Shanaaz Majiet

About Shanaaz Majiet

Shanaaz Majiet is an institutional transformation practitioner, ICF Master Credentialed Coach (MCC), and public sector leadership expert with more than three decades of experience leading change from inside government, corporate, and international systems. She is the architect of the Courage-to-Act Capability Model, a three-layer diagnostic framework that distinguishes between capacity (skills and knowledge), capability (the institutional conditions that allow knowledge to translate into action), and courage (the willingness to act and absorb risk when the system resists). She has applied this model across six years of culture change work at the City of Tshwane, where she initiated and sustained one of South Africa's most ambitious public sector transformation programmes, moving the institution from administrative crisis to emerging maturity. Shanaaz holds an MPhil in Disability Studies from UCT and has completed executive programmes at Harvard Business School (Wits Senior Executive Program) and the Kennedy School of Government. She has served as Superintendent General and Head of Department for the Western Cape Department of Local Government and Housing, Deputy Director General at the national Department of Cooperative Governance, and Chairperson of the Board of Isandla Institute. She is a board member of the Gestalt International Study Center (GISC) in the United States, where she also serves on faculty and trains in two programmes. She has delivered leadership development programmes across five continents, including repeat engagements with the Swedish Gestalt Academy and BTS (a Swedish consultancy working with South African banking, retail, and telecommunications clients). In December 2022, she delivered the inaugural public lecture at the Salzburg Global Center for Education Transformation, the culmination of a 27-year association with the Salzburg Global Seminar that has included seven invitations. She is currently co-authoring three chapters in a practitioner book on local government: one on organisational culture change, one on the compliance paradox in municipal governance, and one on decolonising leadership. Her husband, Shuaib Chalklen, served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Disability from 2011 to 2015. Both have been lifelong disability activists. Shanaaz has been a paraplegic since the age of 17, using a wheelchair for 40 years. She was born in District Six, evicted under the Group Areas Act, and raised in Lavender Hill by working-class community activist parents. Her leadership is grounded not in theory but in the lived experience of navigating power, access, and institutional resistance from a position the system was never designed for.

Key message

Systems change when individuals have the courage to act differently and the stamina to withstand the resistance that change provokes. Policy does not fail in the document where it was written; it fails in the room where someone has to decide. Capacity is almost never the problem; the missing ingredient is the courage and institutional permission to act on knowledge already held. Leadership is presence, not position. Disability inclusion is a question of institutional design, not awareness. The future of leadership lies not in stronger individuals but in stronger collectives.

Speaking topics and expertise

• Institutional transformation and culture change from the inside out.
• The Courage-to-Act Capability Model: why capacity without courage produces non-decision.
• Disability
• power
• and institutional design: how navigating inaccessible systems produces a fundamentally different understanding of leadership.
• The policy-practice gap: why reform fails at the point of judgement
• not at the point of policy.
• Decolonising leadership: from "I lead" to "we lead together." Board effectiveness and ethical governance.
• Executive presence and communication for senior leaders. Diversity
• equity
• inclusion
• and belonging as governance tools
• not compliance exercises.

Achievements

Initiated and sustained the City of Tshwane culture change programme over six years, moving the institution from 30% scorecard performance under administration to emerging maturity with embedded values and peer accountability. Delivered the inaugural public lecture at the Salzburg Global Center for Education Transformation (December 2022). Served as Superintendent General/HOD for the Western Cape Department of Local Government and Housing, managing multi-billion-rand budgets. Deputy Director General at the national Department of Cooperative Governance, overseeing entity operations and leading the development of the Integrated Urban Development Framework endorsed by Cabinet in October 2014. Led the expert municipal capacity assessment accreditation panel for the Department of Human Settlements. Board Chair of Isandla Institute for eight years (2015 to 2023). Board member of the Gestalt International Study Center (2024 to present). ICF Master Credentialed Coach (MCC). Invited to the Salzburg Global Seminar seven times over 27 years.

Education

MPhil in Disability Studies, University of Cape Town. Senior Executive Program, Harvard Business School / Wits. Executive training in Driving Government Performance, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Advanced qualification in Organisational Development and Systems, Gestalt International Study Centre, Cape Cod, USA. International Advanced OD Practice Certificate, Gestalt International Study Centre. Diploma in Coaching, The Coaching Centre and Middlesex University, UK. MFMA Minimum Competencies, University of Pretoria. Development Studies, University of the Witwatersrand. Post-Diploma in Management and BA Degree, University of Cape Town.

