Our Team

Agnes Rapau heads up our Enterprise Development education, bringing 20+ years of experience teaching enterprise development in rural South African communities. She is also an entrepreneur, owning 3 businesses of her own : Learn From Us Solutions Pty Ltd; SATUMO sewing and embroidery Pty Ltd and Nako Yaka Kids Program(NPO).

 Agnes has founded several projects to uplift disadvantaged youth and children, including Learn From Us Farmers in 2014, teaching small scale farmers to use natural resources in a sustainable way and to grow nutritional food in their backyards.  Agnes started working with medicinal plants when she was 15, which developed into a deep passion. She coaches, mentors, facilitates training, organises environmental awareness and stakeholder engagements. What drives Agnes is assisting people to be aware of their potential to deal with poverty and social and environmental issues.

Agnes holds a wealth of knowledge about every aspect of small enterprise development and is an excellent teacher, tackling complex concepts in a way that is understandable and accessible to all of our participants, regardless of their educational level. She has firsthand experience of the harshness of growing up vulnerable in rural South Africa, and brings tremendous wisdom, heart, kindness and love to all she does.  We are so fortunate to have her as an integral part of our team.

Agnes is now working towards her qualification as Health Coach (Integrating Nutritional Therapy into all aspects of Health, Healthy Lifestyle, Financial Breakthrough and Health and Wellbeing of Workers). It is inspiring to see Agnes growing as Director of Education and Operations at Zingela Ulwazi; this  brings huge change in the lives of disadvantaged communities to realise their potential, and scale-up the level of livelihood through learning, coaching and mindfulness. This will not surprise people when ZU beneficiaries and all staff are sustainable; she will be coaching everyone towards this Goal.

Sylvester Nzimande is based in Powerline Village in Acornhoek. He has passion in working with the community, hand vast experience in Permaculture/Organic and sustainable farming. He spent 11 years with Food and Trees for Africa as a facilitator in Gauteng and Mpumalanga province. With FTFA, he helped schools to establish sustainable food gardens to supplement their school feeding scheme kitchens with healthy and fresh food straight from their school yards.

Sylvester also coordinated tree planting events during the celebration of Arbor Month and Mandela Day, and planted about 10 000 fruit and indigenous trees with FTFA. He planted 6,000 spekboom plants as food supplements for rhinos in one the game reserve in Mpumalanga with Konica Minolta.

Sylvester was part of FTFA team who hosted 200 climate change activists from different countries, each member planted a tree in each house in Alexandra township to represent his/her country.

At home, Sylvester runs a project that has chickens, goats and a food garden. The project has influenced surrounding community, they have adopted his style of living where each house has chickens, a small garden or goats to sustain themselves.

Quentan Marule is the co-founder and Project Co-ordinator of Sekwanele : Protective Strategies for Violence Against Women. She is passionate about women’s empowerment, and fierce about doing something to change the status of women in her area, advocating for women’s power and independence. Her motto for Sekawnele is OWN YOUR CROWN. Quentan says, “My experience with Zingela Ulwazi has been amazing because I feel it is a journey of self discovery. This gives me time to polish my skills and learn new ones, accelerating me to reach greater heights. My passion is seeing that I have had a great impact in fulfilling something that was beyond my expectations, and that is why I am a leader of Sekwanele, and why I am fierce.” She resides in the RDP Village, and is the fourth of six children, raised by her lovely single mother, Lillian Marule. Quentan is studying Electrical Engineering at TVET in Acornhoek. Her interests are reading, creative writing, gardening and striving for women’s empowerment.

Suzan Mashego gained a wealth of experience in cooking for large numbers of people during the years she worked in the busy kitchens of A1 Fisheries in Acornhoek, which she now brings to the feeding scheme she runs with her husband Trygive and community at their permaculture garden and training site, Rooiboklaagte B Organic Community Garden, feeding over 150 children. As well as developing her own organic food garden and catering business, Suzan prepares delicious food for ZIngela Ulwazi events, and is in charge of co-ordination, communications and transportation for our Women’s Health Program, which runs in partnership with local health NGO Hlokomela. Suzan ensures that each participant of our training courses attends a full health check at the Hlokomela Clinic, and then liaises with chemists and Zingela Ulwazi for any follow up treatment that might be required. Suzan is the mother of three wonderful children and brings her phenomenal singing voice, her dance, kindness, generosity, wisdom and traditional grace and respect to all that she does. She says that during her time with Zingela Ulwazi, she has learned “how to communicate with others, how to start her own business (and how business works), team work and more about love. I have learned to be independent and NOT dependent. That as a woman I can do everything, and it is possible!”

December Ndhlovu has decades of experience as a community and environmental activist, and brings his skill to our learning programs to help women know, understand and exercise their rights, and processes necessary to such engagement. December has been passionately advocating for water rights, sacred sites and indigenous knowledge systems and is a member of the South African Water Caucus and Mpumalanga Water Caucus. A graduate of Changing Practice (EMG/Rhodes University), December researched and co-authored the booklet “Saving Moholoholo“, which explores how the eucalyptus plantations that cover Moholoholo mountain affect stream flow of rivers that run through Bushbuckridge. The impact on close to a million peoples’ water supply is devastating, also affecting traditional healers’ practice by destroying sacred pools and reducing the availability of medicinal plants.