Prime Highlights
- Women make up over 30 percent of IMESA’s membership, with many in leadership roles.
- Roxanne Canny, Princesse Kabala Muke and Mpho Plaatjie lead IMESA branches across South Africa.
Key Facts
- IMESA was founded in 1961 and has never implemented formal gender policies.
- Young Professionals Portfolio (YP²) expanded from KwaZulu-Natal to the Western Cape.
Background
The Institute of Municipal Engineering of Southern Africa (IMESA) is spotlighting women engineers leading infrastructure projects across the country during Women’s Month, encouraging more young women to enter the profession.
Founded in 1961, IMESA has never adopted formal gender policies, instead building its identity around technical excellence, ethics and community service. More than 30 percent of its members are women today, with many holding leadership roles, including KwaZulu-Natal branch chair Roxanne Canny, Western Cape branch chair Princesse Kabala Muke and Free State and Northern Cape branch chair Mpho Plaatjie.
Rather than dwelling on challenges, the three engineers are using the month to highlight opportunities within municipal engineering for learners, students, graduates and young professionals.
Plaatjie, a civil engineer and project manager at Mangaung Municipality, said her passion took root in childhood, growing up in a community without running water, and watching technicians install a tap at her family’s home sparked her drive to improve clean water access for others.
Canny, a registered civil engineer specialising in water design and acting area manager at eThekwini Municipality, said her mother’s work as a draughtswoman first inspired her before she found her calling in water engineering. She said moving from consulting into local government let her follow projects from design through to implementation.
Kabala Muke, acting manager in the City of Cape Town’s Urban Waste Management division, said growing up in Goma in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo taught her how infrastructure shapes people’s daily lives, describing engineering as a tool for economic development and social transformation.
The engineers pointed to mentorship and networking through organisations like IMESA as key to supporting women’s careers, citing the Young Professionals Portfolio (YP²), co-founded by Canny and later expanded to the Western Cape under Kabala Muke, as a model for building opportunities for early-career engineers.
