Mandela Day inspires action but what happens on 19 July? DKMS Africa challenges companies to move beyond symbolic gestures and commit to year-round impact by addressing health inequities like the urgent need for stem cell donors.
Cape Town, July 15, 2025 – As Mandela Day approaches, corporate South Africa prepares for the annual routine: 67 minutes of service, feel-good social media posts, and the collective sense that business is contributing to social change. “But what happens on 19 July?” asks Palesa Mokomele, Head of Community Engagement and Communications at DKMS Africa.
South African companies invested R12.7 billion in social initiatives last year, with just 100 companies accounting for 76% of that spending. The landscape is, however, shifting from one-off donations toward deeper partnerships.
Mokomele explains that companies are leveraging their full resources, not just funding, but expertise, infrastructure, and influence, to address root causes rather than symptoms. “This creates opportunities to tackle complex challenges.”
“Consider the health sector, which has emerged as the second-highest area of corporate investment, with 36% of companies supporting health initiatives in 2024,” she points out. “Yet, some of the most critical health disparities remain largely invisible to corporate decision-makers.”
In South Africa, your race determines whether you’ll survive blood cancer or a life-threatening blood disorder. White patients have a 75% chance of finding a stem cell match for a potentially life-saving transplant. For Black, Coloured, Indian, and Asian patients, those odds plummet to just 19%.
“This isn’t a medical issue,” notes Mokomele. “It’s a numbers and equity problem. Stem cell transplants are most successful when patients and donors share similar genetic markers, which are typically found within the same ethnic group, but South Africa’s donor registries don’t reflect the country’s demographics.”
While the DKMS Africa registry has grown more diverse with 38% Black, 45% White, 9% Coloured, and 8% Asian donors, many potential donors don’t know where to sign upor how it works. “These are exactly the problems corporate infrastructure can solve,” stresses Mokomele.
AfroCentric Wellness offers a multi-layered, holistic model for sustained engagement. In partnership with DKMS Africa, the company has introduced donor registration booths inside Sanlam Clinics, with nurses trained to guide patients through the swabbing process.
The initiative includes donor recruitment drives among staff at AfroCentric, Sanlam, Santam and MiWay offices. Additionally, internal platforms challenge cultural myths about donation and build understanding of the process.
This approach treats every employee and client interaction as a potential solution to the donor shortage.
Mandela Day’s 67 minutes of service capture public imagination, but Mokomele believes the real opportunity lies in the other 525,533 minutes of the year. “Corporate South Africa has the infrastructure, reach, and resources to tackle health disparities like the stem cell shortage. What’s missing is sustained commitment.”
She highlights that the donor gap won’t be solved by single-day events. “It requires companies to ask harder questions: How can our employee base become part of the solution? How can our business operations contribute to long-term change?”
“For patients still searching for a match, next year’s Mandela Day may come too late. The infrastructure exists. The willing partners are available. What’s needed now is the recognition that some problems require more than 67 minutes to solve,” concludes Mokomele.
So, what will your company do on 19 July and the 364 days after?
Learn more and register at https://www.dkms-africa.org/save-lives
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About DKMS
DKMS is an international non-profit organization dedicated to the fight against blood cancer. It was founded in Germany in 1991 by Dr. Peter Harf and DKMS together with the organization’s over 1,200 employees and has since relentlessly pursued the aim of giving as many patients as possible a second chance at life. With over 12 million registered donors, DKMS has succeeded in doing this more than 115,000 times to date by providing blood stem cell donations to those in need. This accomplishment has led to DKMS becoming the global leader in the facilitation of unrelated blood stem cell transplants. The organization has offices in Germany, the US, Poland, the UK, Chile, and South Africa. In India, DKMS has founded the joint venture DKMS-BMST together with the Bangalore Medical Services Trust. International expansion and collaboration are key to helping patients worldwide because like the organization itself, blood cancer knows no borders.
DKMS is also heavily involved in the fields of medicine and science, with its own research unit focused on continually improving the survival and recovery rate of patients. In its high-performance laboratory, the DKMS Life Science Lab, the organization sets worldwide standards in the typing of potential blood stem cell donors.