PS: please be patient with the sound - technology let us down and re-recording would have tampered with the organic nature of the interview.

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Seadimo Tlale is a 26 year old justice innovator who hails from Thabang township in the Free State. She has merged her background in law and media to advocate for social justice with a focus on intersectionality.

Her story starts with chess. At the age of 3 her mother taught her how to play chess and at age 11 Seadimo started to play chess professionally. In 2008 she and her sister were the first Black girls to represent South Africa at the World Youth Chess Championships which were held in Vietnam. At 16, she founded a club to academically empower primary school learners in township schools through chess.

In Matric she was awarded the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation Fellowship to study an LLB at Wits University. While at Wits she got involved in TV. She was on One Day Leader, and Future Leaders which were both concerned with inspiring youth leadership as the primary response to social ills in different communities across the country. She also co- hosted a talk show called Rise, a Soul City Institute intervention to influence a change in behavior patterns in young women who are most vulnerable to new HIV infections, through critical conversation.

During #FeesMustFall, she was in the legal commission and became the first applicant in the interdict case against Wits and the Minister of Higher Education.

After graduating cum laude, in 2017, she worked as a law researcher to Justice Froneman at the Constitutional Court for 18 months. Thereafter, she started an entrepreneurship education company to empower young people with entrepreneurship skills in response to the injustice that results when many young people who leave high school are unable to get into university, find jobs, or deal with the effects of 4IR.

Seadimo has been admitted to the LLM programme at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) for the 2020-21 academic year and awarded the Sonke Health and Human Rights Fellowhsip. Her LLM will be in Public Interest Law specialising in Critical Race Studies.

Upon graduation she will return to South Africa to start a career as a public interest lawyer, working in the areas of human rights and gender equality.

During this pandemic, Seadimo and her partner have been selling fabric masks and using the proceeds to provide masks to the under privileged.

Tune in to hear about Seadimo’s extremely colourful and scenic experience in the legal profession and empowering stories from her time in university.

Tag us on Instagram @seadimotlale @sister_in_law_

Remember to always use your voice and your resources to amplify the issues which matter. In South Africa a black woman is has an equal chance at securing employment as she does being murdered by her intimate partner. This cannot be our narrative and it is important to speak out about injustices against women. It is also important that if you are a victim of GBV that you gather the strength to see to it that your abuser is brought to book.

Reach out to Sonke Gender Justice: To report an incident of sexual harassment, bullying, abuse or any other form of harassment experienced, seen or heard about, or an incident of fraud, corruption or bribery:

CALL the toll-free whistleblower hotline: 0800 333 059

SMS: 33490

EMAIL: [email protected]