Hot lunch with Katie Mohamed

When they coined the term “a force of nature” they may have had Katie Mohamed in mind. This is a woman who grabbed hold of her bootstraps and pulled herself up so hard I get whiplash thinking about it. It is difficult to imagine her, as I read her memoir/self-help book, Brave Today (which sold out its first imprint), as a young woman growing up in poverty in KwaZulu-Natal.

Her mother sold vegetables on the side of the road and her beloved father was a disabled addict. Her story has all the elements: hardscrabble youth, escaping an abusive forced marriage and another violent toxic relationship, then getting on the path of self-actualisation and finding her voice and personal success.

She became a shoot-the-lights-out advertising executive at the SABC and then continued to grow in front of the camera and behind the mic with her podcast. Brave is as brave does.

I meet her in the newly renovated Atrium restaurant of the Sandton Towers hotel. It is the kind of grand hotel space that reminds you that Sandton really is the business heart of the country.

It has had a makeover and feels opulent and luxurious with a glorious classical frieze running around the lobby and a delicious reinvented menu. Katie has just returned from Dubai on a holiday with her friends but she also has business interests and travels to regularly. 

She is dressed flamboyantly with a sense of joy, a large bloom blossoming at her neck. Her signature grey hair has come to symbolise her empowering approach to this new stage in life which has culminated in Outspoken Owls, a podcast with Lynn Forbes.

Forbes’s late son Kiernan, the rapper AKA who was shot dead in Durban two years ago, would tell Mohamed he was happy the two women hung out because “every time [my mother] comes back home she’s so full of life”.

"[Forbes and I] spend a lot of time together as friends and we get to share our stories, as in navigating our midlife. You know we’re 50 years old. We’re going through menopause. We’re going through dating challenges. We’re going through whatever. How do we navigate this? And I was like, we’re not going through a midlife crisis. We’re going through a transition, a midlife transition.

“And then I was like, we just need a camera here because everything we say other people need to know about. And then Kiernan passed away, and it just took everything out of her. Six months later she says, ‘I so need to get out of my mind, let’s do this.’ And in August 2023 we launched the podcast, and we talk about everything we want to. It’s been amazing.”

The glimpses into Mohamed’s life give me a sense of her resilient spirit.

“I was four hours late to my arranged wedding. I wanted to run away but you do it because you feel you are a financial burden to your family, and you want to bring something back. You think, OK, well, your parents will benefit as well. Then I got married and they literally wanted a maid. And I became their maid.”

But her spirit was indomitable. She started studying marketing and took the Dale Carnegie course. She got a job in a butchery and then at MTN. She sold Tupperware. She hustled hard to gain agency over her life. And then she was seduced by an extremely wealthy, abusive man.

After an incident that resulted in hospitalisation, “I thought I’d lost my soul. The police came to take the case. The next morning my brother went to the police station. The case number had disappeared and I remember my dad said to me, ‘You do know this man is going to kill you?’”

She found the courage to escape and has never looked back. “Six months later I was driving down to Durban for the holidays and I remember getting a call from a recruitment agent and she said, ‘Just drive back. You need to sign a contract with the SABC.’

“And in 2000 I started my job at the SABC. This was my dream and my life has never been the same. I think my prayer all the time was ‘Dear God, never let me be financially dependent on a man ever again.’ Because if I'm unhappy, I would always able to get up and go.”

She flourished and grew into every element of TV — producing content and advertising and appearing in front of the camera too.

“How fortunate am I that I learnt from legends like Carol Bouwer, Basetsana Kumalo and Michelle Garforth. I mean, when you talk about highly favoured, blessed and fortunate, that was me.”

How does she describe her journey? “Grit and grace. You have to build your own agency along the way, talent is nurtured and the influence of people around you is the most important thing. Bassie [Kumalo] once said to me, ‘You only gather good people if you are good people.’”