Motswako helping local Mbombela communities
If you walk down the dusty streets of Mataffin Village these days, you might notice a distinctly sweet smell in the air.
That is because two new bakeries, sponsored by Motswako Office Solutions (www.motswako.com) as part of an ongoing social upliftment programme, are open for business, making and selling fresh bread to the village and surrounding areas.
The proceeds of these sales help the local community rise up from its historic poverty.
Sebenzile Matsebula, an executive director and board member of Motswako Office Solutions, cannot help but get emotional as she describes an interaction she had with one of the young women employed at one of the new bakeries.
“I recently attended the opening of the second bakery in Matsafeni, one of the poorest parts of the village, and when the formalities were over, I was approached by one of the new employees, a young lady,” Matsebula recalls. “Mama, she said to me, you have no idea how this bakery has changed mine and my family’s life. I come from an environment where we have nothing, she said. Our women are subject to abuse every day, and we feel hopeless. Now I see a way forward so we can transform and turn our lives around.”
Matsebula, born and raised in Barberton, lives with disability, and previously served as director in the presidency as head of the Office on the Status of Disabled Persons.
“It makes me proud that a company I work for and which I’m helping to make successful is able to take that success and plant new seeds of hope in the impoverished community I come from,” she said. “In our language, 'Mostwako' means ‘in the mix’, and it has long been part of the company’s DNA to bring people together. When we engage in our business activities, it’s not enough to just succeed, it’s imperative that we also empower the people in the areas that we service.”
Motswako officially opened its Mbombela office two years ago when it took over the business of Ricoh Mbombela (www.ricoh. com), and the company has since become one of Ricoh’s most successful business partners in South Africa.
“When we first opened the new office, we immediately started looking for ways to engage and support the local Mbombela communities,” said Motswako Mbombela’s general manager, Chris Weideman. “At first, we found interesting sponsorship opportunities, together with Ricoh, for the Pumas rugby team, but we wanted to go beyond the usual corporate sponsorship of a professional sporting franchise and find ways of making a real difference at grassroots level.”
Mostwako took note of the organisations and charities supported by the Pumas, and started engaging directly with those communities. That led to a chance encounter with Mzwandile Ngubane, a local resident whose Isinkwa Sethemba bakery in Mataffin was conceived as a self-sustaining, nonprofit business for the upliftment of Mataffin youth through funding sporting clubs and activities. The baking equipment donated by Motswako helped the four-person bakery produce more loaves per day, and they were also able to offer sliced bread, a real differentiator for the bakery in the area.
Fast-forward two years, and the original initiative has grown to support the creation and sponsorship of a girl’s netball team, a Mataffin mountain bike club, and now, a second bakery, along with a soon-tobe opened technology centre for school learners, alongside the new bakery in the Woodhouse community of Mataffin.
“It’s not just about sponsoring a new bakery or sports club and walking away, our objective is to work closely with the people of Mataffin and share with them some of the knowledge we’ve gained from the business world to help them become successful in their own right,” said Weideman.
“For example, we were teaching them, through the bakery, the principles of costs versus price, helping them understand the fundamentals and financial principles that underpin any business, even a small local bakery.
“As the original bakery grew, it started attracting regular clients and even built a reputation for itself in the area, and even with a small team, was soon able to turn a profit. Now, with the second bakery, we’re starting from scratch with bigger premises and better equipment, and helping the two bakeries grow from producing 400 loaves per month to 400 loaves per day.
“These are the principles that inspire us as a business in our own industries, and we’d like to think the same principles will be able to inspire a small community to take charge of its own future, something we desperately want to see happening in this beautiful part of our country.”
Motswako's CEO, Jaco de Jager, has reaffirmed his personal commitment to the Mataffin bakeries by pledging R10 000 of his monthly salary to buying bread and donating it to local orphanages.
“It’s not enough to just make a gesture. If we’re going to make a real difference, we have to put our money where our mouths are, so to speak,” he said.
“The bakery we started sponsoring in
2020, and the new bakery and technology centre we’re opening in Woodhouse, are all stepping stones for this incredible community of people we work with on a daily basis,” he said. “The bakeries provide a valuable service to the community, but also serve as a support mechanism for the young people of Mataffin, who for many years have had no outlet for their energy or creativity, or a place to complete their homework and studies.”
The money generated to fund the netball team and mountain bike club, and any other future clubs and activities, is getting Mataffin’s children off the streets. It gives them a sense of purpose, of focus, and a way to start changing the status quo, which for too long has been mired by poverty and social ills like gender-based violence.
Statistics show that in the 2020/21 financial year, there were 8 326 cases of violence against women in Mpumalanga with 5 238 arrests, and 2 537 cases against children with 1 933 arrests in the same period.
Weideman tells the story of one brave lady who, at the recent opening of the Woodhouse bakery, stood up and addressed the officiating MEC directly.
“With pride and confidence, she reached out to the MEC, and said, 'Sir, can you please make sure that the areas where we sell our bread are secure?'” he says. “I get to meet a lot of people like this in Mataffin, through our work and charities there, and sometimes there’s a look of hopelessness in their eyes, especially in the eyes of women and children, that’s really hard to describe. Then, one day, you see these people again and their eyes are full of hope. That’s when you know what you’re doing is making a difference.”
Along with the netball and biking equipment and uniform sponsorships, Motswako is donating 12 computers, complete with stationery, printer and network equipment to the value of R150 000, to the Woodhouse Technology Centre.
“The technology centre for me is a major undertaking,” said Weideman. “It’s going to take several weeks to put that together, moving containers and ensuring they’re secure before setting up hardware. The real challenge is that the whole area, not just the tech centre, is properly secured, and not just for the equipment, but for the safety of the people working there.”
For now, the site is just an open space, so the community and its sponsors have major work to do. Encouragingly, at the bakery's opening, community leaders committed to work together to make sure this happens, that the facilities Motswako is helping build are protected. After that, the next step is to build momentum for all of these initiatives going forward, something Matsebula believes the combination of sport and education is already achieving.
“We want to keep growing our company in Mbombela, and as we grow, we will continue to support local businesses with the office automation and ICT infrastructure they need to compete and succeed,” she said. “But most importantly, this growth will feed directly into growing the communities around Mbombela, like Mataffin and so many others in need of upliftment. On a personal level,
I’m doing everything I can to make sure the community I was born and raised in has a prosperous future worth living for.”