UJ’s 2019 Mail & Guardian top 200 Young South Africans
MS MOELETSI TAIWE Farmer
As a young Black woman, Moeletsi says it was extremely difficult to enter farming and she had to lean on older, white commercial farmers for advice, technical support, and equipment. She also leads much older staff members, often standing in the sun all day with them during harvest time. Moeletsi says capital is limited and she helps with the manual labour to try to save on costs. Cotton, which is her farm’s main output, is planted in November and harvested in about May. Moeletsi find cotton to be a valuable agricultural product because few farmers in South Africa grow it. She has not received financial assistance from the government to date, but she is planning to ask for more land to lease from the state because her vision is to increase her cotton output.
and started to do small projects,” Moeletsi says. She went on to do a technical course in crop production at the Buhle Farmers’ Academy, where she learned the practicalities of becoming a farmer. Her nine-hectare cotton and bean farm employs four permanent workers and 30 seasonal pickers on land that formed part of a government redistribution programme in 2002. Agriculture has a waning allure for young people, who turn to cities for employment or educational opportunities, but Moeletsi has a different view. “Money is all the same, whether you are in the city or on a farm. It is pointless for me to live in the city if I cannot find employment. I would rather go home, find a job and even create a job. I’d also love to be in the city and wear heels but passion took me into farming,” she says.
Moeletsi Mirage Taiwe left the bright lights of Johannesburg shortly after completing her BA at the University of Johannesburg and returned home to Dennilton, Limpopo, where her father is a small-scale farmer. “Once I finished my degree in 2016 and came home … I realised the amount of poverty around me
BA (Public Management and Governance), 2016
DR KAPIL MOOTHI Head of Department: Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Johannesburg
high school students about the engineering field. Moothi has never been one to back away from a challenge. He began studying in the field of engineering because he had heard it was a difficult programme. He says he knew then “that is a challenge I would like to take on”. After studying he worked at Sasol because he felt “it was time I get this ‘work experience’ that I heard people talking about”. However, he wasn’t prepared for the mental adjustment required and grew disillusioned with the whole experience. “I had not spent a decade of my life studying to end up doing this kind of routine job,” he says. He then took up the job teaching at UJ. Moothi says he enjoys academia
Now Moothi is an associate professor in the faculty of engineering and the built
environment at the University of Johannesburg (UJ), and the head of department for chemical engineering. He has an impressive CV and a master’s degree and PhD from Wits University. He says he studied an additional degree in higher education “so as to improve my skills and knowledge in teaching, learning and assessment practices”. Teaching is also one of his favourite parts of academia. He enjoys his interactions with his students. “It is fulfilling to watch them grow and develop to become 21st Century graduates equipped for participating in the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” he says, adding that he loves speaking to
As a child, Dr Kapil Moothi enjoyed studying and learning. “I was always inclined towards studying, from my time at primary school, I really did not dread going to school,” he says.
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