Thabo Mbeki visits a community crossing the digital divide, writes Mbuyisi Mgibisa
Ten years ago, Tsilithwa locality was one of the least desirable addresses in the Transkei. It had been stricken by poverty, unemployment and disease. Adult illiteracy was widespread and the drop-out rate of learners from school high. Today, it is an attractive, stable and safe residential community.
Icomtek, a Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)-led communications project worth R9-million, is providing the rural communities of Tsilithwa and the surrounding areas near Qumbu with the technological environment necessary for quality education and communication.
Funded by DACST Innovative Fund, Icomtek is impacting on the lives of the Tsilithwa community by training residents in PC literacy and business skills, providing information for agricultural projects and facilitating distance education and telemedicine applications. At the centre of the initiative is Makhenkesi Stofile Technical School. Principal Mzimkhulu Jikijela says the Icomtek project has promoted a partnership with his school and a cluster of schools around his school and has had a positive effect on learners, who can now access PCs and the internet.
President Thabo Mbeki, who recently visited the school to see the work being done as part of the project, said it was exciting and inspiring to learn that learners at Tsilithwa can communicate with others in England using modern technologies such as the internet. Mbeki said skills gained by pupils and communities would impact greatly on the economic development of the Transkei region.
“When small communities like these succeed, the government itself wakes up and development becomes what it should be: ground-up, instead of top-down,” Mbeki said. “The nearby communities, including the hospital, schools and the police station, are also benefiting from the project and have received training on essential skills aimed at improving their lives,” says Jikijela.
Jikijela says enthusiastic support from the community and its leaders is testimony to the extent to which the project is changing people’s lives in Tsilithwa. “Teachers gain more professionalism and have more to say about how to improve the school, community and other surrounding weak schools”.
CSIR Icomtek project director Chris Morris says a unique framework strategy that stresses integration of community participation, innovative technologies, sustainability and applications related to community needs has been developed.
He says customised solutions and an e-mail system has been developed for Tsilithwa using GSM technology and a solar energy supplier for renewable energy. “Training is targeted at the needs of different groups within the society – PC training, business skills, agricultural content and web page design,” says Morris.
Jikijela said the projects had supported small local businesses so that they might grow and employ more people. “The project also assists local business with information on how telecommunications and the internet could improve their businesses.”
Other partners in the Icomtek project include the Agricultural Research Council, the Human Sciences Research Council, Technikon Pretoria, Renewable Energy Africa and Naledi ya Afrika.
Makhenkesi Stofile Technical School has survived and progressed through partnerships with various sectors for the past four years. The school started in 1993 with money donated by the community assisted by donations of R220 000 from the Eastern Cape Appropriate Technology Unit and R1,3 million from Micro-Projects Programme Trust.
Eskom had donated about 16 computers worth more than R100 000 to connect the rural school with the globalised world and the internet.
Telkom provided satellite phones and fax machines for effective communication and links to others within the country and beyond.
The provincial government donated R400 000 for electricity, through the premier’s discretional fund, to help the school run its programmes.
The Johannesburg-based Food Gardens Foundation in conjunction with the BMW seed project donated more than R150 000 to encourage people to grow essential food according to sustainable organic principles and boost agricultural potential in the region. Mbeki’s visit to the school was part of the government Imbizo programme of interactive governance.
– The Teacher/M&G Media, Johannesburg, November 2001.