PiE NEWS
Masingiti Masunga will celebrate The Mandela Month of July with a fulfilled soul – at the beginning of July she will be an equal partner at the Mpete Business Concepts, courtesy of Lineth Mpete who is the founder and CEO of this award winningtalent acquisition and training academy.
Mpete Busness Concepts (Pty) Ltd is a 100% black-female owned talent acquisition enterprise established in 2014 to bridge the gap between the human capital department and business by providing quality talent timeously. They also assist businesses in achieving EE Disability targets.
They have roped in Masunga, who this week said:” As a person with a disability, I’ve learned that not every “compliment” is truly a compliment. Too often, people say things that sound kind but carry the weight of bias and condescension.
“You are a champion of people with disabilities,” they say.
Says Masunga: “It sounds flattering, but in reality—it erases 28 years of dedication, leadership, and achievement across multiple fields. It reduces my identity to a single label, ignoring the depth of my experience, expertise, and humanity.
People say these sorts of things, she says, because it’s easier than confronting their own bias. It’s easier to celebrate what makes me “different” than to acknowledge me as an equal—fully human, fully capable, and fully accomplished.
Inclusive leadership begins with seeing the whole person—not the part that makes you comfortable or superior/better as a human being. It means challenging your assumptions, unlearning stereotypes, and creating spaces where every voice is valued, not tokenised, she added.
“It is on this premise that this Mandela Month comes with a real difference in my life and work”.
Masunga will be a 50% shareholder of the company which is located at the JSE and has the Stock Exchange as it’s biggest client. She comes in at executive level, assuming the role of Director of Marketing and Communications and brand ambassador.
Good pick, Masunga quite excels at this sort of thing.
She thankfully said: “This is a function that I excelled in for many years without being given a chance at it), including that of a brand ambassador. I am well aware that this opportunity doesn’t magically transform my circumstances and given the socioeconomic status of the industry and the fact that as a 100% black female company we still have barriers to face”.
“It makes a huge difference and impact to be empowered with equity and not to be offered crumbs and be expected to be grateful for that just because you have a disability,” she said.
“Mandela Month should be about transformation and equity as that’s what Nelson Mandela fought for and MB concepts doesn’t just talk inclusion, we live it because President Mandela has already taken the long walk”, she said.
“We can make your walk to transformation and inclusion shorter, for you and the talent that your organisation needs. The real difference will happen when Inclusion is driven at the leadership level, not delegated downward and MB Concepts is leading the way because we are trailblazers” added a beaming Masungu.
NOTE: See Masunga’s poem in the PiE Natives section of this site