Samaritan saves rural pupils

While there is an African proverb that says it takes a village to raise a child, one man is changing the lives of almost 300 underprivileged pupils from one of the poorest and most remote villages in Libode.

After being made aware of the plight of rural children from Upper Corhana Senior Primary in Misty Mount, less than 20km outside Mthatha, by a close friend in 2016, Zimbabwean-born Justice Maphosa, the chief executive of a multinational company, decided to take matters into his own hands by digging into the company’s coffers to help the pupils.

The millionaire did this by employing four teachers who are paid by the company, ensuring the 286 pupils were provided with new uniforms, breakfast and lunch every day at school, while also paying for two buses to ferry them to and from school.

Yesterday, the head of the Pretoria-based Big Time Strategic Group arrived at the school, where he was mobbed by pupils, teachers and parents.

The company is involved in ICT in South Africa but also dabbles in aviation matters in Zimbabwe and agriculture in Mozambique.

Maphosa said he was moved when he saw Upper Corhana pupils walking to school barefoot, even during winter.

Maphosa, a devout Christian, told the Daily Dispatch that he himself had once been on the receiving end of someone else’s generosity after having lived on the streets for three months.

He had been born into a very poor family in Zimbabwe and had left for South Africa at the age of 13 to live with a relative.

But a few months later, the relative died, leaving the young Maphosa to fend for himself on the streets.

“That was the toughest period in my life,” he said, adding that he had to drop out of school.

Fortunately for him, a businessman who had employed him to clean his trucks, saw his potential, took him in and paid for his education.

“It takes God to take one from the streets and make him CEO of a multi-national company.”

And now he wants the same for the young pupils of Upper Corhana. When he visited the school two years ago, he found that there were only three permanent teachers.

Immediately, he agreed to recruit and pay for four teachers and three non-teaching staff members. The department of education then employed five more teachers.

Maphosa’s company has also adopted another school in Alexandra, where it provides similar services and provides bursaries to needy pupils wanting to go to university. One of the school teachers at Upper Corhana, Nozibele Mgemane told the Dispatch yesterday that the school had only 146 pupils in 2016 but when Maphosa and his company got involved, the numbers immediately shot up to nearly 300.

“He bought them school uniforms even then and this time around he is buying everyone of them new uniforms,” she said.

Mgemane said the school’s results had improved dramatically in the last two years.

Pensioner Nobandla Goniwe, whose three grandchildren attend the school, praised Maphosa for helping their children.

“It’s a new start for our children and a new life for us all in this village and it’s thanks to this man,” she said. — sikhon@dispatch.co.za