Dr Melodi Botha, who is a senior lecturer in the Department of Business Management, acted as the programme manager and welcomed the guests before tea, coffee, fruit juice and savouries were served.

The first guest speaker, Prof Yvonne du Plessis, who is the PhD programme manager in the Department of Human Resource Management of the Faculty of Economics and Management Science, delivered an inspirational message of love and peace.

“Love feeds a nation and peace feeds the world,” she said.

Prof Du Plessis urged the ladies present to believe in themselves and be a role model to their children, who should be taught basic values.

The ladies participated in a number of lucky draws before the second guest speaker, Ms Ipeleng Mkhari, took the stage.

Ipeleng became the first black woman in South Africa to acquire a CCTV company in 1998. That same year she and Sandile Nomvete started Motseng Youth Investments, which developed into Motseng Investment Holdings. Being the co-founder and chief operations officer of Motseng Investment Holdings, which indirectly employs 20 000 people, Ipeleng shared her life journey and her experiences of entrepreneurship with the very appreciative audience.

She referred to the “commonality of us as women”, and said that in her career as an entrepreneur thus far, her relationships with the people she has worked with have been the key factor.

“I have been carefully nurturing relationships including my interaction with my partners,” she said. “We have mutual trust, respect and an understanding of one another.”