Leading the charge — 6 agents of change tackling South Africa’s challenges head-on

At a time when South Africa’s key institutions are still bearing the weight of State Capture, mismanagement and inefficiency, a handful of leaders are working to restore them.

From rebuilding the South African Revenue Service (SARS), recovering stolen billions and speeding up justice to closing the digital divide, reforming the Department of Home Affairs and fighting for workers’ rights, these agents of change share their missions and the obstacles they face.

Ahead of Daily Maverick’s flagship annual event, The Gathering, on 28 August at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, here’s a closer look at the people driving change in a difficult landscape.

Letter from Hendrik du Toit

Ninety One is enthusiastic about sponsoring The Gathering for a third year. We return not out of habit, but because this event challenges assumptions, inspires action and convenes those who are committed to changing South Africa for the better.

This year’s theme, Changemakers, resonates with us. At Ninety One, we say we are investing for a world of change. We believe long-term value is created by those who, through all the world’s cacophony, find and harness opportunities. Change is constant, and responsible leadership must navigate this ebb and flow. Success belongs to those who face the day as it is, not as it might be.

The conversations we have here matter. They shape public sentiment, inform policy and influence our future. While Ninety One is a global investment firm, we are proud to call South Africa home. We recognise that economic prosperity rests on achieving social stability. We have work to do. The success of our country depends on the courage of its changemakers.

At Ninety One, we are committed to backing that courage with capital, ideas and events such as this one. Sponsoring The Gathering is not a mere contribution; it’s a statement of alignment with those who are building, questioning and leading.

Let that call to action from our greatest South African guide us: “It always seems impossible until it’s done.” ­Nelson Mandela knew about persevering through hardship. In ways great and small, it is our duty to do so as well. – Hendrik du Toit is founder and CEO at Ninety One

Create then salvage: Edward Kieswetter’s two-act tenure

One has to be a special kind of patriot, or even a masochist, to take the same job twice. Especially when the first time meant building a national treasure from the ground up, and the second time meant sifting through its wreckage. This has been the task of Edward Kieswetter, the outgoing commissioner of SARS.

Kieswetter’s first stint at the revenue service was as deputy commissioner in the early 2000s. The “old” SARS was a highly efficient machine. It pioneered eFiling, replacing queues at SARS branches with a world-class digital system. It did not just meet targets, it exceeded them. Its estimated collection was R15-billion more than budgeted in the 2007/8 financial year alone.

But in the world of South African public institutions, nothing good seems to last. Enter former SARS commissioner Tom Moyane and the State Capture crew, who took a sledgehammer to the tax authority. Key enforcement units that pursued complex tax crimes were dismantled and seasoned professionals were purged, forced out by the farce of a “rogue unit”. Why would anyone clean up that mess?

“When I initially accepted this appointment, it was a response to the Thuma Mina [Send Me] call by the President,” Kieswetter says. “I felt the best contribution I could make towards our struggling democracy was to ‘fix’ a broken SARS… It was driven by the same higher purpose.”

His tenure has not only been about reversing the internal decay but also about fighting for resources, at times leading to public disagreements with the minister of finance over budgets and funding for SARS.

Asked which was harder, rebuilding public trust or internal capacity, Kieswetter dismisses the question, stating that the two are inseparable. For him, “external messaging to the public has to be congruent with the experience of the public”. His focus has been on rebuilding institutional capacity and gunning for missing revenue owed to SARS.

Ouma Rabaji-Rasethaba claws back the stolen billions

While Kieswetter works to rebuild the state’s revenue engine, a parallel battle is being waged to recover the billions stolen from it. This fight falls on the shoulders of advocate Ouma Rabaji-Rasethaba, the deputy national director of public prosecutions in charge of the Asset Forfeiture Unit (AFU) at the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA).

In a country desperate for tangible results, the AFU provides them in hard currency. According to Rabaji-Rasethaba, her proudest moment has not been a dramatic courtroom victory, but a pragmatic policy intervention: the introduction of a non-trial resolution to settle foreign bribery cases. This policy has “enabled the NPA to enter into settlements with three international companies for their role in State Capture in South Africa”, she says.

Despite continuing frustration at the slow pace of high-level corruption convictions, these victories are commendable. Under Rabaji-Rasethaba’s leadership, the AFU secured settlements from the Swiss-Swedish engineering giant ABB, the German multinational software corporation SAP and the global management consulting firm McKinsey, recovering more than R5-billion. These non-trial resolutions have allowed the government to get its money back without years of litigation.

However, the fight to recover assets is often hampered by the state’s bureaucracy. Rabaji-Rasethaba says her biggest challenge is the glacial pace of public sector administration. When chasing assets hidden overseas, “where you need assistance to procure international partners to assist in recovery, procurement took 18 months to finalise the process”, she reveals. She adds: “Speed is not of essence in government.”

Shamila Batohi’s Herculean task

Rabaji-Rasethaba’s financial victories are just one part of the NPA’s fight against corruption and impunity. The ultimate responsibility lies with advocate Shamila Batohi. In early 2019, she left a senior career at the International Criminal Court to become the national director of public prosecutions at the NPA.

Her motivation, she says, was a sense of duty. “I had watched the devastation of State Capture from my comfortable life in The Hague. I needed to get into the ring and fight for justice and the rule of law.”

