Our Board
Heidi Sincuba
Heidi Sincuba is a South African artist and speculative thinker who embodies the erotic as a power against violence, toxicity, and erasure. They studied at the University of Cape Town, Artez Arnhem and hold an MFA from the Goldsmiths University of London. They have exhibited in the Netherlands, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, and South Africa. Their most recent solo exhibition was part of the National Arts Festival in Makhanda. They are currently the Head of Painting at Rhodes University
Lee van der Westhuizen
Lee van der Westhuizen is the Board Treasurer. She has spent her career in Financial Management and Operations previously working for SWEAT and having worked for Just Associates (JASS) as their Southern African Finance and Operations Manager until 2014, and now currently employed at the International Association of Theatre for Children and Young People (ASSITEJ SA), as their Finance and Operations Manager. She has a keen interest in community development and upliftment and working with youth. She has a passion for freedom of choice. She also has a deep appreciation of how working in the non-profit world seeks to improve the lives of others and believes diversity should be respected in all forms. She spends her free time with family and friends.
Ntokozo Yingwana
Ntokozo Yingwana, Sweat Board Secretary, joined the African Centre for Migration and Society at the University of the Witwatersrand in April 2016 as the Communication and Research Uptake Officer and a PhD candidate. Ntokozo holds a Masters Degree in Gender and Development from the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex in England. Her main passion lies in gender, sexuality, and sex worker rights’ activism in Africa. Prior to joining ACMS she worked for IDS as the Content Coordinator for the Open Knowledge and Digital Services Unit. She has worked for the Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT) , the African Sex Worker Alliance (ASWA), and the Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP).
Ruvimbo Tenga
Ruvimbo Tenga, Sweat Board Vice Chairperson is an activist and freelance consultant born in Zimbabwe. She is a former Western Cape Media Liaison for SWEAT and a member of Sisonke. Her current work centers on advocating for the decriminalisation of sex work in South Africa. She seats on the Asijiki Coalition for the decriminalisation of sex work in South Africa as a steering committee member and is a SWEAT board member. She has worked closely with organisations such as SWEAT, Women’s Legal Centre, Sonke Gender Justice, Triangle Project as an LGBTI Refuges leader, a PASSOP LGBTI member and has consulted for various organisations focusing on sex work, LGBTI, migration, and feminism. Currently based in Cape Town, she is also an artist and designs jewellery using recycled materials.
Tamara Shefer
Tamara Shefer is a Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of the Western Cape. She has a long interest in the challenges of intersectional gender and sexual justice and has engaged in research on young sexualities, masculinities, memory and apartheid, gender and care, and social justice, decolonial and feminist pedagogies and research in higher education. Her most recent edited books are ‘Engaging Youth in Activist Research and Pedagogical Praxis: Transnational and Intersectional Perspectives on Gender, Sex, and Race’ (2018, with Jeff Hearn, Kopano Ratele & Floretta Boonzaier) and ‘Socially Just Pedagogies in Higher Education: critical posthumanist and new feminist materialist perspectives’ (2018, Bloomsbury, with Vivienne Bozalek, Rosi Braidotti & Michalinos Zembylas). She has been a SWEAT board member since 2012.
Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng
Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng,Chairperson of the Sweat Board, is a medical doctor and an expert in sexual and reproductive health and rights. Her areas of impact have been in clinical services, health policy, advocacy, ethics of care and content production for public health communication. A key thought leader in the region and globally, she earned her medical degree from the Nelson Mandela School of Medicine at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. “Dr. T” as she is affectionately known has extended her advocacy work by penning a comprehensive handbook on sexual health titled ‘A Guide to Sexual Health and Pleasure’. Her debut book seeks to normalise healthy sexual behaviours in relationships, strengthen communication and emphasise that black women’s bodies are theirs first. In addition, she has been appointed a full-time Commissioner to the Commission for Gender Equality (CGE), a Chapter 9 institution with a mandate to “advance, promote and protect gender equality through undertaking research, public education, policy development, legislative initiatives, effective monitoring, and litigation”.
Allie Dee
Allie Dee is originally from Memphis, Tennessee. They began their sex work activism during their undergraduate degree at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. During their time spent living in Canada, Bill C-36 was passed, effectively putting into place the Nordic Model of partial decriminalisation across the country. Allie presented a paper against the bill at 2015 University of British Columbia F-Word Conference and continued with sex work decriminalization activism when they moved to Cape Town in 2016. Allie co-founded Stripperoke Cape Town, a body-positive, sex and sex worker positive queer party at the end of 2016. The space became a political springboard for the decriminalisation message with womxn and queer sex workers at the helm. Stripperoke won the Asijiki Award for Solidarity and Hard Work to a Sex Work Ally in 2017 and was awarded a grant from the Centre for Artistic Activism in 2018 to take Stripperoke to the South African National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, Eastern Cape.
Dr Sithembile Mbete
Dr Sithembile Mbete is a lecturer in the Department of Political Sciences at the University of Pretoria where she lecturers international relations and South African politics. She is also an Associate Fellow of the Centre for Governance Innovation (GovInn) at the University of Pretoria. She has a doctorate from the University of Pretoria on the subject of South Africa’s foreign policy during its two elected terms in the United Nations Security Council (2007-2008 and 2011-2012). In 2014 she was a visiting scholar at the Department of Political Science and Balsillie School of International Affairs at the University of Waterloo in Canada. Sithembile is a 2019 Open Society Foundation Democracy Fellow. She is part of an international study group on the rise of populism across the world. Sithembile joined the University of Pretoria from the Office of the Presidency of South Africa where she was a researcher in the secretariat of the National Planning Commission. She contributed to the drafting of the National Development Plan in the areas of public service reform, anti-corruption policy and community safety. Prior to this, she worked as a political researcher at IDASA (Institute for Democracy in Africa) where she was responsible for parliamentary monitoring and political analysis. While at Idasa she monitored the parliamentary deliberations on the Protection of State Information Bill (POSIB), commenting on and writing about the bill in the media. She served on the provincial and national working groups of the Right2Know Campaign and helped coordinate activism against the legislation.