Lukhanyo E. Makhenyane
Cape Town - The perspective of women we get from the media, particularly telenovelas, is not true to the definition of a contemporary woman.
Most women celebrated on our screens are not the good role models we want for ama2k (millennials). Some of the women we see on our screens are painted with the same ancient patriarchal brush.
In 2023, we still see women who are secondary to men and whose lives are defined by the men. They are portrayed as people whose livelihood, sustenance, and success wholly depended on the men.
Ama2k need to hear and see the true reflection of contemporary women they can look up to as role models.
One contemporary woman that comes to my mind is Thina Maqubela from Motherwell township in Gqeberha.
I had the privilege of working with Thina in 2011 and 2014 at Ubuntu Education Fund (later Ubuntu Pathways) in Gqeberha. In 2011, she had just graduated from the University of Cape Town with a Bachelor of Science, majoring in Statistics.
Thina is so brilliant with numbers that she attracted the Ubuntu Pathways scholarship for her junior degree. In 2014, she had just come back from the US with a Master’s Degree in Statistics from West Virginia University. Once again sponsored by Ubuntu.
At the age of 24 (2014), Thina won the Regional Business Women’s Award in the category of Social entrepreneurship. She was the youngest among 18 finalists. Her outstanding work spear-heading Future Leaders Programme (FLP) at Ubuntu caught the eye of Business Women’s Association (BWA) adjudicators, and she was awarded on the night Felicia Mabuza-Suttle spoke of “Gutsy Women” and, Thina is a gutsy woman, with guts to try anything, as she believes “the world has unlimited opportunities”.
Among these opportunities is an opportunity not to be tied to a rich person in order to make it in life.
I learned from Thina that her mother was a street vendor, selling fruit and vegetables at Motherwell Shopping Centre. Her mother’s zeal and perseverance fuelled Thina to work hard in her studies, as she dreamed of buying her mother a house. As they say, a dictionary is the only place where success comes before work (hard work). She fulfilled her dream when she moved her mother and family from NU10 in Motherwell to a house in NU5.
For the first time, her mother owned a house.
Thina taught Statistics at Rhodes University from 2014. Statistics is no child’s play, and few dare the challenge.
Noticing this and the challenges with her first-year students, she put on her thinking cap. In her quest to bridge the academic gap, she started posting videos on YouTube, teaching Stats in isiXhosa.
This innovative initiative caught the attention of the Vice Chancellor at Rhodes, and she was awarded the VC’s Teaching Excellence Award.
In 2018, while working as a lecturer at Rhodes, Thina started Maqubs Academy. She bought a house in Makhanda and invested in student accommodation.
She had the idea of creating a home away from home for high school learners, while offering comprehensive academic support to them. She assisted learners with their Maths studies, and grades started to improve.
More subjects were offered when Thina hired Rhodes students as tutors. She soon opened a branch in Gqeberha, her hometown, assisting learners with what she learned in her love-affair with numbers and growing her business.
Currently, Thina is heading Community Engagement programmes at Merrifield in East London. In this position, she revived what she started while at UCT and WVU, where she volunteered to assist learners from Khayelitsha and Keyser (rural part of the USA) with Maths and extracurricular activities using puzzles and Sudoku to improve numeracy.
She is responsible for fostering relationships between Merrifield and Nompumelelo community schools, Sakhikamva High School and Floradale Primary.
Thina defines a contemporary woman in South Africa and the rest of the world.
The strides she has made in education, business, and society gives us a distinct perspective of a contemporary woman Ama2k can emulate. She is the type of role model they certainly need to navigate through life.
Makhenyane is a lecturer in the African Languages Department at University of Fort Hare. He writes in his personal capacity.
Cape Times
* The Cape Times’ Big Friday Read is a series of feature articles focusing on the forgotten issues that often disappear in the blur of fast news cycles, and where we also feature the everyday heroes who go out of their way to change the lives of others in their communities.
To nominate a hero or raise a forgotten issue you would like us to feature in our Big Friday Read, email [email protected]