Today’s post features amazing and impeccable South African women under 40 who are shattering glass ceilings and setting the pace for young women to follow.
these women are experts in their fields and they are doing extra to make life better for the people around them.Obviously, there are countless young South African women who are touching lives and making a difference. For today, we’re looking at five of these amazing women. Here’s the list.
Rapelang Rabana
Rapelang Rabana is a computer scientist, entrepreneur, and keynote speaker. She is currently the Chief Digital Officer of BCX; the founder of Rekindle Learning, a learning technology company.
In 2012, she was on Oprah Magazine’s O Power List. In 2013, she was listed on Forbes’s 30 under 30 list for best entrepreneurs of Africa. In 2014, Rapelang was named one of the Entrepreneurs of the World by the World Entrepreneurship Forum.
Topaz Green
Topaz Page-Green is a fashion model and the founder and president of the non-profit corporation The Lunchbox Fund. When she was about 15 years old she had her first job packing groceries in a small store. She used her earnings to purchase food for herself at school.
After graduating high school Page-Green began her career in modelling after moving to London. While travelling on London’s underground she was noticed by a model scout and signed soon after with a talent agency. On a trip home to South Africa in 2003 she was confronted with the extreme poverty of her country, and decided to do something about it. In 2005, she launched The Lunchbox Fund as her response to this poverty. The fund raises money to provide one meal a day to poor and at-risk students in township high schools in South Africa.
Page-Green created Feedie, an app which is credited as being the “first philanthropic food app.” Designed to be used by ‘foodies’ and others, the Feedie application uses social media to transform people’s passion for sharing their photos of food into the sharing of actual food with school children in need via The Lunchbox Fund.
Dr. Liana Roodt
Dr. Liana Roodt is currently working as a surgical consultant in the Surgical Breast and Endocrine Unit as well as the trauma centre at Groote Schuur Hospital, Cape Town. She specifically wanted to change the experience of breast cancer patients regarding the treatment they receive and as such started Project Flamingo, an organisation that deals with “catch-up surgeries” and “pamper packs”. Thanks to Project Flamingo, Dr. Liana Roodt and her team have drastically reduced the waiting time for mastectomies and are constantly improving the lives of breast cancer patients.
Bonang Matheba
Bonang Matheba is a South African television personality, radio host and businesswoman. She is a former host of “The Front Row’’ radio show on SABC’s Metro FM and the brand ambassador for Revlon Cosmetics South Africa.
After high school she enrolled in a Marketing course at the University of Johannesburg.
In 2007, she cut her studies short after she had auditioned as the host on South Africa’s most watched music series, LIVE. When she got the job, her parents weren’t thrilled about it. They were concerned that a television career was not a real career and that it would not take her anywhere in life.
Bonang has said in many interviews that she had to work very hard to convince her parents that dropping out of the university was a good idea. A few months after joining LIVE, Bonang became an overnight sensation and the most sought after celebrity in South Africa. She gave herself the title “Host with the most”.
Bonang hosted many major music and television awards like the South African Music, Channel O Music Awards, The South African Film and Television Awards and many other beauty pageants including Miss South Africa. She would later make a name for herself as a Master of Ceremonies on live entertainment events as well as in government and corporate functions. After sending her demo tape to popular youth radio station, YFM several times and being rejected over a period of two years, Bonang received the call that she would be part of the new presenter line-up. Her weekend afternoon show on YFM titled The B* Hive was an instant hit with its young listeners.
Mametja Moshe
Mametja Moshe is executive director at Identity Mineral Resources (Pty) Ltd., an African mining investment company. Moshe is one of Africa’s leading voices in the mining industry. Before joining the Identity group of companies, Moshe worked as an Investment Banker at Morgan Stanley covering the South African, Zambian, and Nigerian Mergers & Acquisitions and Equity capital markets for the mining industry. Moshe has sat on the boards of Eurodollar Foreign Exchange (Pty) Ltd and south gold Exploration (Pty) Ltd. Moshe holds a B. Com Hons (Accounting) and a B. Com Hons. Management Accounting degrees from the University of Kwazulu Natal. Moshe is a qualified Chartered Accountant and a graduate of the Global Executive MBA Program at Columbia University and London Business School.
