TINA THIART

Well-known women’s rights activist and non-profit fundraising guru, Tina Thiart, is an April Fool’s baby, born on 1 April 1956 – but her achievements are nothing to laugh at. She has worked for more than 20 years as a catalyst for social change and gender equality, aiming to build better communities in South Africa.

A self-confessed multi-tasker and network queen, Thiart runs a consultancy helping women’s funds, community groups and NGOs develop innovative fundraising strategies and sustainable development plans with the end goal of building strong organisations to bring about effective change.

As a child, growing up “on the wrong side of the street”, with three sisters and a brother, in Uitenhage in the Eastern Cape, Thiart was painfully aware that equality was more a privilege than a right, with gender inequality equally entrenched in social fabric of what she describes as a “factory town”. Discrimination of every kind between classes, colour and culture was rife – and it irked her.

She was strongly influenced by her grandmother. “When she wanted a job done, she’d only ask once and then pick up the hammer and do it herself. So also always generated her own money,” says Thiart. So in an era when women stayed at home or had limited career options Thiart, always an adventurer at heart, was the first in her family to go to University, obtaining a BA in education at the Nelson Mandela University.

Ultimately Thiart found the world of teaching, where the men’s opinions held more sway and earned them more income despite having the same qualifications, intolerable. But, in speaking out against this inequality she found her obvious talent – and passion – in marketing and advocacy.

She moved to KwaZulu-Natal when her SANDF navy captain husband was transferred to Durban and took on the role of Director of KZN Athletics. Thiart launched the Tastic Rice Cross Country Initiative travelling around the province to identify talented young athletes and advocate for their inclusion in athletics events – effectively exposing these young athletes and their communities to many new experiences and opportunities.

When her husband, Thienus, was transferred to Simons Town Thiart joined the Women’s Hope Education and Training (WHEAT) Trust filing various marketing and fundraising roles, and then went on to become executive director of the International Network of Women’s Funds. She still consults for the WHEAT Trust (www.wheattrust.co.za), which invests in education, training and capacity building to develop leaders and to empower women to uplift themselves and their communities.

A hard worker and an avid golfer, Thiart is also the secretary of the World Wide Initiative for Grantmakers Support, and the chairperson of Woman’sNet and board member of the African Women’s Development Fund (South Africa). She works with the Southern African Community Grantmakers Leadership Forum and is the liaison officer of Grant.net, a network for corporate social investment managers and grant makers.

This year, she helped raise R1.2-million as part of WHEAT’s 1000 Women United Against Domestic Violence and Abuse Campaign in Cape Town. Thiart also launched the 1,000 Women campaign in Johannesburg, and will be launching the campaign in Durban on 20^th November just prior to the international 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence Campaign –  a United Nations initiative held annually between November 25, the international day of no violence against women) and 10 December (international human rights day).

“Women and girls are not safe in their own homes. They can’t walk the streets at night and have little access to resources,” says Thiart who believes campaigns like 1000 Women and 16 Days of Activism increases people’s awareness and encourages people to speak out against gender-based violence in a society where people have historically condoned the behaviour by turning a blind eye.

The WHEAT Trust provides resources to women to stand up against violence and Thiart and her colleagues will be attending various events in the communities during the 16-day awareness campaign.

Thiart plans to grow the 1 000 Women campaign – she wans to increase WHEAT’s Facebook supporters to 10 000 supporters and have 5 000 women attend the 1000 women events in 2015. She also wants to increase the number of women’s organisations supported by the WHEAT Women’s Fund from 1 200 to 2000.

Having had family and friends affected by cancer, Thiart also plans to mobilise resources to help build the Cancer Buddies initiative, which provides support to cancer survivors and people living with cancer.

However, our tireless campaigner’s dream is start a fundraising academy to train and support fundraisers in the NGO sector who, at this stage, have very little support and no real accredited training. She has most of the details ironed out and just needs “a University or further education training centre to embrace this idea and provide us with the SETA accreditation to make this come true,” says Thiart.

