ZINHLE THUPANA BY FIONA WAKELIN & KOKETSO MAMABOLO
Zinhle Thupana
Public Sector Leader of the Year
“T
here is a lot of negativity and there are a lot of wrong perceptions about public sector employees,” says Zinhle Thupana, Group Executive for Corporate Services at the Central Energy Fund (CEF). At this year’s Top Empowerment Awards, Zinhle was recognised for her contributions with the Public Sector Leader of the Year Award. As she takes Public Sector Leaders into the world of an award-winning civil servant, it becomes clear that while her role may encompass a range of critical portfolios, it becomes clear that while her role may encompass many portfolios, people are at the very heart of what she does.
YOU WON THE TOP EMPOWERED PUBLIC SECTOR LEADER OF THE YEAR AWARD IN 2023. WHAT DID WINNING THIS AWARD MEAN TO YOU AND HOW HAS IT IMPACTED YOUR JOURNEY? “Quite exciting, I must say, and surprisingly unexpected, but really fulfilling as well. And just to realise that the effort that we put, it is being recognised.
this is what we are doing and this is how we have contributed into the bigger scheme of things from the public sector point of view.
I always say, ‘public servants, we do not tell our story right’. There is a lot of negativity and there are a lot of wrong perceptions about public sector employees. And I do not think there is much time to talk about what we do and contribute to this space. So for me, that really enabled me as an individual to be able to say that this is the story,
We need to sharpen the pencil even more. Let’s make sure that we come up with more initiatives that are still building to add to this journey of the public sector work that we do so that the status quo does not remain, but the status quo changes. There are people, whether in the public sector, or the private sector, that are also on the same
34 | Public Sector Leaders | October 2023
It then brings challenges of saying that I need to do better now, I need to improve more. So there is a bit of pressure now to say, ‘yes, hello, we are here, we have done it, we have won, so what is next?’”
