Former Deputy President of South Africa and past United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women, Dr. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, at the VOW conference’s fire side spoke on what shaped her political journey and sundry issues. DEBORAH OCHENI monitored it. Excerpts:

In your remarkable journey from grassroots activism in South Africa, to becoming the Deputy President, and later leading UN, looking back, what exactly is the pivotal moment that shaped your leadership path?

When I look back, I’m in that generation of South Africans who grew up at the time of apartheid. So, that had a strong influence on me.

But I also grew up in a household that was very community-oriented. So, I had a lot of opportunity to engage in the community. For those who want to be leaders in the community, we have to show up. We have to know where the shoe pinches the community.

We may not always have solutions, but people must know that we hear them and that we are willing to do something. So, without knowing it, I was providing a hearing or solutions for that matter in some very modest way. I had an opportunity to be part of the community because if you are a leader, you have to be where the people are.

There is no other magic about this. That is the most central thing about leadership. It is to be where the people are. So if you talk about pivotal moments, I would say showing up and being there where the people are. And of course, there were critical moments. Like in times when you had a big protest.

In those days, a lot was about protesting. You had to be there to actually participate alongside the people and take the pain with them because people want to see and experience the solidarity with them. So that kind of engagement, I think, taught me a lot. I felt like I was learning more than I was giving at that time. And when I look back now, that was way off the lens. Not so much that I gave, but I actually took something that made me better for the next time.

Why did you choose to be on the streets protesting instead of remaining in your comfort zone?

We didn’t have air-conditioned offices in those days. There was only an office to sit in.

What personal challenges did you face when you first stepped into politics?

I don’t want to talk about personal challenges because we all face personal challenges. Let’s talk about navigating the waters in politics as a woman. Working with men. Working with women in the com- munity. Working with women who are also elites.

How did you navigate the waters?

I guess for all of us who want to be leaders, it’s important to invest your time in understanding what nonsense you are trying to cure.

You really have to know what the problem is and focus on addressing that problem. So, I made it my business to know about the issues that needed my input and my solutions. I think for those of you who are in a leadership position, you will know that you end up in a lot of meetings.

You just become a busy bee spinning around. What can I do for you? If you cannot give an answer to that, there is something that you are missing. It’s important for you to shape your own time, your own actions so that they lead you into something and you can also decide what are the things you are not going to do.

You can’t be everywhere all the time. You have to choose the most important thing and the most impactful thing. In my community, for instance, we had problems of water. I knew that I had to make that a priority and I should then give up other things so that I could focus on this issue so that I could say I have been able to come up with a solution for this issue.

We had a problem of roads because for women, when you don’t have roads, then women cannot move from point A to point B. They are stuck in their houses. They can’t take children to school. There is so much they can’t do. If you cannot go to the offices and demand that the road is graded, and whatever it takes to make them walkable, then you are not making a difference. So be concrete.

You must visualise the things that you want to see and make sure that everyday the steps that you are taking are leading you in that direction; so that it’s not just about having gone to a meeting, but going to a meeting so that A, B, C, D can happen. So what I did was identifying the gap and filling that gap for the community to see your impact.

How would you describe leadership?

Leadership is in some way a science of some sort. You have to have a structure to navigate it, to make sure that it happens. It has to add up. There must be a time when you start, a time when you build up, a time when you take it to the end.

What do you have to say on on women representation generally?

The world is in a mess now because the world has been led by men for a long time. I don’t think we have something wonderful to show.

But if men and women were able to work together, there is so much more that we can achieve, so we don’t have to be ashamed that we are less than men because there just has not been enough opportunity for us to show what we can do. We see women now who are achieving.

And that begins to tell us what women can do. Can you imagine if at every position where decisions are being made that affect women, and women are also there to make these decisions, and women could tell about their own lived experience, where would we be now? In the world today, across the world, and I’ve seen in almost every country, the one common thing that we have not achieved in gender equality is equal representation.

There are countries which do much better, but we hardly have countries that you can say are perfect. Some countries are much worse; we have to work much harder. But in general, representation is still a big issue.

It is said that if we are continuing at this pace, it’s going to take more than 100 years for us to reach a stage where we can talk about gender equality. So, this is serious. This is something we have to deal with.

How will this affect the younger generation?

For younger women in particular, who still have many more years than some of us, I’m sometimes jealous of them, I feel like youth is wasted on the young.

I want some of it myself. But it’s for them, it is important to make sure that they do not allow themselves to go for what we have always done. It’s got to be shorter for them than it was for us. So everything that we do now has to be about making sure that the younger women will not work as hard as we did here.

I just cannot believe that I’m still doing this, by the way. That in 2025, we’re still complaining about representation. It’s just not fun. It’s just not fun when there’s so much that women have already done that demonstrates the capacity that they have. So there’s got to be a way, and I’m so glad we’ve been discussing earlier about the changes that are taking place in Nigeria.

These changes have got to be stopped. We have grandmothers who are on this journey of equality and we need to tap from them. We have wonderful women who are championing gender equality and they’re stepping in the right shoes and in the right foot. So there has to be that intergenerational balance, and we can’t allow you to go.

Men remain gatekeepers of political and economic power in many societies, what role do they play in your journey and how can Nigerian women in politics build such coalitions effectively?

Many men have not been engaged about their prejudices against women. So there has to be a way in which we reach them, to reach out to them, so that they can also know how we feel and how we would like them to engage.

And for me, which is how I started HeForShe, it was import- ant for me to also see men who want to make a change, who need a platform and to participate in something that is meaningful. And it’s been wonderful to see just how many men have come forward and participated in HeForShe and the difference they’ve made.

So it was important for me that we focus on men who have got power and authority. Men who have got power and authority can say things and make them happen. One person can make things change for so many people. It was important to talk to men with money.

That they got money is important. They should ensure that the money is actually used to address issues that concern women because women’s agenda is so underfunded. We needed to make sure that women can mobilise resources to address the needs of women, but we also needed to address boy children.

In order to make sure that from a very young age, they overcome their prejudice so that for them, as they get older, they’ve already taken the change. It’s been interesting to see, and I don’t know if you’ve seen it in Nigeria, but I’ve seen it more and more in South Africa, how younger men, in some ways, are much better than the older men in their attitude towards gender equality. How you see men and children, the way men deal with their children, the way they participate as parents. But it’s still a drop in the ocean.

There’re still many more who have not been able to come forward. So there’s still work to be done, and men are important. And in shaping my own career, I was mentored by men. I’m sure many of you must have had that experience. I was sponsored by men and I was also sponsored by women. But it was important to be sponsored by men because they were already in the crowd.

It was easier for them to make things happen for me. It is much easier for them to put in a good word for me. Where they sit in their men’s club, and they’re looking for people to provide opportunities for, your name can come up. So it’s important then to manage and maintain those relationships. But not just for yourself, to make sure that they happen for other women as well.