Masana Mulaudzi is the Brenthurst Foundation’s
first Machel-Mandela Intern. She was selected
for the internship from over 900 applicants from
Africa and the rest of the world.
Masana is a graduate in African Studies (BA
Honours) and Politics, Philosophy and Economics
(B.com) from the University of Cape Town. She is
the recipient of numerous awards and
scholarships, including the Anglo-American Open
Scholarship Award. Masana is an alumnus of the
South Africa-Washington Internship Program,
during which she served as an assistant to the
Director of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for
Justice and Human Rights in Washington D.C. As a
teenager she founded The Empty Tin Can, an
arts-based organisation that reconciles artists
to their communities and provides a vehicle for
change. In 2010 she was named a visiting
Resident Poet/Artist at the British Council (UK
and South Africa). During her studies at UCT she
was widely involved in social work and community
service in Cape Town, including working with
Young in Prison, a Netherlands-funded group
which provided regular support to young women in
the city’s Pollsmoor prison. She has interned at
the African Leadership Academy and Allan Gray
Asset Management Bank, and served as a volunteer
and mentor in numerous educational and faith-based organisations.
Masana was born in Boksburg and matriculated at
the High School for Girls in Potchefstroom,
where both her parents worked in the mining industry.
As part of her six-month internship with the
Foundation, she aims to study how micro-level
institutions in Africa, such as NGOs or
religious bodies, can affect government policy
implementation in key areas such as tax revenue collection.
Explaining why she applied for the
Machel-Mandela Internship, Masana says her
‘passion lies in implementation and working with
the community as much as it does learning. I see
more and more that the realities of hardship in
daily African life are not always addressed in policy.’
Masana Mulaudzi
