Itumeleng Qhali
Itumeleng Qhali is a sustainable development practitioner, activist, writer and multi-disciplinary creative who has worked on several development projects with government and NGOs. She holds qualifications in economics, public management and writing.
In 2015, Itumeleng became a director at Qhama, an urban renewal NGO working to build integrated communities. Qhama addresses past racial imbalances, historical displacement and socio-economic inequalities for low-income families.
At Qhama, Itumeleng led the development of South Africa's first integrated urban renewal social housing and heritage preservation precinct, Steve Biko Precinct, now home to hundreds of women and youth. The precinct includes the former Apartheid torture building where the father of the Black Consciousness Movement, Steve Biko, sustained his fatal injuries along with many other freedom fighters.
Itumeleng ran several training programs whilst working for a training and development institute where she focused on training unemployed youth and women. In 2013, she championed the organisation's New Venture Creations Arts Entrepreneurship Program, which trained over 200 disadvantaged youth and women creatives.
Itumeleng's bilingual writing, which explores culture, women's lives and social ills, has been published in several literary journals and magazines, including The New Contrast Literary Journal, The Kalahari Review and Agbowo Mag.
In 2021, she published Loss-iLahleko, the first multilingual, female-authored anthology & survival guide on gender-based violence (GBV) and gender equality in South Africa, along with a virtual space. The anthology features 11 women writers representing each official South African language, and other creatives, including designers and illustrators.
Loss-iLahleko is based on Itumeleng's bilingual thesis for a master's in Creative Writing from Rhodes University. It explored GBV and how trauma is expressed through creative writing in multilingual tongues.
Through an NGO she founded in 2020, Itumeleng has trained over three hundred children, women and survivors on gender equality, GBV, and writing to heal.