Unisa student recognised with prestigious awards

Unisa Law Clinic Candidate Attorney Thembisile Mahuwa has recently been recognised by two major awards: The Mail & Guardian’s Top 200 Young South Africans 2024, under the legal services category, and the Sunday World’s Unsung Heroes 2024, under the education category. Moreover, she was among the Top 30 Most Memorable Women of 2023 in South Africa under the education category.

Mahuwa is also currently a nominee for the International Women in Law Awards under Young Achievers/Pioneers, which will be awarded at a conference in September 2024 in Austria.

Who is Thembisile Mahuwa?

Thembisile Mahuwa

Mahuwa is passionate about advancing the legal profession through innovative technological and social methods, empowering lawyers and legal teams to embrace change, optimise efficiency, and deliver value. With over a decade of experience in leadership, legal and security, and community development, she holds a Bachelor of Law degree from Unisa. She is currently pursuing her Master of Law degree, specialising in International Human Rights Law at Unisa. She also has an Honours degree in Policy Making from the Thabo Mbeki School of African Leadership and a Community Oversight certificate from the University of the Witwatersrand.

Through her profession, skills, and experience in leadership, Mahuwa aims to accomplish the legal emancipation of communities who do not have access to or cannot afford quality legal representation. She has achieved this excellently in the past two years, as she has won 100% of her legal cases in favour of her clients at the Unisa Law Clinic.

Mahuwa loves to engage in projects that promote positive transformation, human development, job creation, training, and the motivation of community members. She focuses on empowering women and youth in rural communities and peri-urban and urban areas to implement their community development plans. She participates and trains students under the Unisa Law Clinic FOCI plans and conducts community workshops to increase legal knowledge in the community.

About the awards

The publications explain their awards as follows:

The Mail & Guardian (M&G) annually celebrates the excellence and impact of young South Africans aged 18 to 35 through its 200 Young South Africans feature and summit. It is one of the most popular editions of the M&G, widely anticipated by the community and beyond. Receiving a mention as part of any cohort is not just an award to be celebrated like any other. It is a lifetime honour of distinction, given only to those remarkable individuals who stand out and have grown into industry leaders and pioneers in their specific fields.

Sunday World’s Unsung Heroes, in turn, celebrates the great strides first put in motion by the brave 1976 students, who challenged the might of the apartheid security forces to demand a dramatic change in the way education was dispensed to the black masses, demonising the inferior education they were receiving from the oppressive system as a system that needed not to be revised but to be abolished.

*By Ngwako Mokgotho, Communications and Marketing Specialist, College of Law