The Mt Kenya Times 
Mbali Vilakazi
From grief and childhood wounds, a South African woman builds a movement to heal the next generation
By Anila Bukhari
For Mbali Vilakazi, purpose was not discovered in a perfect season of life. It was forged through loss, anchored in faith, and eventually channelled into a lifelong commitment to serve others. Today she is a two-time award-winning Account Executive Analyst in the financial industry, a Marketing Management professional, community activist, pageant judge, Church Elder, wife, mother, founder of IMbalikaLizwi Pageant NPO, and a proud Mrs South Africa Semi-finalist 2026.
Yet her story runs far deeper than titles and public recognition. At its heart is a woman who met some of life’s hardest chapters early and chose, deliberately, to turn those experiences into a reason to help others — particularly children and young people who may be carrying emotional wounds of their own.
Professionally, Vilakazi has built a career around people, relationships, and communication. As an Account Executive Analyst in the financial industry, she manages business relationships and works to create meaningful professional connections. Her Marketing Management qualification has sharpened her ability to understand people, communicate effectively, and navigate the demands of a corporate environment. That work has earned her two industry awards — but Vilakazi’s definition of success has never been confined to the workplace.
For her, professional achievement is meaningful only when it sits alongside service, family, faith, and community impact.
That belief has become increasingly visible in the work she does beyond her career. Vilakazi has dedicated herself to community initiatives designed to support families and restore dignity — school shoe drives, sanitary pad drives, and food parcel distributions during the December period. While these projects may appear modest on the surface, they respond to very real needs.
For a family experiencing financial hardship, receiving food during the festive season can mean more than a parcel. It can mean being remembered. For a child receiving a pair of school shoes, it can mean walking into a classroom with greater confidence. For a young girl receiving sanitary products, it can mean access to something essential to her dignity and her education.
This understanding of service is rooted directly in Vilakazi’s own story.
The creation of IMbalikaLizwi Pageant NPO was not a business idea or a professional project. It was, as she describes it, a calling — born from a question that became central to her life: “How can I be of service to my people?” The answer developed into an organisation focused on young people and guided by a powerful theme: Healing the Inner Child — Heal them young, save their future.
The idea is deeply personal.
Vilakazi grew up away from her parents, raised by her grandparents. As a child, she experienced feelings of being unwanted and unloved — emotions that shaped her early understanding of herself and the world around her. Yet as she grew older, her perspective shifted. Rather than viewing her upbringing only through its pain, she came to appreciate what her grandparents gave her: a foundation of faith that would later prove essential.
That foundation was tested severely.
While Vilakazi was in Grade 11, she lost her mother to violence. Shortly after completing matric, she lost her father. Losing both parents during such formative years created a weight of grief that could have altered the entire course of her life. Instead, faith and prayer became part of her path toward restoration. Her relationship with Christ gave her a source of strength through bereavement and, in time, helped her begin a journey of inner-child healing — a journey that would later define the work she chose to do with young people.
Rather than keeping her experiences separate from her purpose, she began asking how the lessons from her own life could help someone else. She became particularly interested in the emotional development of children and the importance of helping them understand their worth before negative experiences take deep root.
That philosophy sits at the centre of IMbalikaLizwi Pageant NPO.
Through the organisation, Vilakazi works to empower young boys and girls through confidence-building, creativity, public speaking, and personal development. Participants are encouraged to create art from recycled materials, develop their communication abilities, express themselves freely, and discover their individual strengths. The goal is not simply to prepare children for a pageant stage.
Vilakazi sees pageantry differently.
For her, it is a powerful educational platform — one that teaches children about confidence, discipline, communication, resilience, and self-worth. Beauty may be part of the traditional pageant experience, but she wants young people to understand that their value extends far beyond appearance. A crown, in her philosophy, should represent responsibility as much as recognition. It should remind a young person that having a voice also creates an opportunity to use that voice meaningfully.
This perspective has shaped her own involvement as a pageant judge. Her understanding of pageantry is rooted in character and purpose, not presentation alone. She believes young people should be supported in becoming confident individuals who recognise their abilities and the contribution they can make to their communities.
Her work with children is therefore inseparable from her own healing.
Vilakazi knows what it feels like to question whether you are wanted. She knows what it means to lose a parent at a young age. She knows the importance of having someone believe in you when you are still learning to believe in yourself. That is why her message is focused on reaching young people early — before emotional wounds harden into limits.
She believes healing need not always begin after years of carrying pain. Sometimes intervention can start during childhood, through encouragement, mentorship, creativity, faith, positive role models, and opportunities to express oneself. Her phrase, Heal them young, save their future, captures that philosophy precisely.
The Mrs South Africa platform gave Vilakazi a wider stage from which to share her community work, personal story, and vision. As a semi-finalist in 2026, her participation was never simply about wearing a sash. It became another way to demonstrate that visibility can be a vehicle for conversations that matter — mirroring exactly the philosophy she teaches young people.
Alongside her community work, Vilakazi remains committed to her professional career and her responsibilities as a wife and mother. These different roles have shaped her understanding of leadership as something that begins, first, with responsibility to others.
Her story also challenges the idea that purpose must emerge from privilege or ideal circumstances.
Vilakazi’s life was not defined by an easy beginning. She experienced emotional struggles, parental separation, devastating bereavement, and the uncertainty that can accompany childhood adversity. Yet those experiences did not become the final chapter. They became part of the foundation from which she built her life.
She speaks about her journey not to suggest that hardship is desirable, but to demonstrate that hardship does not determine destiny. The power of her story, in her own view, lies not in what happened to her — but in what she chose to do with it.
That distinction matters.
Vilakazi did not erase her past. She carried its lessons forward and allowed them to shape the way she serves others. Her community projects, professional achievements, pageant involvement, faith, and work with young people may appear to belong to different worlds, but they are connected by one central idea: people matter.
Whether she is providing food to a struggling family, helping a child receive school shoes, supplying sanitary products, encouraging a young person to speak confidently, or mentoring children through pageantry, Vilakazi is focused on creating moments in which people feel seen and valued.
Her vision for the future reaches beyond personal recognition. She wants to continue creating opportunities for young people to develop confidence, creativity, resilience, and purpose — and to understand that their circumstances are part of their story, but need not become the boundaries of their future.
For Mbali Vilakazi, that is what turning pain into purpose truly means.
It means taking experiences that once caused hurt and allowing them to deepen compassion. It means allowing faith to become a source of restoration. It means transforming personal lessons into opportunities for service. And it means reaching the next generation early enough to remind them that they have value.
Her journey — from a young girl raised by her grandparents to a professional, mother, community activist, pageant judge, Church Elder, founder, and Mrs South Africa Semi-finalist — is not simply a story of achievement.
It is a story of transformation.
And perhaps its most meaningful element is that Vilakazi is not keeping that transformation for herself. Through IMbalikaLizwi Pageant NPO and her community initiatives, she is working to pass hope forward — one child, one family, one opportunity at a time.
Her story carries a simple message: where a person begins does not have to determine where they end.
For Vilakazi, the future is not only something to reach. It is something to help build — especially for the young people who are still learning to believe in themselves.
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