The University of Pretoria’s (UP) Faculty of Humanities recently awarded Zanele Mbeki an honorary doctorate for her lifelong advocacy for an inclusive society and for championing the rights of women, with a particular focus on empowering rural women and amplifying their voices.

Mbeki, who’s married to former South African President Thabo Mbeki, holds a degree in Social Work from  the University of the Witwatersrand and a diploma in Social Policy and Administration from the London School of Economics and Political Science, among other qualifications.

Professor Antoinette Lombard, former Head of UP’s Department of Social Work and Criminology, pointed out that Mbeki worked to lift rural women out of poverty by founding the Women Development Bank and establishing a platform for women in South Africa and across the continent to work together to find solutions to Pan-African problems.

“Mrs Mbeki’s commitment to development, advocating for justice and contributing to a better world goes back long before she became First Lady of South Africa in 1999, starting during her many years of exile from South Africa in the apartheid era,” Prof Lombard said. “Her deep concern for the plight of those who are left behind spans many years of work. This includes her contributions as a social worker in London, Zambia, Pakistan, India and Kenya; in the fields of health and mental health as a social worker for refugees in Botswana and Nigeria as part of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees; and for Anglo American in Zambia as a case worker.” 

After Mbeki and her spouse, former President Mbeki, returned to South Africa in 1990, she and a small group of women founded the Women’s Development Bank (WDB), a micro-finance institution that catered to the needs of women in rural areas. The WDB aimed to improve the quality of life for women whose male relatives had been recruited to work in the mines and who were paid too little to send money home.

The WDB’s many years of documented success was challenged by the introduction of legislation like the Financial Intelligence Centre Act (2001) and the absence of legislation for micro-financing in South Africa. As such, Mbeki facilitated the establishment of the Association of Microfinance Institutions of South Africa (renamed the Development Microfinance Institutions of South Africa), a lobbying platform for the not-for-profit micro-finance sector. She also facilitated the founding of the South African Microfinance Apex Fund by the Department of Trade and Industry, a facility to fund micro-finance institutions.

In 2003, Mbeki established the organisation Women in Dialogue to give voice to women across all sectors in South Africa and Africa, and to engage their full participation in economic and social development. Another of her initiatives is the Zanele Mbeki Development Trust, an independent, non-partisan public benefit organisation that’s committed to improving the status of African women by engaging national governments, the private sector, civil society and donors in partnerships to shape communal, municipal, provincial, national and continental agendas.

“Mrs Mbeki has a longstanding relationship with UP, where many past Women in Dialogue conferences have been held,” Prof Lombard said. “Her work contributes to knowledge development and practice across several disciplines, and is in line with meeting several Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including ending poverty and hunger (SDGs 1 and 2), good health and wellbeing (SDG 3), gender equality (SDG 5), reduced inequalities (SDG 10), and peaceful and just societies (SDG 16).”

This honorary doctorate is one of many honours that has been bestowed on Mbeki, whose contributions span international and national arenas. In 2014, she was the recipient of the International Women’s Forum Women Who Make a Difference Award as well as the University of Johannesburg’s Ellen Kuzwayo Council Award for her contribution to the social upliftment of the poor and marginalised, especially women. In 2016, she received the Kagiso Trust Lifetime Achievement Award and the WDB Investment Holdings Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 2017, was the recipient of the World Economic Forum Crystal Award for Social Entrepreneurship. The following year, she was honoured with the Standard Bank Top Woman Lifetime Achiever Award and the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa’s Women’s Empowerment and Women’s Peace and Security, which she shared with the late Albertina Sisulu and the late American politician Emma Rene (Rhodes) Gresham.

“It is our honour to recognise Mrs Mbeki for living up to her belief that women have the assets and just need the opportunities and access to funding and training to create their own development paths,” Prof Lombard said.