Eunice Forbes, the first woman to serve as president of a national construction association, has passed away at the age of 80.
Forbes was president of Gauteng Master Builders Association (now MBA North) from 2004 to 2006 and president of Master Builders SA from 2007 to 2009. She was awarded Honorary Life Membership of MBA North in 2014.
Founder and owner of Fintrex, Sandton-based sports track and flooring specialists, Forbes was passionate about reducing unemployment and poverty, and fought for increased training in the building industry and transformation, urging established contractors to help the emerging sector. She also took up the challenge to combat increasing lack of ethics and corruption, compromised health and safety, delayed payments, AIDS-awareness, and industry apathy about the power of unity.
Her work in cementing ties between MBSA and its counterparts in the rest of Africa - through her close association and later representing MBSA at the African Federation for Construction Contractors Association – led to the African body’s Executive Bureau meeting in South Africa for the first time in its history.
Forbes, who overcame polio and a curvature of the spine in youth, also was a camp fighter for equal rights for women and the disabled. Despite severe mobility issues in later life, Forbes still managed to be a member or hold executive positions in Nafcoc-JCCI, SA Women in Construction, SABS, Construction Sector Charter Council of the Department of Public Works Ministry and the BUSA National Disability Task Team.
Mohau Mphomela, Executive Director of MBA North, organised the first memorial service yet staged by the association to honour Forbes on June 30. He said: “Our tribute was to acknowledge ‘an Iron Lady’ who spent almost a lifetime serving the MBA and the entire building and construction industry. Since I became the first black Executive Director of MBA North in over 115 years, Eunice over the past 10 years ensured that I received all the support and guidance required for my work.”
Mphomela told the gathering at the memorial service: “I am - because she was.”
