Phuthi Mahanyele

Phuti Mahanyele-Dabengwa (born c. 1971) is a South African business executive currently working as the chief executive officer of Naspers South Africa. She previously held the positions of co-founder and chief executive officer at Sigma Capital and CEO at the Shanduka Group.Mahanyele-Dabengwa was included in The Wall Street Journal list of the "Top 50 women in the world to watch in 2008", was recognized by Africa Investors as a "Leading African Woman in Business" in 2012, and named as ForbesWoman Africa "Business Woman of the Year" in 2014. The All Africa Business Leaders Awards (AABLA) named her “Business Woman of the Year” in 2019. Quotes Grab hold of every small opportunity and the bigger ones will follow. Push yourself and show the world what you can do. Your mindset drives everything. Failure should not be the norm, especially today. You need to take advantage of the opportunities in your environment. The opportunities in South Africa are immense. You just have to be “willing to take advantage of them. To be successful, you need to do the detailed work that no one else is willing to do. Be the best person you can be in whatever you choose to do. A good work ethic, consistency and focus always pay off. To be successful, you need a consistent work ethic and focus. Your focus determines your decisions.” – Phuti Mahanyele If you’re not focused, you will be moving from one thing to the next without gaining any depth. To build a career, learn as much as you can, put in the time and put in as much work as you can. It’s not about the number of hours you spend in the office. It is about your output. My purpose is to provide opportunities to people who don’t have opportunities. Opportunities give people confidence. My father made me believe that I could achieve anything. Lamenting your financial difficulties will get you nowhere. Live your life to live out your purpose. Put in the work and build strong professional relationships. Through professional relationships, people get to understand who you are, what you are about and what you are working on. There is a time when you need to put in your all into your career. When we look at people who have succeeded, we forget that people have walked a road to get there. People are always afraid to invest during the difficult times. Your goals have to speak to your values. Your goals should be about building significance. My parents came from humble backgrounds and I was inspired by what they achieved. When going into business, you should view yourself as a business person — people treat you the way you treat yourself. If you come in feeling at a disadvantage, you are already at a disadvantage. It’s important to have the best work ethic, that you’re applying yourself as much as possible and that you’re not as dependent on what others can do for you but that you’re focused on what you can do. I grew up in Claremont in Durban, Maseru in Lesotho, and Dobsonville in Soweto. My parents moved around a lot, and we moved with them. I attended primary school in Maseru, and when we came back to Johannesburg, I completed my schooling at McAuley House Convent, in Milpark. When I arrived at McAuley House, I barely knew how to speak English, and my school friends, whom I had to fit in with, lived in a world that was really foreign to me. My school friends used to invite me to birthday parties at venues that didn’t accept black people back then, so arrangements had to be made for me to be there. Every day when I went home to Soweto, my reality was very clear to me, that my life was very different to that of my school friends. In the late eighties, while the Group Areas Act was still in force, my dad, through his Jewish friends, bought a house in Calvin, in Sandton, and that enabled us to travel shorter distances to school, which made life a lot easier for us. I didn’t have the choice of making my own decisions. I had very challenging parents, but, fortunately, that worked for me. If I had had the choice, I would have chosen to become a ballerina, because that’s what I wanted, but I doubt I would have been sufficiently talented. Since completing my Master’s degree, it’s been a matter of sheer focus. In an interview One of the biggest challenges was losing my mother at the age of 17, whilst I was still in matric. Shortly thereafter, I had to start my university life in the States. Living by myself in a country I’d never been to was a challenge, but I worked very hard and, having watched my parents, I never focused on staying in challenges, I always looked for opportunities. My parents had paid for my school fees from their own pockets, so there was no choice, I had to do well. Many years later, I was very thankful to receive two great awards from Rutgers University. So, I have had challenges, but I’m very thankful to also have been able to reap a lot from those situations. She spoke about the challenges she is facing The advice that I would share, that I certainly got from my parents, is that we are each placed in this world for a purpose. So, despite what anyone might do or say, if you focus on achieving the purpose that is in your heart, you can achieve almost anything. The second piece of advice I would give is to stay in your lane and to respect your parents and follow the guidance of elders. Even if you feel you know better, do so in a respectful manner, because you don’t know everything. If someone is older than you and they are being hurtful or disrespectful towards you, you don’t have to respond by being disrespectful back to them. Just make a ‘note to self’ to never behave that way as an adult yourself, and then focus on becoming the person you were created to be. But most of all, just live your purpose. As young people, we find ourselves in situations where there are so many opportunities for so many things. If you decide to be a person who pleases people, you are going to find yourself being all over the place and eventually not knowing who you are. This is why we need to intentionally remind ourselves of who we are. If not, if you are like I was and you don’t really have a clear sense of who you are — I didn’t — you are constantly looking for ways of connecting with the person you really are. I’m most proud of being able to name Andrew Capitman, whom I met after he had done some work for my dad and whom I worked with decades ago, and call him a friend today. I am also proud to call Mrs Sandy Nicks, who was my Grade 4 English teacher, my friend. She still tells me, “Phuthi, you don’t have to call me Mrs Nicks anymore, call me Sandy”, but I can’t, because I still see her as Mrs Nicks. There are many other things that, on paper, look great, but these are the things that I am personally so thankful for and proud of. In an interview Gender equality starts in the home, with opportunities given to both girls and boys — opportunities to learn, opportunities to be rewarded, opportunities for education of both boys and girls. And so, my wish would be that children be brought up in an environment where they are respected. Secondly, it is my wish that children be given opportunities for education, and, thirdly, that children are able to become the adults that they are supposed to be and, hopefully, adults we can look up to. In the Washington Post of July 20th, 1993, my father is quoted as saying, “You gather around in a circle, and everyone squats. Then you pass around the calabash, and everyone drinks,” demonstrating the traditional manner of consuming sorghum beer. He identified the importance of sorghum beer in our African cultures. Through his focus on product and culture fit to his customers, he was able to reverse the long-term decline in sales of low-alcohol and high-protein drinks after buying the business from the state-run monopoly in 1990. In an interview The role of an entrepreneur is completely different. The individual personally takes on far more risks and typically fills more than one role. The earnings of the entrepreneur are completely dependent on the work of the entrepreneur and their team. To this extent, there’s the potential of facing zero income but there is also the potential of receiving significant income. In my view, to succeed as a company executive requires education and having access to education from different global environments, which places the individual in a great position as they have a much broader view of issues beyond the environment in which they operate. In that regard, young people are very fortunate these days as they also have access to online learning, which can bridge the gap in terms of access to global lessons and global cultures. Entrepreneurship is different; you start your business with your own risk capital. With that in mind, having formal education can be irrelevant; as we all know, some of the world’s most successful tech entrepreneurs do not have a formal education. However, what sets them apart is that whilst they may not have formal qualifications, they are highly informed and educated about their industry both locally and globally. Therefore, there is ‘education’, it may not be formal, but it remains. External links Category: living people Category:Businesswomen from South Africa