JM Busha is a man on a mission to empower women through the beautiful game

The founder of JM Busha Investment Group, Joseph Makamba Busha is a man who believes in the emancipation of women in the community through the unifying element of the beautiful game – soccer.

Through the birth of the JM Busha Women’s Tournament, Busha firmly believes he has set off on his mission to revive and develop women’s football, not just in Gauteng, but the whole of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region.

But his vision is not just to develop the skills of women on the football pitch but to produce well-rounded soccer players who are healthy, educated and live in a fair and equal society. “The development of families, communities, nations and regional communities spanning various countries takes centre stage in my vision of an equitable society,” he said.

“You can never achieve peace and equity among communities if you have communities such as those in Sandton who have everything, and those in neighbouring Alexandra who have nothing and can hardly put a plate of food on their table.

“We need to build equitable communities that can survive and withstand elements that threaten the harmony of communities such as disparities in socio-economic standards which tend to breed animosity that threatens the very fibre that glues the families and communities together.”

It is this desire of building oneness among the regional communities of the SADC that Busha has decided to use the unifying power of sport, coupled with the power of mothers who, by their nature, manage to keep families as closely knit units.

“I would like to see Alexandra and Bluebirds becoming vehicles that drive this SADC agenda,” he said.

“I am determined to grow the seeds we are planting today in Alexandra and scatter them in the region in years to come so that we can grow the JM Bush Women’s Tournament into a SADC regional tournament.

“Charity begins at home and it is for this very noble reason that I have decided to start small and grow, as opposed to starting up there [SADC region] because chances are that we might fail.”

Busha said it was for this reason, specifically, that he had not attached a time frame to the sponsorship of the tournament. “If I had, for instance, decided that I was sponsoring Bluebirds and the JM Busha Women’s Tournament for five years, in that five years conditions may still not allow us to grow the tournament into a regional competition,” he explained.

“An open-ended partnership is a fertile ground for growth and, as we go along this developmental journey together, there will come a time when we say we have done enough or this tournament has now outgrown Alexandra and Gauteng and we need to take it to the next logical level, which could be SADC or something else before that.”

Details: JM Busha Investment Group 011 325 2027; www.jmbusha.com