Building access for all South Africans

Boitumelo Leshope’s story began in Postmasburg, a modest mining town in South Africa’s Northern Cape. Her childhood was nomadic and shaped by her father’s work, as she changed schools more often than most. Yet, amidst the constant change, a few enduring truths were forged: the value of grit, the power of belief and the transformative promise of solid structures.

Her childhood memories read like poetry framed in the prose of resilience – living in RDP homes without electricity, the lingering smell on her uniform, pressed with a heavy cast-iron iron heated on a gas stove or open fire, braving long Christmas shopping trips to the nearest big cities, the anxiety of falling ill while being far from a private hospital, the joy of having her home join the power grid– and the novelty of eventually having a door on their shared bedroom.

“You can’t imagine the impact a simple door can have on a little girl’s worldview,” she muses, recalling how her sister’s friends joked that while they could slam doors when they were upset, she and her siblings had to settle for flinging a curtain aside. 

As a portfolio manager on the Sanlam Investments Property Impact Fund, Boitumelo sees her career as a merging of passion and purpose. The fund invests in quality social infrastructure in key sectors such as private education, healthcare, township and rural retail, and student and affordable housing - which are critical to middle-income earners like nurses, teachers, mine-workers and police officers who are underserved by government social programmes, and the formal banking sector (the “missing middle”). 

“I see this role as an opportunity to marry my experience in the property sector with my desire to positively impact lives,” she says. “We are a team of enablers investing in infrastructure that brings dignity, stability and hope within arm’s reach.”

The missing middle: a personal calling

Boitumelo’s upbringing was one of unconditional love and strength, while faced with glaring gaps in accessibility and equity.  She has lived the reality of the “missing middle”.

“What if I hadn’t had to burn candles – and singe my hair in the process – to finish homework in the evenings? What if I didn’t have to wake up at the crack of dawn to make it to school on time? What if the travel costs to the nearest city hadn’t come at the expense of our Christmas shopping budget?” she says.

She is now a Chartered Accountant by training, but Boitumelo’s love of numbers was ignited early on, in a small tuck shop run out of her grandmother’s garage in Petrusburg, in the Free State. “I would often calculate customers’ change mentally, not because I had to, but because I believed I could. Fuelled by that belief, I sharpened my skills, which in turn led to participation in mathematics Olympiads and ultimately helped shape the path that has brought me to where I am today” she says.

Those formative years were also filled with imaginative play and hands-on learning. She spent her time around partially completed buildings, common in many township and rural areas: intrigued by roof designs, captivated by the rhythmic dance of bricklaying and carrying a spirit level to check if the walls were in fact straight. “That’s where my love for properties began,” she says. 

These reflections fuel her purpose today. 

A spirit level for society

Boitumelo attributes her drive and career journey to her father, who taught her the importance of a nourishing environment and the power of belief. 

Again, the theme and analogy of building was entrenched in early on. “My grandfather was a builder, so my dad mastered the trade early, laying bricks and working with cement long before adulthood. The toll on his body was unforgiving as he developed arthritis at a young age, which earned him the nickname Ou Been – loosely translated as Old Bones.”

This physical toll merely ignited his intellectual fire, she says. Barred from studying medicine during apartheid, he instead became a mathematics teacher and mineworker, determined to save enough money to put himself through law school – a degree he would eventually earn in attempt to fight the very regime that once denied him. “I remember how proud he was to be the first lawyer in our family,” Boitumelo reflects. “His achievement didn’t just change his life; it shifted the entire trajectory of those who came after him.”

Her father’s detours taught her that the road to purpose isn’t always linear – and those detours often hold the most valuable lessons. She needed these lessons sooner than she might have realised. 

Boitumelo’s father passed away during her early teenage years. The loss was deeply personal – and suddenly practical. With her dreams of university hanging in the balance, she devised a plan. Leveraging her academic strengths, she secured a Thuthuka bursary from South African Institute of Chartered Accountants, which carried her through university and helped her earn the coveted CA(SA) designation.

But even that journey had its hurdles. The second board exam proved daunting, especially as she was navigating new motherhood at the time. Through that experience, she discovered an even deeper part of herself and womanhood– perseverance. This virtue fuelled her to pursue a qualification in the United States, Fordham University and, most recently, begin an Executive MBA with Henley Business School. Beyond academia, she has also established a distinguished career in investments, with about a decade of experience across listed and unlisted investments in Africa. Having led finance teams across multiple jurisdictions before the age of 30, recently co-led the turnaround strategy of a Pan-African listed real estate fund and launched a social infrastructure fund, she clung to a quote by Henry Ford: “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t – you’re right.”

Boitumelo sees her life’s mission as an extension of those early days with the spirit level – checking for alignment. Not just of walls, but of opportunity. Of access. Of dignity. Her journey is proof that when belief meets action, transformation follows. “I know what it feels like to live without,” she says. “So, I build with purpose – in attempt to inspire those who just need the permission to dream and the audacity to pursue those dreams.”