Claude Mashego

Miss World South Africa 2023, Claude Mashego, is a 24-year-old medical doctor, graduated from the University of Pretoria, in South Africa. After her parents’ divorce, Claude lived with her maternal grandmother whom she says, despite not being afforded the opportunity to pursue her dreams, played a big role in shaping the strong, fierce, bold, ambitious, driven and hardworking young woman she is today. This Mpumalanga-born queen says that her realness is what she loves most about herself and has been intentional about showing up in her truest authentic self in every room she walks in because she believes that is what makes one relatable, and therefore allows people to connect with you beyond the filters, which amplifies the impact of everything you do. If she wins Miss World, Claude’s goal is to build a network of young leaders and community builders in South Africa and across the African continent through her non-profit company, the Young Leaders Network, stemming from the belief that everything rises and falls on leadership, and therefore real change begins when we put leadership on the dissection table and when we all get involved in leadership in our respective spaces. “There will be communities I can never reach for geographical reasons and because I am just one person. But can you imagine what we could achieve if young people across this country and continent came together with the common goal of building Africa into the powerhouse we know it can be,” says the 24-year old medical doctor. She chooses to mainly focus on Africa because she believes in the notion that African problems need African solutions, and therefore the same for all the other continents. “It would be quite arrogant of me to claim to have the solutions for issues in all countries and continents of this world. My goal going into Miss World is to partner with other contestants from all over the world and together we take the concept of Young Leaders Network and implement it across the globe with specific focus on the pressing issues in those parts of the world. Can you imagine us having a Young Leaders Network Africa, Asia, Europe, America, Australia, and the Caribbean – together working with the common goal of bringing change to our respective communities in whatever form required?” Claude is an avid reader and conversationalist who uses her social media platforms to drive conversations around personal and professional mastery as she believes that true leadership begins with the self and then flows into our output. She also works with various non-profit organisations with similar goals and serves an executive director on one of them.