In South Africa, small, medium and micro-sized enterprises provide jobs and opportunities, offering hope, during tough times. For this reason, the SAB Foundation has worked tirelessly for over 10 years to promote entrepreneurship, with an emphasis on creating opportunities for excluded communities such as women, the youth, people with disabilities and people in rural areas.
With their flagship Tholoana Enterprise Programme opening for applications in September, past graduate Alex Msitshana, whose courage, fortitude and ingenuity, provides a shining example of South Africa’s entrepreneurial spirit.
Alex is the founder and Managing Director of the Deaf Empowerment Firm (DEF), based in Soweto. Before founding DEF in 2015, Alex had a successful career, working in HR for over 10 years. However, her life took a turn for the worse in her thirties, when she became increasingly ill and was diagnosed with HIV. She was in and out of hospital and a subsequent TB diagnosis spelled further trouble, when the medication she had been prescribed damaged both her auditory nerves, and she became deaf.
“At first, I was at a loss, because I became deaf at a time when my health was improving and I wanted to restart my career. However all the work I had done had been based on my ability to hear. The reality of the disability itself now became even more profound because finding work became a big challenge,” she explains.
This struggle led Alex to question what was happening to young people with hearing impairments in her community who, unlike her, didn’t have the benefit of experience or qualifications. This inspired her to start DEF, an organisation that she hoped would help the deaf community to become active participants in the economy.
“At DEF, our intention is to be part of the solution by integrating South Africans with disabilities into the economy, creating awareness and contributing meaningfully to creating space for economic participation by members of the deaf community. Our main areas of focus are skills development, sustainable work placements and SMME incubation,” she says.
However, getting her business off the ground was not easy and she struggled to secure the start-up capital she needed. This is where the SAB Foundation stepped in, providing seed funding, business training, mentorship and assistance with accessing markets.
This was the boost Alex needed and DEF has gone on to assist over 300 candidates, either finding them placement opportunities, providing them with skills development training or helping them to start businesses of their own. She also now employs three people on a permanent basis, as well as a further four people on a contractual basis, and generates an annual turnover of over R4.3 million through her business.
When she was invited to address graduates from the Tholoana Enterprise Programme class of 2019, Alex had this to say:
“We come from very different and diverse backgrounds as individuals and SMMEs but have one common thread, we are passionately South African. We are also very proud to have been associated with a company whose roots are as South African as biltong.”
Applications for this year’s Tholoana Enterprise Programme open on 1 September 2020. To find out more visit https://sabfoundation.co.za/tholoana-enterprise-programme
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