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Injiva are not just about fast cars, bingeing, ostentatiousness and violence.

We are learning this now as more of them are investing huge sums of money in community development projects.   They are contributing in the building of roads and clinics and so on.

Yesterday, we reported on two injiva — Messers Never Ngwenya and Lancelot Sithole — who are investing R40million building a school in Tsholotsho.  For greater perspective, the budget is slightly more than US$2million.  A huge amount of money indeed.

The school, Royal Avenues High is in Simanje Village, Ward 15 under Chief Gampu.  The duo expects the first intake to be in January next year.

“The school project is inspired by our struggles to access education when we were young,” said Mr Sithole.

“We don’t want our children in future to go through what we experienced.  Once complete, the school will offer all sorts of subjects, as well as courses like motor mechanics, brick moulding and carpentry, among others.  It’s our desire to have children from Tsholotsho having access to universities after high school, especially at the National University of Science and Technology because we are going to offer sciences with full equipment.”

Mr Ngwenya chipped in:

“It’s not everyone who comes from Tsholotsho who is a criminal and anti-development. We want to bring positive development to our area, which will help our people, change their lifestyle for the good and demystify the negative perception that people have out there.”
Messers Ngwenya and Sithole are an inspiration.  Through their project they are re-writing the history of injiva.  Indeed, working in South Africa is not just about empty bling and violence.  It is about more tangible, durable projects to help transform not just Simanje Village or Chief Gampu’s area but also the entire district, province and the country.

The two are contributing to the national drive to improve access to education by the masses.  Their project will create local jobs, produce students who, we hope will excel in various fields and uplift the community.  The modern facility will beautify the community as well.

We encourage more injiva and the wider diaspora to boost their contribution to national development outside remittances, family homes and cars.

They can build schools as Messers Ngwenya and Sithole are doing, they can build clinics, hospitals, hotels, lodges and so on.

We are confident that the formal registration of Royal Avenues High that the promoters of the project are busy doing as construction continues will not be too complicated.

We say this because the country has a huge deficit of schools, thus the Government is actually encouraging greater private investment in the building and operation of schools.