Chio Sakutukwa is a commercially astute General Counsel and Chartered Company Secretary with over 15 years of experience advising listed and privately held groups across multiple African jurisdictions. She combines deep technical expertise in governance, corporate and commercial law with pragmatic commercial judgement and a consistent record of building high-performing legal functions that protect enterprise value and enable strategic growth. Her approach emphasises measurable outcomes, practical risk mitigation, and the translation of legal complexity into clear, commercially actionable business options.

Chio is currently Executive: Group Company Secretary & General Counsel at Zeda Limited, the listed mobility group operating the Avis and Budget brands across 11 African countries. She leads the Group’s legal, governance and company secretarial functions, and has implemented a strategy-led litigation model that delivered dispute-related savings in excess of R80 million while strengthening the Group’s legal risk posture and protecting its corporate reputation. She serves as a trusted advisor to the Board and executive leadership, partnering across treasury, compliance, mergers and acquisitions, human capital, operations and sales to align legal strategy with business objectives.

Prior to Zeda, Chio served as Group Company Secretary & Head of Legal at Peermont Global, South Africa’s third-largest casino and hospitality group. Peermont’s flagship property is Emperors Palace.  In addition to a R4,5billion refinance transaction, she played a key role in the R7.4 billion sale of Peermont to Sun International, coordinating negotiations, leading complex minority shareholder engagements and pursuing regulatory approvals within tight transactional timelines. She joined Peermont in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic and she led engagements with licensing authorities and regulators that supported business continuity and achieved approximately R100 million in liquid compliance-cost savings over the first 12 months.

From 2015 to 2020 Chio was Executive Head of Legal & Group Company Secretary at Goldrush Gaming Group, a privately held group comprising seventy-five entities across South Africa and selected African markets. Her remit included Legal, Human Resources, B-BBEE, Compliance and Company Secretarial functions, and she led and executed end-to-end M&A and regulatory strategies for transactions valued at approximately R500 million, securing timely approvals from provincial gambling authorities and integrating governance frameworks with operational needs. Earlier in her career she progressed at RSM South Africa to become the youngest Head of Corporate Statutory Services in the firm’s history, providing company secretarial services to over 100 external clients.

An Associate Chartered Governance Professional (ACG), eligible for Fellowship status, and an LLM (Corporate Law) candidate, Chio’s sector expertise spans mobility, gaming, hospitality and advisory services. She is recognised for designing lean, commercially focused in-house legal teams with strong fundamental legal underpinnings, negotiating high-value commercial and M&A transactions, and embedding risk-aware governance aligned to the JSE Listings Requirements and the King Codes. Former colleagues and board members cite her tact, clarity, composure and pragmatic counsel as defining strengths.

Team size: Seven

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crisis to ensure the organisation’s resilience?

In periods of instability or crisis, my approach remains consistent with the examples above. I ensure a thorough command of the applicable law and engage specialists where required. I apply forensic discipline to facts and documents, translating complexity into advice that is commercially and strategically valuable. The value of the General Counsel lies not only in legal analysis, but in contextualising information through strategy, culture and institutional knowledge, so that Boards, executives and counsel receive practical insights. That translation is often the difference between escalation and resolution, and between losing and winning. Frequently, this equips me to achieve a win–win outcome, but it is equally effective in securing more wins than losses over time. The goal is always clear, though I remain adaptable in pursuing it.

Based on your experiences in the past year, are there any trends in the legal or business world that you are keeping an eye on that you think other in-house lawyers should be mindful of?

Over the past year, I have noticed that many lawyers discuss AI with a degree of disdain, often stating quite proudly that they would never use it. I believe this starting point itself warrants reconsideration. When AI is viewed solely as a potential replacement for a lawyer or General Counsel, we immediately blind ourselves to its far more practical role as a tool.

A lawyer’s value extends well beyond research and drafting. It lies in the human ability to engage, understand nuance, exercise judgment, and respond with outcomes in mind rather than two-dimensional answers. Viewed through this lens, AI is not a threat. The more pertinent question is how AI can enhance our capacity for higher-order thinking.

For example, a General Counsel and Company Secretary might leverage AI through fully virtual statutory records or tools that can retrieve basic corporate information for the business without manual intervention. This, in turn, frees up time to focus on substantive matters such as assessing the merits of litigation or advising on strategy. Similarly, systems that automate reminders for meetings or dynamically manage and roll over board calendars could reclaim a significant amount of time for company secretaries.

AI is also not limited to tools like ChatGPT. It includes, for instance, digital notebooks that replicate the experience of writing on paper while seamlessly backing up information to the cloud. Evolution in this space is inevitable. The future leaders in the legal profession will be those who learn how to harness these tools to their advantage without compromising professional excellence or ethical standards.

What is a cause, business or otherwise, that you are passionate about? Why is this?

I am passionate about reading. I believe that reading is a vital, empowering habit that shapes individuals, then families, then communities, then regions, and ultimately nations, directly linking literacy to ambition, understanding, and the ability to overcome self-sabotage. Once upon a time, mentorship, growth and knowledge could only be accessed by knowing certain people and having entry to exclusive spaces. Books are the great equaliser, whether by helping you dream — because research shows that you cannot be what you have never seen — or by helping you identify and manage self-sabotage, or teaching you how to show up. For each example, a book comes to mind. I encourage my team and mentees to read. The difference between those who adopt the habit and those who do not becomes apparent within a few months and compounds over the years.

What factors influence your team’s decision to use external legal services versus handling matters in-house, and what criteria are used to evaluate their performance?

Matters are handled in-house when they fall within our core competence, institutional knowledge and capacity, and when proximity to the business adds value. External legal services are engaged selectively for highly specialised matters, capacity constraints, jurisdiction-specific requirements, or where independence and credibility are critical, such as complex litigation, regulatory investigations, or material transactions.

We measure success primarily by the achievement of a sound outcome aligned with the company’s commercial and strategic objectives. In evaluating external counsel, we consider the quality and practicality of advice, including commercial acumen; historical performance; effectiveness in managing risk and delivering the desired outcome; responsiveness, accessibility and ability to operate as an extension of the in-house team; cost discipline and adherence to agreed budgets; originality and innovative thinking rather than a cookie-cutter approach; and the ability to anticipate issues and provide solutions rather than purely technical opinions.