A Wider Angle: Graduates a source of pride

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PERHAPS many of you have experienced the anguish of children trying to get a job after they have either matriculated or graduated.

The strain, even despair eventually overcomes them as their hopes are very often dashed.

I frequently hear of this anxiety and dismay.

I, too, am a parent but my family is large, very large. You see, as the CEO of Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife I hold strong feelings about our rural communities and their hopes for a better life. Yes, I really do feel like a father to them all.

Last year I visited a few matriculants who had been chosen to attend a year-long training course I had organised for them with Ezemvelo.

I had found a monthly stipend to pay each of them and enlisted financial support from one of our largest Seta’s (CATHSSETA) as well as the Tourism World Academy for training purposes.

Many suitable candidates were selected by our Amakhosi from many areas of our province and eventually 47 were chosen for this work experience; half for those interested in the hospitality side of conservation and the others for field operations.

I went to chat to a few of them after their selection. And I’m, so glad I did.

It just served to reinforce why I adopted the mantra ‘African Conservation’ as the driving credo behind all our efforts.

The joy and hope on their faces!

This engagement with our communities’ lies at the heart of prioritising humanity as the principal beneficiaries of the practice we call Conservation.

I repeat myself: without community support, conservation will be lost to us.

Articulate, bright and smartly turned out, I learnt from two of them that they had achieved excellent marks in Maths and Physics in Matric.

But in the intervening two years they had been dividing their time between attending to their parent’s goats and cattle and trying to find a job.

‘Baba Mkhize, you know there are no jobs but we love nature. We will make you proud – as proud as our parents are in us!’

I left them frustrated, knowing that even when they graduated there were unlikely to be any full-time jobs available.

But I consoled myself knowing that at least I was able to find them a monthly stipend of R1 500. (Later on I was able to extend this training programme from one to two years, too).

It wasn’t a lot but a start. And last month they all graduated and now each of them holds NQF Level 2 qualifications.

More good news

Now, against this backdrop, you will appreciate my thrill when out of the blue, I received a call from the internationally renowned Wilderness Leadership School that operates out of our Stainbank Nature Reserve.

Twelve of my Rhino Ambassadors had been selected to undertake a six-month long training programme with the school while a further 40 had been chosen to partake in another life-skills programme.

I began our Rhino Ambassador programme some two years ago along similar lines to the matriculants I discussed above.

I was able to recruit 400 very deserving youth to patrol their communities and towns to help protect our rhino as well as impart some fundamental conservation messages.

Again I was able to offer each of them a stipend for two years.

I confess I’ve felt quite pressurised lately with how to advance the careers of these Ambassadors.

I suppose there is only so much talking and spying a young person can do before they become bored!

But the school’s general manager Cherryl Curry told me she had clinched this deal with Absa Bank; a deal worth some R500 000.

She told me she had been so impressed with them from the very outset (‘n amazing pool of young conservation talent’) that she had written a detailed proposal to Absa Bank, requesting them to finance this training programme.

Absa said there was one condition to the deal; I must employ the 12 top graduates from the training programme.

And this father was only too happy to oblige and welcome them into the Ezemvelo fold.