Introducing Linda Olga Nghatsane

South African Woman of the Year 2007

womanoftheyear.co.za Ms Linda Olga Nghatsane, a public health practitioner from Mpumalanga, turned farmer three years ago to answer women who challenged her while she taught good nutritional practices. These women said although they acquired useful nutritional knowledge they remained challenged by poverty and unemployment. That is when Ms Nghatsane bought a 10 hectare farm, De Hoop, in the Crocodile River Mountain conservancy near Nelspruit. The land was overgrown with Lowveld vegetation and most of the bush clearing had to be done by hand. There was no infrastructure on the farm, i.e., no house, electricity, or water and not even a road leading to the piece of land which she has since turned into a flourishing farm.

Today she rears broiler chickens in an operation with a capacity of 25,000 chickens; produces oyster mushrooms, strawberries and a variety of vegetables. The farm turnover per year is about R2 million. Ms Nghatsane bought the farm without Government assistance in a commercial transaction. Her successful farming also includes involvement in community development where she conducts training on planting vegetables in bags, poultry and oyster mushroom production as well as care and support for orphans and vulnerable children. She is a self-driven person who does not believe in hand-outs but in hard work. Ms Nghatsane uses the example of how she has turned an open land in the middle of nowhere into an oasis to create jobs as well as feeding her community.

Nghatsane won in the business category of the Woman of the Year award before taking the overall title. Linda has Masters degree in public Health and Diplomas in Nursing and Project Management.

source: http://www.womanoftheyear.co.za/pages/79568134/Winners/business.asp

Read More About the SA Woman of the Year Awards

Of Notable Mention

The winners in the other six categories were as follows.

Social welfare
Esther Carmickle-Ramusi is a community worker who has worked relentlessly to transform the communities in which she has lived and worked - turning dry rural communities into areas of greenery, helping a disadvantaged community with school development, and helping hundreds of young South Africans to make positive choices through education.

Health
Dr Angela Mathee, director of the Environment and Health Research Unit of the Medical Research Council of SA, has conducted a series of studies on lead poisoning in children and its relationship between poverty and lead poisoning. Mathee's work has supported the development of policies to reduce lead pollution in SA, including the reduction of lead in petrol and a ban on lead in paint.

Education
Advocate Molly Malete helps ordinary South Africans to understand the country's laws, and to benefit from this knowledge, through workshops and motivational talks on family law, gender equality and development, violence against women, parenting, and children's rights and development.

Arts, culture and communications
Artist and medical doctor Carol Hofmeyr established the Keiskamma Art Project, an Eastern Cape community project that created the Keiskamma Tapestry, a 120-metre embroidery now hanging in Parliament in Cape Town. Hofmeyr also set up a residential HIV/Aids treatment centre in the Hamburg area of the province.

Science and technology
Since being appointed the first woman president of the SA Institution of Civil Engineering (SAICE) in 2000, Allyson Lawless has been making a difference, from the highest levels in government to communities in need of infrastructure. Lawless has campaigned to put engineers back into local government, and was instrumental in launching the Local Government Engineering Empowerment Programme to guide new municipal councillors on the intricacies of infrastructure delivery. Along with SAICE executive director Dawie Botha, she was also instrumental in establishing the Africa Engineers Forum to share technology and harmonise codes of practice throughout Africa. Her book Numbers and Needs (2005) has become a national reference guide on skills development, offering a range of solutions from cradle to grave.

Sport
Anne Siroky, who at the age of 37 became the number one beach volleyball player in SA, started The Future Factory in two schools in the Western Cape six years ago. Today, the sports academy operates in 50 schools in the province, working with more than 150 000 children.

SouthAfrica.info reporter - http://www.southafrica.info/women/woman2007.htm

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