It's not unusual to find Soul City CFO Dumisani Dlamini hundreds of kilometres from the finance office. More often than not, his work takes him into communities across South Africa, where he sees first-hand how corporate social investment investments (CSI) are changing lives. While his job is to make sure every rand is accounted for, he also makes it a point to see where that money lands and whether it’s delivering the impact it was meant to.
During a recent visit to the Northern Cape, it was the things that couldn’t be measured in rands that mattered most. A learner finding her confidence. A survivor finding her voice. Men choosing conversation over silence. For the Soul City CFO, those moments are the true return on investment.
The visit offered a first-hand look at how Soul City, together with the SIOC Community Development Trust (SIOC-CDT) on behalf of Sishen Iron Ore Company (mining), is implementing community-led programmes designed to create lasting social change, especially for GBV.
“CFOs must look beyond balance sheets and compliance,” says Dumisani. “CSI is a direct investment in the health and sustainability of our operating environments, especially when we are implementing on behalf of a client organisation.”
“Soul City assists by providing a robust framework for financial accountability tied directly to social outcomes. For instance, through our partnership with SIOC-CDT, we manage a total budget of R21 million to ensure resources are efficiently channelled into critical areas. We provide the rigorous oversight required to ensure every rand translates into tangible community impact.”
A different kind of ROI
His perspective comes at a time when South African companies continue to invest billions of rands into CSI initiatives every year, yet many communities continue to face the same challenges. For Dumisani, the issue is not necessarily how much companies are spending, but how they are spending it.
“Many interventions fail because they lack a multi-sectoral, community-driven approach,” he explains. “Throwing money at a problem without addressing its structural drivers or building grassroots capacity leads to short-term relief rather than systemic change. Real change requires targeting the root causes and drivers of issues like gender-based violence and femicide. By focusing on an ecological model that addresses individual, relational, community and societal levels, we move away from fragmented funding towards deep, structural transformation.”
That thinking is exactly what convinced SIOC CDT to appoint Soul City as its implementation partner instead of running the programme itself.
“When we started looking for someone to implement the project on our behalf, there were two things we needed, which include an organisation with experience in GBV, and one that could capacitate local organisations because our board had given us a mandate to localise,” explains an SIOC-CDT representative.
“After researching potential partners, Soul City quickly emerged as the right fit. They had experience dealing with GBV from a young age, but they also had the ability to build the capacity of local organisations. That's exactly what we were looking for.”
For the Trust, that decision reflects a lesson many organisations still overlook.
“Sometimes companies think everything is about money,” the representative says. “It’s not only about money. SIOC-CDT may have the funding to appoint Soul City, but government departments bring their expertise, community organisations bring local knowledge and Soul City brings technical experience. It’s no longer SIOC’s project. It’s no longer Soul City’s project. It’s a collaborative effort.”
Healing communities differently
That collaborative approach became clear throughout the Northern Cape visit. Rather than arriving with ready-made solutions, Soul City starts by asking communities what they need before designing programmes.
“You cannot implement a project without engaging the people,” the SIOC representative explains. “We don’t only engage our partners. We engage the community directly. We ask them what their needs are before designing interventions. Consultation is very important. You must consult the relevant people, including survivors themselves.”
One of the community leaders implementing the programme confirms how Soul City’s approach was different from anything they had experienced before. “The training showed us that every community is unique and has its own challenges. You cannot arrive with solutions from outside. You have to involve the community and allow people to take ownership.”
That ownership is already producing results, as they share how community members now walk into local offices asking for help after recognising abuse in their own lives. Young people are becoming changemakers in their schools. Parents are beginning to join conversations that previously excluded them.
However, it doesn’t stop there because the community work is also changing those delivering it.
“Even us as employees are also learning,” says a steering committee member. "GBV is something I never fully understood before. Now I know how to help people who may not even realise they are experiencing abuse, whether it’s financial abuse, emotional abuse or something else.”
Returns worth measuring
For Dumisani, this is where financial stewardship becomes something much bigger than financial management.
“My primary role is ensuring rigorous financial oversight while strictly aligning our spending with the project’s measurable outcomes,” he explains. “I oversee the financial health of the initiative, ensure compliance with the monitoring and evaluation frameworks established between us and SIOC-CDT, and make sure our internal financial controls support the five local community-based organisations we sub-grant to, enabling them to deliver effective services on the ground.”
What effective services on the ground actually look like became clear inside a classroom with learners from the Rise Club, one of Soul City's programmes aimed at empowering young girls.
Only moments earlier, the learners had confidently presented projects on consent, healthy relationships and women’s rights when one learner reflected on what the programme had meant to her.
“I used to be depressed before joining Rise,” she said, before emotion overwhelmed her.
Another learner added, “The reason I’m part of the Rise Club is because I believe in women and girls’ power. They’re teaching us about our rights and about the things women go through every day.”
