The stage took twenty minutes. Getting to it took months, says the NPO.
Yanga Gongwana, 25, from Orange Farm, was crowned Mr Ability 2026. Nonhlanhla Nxasana, 21, from Braamfontein, was crowned Miss Ability. Njabulo Vincent Mthembu, 27, from Alexandra, and Ayanda Mncube, 28, from Braamfontein, took the Prince and Princess titles. All four will spend the coming year as Disability Inclusion Ambassadors across the organisation, adds the NPO.
South Africa's Commission for Employment Equity reported this year that employees with disabilities make up 1.3% of the workforce at companies with 50 or more staff. The Employment Equity Regulations that took effect on Wednesay, 1 January 2025 set a five-year sector target of 3%. Even that gap flatters the picture, because almost none of the 1.3% is made up of persons with intellectual or learning disabilities, says the NPO.
Lana Roy, Disability and Inclusion Head at Afrika Tikkun, puts the continental version in numbers too. Around 61% of young persons with disabilities in Africa are out of school, she says, and persons with disabilities across the continent are roughly twice as likely to be unemployed as their peers, with women worse off againm adds the NPO.
The cost of that exclusion to African economies has been estimated at between 3% and 7% of GDP. "This isn't a talent problem," says Roy. "It's a structural one."
"That intellectual disability means inability. These young people are not unable. They are unaccommodated. The moment you change the environment, the assessment, the expectation, you find capability that was always there," adds the NPO.
Latchean Mhlanga, Disability Project Manager of Afrika Tikkun, who steered the programme described the mechanics of that from the stage. Young people spend years in special schools learning gardening, beauty, carpentry and other trades, she comments, then apply for work and are told they need matric and must sit an online assessment, says the NPO.
"It's not because there are no jobs. Our recruitment systems are not accommodating." says Mhlanga. "Not because they don't have the skills, but because they are not given the opportunity to show the skills that they have. What brings us here today is not this stage. It's not the lighting; it's not the venue. It's the contestants."
This was the second edition, following the inaugural Beauty in Ability in July 2025. The finalist count is unchanged at twenty, but the cohort is not. Last year's contestants came through Afrika Tikkun's services arm, says the NPO.
This year's contestants came from the Foundation's four Johannesburg Centres of Excellence, in Diepsloot, Alexandra, Braampark and Orange Farm, after pre-selection events at each centre where managers and facilitators nominated young people who had shown growth and readiness. According to Roy, the number stayed the same and the significance of who those twenty are grew considerably.
Afrika Tikkun's disability work sits inside its cradle-to-career model rather than beside it, which is the organisation's central position: inclusion that starts at eighteen is too late. The pageant is the public face of a year-round programme that also aims to run work readiness, life and work skills sessions, corporate sensitisation training and employer partnership work, says the NPO.
It is benchmarked externally, against the Valuable 500 coalition of chief executives on the corporate accountability side and the UN Zero Project on the programme side. The point, Roy says, is that attending the pageant is not the commitment.
Marc Lubner, Group Chief Executive of Afrika Tikkun, tells the room that integrating children with disabilities into mainstream programmes lifted results for everyone, with school grades improving and participation rising.
"In all those years, I did not realise I had a disability. I was ADHD, which I discovered when I discovered my children had that condition. But I couldn't admit to it, because then I wouldn't be cool," says Lubner.
The judging panel was chosen for lived experience as much as credentials, drawing on disability advocates and community leaders. Among them was Esihle Mhluzi, the technology enablement specialist and international disability advocate who in 2021 became the first contestant with a physical disability to compete in Miss Free State, where she was crowned Second Princess, and who has since walked as one of designer, Gert Johan Coetzee models, says the NPO.
"Representation is not about being the only person in the room," says Mhluzi. "Representation is about making sure you are not the last. Inclusion is not charity. It is justice. Accessibility is not a favour. It is a right."
Her instruction to the finalists was not to treat the sash as an achievement. "Your crown should never be your destination. It should be your introduction."
Roy turns the last of her thanks to the rows of families and carers. "You are the winners at the end of the day. I want you all to partake in the economy. I want you to be the next presidents and the next corporate owners and the next execs of this country. And you know what? You can."
The event was supported by Afribrands, FNB, Legends Barber, Clothes to Good and The Venue at Nine Yards, which hosted, says the NPO.
The ask coming out of Rosebank is aimed at decision makers rather than donors. Roy says she wants media to tell these stories properly, corporates to open their recruitment processes and ask honestly whether they were ever designed to include this group and government to enforce the policy that already exists. Formal employment pathways for young people with intellectual disabilities in South Africa remain extremely limited. That is the gap the event exists to attack, concludes the NPO.
For more information, visit www.afrikatikkun.org.
*Image courtesy of contributor