I am a 38 year old Female Crime and Prevention Activist and Speaker, born and bred in the Free State Province, South Africa. I am a mother of 3, a wife, sister, daughter and granddaughter. I completed my senior certificate (Grade 12) at Welkom High School in 2001. In 2002 I moved to Johannesburg to further my studies. I completed National Diploma in Management through University of Johannesburg and Financial Services Advisory through University of South Africa.
I am the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Modiehi Mongale Foundation NPO, a registered non profit organization addressing socio-economic issues amongst ex female offenders. I am a Managing Director of a communications and marketing private company called Leraman Media.
Childhood Experience
I come from a very strict background, I was not allowed to have friends outside the school and church. That resulted in me locking myself inside my shell, I became anti-social, I had a low self-esteem and low self-confidence. Due to the fact that I was unable to express my feelings and thoughts it resulted in me not being able to make my own decisions. I always wanted someone to validate my decision, it resulted in me having to justify all my actions and I am very defensive!
Family Influence
My family had basic influence over me such as religion values, decisions affecting my future such as educational decisions. They also had bad influence such as obesity and abuse of alcohol. My family had both positive and negative influence over my life.
Childhood Highlights
My joyful highlights would be when I was in grade 5 (standard 3) I received a Gold trophy for Needle worker at school. My other joyful was when I was in high school I received silver medal for Chess Regional Competitions for schools and this was officially the first time I was featured in a community newspaper.
My painful highlights would I was 20 years and I lost my dad. He passed away after a short illness and that is when my mother started disowning me. I was going through a lot and I resulted in drinking alcohol, spending time with friends and my boyfriend. I ended up getting pregnant at the age of 21.
Journey into Business
Growing up parents tends to have an influence over our future, my parents wanted to see me as a Chartered Accountant. After my matric I studied National Diploma in (Business) Management, because Accounting was full, through University of Johannesburg. However, I found myself working in the finance roles throughout my career life. After defrauding my employer, I lost my job as a Head Office Accountant. For survival I was forced to venture into business. Little did I know that varsity qualification was going to come in handy and prepare me for my role in business.
Going criminal
After the death of my father from a short illness, I started introducing myself to the life of alcohol, partying every weekend and smoking not only because I didn’t take the news well but also due to having to stop receiving financial support from my mother and the lifestyle I had chosen demanded high financial maintenance.
Later on in the years I got married. The lifestyle didn’t change. Instead as a couple we were partying together. As life continued, we were blessed with kids, my husband lost his job, rent and school fees demands, debts increased and so did the love of alcohol increase with only one salary in the house.
I was employed in a very trusted position as Head Office Accountant having access to my employer’s bank accounts. One day I sat at work, my mind was preoccupied with all the stressful things we were going through – the bank wanting to repossess our family car. As and when I looked into my employer’s bank accounts, I thought to myself if I stole little no-one will notice.
I defrauded my employer money and transferred it into my husband bank account. The first criminal activity went straight into settling school fees, accommodation and saving the car, I felt it was going to be extremely hard without the car – taking kids to school and going to work.
Six months later into doing this criminal activity, my manager received a tip-off email to say that I was defrauding the company. Investigations were conducted and indeed it turned out that I was taking money out of my employer’s bank account and transferring it into my husband’s bank account.
Both my husband and I got arrested in 2012 and I was only 29 when it happened. We went out on bail pending trial. During that time there was no employer willing to hire me because I already had a criminal record that says ‘pending trial’, I had to kiss my career in Finance goodbye and this is when I decided to venture into business for sustainability reasons.
The court trial took 5 years and we received our sentence in 2017, at that time I was managing the legendary Papa Penny. I was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment with a four years suspended – therefore I had to serve eight years. By God’s grace, I served two years and six months at the Johannesburg Correctional Centre. I was released in 2020 after receiving early parole due to the facility reducing the number of inmates as a measure to contain the spread of the COVID-19 infections.
My Lessons
It might take you a nearby death experience to change your life, for me it took me to go into a Correctional Centre to change my life. I didn’t go to prison BUT I went to a Correctional Centre to correct my mistakes! Department of Correctional Services helped a lot in the process of correcting myself by offering rehabilitation programs.
One lesson that stood out for me was as much as we think fraud is a petty crime, we are wrong! It’s actually a serious crime because a lot of people were affected by my criminal activity. Company suffered financial losses, a bread winner lost their job because the company had to retrench, South African economy was affected, and my family and friends were affected emotionally and financially because now they have to support me. So the action that I only thought of myself and situations turned out to affect a lot of innocent people and that was very selfish of me!
I also learned a couple of basic lessons about life such as tolerance, patience, time management, respect, self-realization, the list goes on. During detention we each had a choice to make, you can either chose to be rebellious or you can chose the willingness to correct yourself and allow yourself to go through the process of rehabilitation.
About the Foundation
Modiehi Mongale Foundation was established in 2017, two months before my incarceration, by myself. I was following an instruction that came in my dream.
My name at birth is Modiehi Mongale. I was named by my paternal grandmother who named me after her late sister. My mother changed my name to Lerato because she had a fear of naming kids after deceased. I have two sisters that passed on before I was born.
Modiehi Mongale was well known by her community as a community builder. So I took after her character but I chose the Prison Community.
Why Ex- Offenders?
During my incarceration I was appointed as a Vice Chairperson of the Sports, Recreation, Arts and Culture and my portfolio included Arts and Culture. I was representing 210 inmates and this is where I noticed tremendous amount of talent that the offenders had and fell in love with it.
Participants in these activities are often offenders that have good conduct and behaviour, moreover, they are the ones that have shown the willingness to correct themselves.
Prison community is a community that is neglected and stigmatized. Communities are not willing to give us second chances. I wanted to contribute to their reintegration back into the community, keep them busy so that we reduce the cycle of reoffending.
High Crime Rate
The foundation aims to reduce the cycle of reoffending amongst ex offenders by keeping them members busy. We also want to reduce crime rate we have within our communities by educating our communities about the impacts of crime. We strive to have peaceful communities.
High Unemployment Rate
Having criminal record is a barrier in us having employment. The foundation is addressing unemployment rate amongst ex offenders by giving them a platform to make a living using their God given-talents and skills acquired during incarceration. At the moment we have females beneficiaries which are participating in drama, choir and others are authors. We go around communities entertaining them with our crafts.
Watch Lerato Manaka’s interview on SABC 3’s “Unpacked with Relebogile Mabotja – Episode 27, Season 2”:
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For more information, contact Lerato Manaka on leratomanaka@gmail.com