From motley crew to inspired leaders
● Ten years ago Ben Makhanya had never stepped onto a boat, let alone been out to sea. Today the 27-year-old from Mtubatuba in KwaZulu-Natal is a professional skipper for a Cape Town sailing school, and sails thousands of miles abroad twice a year to teach his students what to him was an impossible dream a decade ago.
Makhanya is one of 12 young South Africans who have had their lives transformed through a gruelling leadership training programme linked to one of the world’s toughest ocean sailing races.
Since 2013 the organisers of the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race have partnered with SA’s Rainbow Foundation to use the 40,000 nautical mile adventure not only to teach disadvantaged young South Africans to sail, but to also challenge them physically and mentally in preparation for leadership roles in their communities.
This week Makhanya and other graduates of the training programme met in Cape Town ahead of the departure of the yachts to rename the programme and meet the crew selected for this year’s race.
“The programme just pushed me to the right direction,” Makhanya said. “When I took part in leg five of the race between Australia and China I became braver. I started asking myself: ‘If I could sail 5,700 nautical miles, what could stand my way?’ For the first time in my life I started to believe there is nothing I can’t do if I set my eyes on it.”
The project is part of a global concept, Dare to Lead, aimed at attracting global organisations to create their own youth development programmes in other parts of the world. Youngsters are recruited to join the crew for different legs of the race after completing a month-long training course. Along the way they are mentored by some of the world’s best sailors.
At Friday’s reunion the project’s founder, European financier and philanthropist Dirk van Daele, renamed the project Liyaba Rainbow Programme in honour of one of the programme’s former ambassadors, Masibulele Liyaba, who was murdered last year.