Another learner described how the programme had changed the way she sees her future.
“Rise Club has taught me to become an independent woman,” she said. “It has taught me that as women we have rights. We can achieve more. We also share things that are very deep and personal, and what we say stays within the group. It has really helped me in my personal life.”
Change that starts at home
Moments like these are precisely why SIOC believes prevention has to start early. “If we can start with them from a young age, we can build future leaders,” the SIOC representative says.
“We also target the parents because you cannot prepare a child without preparing the home they are going back to,” adds a steering committee member. “Parents are very important, especially those with strong traditional beliefs or different religious backgrounds. While you’re preparing a child, you also prepare the parent, so that when the child comes home and starts talking about these issues, the parent already understands where they're coming from.”
That belief in bringing people along doesn’t stop with families. It also guides how every community intervention begins.
“The training taught us that every community is unique,” explains one steering committee member. “You cannot come into a community with solutions from outside. Communities must identify their own challenges and take ownership of solving them.”
That ownership is changing attitudes as people now voluntarily approach community organisations after recognising abuse in their own lives. Others are even beginning to recognise forms of abuse they never realised existed.
“People think GBV is only physical assault, but many don’t realise financial abuse and emotional abuse are also forms of violence. We have also learnt so much as employees. It has changed us personally,” explains a social mobiliser.
That learning extends to organisations like Therapists on Wheels, one of the community-based organisations delivering psychosocial support.
“We don’t call it therapy because many people immediately shut down,” explains the Therapists on Wheels practitioner. “We invite them for psychosocial support or simply to have a conversation. Once they’re comfortable, we begin working together on behaviour change and healing. We were already doing GBV work, but we weren’t as visible. The partnership with Soul City has helped us reach more people, even in outlying communities.”
The programme is also changing conversations among men. She also recalls a recent men’s dialogue where participants asked women to remain afterwards so the discussion could continue together.
“It showed us that people are beginning to listen,” she says. “Change takes time, but we’re seeing the progress. Men need to see themselves as part of the solution. They’re labelled trash, labelled the problem, but they need to understand why they’re seen that way, and be given a platform to voice why they behave the way they do.”
These conversations don’t end when the community meetings are over. They give people the confidence to recognise abuse, seek support and, in some cases, help others by sharing their own experiences.
“I realised it was no longer love, and I was tired of being a victim,” says a survivor who is now a steering committee member. “Now I’m able to stand up and tell people I was a victim of GBV, and they can learn from me and what I’ve been through. They can also learn the importance of leaving such situations and making men part of the solution.”
Counting what counts
According to Dumisani, these stories represent the return every finance leader should be looking for. For him, stories like these have done more than demonstrate the impact of the programme, but have also shaped how Soul City continues to deliver it.
“We have learnt that community trust in local CBOs is a massive enabler for success. However, our mid-term evaluations also revealed systemic weaknesses, such as fragmented referral systems and limited male engagement in certain areas. In response, we adapted our strategy to heavily emphasise targeted Men for Change dialogues, which engage men and boys to challenge harmful gender norms and promote positive masculinity,” says Dumisani.
That willingness to measure, adapt and improve is exactly what Dumisani believes should define CSI.
“I would also encourage every CFO to demand rigorous return on investment metrics based on human development, just as they would for any commercial venture. Do not just sign off on the budget; interrogate the data. For example, we look closely at the monitoring and evaluation frameworks and track the real human outcomes like the 583 members recruited into our Rise Clubs or the 219 men reached through our dialogues to ensure your financial output is genuinely changing lives.”
“NGOs like Soul City are best placed to implement CSI projects on behalf of many companies because this is what they do best. I would encourage every CFO to collaborate with organisations that can ensure the lasting impact of their organisation’s CSI programmes.”
As Dumisani puts it, every balance sheet eventually closes, but the audits that matter most lie in effective CSI investments, being a more human CFO, and CFOs going beyond the numbers.
“The knowledge stays behind,” adds the SIOC representative. “Soul City is capacitating local organisations so that when the project ends, communities can continue the work themselves. That, for us, is the real impact.”
Such words were one of the most encouraging parts for Dumisani – not the size of the investment, but the signs that the work could outlast the project itself.
“Corporates need to shift from viewing CSI as an annual charitable donation to treating it as a strategic, multi-year partnership. Our agreement with SIOC-CDT operates on a three-year timeline, from January 2024 to December 2026. This extended duration is vital because genuine behavioural and social norms change guided by models like the ADKAR framework requires sustained investment, consistent engagement, and ongoing action,” says Dumisani.
“If this model were replicated, we could drastically reduce pervasive, systemic issues across the country,” he adds. “By combining psychosocial support with economic empowerment such as enrolling youth and women into certain economic programmes, we tackle poverty as a core structural driver of violence. Communities would benefit from scalable, locally owned solutions that foster long-term resilience rather than temporary fixes.”
