Our Trustees

Yasmin (Jessie) Turton, is currently a lecturer in the Social Work Department at the University of Johannesburg. Prior to this, she worked as a consultant providing services largely to NGOs, government departments and foreign donor agencies in South Africa, the SADC region as well as Anglophone Africa. Her areas of service are in  organisational development, human resource development, strategic planning, capacity building, training and evaluation. She serves on the Programme Committee of the Black Sash.

Mary-Jane Morifi is currently the Chief Corporate Affairs and Sustainability Officer at Tiger Brands responsible for Corporate Communications and Media Relations, Stakeholder and Government Relations, Sustainable Socio Economic Development and Sustainability and Enterprise and Supplier Development focused mainly at the creation and promotion of black farmers as suppliers into the Tiger Brands business. 

She joined Tiger Brands from The Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital Trust where she was the Global Capital Campaign Lead responsible for raising the $100million required to build, equip and train the medical personnel for the Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital.  The state of the art hospital was launched in December 2016 as a legacy for Madiba and is now ready to receive patients from Southern Africa.

She joined the Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital from Anglo American Platinum where she held the position of Executive Head of Corporate Affairs for 6 years.  Her portfolio included among others; Corporate Communications and Branding, Sustainability and Sustainable Community Development and corporate reporting through the Integrated Annual Report and the Sustainability Report.  She joined Anglo American Platinum from BP International in London where she was Director of Internal Audit. 

She has served as a facilitator and contributor to the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) programme in South Africa for 8 years focusing mainly on Sustainability within the extractive industries in particular Mining. She is a Senior Associate for the Cambridge Institute of Sustainability Leadership and serves on the Sustainability Advisory Board of Astra Zeneca in the UK. Mary –Jane serves on a number of not-for-profit Boards including the UCT Foundation, Black Sash Trust, Grassroots Soccer, The Open Society Foundation and Leratong Hospice, a palliative care facility in Atteridgeville where she grew up.

Mieke Krynauw is a lawyer working in the public sector. Mieke has an interest in commercial mediation, dispute settlement and the effective use of strategic litigation. She is a CEDR UK accredited mediator. Mieke has previously lectured jurisprudence at Wits Law School and has experience in constitutional law, having clerked for the late Justice Skweyiya during his tenure on the bench at the South African Constitutional Court. She obtained her undergraduate degree in philosophy, politics and economics as well as her LLB at the University of Cape Town and her LLM at NYU. Her involvement with the Black Sash started as a toddler getting under everyone's feet at Sash meetings attended by her mother, Paula Krynauw.

Janeen de Klerk is currently Chief Operating Officer in the Competition Tribunal in Pretoria – where she has been since September 1999. Prior to this Janeen was employed in SALDRU (Southern African Labour and Development Unit) and the DPRU (Development Policy Research Unit) at the University of Cape Town. Janeen's expertise lies in the areas of finance and governance and she currently serves on the Finance Committee of the Board.

Nolundi Luwaya is the director of the Land and Accountability Research Centre (LARC). Nolundi’s research interests include rural women’s land rights under customary law and methods for understanding and protecting these rights that are informed by the experiences of rural women. Nolundi has a BA LLB and LLM from the University of Cape Town.

Maleshini Naidoo is a BCom (Hons) graduate who has 18 years of extensive financial and auditing experience.  Since 2007, she has been a director of MG Associates, which is a black-owned chartered accountant and consultancy business. In her consulting role, Maleshini has been involved in various projects at an executive level, namely: Acting Chief Financial Officer (CFO) for the National Arts Council; Energy and Water Sector Education and Training Authority (EWSETA); Council on Higher Education (CHE) and the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC).  Other entities where she has been involved at a consulting level include, amongst others, Johannesburg Development Agency (JDA), Astrazeneca Pharmaceuticals Ltd and ABB Power Technology South Africa (Pty) Ltd. Maleshini currently serves on numerous boards, both within the public sector and private trusts.  She also served as an independent audit committee member for the Competition Commission and Competition Tribunal. Maleshini serves on the Black Sash Finance committee.

Matilda Smith is currently the Director of the Law Clinic at Nelson Mandela University. She is also a mediator who has practiced in the commercial sector as well as with communities, NGO’s and Chapter 9 institutions. She has previously worked in Local and National Government as well as in the NGO sector providing training to Rural Advice Offices. Having first conducted research on the Street in respect of female Street Children, she founded the first Homes for Female Street Children in Cape Town with Child Welfare. Her relationship with Black Sash started when she worked with the Legal Education Action Project (LEAP) and both institutions serviced Advice Offices and were co-publishers of the Paralegal Manual.