Mr Lunga Sokhela (Chairman of AmaZulu Community Trust)

Distinguished guests,
Members of the media,
DEFY attendees represented on the panel by Mr Mark Hobbs,
Trustees of the AmaZulu Community Trust, good morning.

We live in a country of absolute beauty and splendor, a country well renowned the world over for having fought through many negatives to now being a rainbow nation. Many come to our shores and marvel about how far we have come but in reality we know that our society still has many challenges.

 This has been through a great contribution by individuals past and present. Some like Chief Albert Luthuli have had to sacrifice their lives for the South Africa we live in today. I was touched when I read the statement made when the government dismissed him as Chief when he refused to resign from the ANC, a movement that was fighting discrimination and segregation using a non-violent approach. I was motivated by his selfless nature when he said and I quote….

“What the future has in store for me I do not know. It might be ridicule, imprisonment, concentration camp, flogging, banishment and even death. I only pray to the Almighty to strengthen my resolve so that none of these grim possibilities may deter me from striving, for the sake of the good name of our beloved country, the Union of South Africa, to make it a true democracy and a true union in form and spirit of all the communities in the land.
My only painful concern at times is that of the welfare of my family but I try even in this regard, in a spirit of trust and surrender to God`s will as I see it, to say: "God will provide.
It is inevitable that in working for Freedom some individuals and some families must take the lead and suffer: The Road to Freedom is via the CROSS.” Unquote

It is with these words that one realizes that a major contribution still needs to be made in our society by all of us for the betterment of our country. The battle may be different as the walls of segregation and discrimination have been broken but there are other challenges facing our generation.

We are plagued by the majority of our people living without education, many live unhealthy lifestyles, we have high levels of HIV and AIDS, high illiteracy levels and so on.

In speaking about this one just has to highlight governments 5 priority points as alluded to in last week’s State of the Nation address i.e. providing decent work, improving health, focusing on education, implementing rural development and fighting crime.

It is critical that us as organizations that operate within South Africa work along with our leaders in government and play our part in addressing the negative aspects we see in our country such as unemployment, poverty and inequality.

As seen in the presentation the need to have focused placed on Corporate Social Investment Initiatives led to the birth of the AmaZulu Community Trust. A body that would roll out life-skills training, promote healthy lifestyles, promote education, run initiatives to decrease crime and provide employment by using poor community members to run programs.There is synergy with what the Trust is trying to achieve and what the government plans are for our countries.

The Trust is not purely about football development. It is about rolling out critical programs within the community that will better the people especially those in need. Football is used in most cases as it is the most powerful tool in the world to draw people. It then becomes a draw card in rolling out critical programs.

There are many initiatives out there that don’t draw the necessary numbers to make a noticeable difference. Interest levels in these programs ends up going down and what was once a positive initiative on paper dies a sad death without having achieved much. The Trust is about changing that and what better tool to use then football.The passion it drives amongst our people is second to none. Programs are not designed for talented players only but for the whole society no matter what religion, sex, race or sexual preference.

We use other vehicles to achieve our objectives and a classic example is the annual corporate golf day which has been used to raise funds for Gozololo. This is a home that feeds over 3000 kids that are orphaned. This year we were able to donate R 140 000 to the home making our total contribution close to R 400 000 over the past three years.

All in all, over three odd years, the Trust has established programs that have touched the lives of over 20 000 people across the corners of our province on an annual basis. Going forward we are spreading our wings to the Gauteng area and Eastern Cape thus potentially doubling this number in months to come. My personal ambition is to touch the lives of over 100 000 needy people every year from next year. This will need the support of government and some of you sitting amongst us today.

Amongst the audience we have Mrs Fikile Ngezi from the department of social development and she mainly focuses on youth programs. I do hope that going forward the department can be a major part of the Trust and together we can run projects in the KZN area. We also have representatives from Sport and Recreation whom we hope to achieve the same with. Members of the private sector, you are always blamed for just wanting to make money and not giving back – lets engage and design programs that will show visibility especially in the areas you operate it. Invest in the Trust as a vehicle to develop powerful and popular programs.

The Trust has all the mechanisms to run projects across South Africa and have all the governance in place to ensure that donations made donnot go unaccounted for. As a PBO the partners we work with will reap great benefits when it comes toscotecard points as well as tax incentives. These to me should just be additional benefits. The real pleasure should come in a story you can help create in our beautiful country for potentially thousands of South Africans. We are aiming to run programs that are sustainable and will shape future leaders.

DEFY have come today to partner with the Trust in what will be sure to be a great initiative among 20 schools from the Durban, Ezakheni and East London areas. This initiative will involve teacher education programs which will empower the teachers to pass valuable knowledge on a variety of topics to their learners. Personnel from the Trust will be there to ensure that these programs are rolled out in a proper manner by the teachers and will also monitor and support them when needed. Stipends are a part of this program which means we are creating employment in a lot of areas.
Later in the program we will hand out kit and equipment to these coaches who will be looking after Durban. DEFY has also shown interest in educational funding that will assist really talented youngsters to attend a top school in Durban whilst being looked after by the Trust. More of these are needed and more sponsors are encouraged to support is supplying educational funding.

DEFY has donated over half a million Rand towards the running of this program and as the community Trust we will ensure that the DEFY Community Development Program is successful. Thousands of kids will have the life-skills training and football programs rolled out to them which will benefit the mentioned areas.
We are grateful for the opportunity afforded and encourage the selected schools and kids to take full advantage of this program. It will better you as people and ultimately the community. As for the AmaZulu Communty Trust we ask for the contribution of all members so that the spirit of leaders such as Chief Albert Luthuli can inspire us.

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