SOWETO FARMERS 

We the adequate were assigned to work this uMam’ Zondi from Soweto on a school project “Soweto Farmers”. Initially we were assigned to Mr. David who didn’t really understand the purpose of the project no matter how much we explained to him, instead, he wanted to get paid of which we couldn’t do.

So Mam Zondi was our second option, a very humble, down to earth woman who was willing to take part in our project and didn’t expect anything in return. She allowed us to interview and take pictures of her while she was educating us a bit more on farming, how she went into the farming industry and her experiences. She told us also about a certain somebody she went into business with and ended up being robbed, someone who took all their profits into her own pockets and registered the farm under her own name and, this was the farm that they all worked on building.

Because of that incident Mam Zondi came together with some of her friends and are planning to build a new farm that’s going to benefit all members. This new farm goes by the name DESTINY and they plan on going commercial with it and supplying big supermarkets. They had already registered the name and just waiting for land approval from the government and start-up funding.

She got me to look at farming from a different angle, it wasn’t something I’d consider doing but, after speaking to her I realized it isn’t a bad thing, that it actually has a lot of opportunities for us the youth that we not even aware of. She did mention that a lot of youth don’t show interest in this industry because we lack the knowledge, we not taught about it and that there are a lot of stigmas going on about the industry e.g. its only for the older generation.

It was a great learning curve for me, I mean our unemployment rate is very high and the farming industry needs our hands and, it actually does pay a lot. If we make our youth aware of the opportunities they have then maybe, we won’t have to worry about unemployment’s because opportunities are waiting for us.