LEN KALANE
It was, by all accounts, a cold Saturday in Daveyton. But inside Mono Café, the temperature told a different story. Every invitee who had promised to show up did — filling the room with a warmth that had nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with intention. The inaugural Women in Leadership Networking Session, held under the theme “Breaking Barriers, Building Legacies,” had promised a gathering built on connection, visibility and legacy. On the day, it delivered.
The event drew together women leaders, entrepreneurs, professionals, government representatives and women from across sectors, all pulled by a shared instinct: that real change happens not in isolation, but in rooms like this one, where women choose to show up for one another.
The Power of Women Leading Change
The day’s centrepiece was a keynote address from Ms W.R. Shoki Tshabalala, Deputy Director-General at the Department of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities. Her address, titled “The Power of Women Leading Change,” was widely regarded as one of the highlights of the afternoon — a well-articulated and warmly received call to action that grounded the day’s more personal conversations in a broader national context of women’s leadership and economic participation.
What followed was less a programme of speeches than a series of candid, unscripted conversations. Guided by Master of Ceremonies Nunu Moloi, the panel discussions moved fluidly between the practical and the personal, touching on leadership, entrepreneurship, resilience and opportunity — and returning, again and again, to a single idea: that women supporting and empowering one another is not a nice sentiment, but a strategy.
Voices from the Panel
IMAGES AND VIDEOS SUPPLIED BY NUNUS PHOTOGRAPHY
The panel brought together a formidable set of perspectives. Michelle Sohn, Boitumelo Ramela, Nyameka Mazilazila, Refiloe Mukoka and Lerato Cingo each drew on their own path through business and public life to unpack what leadership actually costs, and what it gives back. Between them, the conversation ranged across founding and running organisations, holding one’s ground in male-dominated rooms, and the quieter, less celebrated work of mentoring the next woman coming up behind you.
women create opportunities for one another, share knowledge and open doors, meaningful and lasting change can be achieved.
— Reflection from the panel discussion
It was a message that didn’t stay on the stage. Attendees described the panel less as a presentation to be watched than a conversation to be joined — proof that the event’s founding philosophy, that one introduction can become a partnership and one story can inspire another woman, was built into the format itself, not just the marketing around it.
Collaboration Over Competition
If there was a single thread running through feedback from the day, it was this: the spirit of collaboration in the room was tangible. In an environment where women are so often positioned as competitors for the same limited opportunities, Saturday’s gathering offered something different — a room where support was the default, not the exception.
That every single invitee braved the cold to attend was, in itself, read by many as a quiet but powerful statement of intent. Nobody came to be seen. They came to see each other.
What This Means Going Forward
Organisers have been candid from the outset that 5 September was designed as a beginning rather than a finale, and the response on the day only sharpens that ambition. The consensus to emerge from the session is that its real test will not be the afternoon itself, but what women in the room do with it next — the partnerships formed, the doors opened, the mentorships that quietly begin over a cup of coffee.
Given the depth of what surfaced on the day, this gathering has earned more than a single write-up. A dedicated follow-up piece is already in motion, one that will go deeper into the stories, partnerships and commitments this first session set in motion — the first of what organisers promise will be many chapters in this movement’s story – and PiE Digital was there to witness it all.
