The appointment of Wendy Luhabe to the Steinhoff Africa Retail (Star) board is the latest of several board changes announced by the board as it attempts to battle with the fallout from the controversy surrounding its controlling shareholder, Steinhoff International. Luhabe, a major force in the corporate community during the mid-nineties and early noughties, has adopted a lower profile in recent years. Her appointment to the Star board is effective from January 1 2019. Luhabe joins a board dominated by white Afrikaans men. The three notable exceptions are chairman Jayendra Naidoo, Heather Sonn and Fagmeedah Petersen-Cook. Naidoo is founder of the Lancaster group, which secured funding from the Public Investment Corporation to take a 9% stake in Star and become its black economic empowerment shareholder. Sonn, who was appointed to the Star board as an independent nonexecutive director in August 2017, is the chairwoman of Steinhoff.