Ex-offenders discourage community from engaging in crime
The aim was to give ex-offenders a platform to show the community that they have been rehabilitated
Nkgalabi Projects, ex-offenders, parolees and the Department of Correctional Services presented the 2018 Kasi Entrepreneurship Summit and Expo at Rabasotho Hall on January 24.
Community members young and old attended the event to get some inspiration for starting their own businesses.
The aim was to give ex-offenders a platform to show the community that they have been rehabilitated by the Department of Correctional Services.
Organiser Solly Mankga, an ex-offender himself, said the event was focused more on crime prevention, with ex-offenders who have started their own businesses brought in to discourage young people from committing crime.
“Ex-offenders were giving a message to say, look, we can start businesses, we’ve been doing crime, we have served our time but now we have changed, so crime is not a solution,” said Mankga.
The theme of the event was, ‘In 2018 think entrepreneurship’.
“Entrepreneurship can be used as a tool to combat poverty and unemployment,” said Mankga.
Ramokgolo Kau from Leeuwkop Correctional Services said parolees are monitored to see to it that they they comply with their parole conditions until their sentences are finished.
“We cannot do that by only monitoring their compliance, but we have to do something to assist them in restoring their lives by seeing to it that they are getting employment. Due to criminal records it is very difficult for them to get employment, so we have decided to work with the community to identify what we can do to help,” said Kau.
He said stakeholders together with the the Department of Correctional Services therefore decided to partner in the 2018 Kasi Entrepreneurship Summit and Expo.
“This is not the first event, it is the third one,” said Kau. “We said let us go back to the township because we have seen the success yielded by the other two events, whereby people got inspired to start their own companies and are doing something for themselves. The success of this is that the ex-offenders are then able to employ others.”
Ex-offender cum businessman and author Themba Lukhele said the idea is not to tell young people that they must go to jail first before they can write their own books or start their own businesses.
“My speech today derived from the sheer suffering in prison,” said Lukhele. “Things that happen there no one can explain. That is why the system called the Correctional Services is very strict when it comes to their materials. I am standing here today as an ex-offender and what I am doing now, I am impacting young people’s lives and giving back to the community.”
Lukhele added that young people should not involve themselves in crime hoping that when they come out of prison they will become motivational speakers.
He emphasised his disapproval of people committing crime, saying they were there to give hope to young people who have lost hope. Tembisa entrepreneurs came out in numbers to showcase their products at the event.
