Joy as Soshanguve gogo (98) receives new home

After many years of waiting, Soshanguve gogo, Elizabeth Kekana (98) now has a decent home to call her own.

Afribiz Invest and the Collen Mashawana Foundation joined hands to gift her a newly-built house.

The Johannesburg-based company partnered with the Soshanguve foundation to provide proper shelter to residents in shacks or run-down homes.

The two started the initiative in 2017, after realising that many residents were still without proper homes, even long after they had applied for RDP homes.

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Gogo Kekana told Rekord that she was looking forward to moving out of the shack she had lived in for the past 25 years.

She said two weeks before construction of her house began, her son, with who she had lived since 1994, had died.

Daughter Monica Malope (71) and granddaughter Esther Seodisa (58) said Gogo Kekana had applied for an RDP house in 1998, the government started building it in 2009 but it had never been completed.

“Residents heard that the Collen Mashawana Foundation was assisting residents and contacted them to assist our mother,” said Malope.

Kunene Makopo of Risk Solutions, another foundation partner, gave the family life and home insurance.

Kekana said she was “over the moon” that she would no longer sleep in a shack.

“I am very happy to have a new house today because I am not sleeping in a shack, I am sleeping in a new bed which is warm,” said Kekana.

Afribiz Invest executive director Cecil Mashawana said the foundation was active throughout South Africa not just Soshanguve.

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“This is the third house that we have built in Soshanguve. We hope to attract more donors so that we can assist more people, not only in Soshanguve but also in other provinces. We have donated 35 houses this year across South Africa,” said Mashawana.

“The reason why we are pushing it through the media and everyone is only to make sure that we attract as many people as possible who have the heart to help the needy. We hope to build 100 houses in 2020, all for charity,” he said.

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