Five years later, frustration lingers. Public confidence in the NPA has been eroded by high-profile legal bungles, from the collapse of the Gupta extradition case to the state’s failure to secure a conviction in the Timothy Omotoso trial. These missteps have fuelled a narrative of incompetence and political parties such as ActionSA have called for her resignation. Batohi has been forced to publicly defend her position, defiantly telling the nation that she “will not step down”.

Although she remains confident that the NPA “will make important progress”, her methodical institution-building approach is still overshadowed by the authority’s very public failures. The key question remains whether her time at the NPA was helpful enough to leave it with strong foundations.

To her, “there is still a lot of work to be done”, but she says she leaves a “solid, strong institution, critical in any constitutional democracy”, on which her successor will be able to build after she retires in January 2026.

Alan Knott-Craig’s connected moves

Alan Knott-Craig’s brief but unforgettable tenure as CEO of Mxit, after acquiring a controlling stake through his company World of Avatar in 2011, already showcased an ethos that continues to define his career: a relentless drive to connect South Africans, especially those on the margins.

At the time, Knott-Craig operated in a context of a stark digital divide keeping most of the country offline. Mxit offered low-cost messaging on cellphones with basic features, making it a social phenomenon that had millions of registered users at its peak. With Knott-Craig stepping in, the vision was “to tackle inequality, specifically access to opportunity”, says Knott-Craig, who envisioned Mxit as a platform to deliver educational and financial tools without the expensive hardware.

“I’ve been committed to trying to bring internet to all South Africans since 2006, although more consciously since 2010,” says Knott-Craig. The drive has evolved, and today the digital divide is less about basic access and more about the availability of affordable, high-speed broadband, which is still far more expensive in South Africa than the global average.

And that is now the context for Knott-Craig’s Fibertime, of which he is the founder and CEO. The company builds and connects fibre networks in townships and informal settlements, which are mostly overlooked by larger service providers. It has a pay-as-you-go option that puts affordable fibre “in every home, every shack, every dwelling”.

According to Knott-Craig, the biggest challenge is “convincing capital providers of the business case of prepaid fibre”. He says that without buy-in from funders for ultra-low-cost models like “R5 for uncapped 100mbps for 24 hours”, the goal to connect all South Africans will never be realised.

Leon Schreiber’s overdue shake-up of Home Affairs

Senior DA politician Leon Schreiber is now the minister responsible for Home Affairs, a department widely known for its inefficiency. Since his appointment to the Cabinet after the 2024 general election, Home Affairs has enjoyed positive press accompanying its efforts to shake off its reputation as a painfully tedious and ineffective organ of the state.

Schreiber’s main goal is to digitalise services under a plan called “Home Affairs @ home”. Citing recent information technology upgrades, he says most major banks will soon offer smart ID and passport services at hundreds more branches and on their apps, with doorstep delivery to follow. The aim is to eliminate the need for citizens to travel long distances and wait in endless queues for these services.

This tech-first model is also being applied to immigration. A new digital system for tour groups from China and India, the trusted tour operator scheme, now processes visas online within 24 hours. Schreiber says this will be expanded and followed by a fully automated electronic travel authorisation system for all visa categories. The obvious criticism, however, is that these solutions primarily serve those with bank accounts and internet access, while millions of other South Africans still struggle with backlogs for basic documents at understaffed offices.

The most politically sensitive part of Schreiber’s plan is his push to attract highly skilled immigrants to South Africa. This runs counter to the strong political current of localisation in a country with extremely high unemployment.

He justifies the policy with economic data, stating that the skills shortage is the “second-biggest impediment to growth in South Africa, only eclipsed by load shedding”. To address this, he has introduced a points-based system for work visas which is designed to be transparent and efficient.

Ultimately, Schreiber has faced two main challenges. The first is demonstrating that his technology initiatives can solve the department’s fundamental service delivery failures for all citizens, not just a select group. Second is cleaning up the residual mismanagement, incompetence and misconduct in the department, as evidenced by recent arrests of Home Affairs officials colluding to issue passports and IDs illegally.

Zingiswa Losi and the fight for Cosatu’s relevance

Zingiswa Losi is the president of trade union federation Cosatu, the first woman elected to this position. She is leading it at a turbulent time, as trade unions have been weakened by a changing economy and declining membership.

Seven years after her election, however, the concept of renewal is her focus. Cosatu’s closeness to the ANC and, recently, the news of its other partner in the tripartite alliance, the SACP, intending to contest the 2026 local government elections, have raised existential questions about whether it can still play a meaningful political role.

Asked how Cosatu stays relevant for workers, Losi says its core mission is still fighting their exploitation, even in non-traditional jobs such as e-hailing. “Cosatu will remain relevant because our mission is to fight for and defend workers’ hard-won rights,” she says. She also notes the federation’s work and its broader impact, such as the national minimum wage.

Losi has been clear about the behind-the-scenes battles she has faced because of being the first woman to lead Cosatu. Speaking bluntly, she says: “The biggest trade-off has been balancing the demands of leadership with the personal sacrifices it takes, especially as a woman, where expectations are doubled.” Her experience highlights the patriarchal culture in the labour movement, and she says her mission is to “open doors for the women who will come after me”.

Her leadership thus faces a test on two fronts: whether she can truly reposition a legacy institution for a new era, and whether she can reform its internal culture. DM

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.