Back in 1999, 31 mothers in rural Giyani, Limpopo Province, decided one day that they would no longer sit around another day unemployed and impoverished.
Four years later the initiative they devised that day has produced more than 200 self-employed businesswomen.
Sarah Masunga, project manager for the Hi Hlurile Skills Development Programme, left her job six years ago because she had cancer. She decided she would not let her condition get the better of her, and was inspired after reading about a skills development project in Orange Farm, south of Johannesburg.
”I read about the Siyabonga Skills Development Project run by Patricia Makora,” Masunga says. ”I got in touch with her and a group of us started training with her. She really empowered us.”
The Giyani women were a group of unemployed women who didn’t want to just sit around and wait for things to happen — they knew how to take matters into their own hands.
They raised enough money to send 15 of their members on the Siyabonga course. They were trained in project management, but also learnt to make bricks, candles and juice.
Back home they found that the local market for bricks and juice was saturated, and candle-making was not a viable business in a poor area where people had electricity.
The women thought of products that people in their community would buy and decided to try dressmaking. Each member contributed R20 for material. Those with sewing machines brought them to their workshop and those who knew how to sew taught the rest of the group.
”We started off making tops. I still have one of the first I made. As time went on we thought about ways to make our products more desirable, so we started beading them and putting designs on them,” she said.
The women lacked sewing machines for everybody, so spare hands were set to needlework. They started making curtains, which Masunga said improved their lives. Soon they were decorating their own homes with the articles they had learnt to make, as well as selling goods to their neighbours.
”An old lady showed us how to do pottery, and before we knew it, we were doing that, putting designs on whatever we made. More and more we advanced,” she said.
Constant interaction with their market brought to their attention what most people really wanted to wear and which designs appealed to them. They started with ethnic designs.
”We don’t just sew or make plain pots. We work on something that will attract the market, and people like the African designs because they reflect the culture,” Masunga says.
Their business grew and they contacted the National Development Agency (NDA), a statutory body that funds nearly 2 200 poverty eradication programmes across South Africa. The Department of Social Development and Welfare chipped in more than R230 000 two years ago, which the women used for much-needed equipment.
”The two organisations saw that we’d taken big strides to make our project work and wanted to help us grow,” she says.
This project started small but neighbouring communities noted their success. They now oversee other projects that range from a baking to mushroom-farming, and from pig-farming to computer literacy.
”We started an adult literacy programme. It was hard because we had to teach people who didn’t have a matric and others who couldn’t read or write. We used Tsonga and the people’s daily activities to explain how the computer works,” she said.
Their first group of nine computer-literate students graduated early this year. Masunga was overwhelmed: ”These are people who could never get into tertiary institutions and get a degree. I can’t explain how I felt when they graduated.
”My philosophy is never to dwell on something you cannot change, just adapt to the situations you find yourself in,” she said.
Nkhensani Nkuna, the NDA’s project officer, says that the project is one of the most successful she has ever monitored.
”They were able to buy equipment for the various products that they needed with the money that was funded to them — making their work easier because before they did everything manually.
”They had training in pottery, in financial management, strategy planning and silk-screening. They even managed to get their products to Portugal.
”They also have a stall at the Meropa Casino in Pietersburg and help other women in neighbouring villages,” she says.
Masunga says: ”It’s not a question of money; it’s about acquiring knowledge, having ideas and using them.
”The original training we got didn’t go to waste because now we make our own bricks. We aren’t dependent on other people. No skill should be wasted.”
Their hard work recently attracted the attention of the Japanese embassy, which is funding a new workshop.