MAGANGENI Primary School in Malamulele, Limpopo, is a rural school with not so much to write about in terms of rescources and facilities. The school is well run and taken care of by its management, a fact which should be the standard for all schools. However, for a rural school in a community where girls come against great odds to get ahead in life, Magangeni has been doing great over the years.
In November 2018, then 13-year-old Hlulani Baloyi was in the news for having earnt the right to represent South Africa in the spelling competition in Kenya. The following year a teacher from Magangeni, Florence Bekwa, received an award at the National Teachers’ Awards. In 2020 Bekwa clinched another national gong, with a brand-new car as part of her prizes, for winning the excellence in primary school teaching prize award. Other female teachers at Magangeni Primary also excelled in the national teaching awards in 2015 and 2016. In 2021, a former Magangani pupil and agriculture academic, Hlami Ngwenya, received the Order of Baobab in Bronze from President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Dr Ngwenya was cited for her work in in sustainable development, capacity building and empowering communities. Today another former Magangeni girl, Dumisani Chauke, is hard at work preparing the South African national team for the Netball World Cup to be hosted in Cape Town from July 28 to August 6. Chauke, the Proteas assistant coach, is fully aware of the daunting task awaiting her team in the tournament, more so from powerhouses such as Australia, New Zealand, England and Jamaica.
For that reason, the eloquent Chauke believes her team’s best chance lies in being clinical by reducing their error rate and improving on conversion of turnovers. She’s right. There’s nothing wrong with the physical fitness and emotional intelligence of our players. One big factor the Proteas have in short supplies is the competitive aggression. It’s there but not enough; our girls need to be more enterprising and daring to the brink of testing the rules during games. Our players’ approach must be of warriors; stuff of the ladies can be taken care of after the matches when pleasantries are exchanged with the opposing sides. That’s Chauke’s emphasis in her role of preparing the team for the world cup, while the head coach Norma Plummer focuses on philosophy and strategy.
Chauke knows full well what it means and entails to beat the odds, coming from the rural areas to holding a national position in the biggest sport for girls in South Africa. She is rightfully concerned about the participation of girls in sports, hence her involvement in the activitiies of netball development. Earlier this month, she was at Wendywood Primary School in Sandton, Johannesburg, for the launch of the Pep Mini Netball.
Retail giant PEP says its involvement in the tournament is influenced by the quest to ” extend its community reach to young girls”. The need to promote netball mostly in poorer areas, where in some areas the game has completely disappeared, is growing fast. PEP’s initiative will therefore not only help the schools’ netball programmes but also the communities around the schools. For its launch year, the Mini Netball programmes will only be in the Western Cape, Free State and Gauteng, for girls between the ages of 8 and 10. It is envisaged that apart from early introduction to critical foundation skills of the sport, the mini netball games will give the young girls an opportunity to stand proudly and aim high, subsequently boosting their self-esteem. PEP says in its statement announcing the initiative. Dumisani Chauke however is the living proof what playing sports can do for a girl. She started out playing basketball and soccer before adopting netball on fulltime basis from the age of 10. After her secondary education in Polokwane, she studied sports management at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Gqeberha (former Port Elizabeth), where she continued to play and coach netball. By the time she read for her postgraduate diploma in sports management at the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT), Dumisani was already a Proteas’ player. When she retired from international netball in 2014, she returned to NMMU to coach. In 2016, she was appointed assistant coach for the baby Proteas (under 20) before progressing to her current position as the senior national team’s assistant coach. By the way, the Pep Mini Netball Festivals officially got underway on 15 April.