Talks and speeches

Speeches Detailed: Talk 1: The Courage-to-Act: Why Institutions Fail at the Point of Judgement, Not the Point of Policy. This keynote introduces the Courage-to-Act Capability Model and uses the City of Tshwane case study to show why capable leaders choose inaction and what it takes to build a culture where sound judgement is supported rather than punished. Suitable for executive leadership summits, governance forums, and board retreats. Talk 2: Disability, Power, and Design: What 40 Years in a Wheelchair Taught Me About Institutions. This keynote reframes disability inclusion as a governance and design question rather than a compliance or awareness exercise. Drawing on four decades of lived experience inside systems never designed for her, Shanaaz shows how the experience of navigating inaccessible systems produces a fundamentally different understanding of leadership, power, and what institutions are for. Suitable for DEIB summits, DFI forums, corporate leadership programmes, and policy conferences. Talk 3: From Compliance to Courage: The Culture Change Journey of the City of Tshwane. A practitioner's account of initiating and sustaining a six-year institutional culture transformation in one of South Africa's largest municipalities, from 30% scorecard performance under administration to emerging maturity. Covers the intervention that started it, the resistance that followed, and the coalition of the willing that carried it. Suitable for public sector leadership forums, local government conferences, and organisational development summits. Talk 4: Leading at the Intersection: Power, Purpose, and the Permission to Act. This keynote explores leadership at the intersection of disability, governance, gender, and institutional transformation. It draws on the Courage-to-Act Capability Model and Shanaaz's career across all three spheres of government to argue that the leaders institutions need most are the ones the system was never designed to include. Suitable for women in leadership summits, executive presence programmes, and international governance forums.

Delivery style

Shanaaz leads with presence, not performance. She enters a room and holds it through gravitas, deep listening, and the authority that comes from having done the work she speaks about for three decades. Her delivery combines sharp institutional analysis with personal story, using the wheelchair not as a prop but as a lens through which power, access, and leadership take on a completely different meaning. She is direct, warm, and unafraid of silence. She asks the questions the room has been avoiding and then holds the space while people find the courage to engage. Audiences describe her sessions as deeply impactful, transformative, and unlike any conventional keynote.

Why audiences listen

Because the gap between what leaders know and what leaders do is not a training problem. It is a courage problem. Most leadership development assumes the issue is capacity: more skills, more frameworks, more knowledge. Shanaaz's three decades inside government, boards, and international systems have shown her that the real failure happens one layer deeper, where capable people choose inaction because the system punishes judgement. If your organisation is stuck, if your leaders know what to do but are not doing it, if your culture rewards compliance over performance, her work will name the mechanism and show the way through.

What the talks address

Why institutional transformation fails when it focuses on capacity alone and ignores the courage layer. How the City of Tshwane moved from administrative crisis to emerging maturity through a six-year culture change journey. Why policy fails at the point of judgement, not at the point of writing. How disability, when understood as a governance question rather than an awareness exercise, reveals the architecture of inclusion and exclusion in every institution. How decolonising leadership shifts organisations from hierarchy and control to collective capability and shared accountability.

What participants will learn

How to diagnose where their organisation is stuck using the three-layer Courage-to-Act Capability Model (capacity, capability, courage). What institutional culture change actually requires in practice, not theory, drawn from a real six-year case study. How to distinguish between non-compliance that destroys value and non-compliance that creates it. How to build coalitions of the willing and sustain transformation when the system resists. How presence, not position, determines whether leadership lands.

What audiences take home

A diagnostic framework they can apply to their own organisation immediately. A clear understanding of why capacity-building alone does not produce institutional change. The confidence to name the courage gap in their own leadership context. A case study grounded in real institutional stakes they can reference and share. A different understanding of what inclusion, governance, and ethical leadership look like in practice.

Benefits for individuals

A shift in how they understand their own leadership: from competence-based to courage-based. Greater clarity on where they are choosing inaction and what it would take to act differently. A personal reckoning with the gap between knowing and doing. Exposure to a model of leadership grounded in lived experience, not borrowed theory.

Benefits for organisations

A diagnostic lens for understanding why transformation stalls despite investment in training and development. A practical framework for aligning leadership behaviour, institutional culture, and systems. Exposure to a real, documented, six-year institutional case study that shows what culture change looks like in practice. A clear path from compliance dominance to capability-driven governance. A credible voice that can hold the room through difficult conversations about power, inclusion, and accountability.