RHODA KADALIE

Rhoda Kadalie unflinchingly cuts to the chase with her direct and assertive approach to gender and human rights, as well as politics in South Africa. She has a strong anti-apartheid profile but in September 2011 resigned somewhat controversially from the Stellenbosch University Council over the appointment of the lesser qualified of two candidates to a senior post and the dilution of academic excellence in the name of transformation.

She’s the granddaughter of Clements Kadalie, one of the first black trade unionist in South Africa, an academic, anthropologist, human rights activist, newspaper columnist and social commentator - and is admired (and sometimes feared) for her no-nonsense and forthright attitude. She’s recently released her first book, a compilation of her columns, appropriately titled: In your face – Passionate conversations about people and politics.

Kadalie was born on 22 September 1953 in District Six and grew up with seven brothers and a sister 16 years her junior in Mowbray before her family was moved, in her final year of high school, to the “coloured” area of Athlone, on the Cape Flats, under the Group Areas Act. 

The family ran without gender stereotypical roles under a mother who made it clear she wasn’t wiling to be anyone’s slave – which imbued a healthy sense of gender equality and fairness in Kadalie. She learnt the quality of assertiveness from her mother; and as the daughter of pastor, Kadalie grew up with strong Christian values, principle among which was respect.

After completing her studies at Harold Cressy High School she went on to study library science and anthropology completing her arts degree at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) where she developed an interest in politics and women’s rights. Kadalie went on to lecture at the University of Cape Town’s summer school, and after completing her masters at the Institute for Social Science in the Netherlands, she returned to UWC to lecture anthropology and went on to play a founding role in the UWC’s Office of Gender Equity. 

While bringing up her daughter, Julia, largely as a single mother, she campaigned against the attitude the women’s rights should be sacrificed in the name of a unified political struggle and, although labelled a bourgeois Western feminist, continued undeterred to campaign against sexual harassment and rape on campus.

With Kadaie’s influence as one of a group of women to campaign for women’s rights as human rights on the UWC campus, the university was the first campus to develop a sexual harassment policy. They also successfully campaigned for maternity and paternity benefits for academics, equal housing benefits – as well as push for the promotion of women in the academic hierarchy.

Kadalie left her life as an activist academic at UWC to take up an appointment from Nelson Mandela as a Human Rights Commissioner for the Western and Northern Cape in 1995 but she left after three years when she realised that people were being paid “gravy-train salaries” while cheating tax payers as a result of inadequate leadership, control and direction.

In 1998 she headed up the district Land Claims Commission for District Six to deal with 2,000 unprocessed land claims – an issue close to her heart. The R1.7million budget for the first year never materialised and Kadalie left the Commission in 1999, disappointed after being told to pay over the funding she’d raised for her office to a central kitty.

In 1999 the University of Uppsala in Sweden awarded Kadalie an honorary doctorate in liberal arts and she founded the Impumelelo Innovations Award Trust in the same year. Under Kadalie’s directorship, the non-profit Impumelelo provides financial assistance to innovative and well-run public-private partnerships that improve the quality of life of the poor in South Africa – with a focus on building capacity for service delivery.

Kadaie was awarded an honorary doctorate of literature from UWC in 2007, and is a regular columnist in Die Burger and Beeld.

Apart from humanitarian work in her role as Executive Director at Impumelelo (now known as the Impumelelo Social Innovation Centre) Kadalie serves on the Rhodes Scholarship Committee, the University of Cape Town Council and served on the Stellenbosch University Council prior to her resignation in 2011.

Dubbed the ANC’s internal critic she’s anti-transformation and affirmative action if it means South Africans, especially poor South Africans, have to suffer incompetence and lack of service delivery as a result.

Kadalie plays a tireless and vital role in keeping our politicians honest – or at least more honest than they would be otherwise – and deserves our thanks as a champion of equal rights for all.