Mail & Guardian reporter
The Women in Rural Areas’s (Wira) Woman of the Year award is the public face of a major corporate social investment programme sponsored by South African Breweries (SAB) in partnership with the Centre for Community Development.
Started in 1996, the Wira project is designed to have the two-fold effect of developing rural economies by creating job opportunities for women living in such communities.
SAB invests R2,5-million a year in pilot projects established in 16 villages across the country. The Wira programme aims to develop business and job skills, and to encourage self-respect and confidence among women. Participants are taught leadership skills, how to handle conflict and group dynamics as well as assertiveness training.
SAB’s director of corporate affairs, Dr Vincent Maphai, says Wira aims to “create sustainable economic entities that would stimulate livelihoods in each participating village”.
To this end the project provides after-care services such as additional business and technical training, extension of projects and encouragement of individual empowerment.
Women make up 51% of the population, and are heavily represented in rural areas where they are often the family breadwinners. They have to bring up children in areas without roads, water, electricity and child care facilities.
Speaking at the 1999 Wira awards, Maphai said he had heard many stories of how the initiative had changed lives “not only in monetary terms, but in terms of day-to-day interactions”.
“The self-respect and assertiveness training has proved particularly beneficial for so many women who, under the old apartheid regime, were reduced to second- class citizens in a largely patriarchal society,” he said.
Each year the Wira programme sponsors the Woman of the Year award to recognise an individual who has demonstrated entrepreneurial skills as well as a commitment to the community in which she lives. This year’s winner is Sheila Ngubane, a businesswoman from KwaZulu- Natal.
Annual awards in the form of additional cash grants are also made to the top Wira projects.
This year the winner was the Simunye sweet manufacturing project in Bhunga, Mpumalanga, which received R30 000.
The Chivirikane fruit and jam-making operation from Mafarane in the Northern Province was runner-up and received R15 000.
The joint winners for the third-place prize of R10 000 each were the Ikageng Basadi poultry and crop farming project from Mabaleng in the North-West province, and a sewing operation from Rawsonville in the Western Cape.
SAB paid a consultant to teach technical skills to the Simunye group. The women are now in negotiations with Pick ‘n Pay to supply their produce. They already have a contract with a local supermarket, as well as selling direct to the public.
The Chivirikane project – last year’s winner – is facing rising demand for its fruit products from surrounding hotels.
Meanwhile the Rawsonville women are producing hospital linen, overalls for local farm workers and school uniforms.
The Ikageng Basadi group is eyeing Sun City as a possible target market for its vegetables and chickens as part of a drive to expand outside its local community.
With the goal of sustainability and empowerment, the Wira project has also taught women how to access other possible resources. As a result the Sihulile sweet manufacturing project in the Northern Cape received R250 000 from its provincial government, while the Gauteng-based Thabong crop farming group received R70 000 from the North-West government. The Itireleng poultry farming operation in the Northern Cape received R35 000 under the auspices of the Masakhane campaign.
The other Wira projects are:
l Ga-Matamanyane, a bakery, poultry and vege- table concern in the Northern Province.
l Zanokhanyo, a bakery in the Eastern Cape.
l Amathole, a poultry producing scheme in the Eastern Cape.
l Thuthukani, a poultry and vegetable project in Mpumalanga.
l Nzimakazi, a poultry concern in KwaZulu- Natal.
l Simunye, a poultry operation in KwaZulu- Natal.
l Morokweng, a crop and bakery scheme in the North-West province.
l Iketsetse Basadi, a sewing project in the Free State.
l The Chabelopele poultry concern in the Free State.