WISA • Y WP
YWP-ZA Women’s Month Webinar Series:
“She leads with her power, voice and pride” In honour of Women’s Month and the 20 000 women that marched to the Union Buildings on 9 August 1956 to protest the Pass Laws, the WISA Young Water Professionals (YWP-ZA) hosted a webinar series honouring the incredible women working in South Africa’s water sector in 2020.
he first of three webinars, held on 10 August 2020, was entitled ‘She leads: with her power, voice and pride’ and included a dialogue with seven phenomenal women from diverse backgrounds, with amazing stories, sharing their experiences navigating their chosen fields and what the current Covid-19 pandemic has meant for their personal and professional lives. Monica Malunga, acting executive: Operations, Umgeni Water, started the webinar with an all too familiar story of how she, like many others, joined the water sector by chance in her youth: “It found me, I didn’t find it,” she confessed with a laugh. However, after many years of hard work, she had managed to work her way into the upper echelons of leadership in the sector that ‘found her’ and in answering the question of how
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she came to be an executive at Umgeni Water, Malunga says that when she was given an opportunity to lead, she took that opportunity while at the same time making sure that – through her hard work and excellent leadership – she would not just be a token woman in leadership, but would use her voice to make sure that women in the sector would have similar opportunities.
Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.” Maya Angelou
Malunga advises young women that while South African society is still battling to accept women in boardrooms and there still remains a perception that women who raise their voice are ‘just being emotional’, it does not mean you have to start acting like a man to be accepted in positions of power. “Stay true to yourself and know that, as a woman, you have all the capabilities that men have and you must demand that space in the boardroom and not be afraid to speak and stand up for yourself,” she said.
Mentorship
The need for mentorship among women was a consistent talking point among the panellists, with Dr Tebogo Mashifana, senior lecturer, University of Johannesburg, challenging those women that are the first to enter the male-dominated boardrooms to ask themselves what they are doing to empower other women to achieve the same and taking the time to mentor these young women who are following in their footsteps. Matome Selelo, microbiologist, ERWAT, further advised that while she agrees mentorship is critical, young water professionals (YWPs) must equally “come with a teachable attitude” and a willingness to learn, so as to harness this mentorship better. “Whenever there was a new student, it was always a man,” recalled Lungi Zuma, senior chemical engineer,
