Kenneth Mokgatlhe
Kenneth Moeng Mokgatlhe
Stephen Bantu Biko, who met his untimely death 46 years ago this month, once said, “Black man, you are on your own”.
He was reminding us that we should be proactive and learn to do things by ourselves instead of being dependent on the state or other people. Biko and his contemporaries from the Black Consciousness Movement taught the importance of self-reliance.
An immigrant from Congo, Nicole Lukusa Tshifuaka-Bwasa, and her husband Jean Bwasa have started a bakery in Yeoville. Called Heart4Africa, it is situated at Sacred Heart College, a school that caters largely to immigrants from war-torn or poverty-stricken African countries.
The Heart4Africa community-based bakery does not only produce mouth-watering cakes and bread, they are also producing bakers. I was impressed when meeting three unemployed young people from Tembisa in the City of Ekurhuleni who were attending a two-week training programme with the purpose of starting their own bakery as a way of realising their social and economic desires.
Caroline Ndlovu, 29, Johannes Mohlabane, 31, and Tshepang Malema, 26, are a few of the more than seven million unemployed youth around the country. Their wish is to get employment opportunities so that they can look after their families in Tembisa.
“I survive through R1 000 from (the) child grant, and it is not enough to sustain me, two children and three siblings who are my responsibility since my mother passed on. I have never worked anywhere, and I hope that with the bakery training I will be able to create something out of it and get out of this desperate situation,” Ndlovu said.
Biko and his contemporaries did not expect miracles to happen to change the fate of those they wished to help. When there was no hope left among African people, they established Black Community Projects (BCP) to begin progressive community projects such as gardens and health centres run and managed by black people to serve black communities.
Heart4Africa, which is proudly sponsored by the Angel Network and the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD), aims to build bridges to enhance social cohesion. As the country is periodically engulfed by conflicts inspired by xenophobia, with foreign nationals from other parts of the African continent being accused of “stealing” jobs from the locals, Heart4Africa is showcasing a different picture, one where foreign nationals are contributing towards job creation opportunities.
Sitting at 33 %, South Africa’s unemployment rate is the highest in the world, surpassing those of Gaza, the West Bank, Djibouti and Kosovo. We have 7.921 million people who are unemployed, a situation described by many people as a “ticking time bomb”.
The existence of this bakery is important for two reasons. First, it creates learning and training opportunities for the local population, and second, it brings foreign nationals and locals together in helping to better understand each other and start to work together in a bid to build a better continent, Africa.
“We are building social cohesion and making a difference in the lives of those we train through the transfer of these important skills,” says Tshifuaka-Bwasa. “We always have a group of South African youth that we train from surrounding parts of Gauteng province and are aiming to grow our influence as soon as we obtain a health certificate from the authorities.”
Tshifuaka-Bwasa runs multiple projects with the aim of making a difference among the people, one of them being a community garden located at Sacred Heart College. She also runs projects whose principal aim is to promote and protect the interests of women, children, senior citizens (pensioners), and people living with disabilities. We need more people like her if we are to create a better world, one characterised by love and conscience.
Tshifuaka-Bwasa does what Biko and his contemporaries taught us to do, to be self-reliant at all material times. We should not fold our arms and wait for miracles or messiahs to change our poor material conditions. We are inspired by women such as Tshifuaka-Bwasa, who rise above our difficult circumstances as Africans facing poor-performing economies, public malfeasance, and the complete ineptitude of African governments.
Heart4Africa bakery uses available and limited resources to operate – the small space they have at the Sacred Heart College, firewood and the human resources available to them. They are able to create opportunities to change lives with the little they possess.
These are positive stories that should be told to inspire those who are losing hope in either finding employment or creating employment opportunities.
Mokgatlhe is a thought leader based in the North West province
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