How a group of women built each other up, one brick at a time
Dream inspires Cape Town stokvel that pools money to construct decent homes
Today, the Masakhe Ladies’ Stokvel is more than a savings group. And it all started with a New Year’s dream, shared between two sisters.
Jeanette Nobantu Kenya Malgas sits on her sister’s bed, a mix of pride and sadness in her eyes as she surveys the room.
“She had gathered her children around her to pray that evening, she was sitting here, just like I am.
“They prayed together but by the time they said Amen, she didn’t come back from the prayer.”
Malgas’s 51-year-old sister, Ntombekhaya “Ntosh” Nyamaplati was declared dead on November 21 2022, just two days before her birthday, having suffered a heart attack during the family’s nightly prayer session.
It was a huge blow not only to her family but to the dozens of women whose lives she touched.
Just three years earlier, Nyama-plati had been living in a leaking tin shack in Gugulethu, Cape Town.
When she fell asleep on January 1 2019, she had a dream — so vivid and convincing — it jerked her awake at 4am and had her reaching for someone to share it with.
“My phone rang and it was her, saying she’s at the gate. I was confused because she’d just left my house a few hours earlier,” Malgas said.
“We’d celebrated New Year’s together.”
Nyama-plati told her sister she’d had a dream they should gather women in the community and start building each other houses.
Malgas was perplexed and slightly amused, but allowed her younger sibling to continue.
Nyama-plati explained that women in the community had been pooling their money in monthly “stokvels” for decades to buy groceries or clothing, but still found themselves living in poverty, without ever owning a house.
Why not pool money to build decent homes?
The sisters put the idea on Facebook and within hours, dozens of women between the ages of 25 and 72 had responded.
A week later, the Masakhe Ladies Stokvel was born.
Masakhe is an isixhosa word that translates best as “let’s build”.
“When the stokvel officially started, we had 40 ladies.
“We opened a bank account and each of us contributed R2,500 every month.”
Each month, one woman received the total amount of R100,000.
They had to immediately use it for building material and builders, not for food, clothes or cars, Malgas said.
“Construction normally takes three to four weeks because the next month, we must start building another house.”
Within three years, the women had built 36 new houses and completed renovations or improvements on four existing homes in Gugulethu and surrounding areas.
“We did great!” a beaming Malgas said as she walked out the bedroom and into a kitchen with shiny red cupboards and sparkling appliances in a double-storey house in Gugulethu, where her sister’s tin shack once stood.
“I wish she’d wake up,” Malgas said, before she went downstairs, where Nyama-plati had used part of her stokvel savings to build rental units and a shop for extra income.
The Masakhe Ladies Stokvel has remained strong, even after Nyama-plati’s untimely death.
It is a registered company, with Malgas as co-founder and director, and Ondela Malgas and Malgas’s daughter, Gabriella Kenya, as directors.
Malgas encouraged her daughter to join the stokvel when she was 25.
For her, it’s been the gift that keeps giving.
“As one of the youngest members of Masakhe, I can safely say joining the stokvel was one of the best things I ever did for myself because, today, I own two flats and have an extra stream of income,” Kenya said.
Malgas is clear that the Masakhe Ladies Stokvel was never just about building decent houses.
It was, and still is, about uplifting and empowering women to dig themselves out of poverty.
To continue building, one brick at a time.
For Patricia George, it was a lifeline she never knew she needed.
George shared her experience in the courtyard of her home in Nyanga. She is on crutches, calling for her son to bring her wheelchair.
George had just signed up for the stokvel when she was hit by a minivan while walking to a nearby shop.
She spent the next seven months being treated for a serious spinal injury.
“It was hard, but I knew I had been given a second chance to live.
“I used my children’s government grants and the little my husband was earning at the time to continue paying the stokvel,” she said.
In August 2022, George received her payout and built two rental units behind her house.
She has since built four more rental units from the income of the first two.
Ntombekhaya Nyama-plati would be proud.
Not only did they achieve her dream of building decent houses for women, they have also attracted the attention of the government and small businesses.
These days, they are receiving support and training in construction so they can do the building themselves.
The stokvel has also registered other co-operatives to teach skills such as brickmaking, carpentry, IT and health care.
And they are raising funds to expand Masakhe.
Malgas believes more communities should follow the Masakhe Ladies Stokvel model. “This housing backlog affects people all over the world.
“It’s a crisis that is not easily solved,” she said.
“But Masakhe’s way of doing stokvel, people grouping themselves and building themselves, is better than waiting on databases forever.”
According to Stats SA, there are more than 2.2-million people on the country’s housing waiting list.
“It is already the case that most housing in Africa is produced by people themselves,” Ndifuna Ukwazi urban policy researcher Nick Budlender said.
“A lack of government capacity and a mismatch between people’s earnings and what formal private housing costs means that people have largely had to rely on themselves and their communities to build homes.
“However, governments could do a lot more to support people so that they build safe, decent and secure housing that truly meets their needs and improves their lives. ”— bird