Joining a chain of goodwill and making it bigger
published on the 22/06/2002 in the 'City Press - Peoples Paper'

Tsakane Mudau started with nothing but today she is a qualified electronics technician and MD of Mintbrooke, an electronics company that has a contract from Uthingo to service all their payout machines on the East Rand.

Tsakane was born in Soweto but left school after standard nine to take a job with a plastics manufacturer. Her meagre income supported her mother and three siblings. She kept her job while studying at night and matriculated in 1981. She then got a job at an electronics company and worked her way up from a machine tester to a technician.

Her managers were so impressed by her drive and intelligence that they sent her to college to study electronics, at their expense.
Her next job was with a manufacturer of heavy mining equipment.

"They said I couldn't handle the heavy equipment and I should rather work in the office, despite my qualifications. I was paid less than the men, but I persevered and turned adversity into a challenge. I was not about to give up because a man thought I was incapable," said the 42-year-old mother of two.

She then started her own electronics company, VNC Electronics, which she is still running today.

"It was difficult. I didn't know about cash flow or how to run a business. I had no furniture at home but I kept putting money into the business, but still things were not going as they should and I couldn't understand it. Then I met Judy Weber, who runs a business-training project called Winning Business Systems (WBS). It teaches women to understand and run successful businesses. So I learnt vital things like controlling cash flow and from then on the business prospered."

Last year in August Mudau was identified by Women's Development Business Investment Holdings (WDBIH) to take up the position of managing director at Mintbrooke, which was contracted by Uthingo to service 870 payout machines on the East Rand .

To give something back to the community, Mudau has begun computer literacy training for children in the East Rand. Zodwa Mbadu, owner of the Marimba creche in Vosloorus says: "My children can type their names, ages, date and day on the computer. They can identify all the components of a computer and work in Windows. They are just toddlers - imagine what they will be capable of later."