Pretoria - Gwakwani Village lies near South Africa’s northern border, close to Zimbabwe and Mozambique.
The Venda name means armpit, but thanks to the University of Johannesburg (UJ), and now the South African Jewish Boards of Deputies (SAJBD), it is well on its way to becoming a model village.
Over the past three years, the village has become a pilot project, showing what public private partnerships can achieve for communities without basic services.
Today, the village of 100 inhabitants has solar power which provides community lighting and running water, where it once had nothing, as well as a bakery. This has created job opportunities for entrepreneurs.
On Friday, the SAJBD donated Nga Tshumisano (Let’s work together in Tshivenda), a fully equipped education centre with computers and uncapped WiFi to Hanyani High School to help the 52 matric pupils with a place to study and an opportunity to connect to the rest of the world.
The school is in the Sagole Tshipise area, outside Musina, and serves the cluster of villages in the area. Many of the school’s 470 pupils have a 14-kilometre walk to and from class every day. The donation is a life changer, principal Thifhelimbilu Ndou said.
“This centre will mean a new beginning for our school. It will mean a new day for our learners,” he said on Friday at the official opening of the centre attended by UJ Vice-Chancellor Professor Letlhokwa Mpedi and the SAJBD’s head of communications Charisse Zeifert.
The access through a connected computer network will bring the school into the 21st century, allowing access to the internet, and through that make learning and assignments richer and more meaningful.
“This means life to our school,” Ndou said.
For Mpedi, the collaboration is proof of the UJ and the SAJBD’s shared vision to bridge the digital divide and promote equal access to education.
“By investing in the educational needs of the learners at the school, UJ and SAJBD aim to create a sustainable impact on society. We hope it will give the learners the opportunity to achieve their full potential,” he said.
Mpedi told the pupils he, too, had grown up in a small village and had been told he would amount to nothing and had to pull himself up by his bootstraps while holding on to his dream of becoming a lawyer. But through perserverance he triumphed.
This is not the first time the SAJBD has reached out to outlying villages in Limpopo, said national director Wendy Kahn. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the board worked with the Angel Network to bring much-needed social relief projects to isolated communities, including delivering food parcels, creating food gardens, drilling boreholes and installing water tanks.
“We are acutely aware of the suffering around us in our country. During Covid we knew we had to make a difference. Thanks to our incredibly generous donors and the remarkable partners we worked with, including the Angel Network, we ensured the Jewish community was providing the critical need. We invested over R40 million to beneficiaries in all nine provinces, in rural and urban areas, and especially vulnerable communities such as refugees and child and granny-headed households,” Kahn said.
Gwakwani was different though, she said. “When we became aware of Gwakwani, we immediately wanted to be part of it too.
The village is in a forgotten part of South Africa which has no water, electricity, jobs or hope. We wanted to make a difference.”
She said Gwakwani was a case study on how the potential of a forgotten community could be unlocked through a blend of technology, friendship and support, and help it become fully functional, fully integrated, fully independent and fully sustainable.
“The University of Johannesburg is doing remarkable work uplifting communities in a sustainable and responsible way, and we hope to work with Professor Michael Rudolph and his team to upskill some of our other beneficiaries to help them improve their food gardens.
“The Gwakwani project draws on the expertise of several UJ departments, from engineering to education, and it is a privilege to work with these remarkable academics who are applying their academic knowledge to help communities in need.
“In 2020, during Covid, we discovered a Limpopo village, literally called ‘Nowhere’. We were able to provide people who were starving there with food through the Angel Network.
“It is the Gwakwani’s and the Nowhere’s where we believe we can make such a meaningful contribution.”
Pretoria News