It Takes a Village - Mentorship

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Today I felt like sharing a very personal letter that I wrote. I had been toying with the topic of mentorship and I could not write about it without writing about me. I also could not write about mentorship without writing about Ubuntu.

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Ubuntu means humanity. It is a continental philosophy that revolves around compassion, humanity and humility. This is far beyond a philosophy as Africans have been practicing Ubuntu without ever needing to define it. We just believed that that is how all people are.

Ubuntu in action is the community coming together to crowd fund and support a family that is known to be in need.

Ubuntu is helping the old in the community.

Ubuntu is about baking cookies for the wake (the days before the burial) of someone you might not know too well but lives down the road. Ubuntu is the about the whole community going to cook at night for the funeral that will be held in the morning. 

Ubuntu is about the young graduate who tutors young kids in their respective community for free afterschool.

Ubuntu is really about helping someone when you really don't have to.

Ubuntu is about realizing that "I am, because we are". It is about truly being beautifully human.

Ubuntu embraces the concept of collaborative excellence and success. Ubuntu is about paying it forward without expecting any recognition nor reward.

I have experienced my fair share of Ubuntu and I practice it too. I have had people from different walks of life help me get to where I am today and there is still a concrete-village behind me driving me to succeed and self-actualize.

Genuine mentorship can also be viewed as ubuntu too.

Please read my letter below to a publication called Destiny Magazine that helped me identify my mentor who truly shaped my life.

Good Day 

I want to take this moment to thank Destiny Magazine for shaping my future more than it will ever know.

Over five years ago, I grabbed my first copy of Destiny Magazine. I read it from front to back. I obsessed over the profiles of the many women that were featured in it and I admired the founder of Ndalo Media and the magazine Khanyi Dhlomo. What I did not expect to find was a life changing moment. I reread the feature done on a phenomenal businesswoman by the name Dr. Nondumiso Mzizana and everytime I read it, I felt even more connected to her. I loved how she was portrayed, I loved her answers to the questions posed and I was deeply moved by her journey. For some strange reason, her personal email was included at the bottom of the page and I reached out to her. I had to know more about this woman who started of as a dentist and won The Businesswomen's Association Businesswoman of the Year award. I emailed her and thanked her for being herself and doing it for the rest of the black women in South Africa.The Medical and Pharmaceutical supplies industry is no joke. 

What I did not expect was her prompt and warm response. She was humble and interested in me, a second year student at the University of Pretoria. We ended up keeping in touch and I would let her know about my business endeavors. She even ended up sponsoring and attending a fashion show that my business partners and I hosted at the Leo Haese BMW showroom in Hatfield. We became inseparable.

In my third year (2012), she asked me to work for her part time on her latest project that was solely focused on empowering entrepreneurs through knowledge sharing events with key stakeholders in government and in business, The Success Summit. After school, I would go to her office in Brooklyn and work with her team on every aspect of the event, be it the planning, the sourcing of sponsors and inviting entrepreneurs to attend. Apart from the work experience that I gained, SHE ALSO PAID ME. It was truly a dream come true.

Dr. Nondumiso Mzizana took time out of her busy schedule of being a high powered businesswoman, a dentist after 4pm, a mother and a wife, she also attended my graduation. She sat with my mother and became my second mother, she was as proud as my mother.

After completing my third year, I went to study a short course in project management and she invited me once again to work for her. I became her project manager and PR manager. I got the event a lot of publicity and write ups before the event. All these new found skills were learnt from working with her. The event was an absolute success with sponsors such as Standard Bank, NEF, The Innovation Hub etc. 

In 2014, I began my Honours degree in Brand Leadership at Vega School of Brand Leadership and she was my biggest fan. Dr. Nondumiso really took me everywhere with her. We did presentations together for funding at different institutions. She taught me how to draw up amazing business plans and proposals. She introduced me to a lot of people and taught me how to network efficiently. I watched her every move and how she interacted with people, clients and her employees. After meetings and presentations that we had done together, we would drive back to the office and she would lecture me on knowing my worth in business and cultivating the culture of excellence. Lessons not found in a text book. She even sent me her manuscript of a book that she was writing to go through. I knew her family and have been to her house. I loved her sons and considered them as my little brothers. I was the daughter she never had. This had gone beyond mentorship, Dr. Nondumiso was my second mother. 

To cut this long story short... Thank you to you Destiny Magazine and sis Khanyi Dhlomo, for introducing me to the woman who helped shape my life. We are still close and she is still my mentor, she is one call away and 15 min away in distance/time. She truly not only gave me her time, she gave me her heart. She opened up to me and saw me in a way that I had not learnt to see myself and that was sometimes frightening. She spoke to the queen in me, the mogul in me. And all these blessings came to me because I bought your magazine and contacted a stranger who became more than family to me. 

I am now a brand strategist at a specialized vehicle manufacturing company and to think that she is the one who made me realize my love for marketing and communications through pushing me into the ocean and teaching me how to swim in there. I hold an Honours Degree in Brand Leadership, I am currently completing a Management Development Programme and plan on completing my MBA. I also co-own a luxury skincare company on the side and am currently identifying opportunities in male dominated industries that need black women to shake things up. I plan to do what she did in her industry, break the glass ceiling by all the principles that she taught me through action.

Thank you once again, for being my Mentorship Matchmaker and I will definitely pay it forward by affording another younger woman the opportunities that Dr. Nondumiso Mzizana afforded me.

It is after all the cycle of womanhood. It takes a village.

Best Regards

Keamogetswe Matsho

(image via www.sikelela.com)