Reaping fruits of his labour
Young man turns life around by growing his field of dreams
SEEING Odwa Madikizela standing proudly in his sprawling and thriving vegetable garden in Slovo Park near Mthatha, it’s hard to imagine that not so long ago, he could have been another young life wrecked by drugs.
The 33-year-old Port St Johns-born man has not only managed to kick drugs out of his life, but today has a stable job as a security guard working for the national Department of Agriculture and Forestry’s Mthatha offices.
His job entails guarding the department’s offices every night – but it is what he does during the day that has caught the attention of his neighbourhood.
That’s when he tends to his well-manicured garden where he produces vegetables which he sells to the local community.
Born in Gomolo village in PSJ, Madikizela was always surrounded by poverty at home.
Both parents were unemployed and his mother resorted to selling homebrewed traditional beer to feed her eight children.
Although the youngster attended school, he was drawn to a life of drugs around the age of 13 while in Grade 4.
“Many of the people who came to drink at our home, smoked dagga and I ended up smoking it as well,” he told the Saturday Dispatch at his home in Slovo Park this week.
“It affected my schooling and there were times I bunked school altogether.”
He would later quit school when his mother was unable to pay for his fees.
But his situation soon improved when he bumped into a social worker who introduced him to an employee at the department, Isaac Mnyaka.
Mnyaka, a born-again Christian, not only introduced the youngster to a life of Christ but opened his home to him. He also took him to school paying for his tuition.
“I couldn’t just stand by and watch while a child this young was wasting his life,” Mnyaka told the Dispatch.
But while he devoted his time to his education, Madikizela also learnt crop farming from Mnyaka’s father who was a farmer himself.
Having quit schooling in Grade 8 in 2006, Madikizela eventually found his security guard job in Stutterheim with the help of Mnyaka.
In 2013, he asked for a transfer to Mthatha where he was put on nightwatch.
But Madikizela, who always harboured dreams of becoming a farmer from an early age, found himself taking interest in learning about producing vegetables as the department also owned land where vegetables were planted.
“I am sure I would have been long dead by now had it not been for Mr Mnyaka’s intervention,” Madikizela said.
“Last year I started my own garden and produced about 75 bags of potatoes which were quickly bought by locals in Slovo Park. Each bag retailed at R40.”
Now he is about to harvest cabbages and has started a piggery. He said his biggest concern is getting more land to produce more vegetables as the demand for his produce is growing by day.
The young farmer has also managed to build his mother a house but says he cannot quit his job yet as he is able to buy seeds, fertiliser, pesticides and food for his pigs from his monthly salary.
However in the face of the high rate of unemployment among young people, he hopes to help mentor some of them.
“I am willing to take young people under my wing because I believe if government can invest in people like us, we could put a huge dent on unemployment.”
Saziso Thutha, an agricultural technician at Madikizela’s workplace has also heaped praise at the youngster describing him as a “breath of fresh air”. — sikhon@dispatch.co.za