“Speak what you seek until you see what you said” – an energy that recognises destiny
My relationship with the first iteration of DESTINY magazine began with me as one of the many consumers of the brand. I was an avid reader for eight years. Then I was given the rare opportunity of working on the brand, together with what I still believe was the best team in media at that time. In 2017, however, my journey with DESTINY came to an end. Endings, as we know, close one chapter – but also open the next.
What began for me was a process of understanding how the brand engaged its audience. It became glaringly apparent that the magazine’s impact on readers was due to its ability to create discourse relating to matters of national importance such as education, employment and leadership, especially the access to opportunities in these sectors for women. In addition, it understood those women’s aspirations, daily challenges and identity issues, and addressed them in an empathetic and informed way. The subsequent closing down of the previous publisher and its brands left me – and many hundreds of others – with a feeling of emptiness.
No DESTINY felt like no content that spoke to the woman I was and the one I worked towards becoming. What was once a compass left a group of women who ran with a pack of wolves deafened by the silence of no arresting howl that signalled the way.
That gap – against the backdrop of a local landscape where the unemployment rate is among the highest in the world, where gender-based violence and a national crime rate are reaching crisis levels, and where rampant xenophobia, widespread corruption and inefficient service delivery are burdening women on all strata – was one which left me unsure of the degree to which we as a country remained alive with possibility. A deep pain set in.
Pain, however, is the harbinger of growth and strength. As the late American evangelist Vance Havner said: “ It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give
bread and broken bread to give strength. It is the broken alabaster box that gives forth perfume.” I, for one, have always been an advocate for the sweet scent of possibility and what can emerge when courage is harnessed and ridden for all it’s worth. We’ve all been witness to that through the achievements of Mandisa Mfeka, a South African who became the world’s first black female fighter pilot, Tyler Perry who launched the first film studio owned by an African American, Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge who became the first person in history to finish a marathon in under 2 hours and UCT student Uyinene Mrwetyana whose painful death became the catalyst call for our country to actively address the plight of women in ways which exceeded mere words. The possibility lies in this energy of renewed strength in the will of a people whose roots, like ours, are African. That presents with it the responsibility of platforms such as DESTINY to re-emerge once again and provide the requisite content that charges a cohort of women with the will to realise their dreams
through their careers and business endeavours, be recognised for the impact they make and applauded along the way.
True to the notion that “nothing changes if nothing changes”, this renewed version of DESTINY is not an echo of the previous publication, but one in its own right, with its own ideals and its own intrinsic values. Accordingly, we could think of no-one better suited to grace its cover than Amanda Dambuza, a remarkable businesswoman woman whose triumph over hardship and entrepreneurial brilliance truly illustrate what can be achieved when we take charge of our own destinies.
It is our sincere wish that DESTINY – in its new, vibrant form – will once again delight, celebrate and stimulate readers, acting as a catalyst for conversations that matter and dreams worth pursuing.
Welcome to DESTINY 2.0. It’s good to be back!