Basani Maluleke (born in Soshanguve, north of Pretoria) is an executive board member of the African Bank Group. In April 2019, she took over at African Bank and sees her position as “strategic in changing banking” in the country.
She is the first black female Chief Executive Officer of a commercial bank in South Africa. Her place of birth is in Soshanguve, north of Pretoria, South Africa.
She began her primary school education at a local school but did not complete there as her parents moved her to a private school. At that time, schools located in the township were most times disrupted by apartheid police raids.
She furthered her academics at the University of Cape Town (UCT) obtaining a Bachelor of Commerce. Upon completing her BCom degree, Basani studied law.
Basani practiced Law and later worked in corporate finance and then flew to the United States for an MBA at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
She was born into the family of a lawyer and judge George Maluleke. Her source of inspiration was her father who had a law firm.
Basani is a sister to Tsukani Maluleke, a Chartered Accountant who was appointed as South Africa’s auditor-general by President Cyril Ramphosa.
In 2012, after returning to the country, she became the head of First National Bank’s private clients.
She joined a corporate finance firm after leaving the bank and later moved to African Bank as a non-executive director in 2015. She is a co-founder of the African Century Ventures.
Before she joined the African Bank, Basani was director of Transcend Capital. She boasts of over a decade of financial service experience in the areas of corporate finance with Rand Merchant Bank.
She was also the Head of FNB private clients and lately identified as a potential successor and first black and female bank at African Bank.
Basani Get me to Graduation NPC, an NPO set-up to fund the subsistence needs of students in higher institution system in the country.
She is a trustee of a distributor of an online solution for teaching children to read Click Foundation.