The woman driving one of the biggest employers in South Africa
Mpumi Madisa, the CEO of Bidvest, has climbed to the top of the corporate world, establishing herself as one of South Africa’s leading chief executives by heading a company with a R96.55 billion market cap and an estimated 130,000 employees.
Her journey and achievements have not gone unnoticed. In 2023, she was the only South African on Forbes’ list of the world’s most powerful women and the first black woman to be CEO of a Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) Top 40 company.
Mandisa was born in the Mohlakeng township in the late 1970s, and grew up in Sebokeng near Johannesburg.
She had her primary and high school education at Sancta Maria Junior High and Mondeor High School, respectively, and recalls how, during the worst of apartheid violence, she often had to be smuggled into school.
“A month before I wrote my matric exams, my parents split, so when I started university, my mother made it clear there was no money beyond registration,” Mandisa told the City Press.
“It was clear that I had to pass whatever I was studying and needed to apply to the Tertiary Education Fund of SA (now the National Student Financial Aid Scheme) for funding,” she added.
By fate, she missed the deadline to apply to study medicine at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) but managed to enrol for a Bachelor of Science degree with the hope of transferring to medicine in her second year.
However, a university practical changed her mind.
“Midway through my first year, we were required to operate on a rat, and that’s when I realised that could not be my life,” said Mandisa.
“I am very terrified of rats, even now, and I was required to operate on it. with all the blood and mess, my lecturer just asked me if I realised that I had killed my ‘patient’.”
“That is when I knew that I had chosen the wrong career, and there was no way I was going to reach year seven,” she added.
Mandisa changed majors by taking up mathematics, statistics and economics. She now holds a BSc in Economics and Mathematics, a BCom Honours in Economics and a Masters in Finance and Investment – all from Wits University.
Right after her tertiary studies, she was employed as a trainee marketing assistant by Hollard Insurance, where she worked for 18 months. She was initially reluctant to take the position because she was not keen on joining a marketing team, not having studied for it.
“At the time they were doing something called cross-pollination and they would place people with different skills in teams that were generally homogenous and I was convinced to join that team,” said Madisa.
She then went on to work at Prestige, a Bidvest subsidiary specialising in cleaning, as a client relations manager from 2003.
“I didn’t know at the time it was a Bidvest subsidiary. The CEO told me my job was to tell them why they were losing clients despite getting a lot of new business,” Madisa says.
After three years climbing the corporate ladder, she left Prestige to work in the public sector and was appointed chief director of transformation at the Gauteng department of agriculture and rural development.
“My time in government was probably my richest experience; I got exactly what I wanted,” she says of the experience, which she credits for greatly bolstering her expertise.
And while she hails the experience from her time in the public sector, she also says it was among her most difficult.
“The only reason I left was the elections were around the corner and the political nuances were heightened, and there was not much work being done, and I am not a political person,” said Madisa.
During her time there, her former boss at Prestige asked her to return to the company, but Madisa made it clear that she would not be heading the transformation work “as I already knew it like the back of my hand.”
Upon her return to Prestige, a new portfolio was created as corporate affairs director in charge of four departments.
She then moved to sales director where her impressive turnaround of the underperforming sales earned her a request to do the same job at group level. A few months later she was appointed to the board.
At Bidvest, she has served in multiple senior roles, including General Manager of Business Development, Divisional Director of Business Development, Corporate Affairs Director, and Sales and Marketing Director, among others.
With her vast expertise, she was appointed as non-executive director of the Adcock board of directors in November 2017 and its non-executive Chairperson several years later.
Madise made history in 2019 when she was appointed CEO‑designate of the Bidvest Group, becoming its full CEO in 2020.
The Bidvest Group operates in a range of business sectors including financial services, pharmaceuticals and freight management, with her sitting on the boards of 16 of the company’s subsidiary companies.
It sports a market cap of R96.38 billion and around 130,000 employees.
Her appointment made her the first black woman to be CEO of a JSE Top 40 company and one of the youngest in South Africa.
Although still limited, other black female CEOs in top JSE companies now include Nombasa Tsengwa of Exxaro, Mpumi Zikalala at Kumba Iron Ore and Bertina Engelbrecht at Clicks.
This is something Madisa is looking to turn around.
“I say to other women as a woman, I will look out for you as other women. I say to other women I will talk to my brothers in other organisations and ask them and agitate why they don’t have sufficient women in the executive teams,” she told Forbes.
Madisa still finds time to speak at schools and to young people about how to start their careers, even in the face of hardship.
“I reminded them that I was the reality, not the dream and that I didn’t grow up far from where they were growing up.
“I tell pupils that we are not how we start or where we start, and therefore, they should never be afraid to dream. I tell their teachers to imagine that every child before them is destined to do amazing things,” said Madisa.
Read: The man who built South Africa’s biggest retail empire
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