The welcoming warmth of the office and her affable smile belie the real toughness of Ekurhuleni’s first female city manager, Imogen Maboikanyo Mashazi
The 60-year-old epitomises the Sotho idiom that says: “Mosadi o tshoara thipa ka bohaleng [A woman holds the knife by the sharp end of the blade]” – meaning she would go to any lengths to fight for what she believes in.
“If you look at my previous position, my three divisional heads were women,” she told City Press in an interview this week at her office in Germiston. Mashazi had a rather colourful upbringing, having lived in three different townships in Gauteng. She left Atteridgeville in Pretoria when she was still young and moved to Soweto, where she matriculated.
“After stints at Pholosong Hospital in Tsakane, Brakpan, and in casualty wards in Boksburg, I was head-hunted to train nurses in clinical health assessment treatment. Remember, after 1994, government introduced free primary healthcare and the system was not ready in terms of doctors and support staff.
“Around 2000, an idea came to form a metro, and a department called health and social development was formed, and I was appointed as the director. The department received a lot of trophies for increasing the cure rate of TB to more than 85%, which was above the national norm. Those are some of the milestones we achieved.
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