refused to transform or deal with me directly, I closed their investment line,” she said. She also insisted that Black professionals and women should be part of the teams involved in financial deals before she would do business with certain institutions. For Mangope, being in the room was never enough. The position had to allow her to change who else could enter that room.
Asanda Penny entered the workforce after 1994, at a time when South Africa's new democracy created expectations that many of the old barriers would disappear. But she said being a young Black woman in the workplace showed her that some barriers had simply become less obvious.
“People often questioned my presence or assumed my career growth had a ceiling,” Penny said. Her response was to focus on excellence, integrity and authenticity. She also described leadership as a form of service, saying that the positions women hold should be used to help others grow.
For Penny, that includes rejecting the idea that women have to copy traditional ideas of masculinity to be taken seriously. “You do not need to adopt masculine postures or pretend to be someone else to execute authority,” she said. “True power comes from competence, preparation, intellect and emotional intelligence.”
The youngest member of the panel, Mothathe Sewelo, said women of her generation were entering a workplace very different from the one older women on the panel had faced.
The basic question of whether women could be competent enough to enter certain spaces had, in many cases, changed. The challenge now was making sure women were not simply present for the sake of numbers. “We are allowed in the room. However, the new challenge is ensuring we have an active voice and aren't just filling a quota,” Sewelo said.
She pointed to technology, artificial intelligence and flexible working as changes that could give younger women more control over their careers. But she also stressed that progress should not be confused with equality.
The discussion later turned to the relationship between women in leadership and the communities they come from. An audience member asked how younger people could maintain a connection to the history of the struggle when many leaders had moved away from the townships and communities where they had started.
Mangope said moving away for better opportunities did not mean that leaders should lose their connection to their communities. She encouraged women with access to resources and influence to invest back through mentoring, supporting schools and creating opportunities for young people.
The question also returned to the pressure women sometimes feel to change themselves in order to succeed.
Penny said women should not have to lose their femininity or personality to be seen as strong leaders. For her, kindness and empathy were not signs of weakness but important parts of leadership. “Never apologise for leading with heart and authenticity,” she said.
For Dlodlo, the responsibility of today's women can be understood through the image of a relay race. The women of 1913 passed the baton to the women of 1956. The women of the liberation struggle carried it forward, and the generation that came after 1994 inherited it.
Now, she said, the baton belongs to the current generation. That means the goal cannot simply be to secure a place for yourself. It must also be to make sure that the young woman watching from a township or a rural village can see a future for herself in places where women once had no access.
“A young woman from a township or a remote village is watching and wondering where she belongs,” Dlodlo said. “Our responsibility is to ensure that when her moment comes, she never doubts that she belongs.”
As South Africa marks 70 years since the Women's March of 1956, the discussion suggests that the meaning of that march has changed with each generation. The women of 1956 were fighting to be heard by a government that denied them basic rights. Today's women are fighting different battles, including unequal access to power, representation that does not always translate into influence and the need to create workplaces where women can lead without having to change who they are.
Dlodlo said the measure of today's generation should therefore not only be the positions women have managed to reach. “History will not remember us merely for the seats we occupied. History will remember us for the pathways we created,” she said.
The challenge, then, is not only to get more women into the boardroom. It is to make sure that once they get there, they use their seats to make room for someone else.
As Dlodlo put it, the baton is in our hands. Let us carry it well, carry it forward and never drop it.