LISA WITEPSKI
Having established her business, Sebenzile Demolitions & Projects with just three employers, Thandi Mase now provides jobs for up to 200 workers, marking her as a force to be reckoned with within this industry.
Thandi stands out for more than her success at job creation, however: she is also the only black woman in a field that remains dominated by white men, she maintains.
This distinction has helped her gain a name in the industry after much hard work – but, then again, hard work is something she is used to.
Eastern Cape-born Thandi recalls that she started her working life as a cleaner at the Hyperama, taking on a series of jobs at various companies until having amassed extensive experience and studied further to broaden her skills base, she was appointed department manager in one of the country’s leading banks.
“I used to take on anything I could do to put food on my table – I sold my own paintings at Bruma market; I made vetkoek and sold it at taxi ranks; I’d even ask contractors whom I saw relaxing on the roadside if they had lunch, then I’d run home and cook for them,” she says.
This resilience, and her ability to create her opportunities, came to the fore when she was retrenched from the bank in 2014. Thandi turned this piece of bad luck to her advantage.
“I decided that, rather than returning to the corporate world, I would start my own business,” she recalls. She settled on construction as an industry she could enter with relative ease, as “there was always someone building something when I was growing up. Consequently, I knew a bit about it.”
Even so, breaking down barriers proved harder than she had expected, especially with so many entities offering a similar service. Thandi looked to a less saturated area and found her niche in demolition. There was an obstacle, however: she didn’t know how to start. She solved this challenge with typical tenacity: at the time, there were only five companies active in this space, and she knocked on the door of each one and asked the owners to put her to work.
“They couldn’t believe that, as a black woman, I wanted to enter the industry. They gave me all their rubbish jobs that no one else wanted, but I used each as a learning curve,” Thandi says, adding that she started to fund and build her business by selling the salvage gleaned from demolition sites.
She quickly learned to use her willingness to take on a challenge to her advantage. In one instance, a client asked for assistance pulling down a building located on a Pretoria street corner. The job was so complicated that no other company would consider taking it on, but Sebenzile succeeded in pulling it down within three days.
Since Sebenzile’s establishment, Thandi has developed the know-how to strip buildings, conduct partial demolition (where the building’s shell remains intact), and full demolitions. She has started working closely with developers and has a full pipeline as many of these developers are turning old office blocks, no longer in use since the Covid pandemic ushered in a new era of remote work, into apartment buildings.
She is also concentrating on growing the second arm of her business, which focuses on salvage.
“I often say that Sebenzile is about ‘green demolishing’, because we try to make sure that none of the building materials from our sites go to landfill – instead, we sell everything from the site, from tiles to bricks.”
With 11 projects on her horizon, Thandi says the business is starting a new chapter. She has recently employed a project manager to oversee the day-to-day operations, while she turns her attention to tasks such as marketing.
“I started this business with just R50 in my bank account, but I have never had to take a loan – I’ve been able to keep building it because I am ready to take on any challenge. In fact, the more difficult, the more excited I am!” she concludes.
Daily News