SERITI’S WOMEN IN MINING TRAINING PROGRAMME PROVIDES HOPE FOR LOCAL BUSINESS OWNER
“The training lets me view business differently” Khuliso Munyembane
Ogies based businesswoman, Khuliso Munyembane and the owner of Yellow Team Mining Construction and Civil, is a beneficiary in Seriti’s Enterprise and Supplier Development (ESD) holistic development programme.
This programme, launched during May 2022 by Seriti, aims to empower woman entrepreneurs in the Emalahleni/Middelburg area, and was designed and is being run by Collective Value Creation (CVC) over eighteen months and emphasises Seriti’s focus on women empowerment. It further aims to develop local SMMEs to create a pipeline of supply chain ready businesses who can secure procurement opportunities both inside and outside Seriti and endeavours to develop existing local suppliers and SMMEs to enable them to realise scale and drive supplier diversity in their supply chain.
Khuliso started her business six years ago and with her fourteen employees, provide grass cutting, landscaping and waste water treatment services to Khuthala Colliery just outside of Ogies. One of these employees is her husband who is the general manager of the company and with their two children, forms her biggest support structure.
Also read: Women in Mining – Eva Masemola participates in Seriti’s programme
She started her business career when she resigned from her first job as a Telkom technical officer and started attending business seminars and briefings. She found both the mining sector and natural environment appealing and decided to combine them in her business venture. She enrolled in one of Seriti’s earlier ESD programmes at the then, South 32 mine, in order to learn more about business processes. She explains that it was not an easy road and she was confronted with numerous obstacles in the founder years, such as obtaining capital and equipment as well as employing the right skills.
Khuliso, who was born and bred in the small Mutiti Ha Matsa village in Limpopo, grabs opportunities that come her way and because of the Women in Mining programme, has already made some changes to her lifestyle. One of the first assignments of the twenty entrepreneurs on the programme, was to build a vision board with long term goals in different categories. One category is personal health and wellness and Khuliso has subsequently bought a treadmill to ensure that she gets the necessary daily workout to a stay fit and combat work-related stress.
The training so far has played a significant role in boosting her confidence and improving some crucial business skills. Some challenges she hopes to overcome is learning how to improve her marketing, negotiation and decision-making skills.
Apart from growing her business, expanding to the private and government sector while acquiring much needed skills, Khuliso plans to one day become an investor herself.
Sharon Sprenger, sales coach to the entrepreneurs said “working with the ladies on an individual level has been both inspiring and rewarding as we assisted them in developing their sales skills so that their businesses could grow and expand. To see how the confidence and attitude has shifted in each of them over the last few months as they tapped further into their potential, has been extremely satisfying to experience.”
