As the nation celebrates Women’s Month she stands as one of South Africa’s foremost women in law enforcement.
Born and raised in Meadowlands, Mamonyane said law enforcement was not the career her parents envisaged for her. She said, “My mother was a nurse and my father was a teacher, and they wanted me to follow those career paths. But I wasn’t a person who could do nursing or teaching.”
After matriculating in 1977 she studied a diploma in marketing at Damelin in Braamfontein.
Her first job was in the marketing department at South African Breweries. “I worked for the breweries for about four years when the offices were based in Braamfontein. I was involved in everything, from the printing of the T-shirts to the logos on the bottles.”
She was then head-hunted to work as the co-ordinator of a project for Sheer World, a company sponsored by the traffic department which helped matric students to learn to drive and teach them the rules of the road. “When the company dissolved in 1988 the Metro police took over the project and I started working for them,” she said.
From the start of her 26-year service at the Metro police, Mamonyane realised that as a woman she had to work twice as hard as her male counterparts. She said, “I had to do double the work everyone else was doing to make them realise that I was as capable as they were. And when there were hijackings or car chases, I would have to jump those fences and sprint to show them I could keep up.
“Another challenge I had was with male drivers who struggled to take orders from a woman,” she said.
But through an assertive nature and pure dedication, whether at a roadblock or in the office, she won the respect of all the officers around her.
Today she is the voice we all hear on the radio or the name we read in the newspaper as the spokesperson of the Metro police. She urges young women to make a career in law enforcement.
She added, “But my advice to young people including men wanting to join the Metro police is not to join because it’s a job, but to look at it as a service to the community.”
