About The Author

Zimkita Precious Mabindla

Director & Partner at KPMG, [CA]SA and Writer

My Background

This website is inspired by my daughter, Ramorata Samthanda Musashi Motshegare (Ramo). Ramo is the person whose existence has shaped and helped me crystalize who I want to be and what I want to be remembered for.

She is my inspiration and a blessing because qualifying as a Chartered Accountant coincided with me being a mother. Being a mother was a time of deep reflection on who I wanted to be, and the kind of person I wanted my daughter to experience. I have never been a touchy-feely person. I am a realist – objective, analytical, dependable, trustworthy, reliable, problem solving and troubleshooting. This is who I am. But would this make me a good and competent mother? It then dawned on me that being a mother is primarily a leadership role; it is the most important, complex and difficult leadership position I will ever play in my life. I am basically tasked with ensuring the continued existence of humanity at large. I am responsible for ensuring that society has a sustainable supply of future leaders to choose from. These leaders will then mould, shape and direct the course of humanity’s existence.

It was such an insightful realisation. Being a loving, competent mother meant being – a competent, confident leader whose leadership seeks to empower and imbue Ramo with a sense of agency and self-confidence. Being empowering includes endeavouring to be a future focused leader. Future focusing to me involves looking at the patterns from the past and trends in our immediate environments and ask fundamental questions about the future. Questions such as, what to continue, start or more importantly stop doing, in order to achieve our goals.

This analysis helped me to identify various threats, especially within our norms and cultures, which hinder women – especially black women – from being empowering leaders. These norms and cultures also hinder women from nurturing empowered future leaders. I noted traditions and cultural practices that no longer serve the vision of an existence of enlightened and empowered future women leaders.  This analysis encouraged me to be bold, decisive and absorb, at times, harsh consequences of those decisions.

I learned that inequality for (mainly) black women, generally starts in their homes. The resistance against women’s self-actualisation, fairness, right to equal opportunities, starts mainly with their communities. Raising children, especially black girl children, is an act filled with immense challenges. I learned that societies and the world at large run mostly on the unacknowledged, under paid, and sometimes unpaid labour of mainly black women. I must admit that, the determination to raise women – especially black women– who have agency, who are empowered, and empowering is a drastic change to the status quo and its beneficiaries. It leads to the pursuit of freedom, not only for yourself, but for the future black women leaders. It requires mothers to be courageous. It requires them to be bold and to be honest about how our culture works. It is met with resistance. You sustain bruises even from the people closest to you. People who try to hold on to harmful ideas and stereotypes. You learn, unlearn and relearn. But critically, as women (especially black women) we need to share the learnings, the un-learnings and the re-learnings. It is more critically important than ever to create black women thought leadership. To put critical issues out there. To prompt discussions and critical conversations. To emancipate ourselves. To push forward. To define new ways of acting. To come up with sustainable solutions. To take charge of our destiny and the destiny of other women leaders.

I learned that inequality for (mainly) black women, generally starts in their homes. The resistance against women’s self-actualisation, fairness, right to equal opportunities, starts mainly with their communities.

This website is about my life experiences. It’s about my parenting journey. It will detail my learnings, un-learnings and re-learnings. It will detail “things I want my daughter to remember” so to speak. I hope other women, especially black women, will find it useful. More importantly, I dream of a world where my daughter and my nieces, unlike people from my generation, will not have to struggle to find black women thought leadership. I hope I will set an example and inspire young black women especially, to document and publish their own stories, share their experiences of how they engage and navigate the world and the society at large. I believe that sustainable change will occur when women- especially black women– recognise and acknowledge the impact of their decisive leadership and the sustainability of their leadership outcomes.

For those who brand themselves as culturists, traditionalists and men and women who support a return to the “African Way”, the content here is probably not for you. This website is about changing the status quo. This website is dedicated to mainly black women progress and empowerment. It contains content that hopes to inspire black women to be activists, to have agency and to reject cultures and traditions that hinder them from reaching their potential as future leaders. This website is my final word on matters. It’s Zimkita’s word; it’s the Z Word.

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Zimkita Precious Mabindla