the people I was leading. Thankfully, on the whole
I have not been disappointed to this day.”
Another critical aspect of the SEIFSA strategy
was for the Federation to think bigger and
beyond just South Africa. This led to “SA” in
SEIFSA changing from standing for South Africa
to standing for Southern Africa. Mr Nyatsumba
attributes this change to the fact that many
SEIFSA member companies also operate outside
South Africa.
Since the adoption of the new strategy in 2014,
SEIFSA immediately set about to register in
Zambia, Mozambique and Namibia.
“Our plans to enter the rest of the Southern
African Development Community were halted
by our weak financial position at the time,” he
said. “However, the strategy to register in the
neighbouring countries remains.”
Of course, change is not easy. Mr Nyatsumba
says that some within the SEIFSA fold struggled
with the changes more than others, but the vast
majority of stakeholders – employees, member
Associations and the Board – bought into and
embraced the changes that he introduced.
He singled out Operations Director Lucio
Trentini, Associations Manager Theresa Crowley,
Associations Administrator Christa Smith, former
Marketing and Communications Executive
Adelia Pimentel, former SEIFSA President Ufikile
Khumalo, former President Henk Duys, former
Board Member Neil Penson and current Vice-
Presidents Alph Ngapo and Pieter du Plessis, in
particular, for thanks and appreciation for their
support.
a collective bargaining levy (CBL), which left a
huge hole in SEIFSA’s finances when the CBL
was not renewed after December 2012,” said Mr
Nyatsumba.
The precarious SEIFSA finances caused by the
non-renewal of the CBL and the worsening state
of the economy, among other factors, resulted
in SEIFSA having to embark on a retrenchment
exercise for the first time in its history, which
resulted in the organisation having to let go of
11 people.
“Since then we have not increased the staff
compliment as a strategic cost-containment
measure. These measures, together with an
aggressive focus on revenue generation, have
enabled us to break even and make a profit
during the 2016/17 financial year – for the first
time in five years,” he said.
The establishment of the
Indaba and the SEIFSA
Awards for Excellence
Now in its fourth year of existence, the Indaba
continues to bring together business owners,
trade unionists and policymakers from across the
Southern African Development Community to
deliberate on the sector’s turnaround strategies.
In addition to establishing the Indaba, Mr
Nyatsumba also created the SEIFSA Awards
for Excellence to encourage and celebrate
innovation and excellence in the metals and
engineering sector. The sector had gone through
a rough period, the environment it operated in
SEIFSA
AWARDS for
EXCELLENCE
2018
Of all the priority areas that Mr Nyatsumba had
to deliver on, the most important was for the
Federation to break even financially, to be self-
sustaining and to build financial reserves. Commenting on the need to establish the
Southern African Metals and Engineering Indaba,
Mr Nyatsumba says that the annual conference
was born out of a need to stimulate growth in the
manufacturing sector in general and the metals
and engineering sector in particular, through
bringing together policy makers, experienced
business leaders and executives, entrepreneurs,
and investors wo would deliberate on the
challenges that were facing the sector at the
time. These included low economic growth, an
influx of imports from Asian economies and weak
demand both domestically and internationally.
“The SEIFSA I inherited when I took over was a
SEIFSA in a serious deficit owing to the fact that
the Federation had, up until 2012, been receiving “We needed a platform that would enable
stakeholders in our sector to come together,
deliberate on our issues and come up with
SEIFSA’s precarious
financial situation and
the need to retrench
sustainable solutions – and there was none
at the time. The mining sector has the annual
Mining Indaba, which has become synonymous
with Cape Town and is attended by all players in
the mining sector and the relevant Government
stakeholders from different parts of the world,
but especially the African continent. The metals
and engineering sector, which is a vital supplier
to the mining, auto and construction industries,
had no such conference of its own, so we created
one,” Mr Nyatsumba said.
was tough, job losses were imminent and there
continued to be lack of demand for its products
and services.
“Against this backdrop, we felt that it was
about time that the manufacturing sector not
only stood up and showcased its expertise and
innovations to the rest of the world, but that it
also celebrated its own efforts and excellence in
the midst of tough economic conditions,” he said.
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