Gloria Serobe receives Lifetime Achiever Award at the Sunday Times Top 100 Companies event

Gloria Serobe, co-founder of Wiphold and chair of the Solidarity Fund, was honoured at the Sunday Times Top 100 Companies event on Thursday night for her decades-long contribution to business and empowerment.

Serobe was named this year’s recipient of the Lifetime Achiever Award. 

Her business acumen is steeped in social transformation, with the goal to empower women, specifically through socially inclusive economic models to uplift marginalised rural women through interventions underpinned by agriculture and tourism. 

With her partners, Serobe created and built Wiphold from the ground up. The organisation lists Wiphold Investment Trust as having more than 1,200 direct and 18,000 indirect women beneficiaries.

Serobe is the first female awardee and joins an exclusive group of previous Lifetime Achiever Award recipients, including Jabu Mabuza, Jacko Maree, Adrian Gore, Patrice Motsepe, Johann Rupert, Bobby Godsell, Brian Joffe, Nelson Mandela and others.

In her acceptance speech, Serobe paid tribute to the women holding senior positions on the JSE-listed companies saying that the “whole world must look at SA in terms of what it has done on this matter of women empowerment. The figures do say we are in leadership position. But of course we have a lot of things to do, we still are very far from where we should be."

"When I look around, I see powerful women (in leadership positions on the JSE-listed companies)…So I just wanted to say that we are quite harsh on ourselves, but the truth of the matter is that South Africa has shown the way."

"I just want the young professional women to know that it can be done. But for it to be done they must stop feeling guilty about being working mothers. So I think the young professional women must actually understand that the stakes are high for South Africa and the luxury to stay at home we don’t have.”

As one of the pioneers of women empowerment, Serobe paid tribute to women leading the JSE listed companies.

Andrew Kirby, president and CEO of Toyota SA Motors, was named Business Leader of the Year for his leadership during the worst crisis faced by the automaker after the devastating floods in KwaZulu-Natal in April that damaged the Toyota plant.

In his acceptance speech, Kirby said the flooding disaster is the biggest that the company has faced and there were so many lessons that have come from it.  "It's nothing that we'd ever wish on anyone. And I think it did help us to grow and develop...our capabilities and our resilience to be able to survive and even flourish.”

"We have a can do attitude. We have tremendous resilience and a vision for the future.”

He paid tribute to the Toyota South Africa team “for their sacrifice and for the tremendous commitment that they all made. This award is very much appreciated, and I know it will be appreciated by the team.” said Kirby.

Kirby joins an elite list of former recipients, including Gore, Michael Brown, Lesetja Kganyago, Pravin Gordhan, Johan van Zyl, Michael Jordaan, Gerrie Fourie and Phuthuma Nhleko, and others.

The event, held in Johannesburg on November 10, also recognised the companies that had delivered the best returns for shareholders. 

Montauk Renewables claimed top spot at the Sunday Times Top 100 Companies Awards. 

Overall, the mining sector continued to perform well, with eight out of the top 10 positions on the prestigious list. Impala Platinum Holdings and Royal Bafokeng Platinum were second and third, respectively.

For the fourth year running, BCX was the headline partner for the event, which is a highlight on the South African business calendar. 

To qualify, JSE-listed companies were required to have a minimum market capitalisation of R5bn at August 31 2022, with winners determined by the highest returns for their shareholders over a five-year period, based on a theoretical initial investment of R10,000.

The winners of the fourth BCX Digital Innovation Awards were also announced at the event. These awards honour South African organisations that have taken up the cudgels to transform their businesses through technological advancements and digital transformation.

The winners in the corporate category are, in third place — iiDENTIFii — Facial Biometric Digital Authentication Platform; second — ShopriteX — Checkers Xtra Savings 60Sixty Integration, and first place — Discovery Bank — Shared Value in Banking.

In the SME category, in third place — Acumen Software — My Smart City; second — Envisionit Deep AI — RADIFY; and in first place — Ctrl Technologies — Creating Digital Insurance Advisors.

The full results of the Sunday Times Top 100 Companies will be published in the newspaper on November 13 2022.