Katlego Sekhu
Sadika Fakir has spent two decades inside the boardrooms of some of South Africa’s biggest banks. Today she is Absa Group’s Executive for Digital Marketing and Media. She has also just written the book she says she needed at 21, wet behind the ears, unsure of herself, and grieving her father.
Kaya Breakfast with DJ Fresh and Thato caught up with Fakir on Creators’ Corner ahead of the launch of her debut book, Corporate Rebel, to find out what took her 20 years to write it.
Why she waited two decades to write it
Fakir said she needed the time to accumulate the wisdom the book required. “There are 21-year-old somethings coming into the industry, starting a side hustle, all broken already in the corporate space,” she said.
Corporate Rebel is not a leadership book or a motivational title, of which she says there are plenty already. She describes it instead as a manual to keep by your bedside for the bad days, something to flip open at breaking point.
The book draws on her own early career, when she was navigating grief, her weight, and a family and community that expected her to become a doctor, lawyer or actuary, not a marketer. “My grades would have never got me into medicine, into actuary or law. You let the family down,” she said.
What being a corporate rebel actually means
Fakir was clear that the title is not a licence to cause chaos. “The corporate rebel does not come here to create chaos, doesn’t come here to flip boardroom tables and get escorted out by security,” she said. She argues corporates need rules and governance, particularly in regulated environments like financial services, where organisations are protecting both customers and communities.
Instead, she frames the corporate rebel as someone who challenges bad leadership and outdated conventions with respect and integrity, while investing seriously in their own personal brand. She also pushes back on the idea that rebellion means being loud. “It teaches you silence. It teaches you, let me respond once I’ve got my facts,” she said, pointing out that most decisions in marketing and advertising are made on emotion rather than reason.
On toxic workplace dynamics, Fakir was candid about her own growth. “If I am pointing one finger at you, there are three pointing back at my brokenness, my exhaustion, the fact that I have childhood traumas that I’ve not healed from,” she said.
Her message to her younger self, and to the 21-year-olds she now leads, is not to be defined by a title. “Don’t be led by a title. Create the revolution. This is not a book. This is a movement,” she said.
To hear the full discussion, listen to the podcast.
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