No more barefooted pupils
ALEXANDRA - The sight of pupils in Alexandra going to school barefooted with cracked heels and swollen toes from the knock-on effects on their route to school will be a thing of the past.
The sight of some pupils in Alexandra going to school barefooted will be a thing of the past.
This follows a conscious decision taken by Alex business tycoon, George Moyo who has partnered with fellow tycoon, Justice Maphosa to donate shoes and school uniforms to more than 200 Alex pupils.
Moyo, founder and president of Respect & Ubuntu Foundation said he could no longer sleep soundly when he was constantly confronted by the sight of schoolchildren walking to school barefoot.
Moyo said, “I could hardly go to bed and have a sound sleep with the sight of barefooted children going to school. This struck me so such that I went straight to that school the kids were going to and donated 30 shoes this past winter but immediately realised this was nothing but a drop in the ocean.”
Moyo decided to use his business connections and brought on board multimillionaire, Maphosa who is also an avid philanthropist. He has pledged to donate R2 million over a three-year period towards bursaries for tertiary students.
This will be over and above the shoes and uniform donations he will make. “We cannot continue to sip and enjoy our expensive whiskies when our neighbours can hardly scrap for a meal,” said Maphosa at a gala dinner held for the symbolic handover of uniforms and shoes to some pupils.
“South Africa has socio-economic problems not just from our past but some created by our indecisiveness in dealing with our social issues 20 years down the line. It took a rich American woman [Oprah Winfrey] to come to South Africa and see the challenges.”
He said Winfrey decided to build a world-class school to educate the country’s children and offered them bursaries. “Yet we as parents of these children still enjoy sipping our expensive whiskies from the comfort of our expensive bars.
“We should not complain when we are robbed in our houses, hijacked in the streets and conned in our offices. We should ask ourselves, what have we done to alleviate the socio-economic imbalances that characterise our nation that we inherited from our past?”
