It’s not every day that people get praised while they are still alive. We always reserve these words of praise as eulogies at their funerals.
I think it is a good thing to shower people with the praise they deserve while they are still alive and can hear and appreciate it, and this is precisely what I want to do with the president of the Greater Alexandra Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Mpho Motsumi.
For what he has done for the people of Alexandra, in building a world-class mall for them and creating the much-needed employment opportunities, which I am quite sure will go a long way towards alleviating the rampant poverty in Alexandra, I think he deserves our accolades while he is still alive.
I am quite sure that thousands of Alex residents who have landed jobs at your mall will bear testimony to what this means to them as individuals, their families, friends and relatives, most of whom may be dependent on them for a meal to fill their pestering tummies; for a piece of cloth to wrap around their bodies to cover their essentials and protect themselves from the elements of the weather.
Most importantly, maybe you don’t understand the magnitude of the burdensome load you have removed from their shoulders as a result of creating employment for them, giving them that independence and freedom to stand on their own two feet.
For once they can put a meal on the table of their loved ones, provide for their children, send them to school and even buy and drive that dream car, or, even more, buy and live in that dream house they always admired in property catalogues.
I am sure if they had their way, they would express their never-ending gratitude for saving them from that desperation of a suicidal path, if not from the horrible road leading to the dreamland of nyaope.
I am sure you were celebrated at the opening of the mall – amplified by the Executive Mayor of the City of Johannesburg, Herman Mashaba during his address, where he indicated that when one stole from a white person during the apartheid era, he or she was celebrated.
The multimillionaire businessman alluded to the indisputable fact that most blacks stole from white people not because they were habitual thieves but out of a need to survive.
Growing up in a poverty-stricken family, we used to steal firewood and buckets of water from a neighbouring white-owned smallholding, not because we liked stealing but for the sake of survival.
I am sure Mashaba was echoing the sentiments of many in Alexandra, as well, who would have soon found themselves on the wrong side of the law, not because they like what they do, but because it is the only option they have to survive on a day-to-day basis. Your mall has come in handy and averted the criminalisation of many.
I hope the establishment of your mall will mean one less criminal [if not more] prowling our streets in Alex.
Edited by Stacey Woensdregt
Tell us how you think the mall has helped people residing in Alex on the Alex News Facebook page.
