Durban — If Tourism Minister Patricia de Lille's GOOD Party wins the elections in KwaZulu-Natal, its premier candidate, Wendy Nare, says she will advance the interest of youth-run small businesses.
Nare was talking about businesses such as welding, motor mechanics, car washes, hair salons, fruit and vegetable stalls and grass cutting, which young people run in rural and township areas, but which often do not prosper because of a lack of financial support.
Nare, who is from eManzimtoti, is a businesswoman and says she understands small businesses.
“Small business owners are not afforded proper support,” said Nare.
She said the government should provide small businesses with proper infrastructure to operate from to thrive, because big businesses were not the only ones that could create jobs.
“Small business owners sell food, wash cars, make burglar guards and so many other little things, but because they don’t have the support to grow their businesses to an extent where they make enough money and create jobs, they fail. And this is because they work from hand to mouth, and that is not sustainable.
“We have to give them support and priority as they will not be sustainable unless someone helps them,” she said.
Nare runs a bakery and dessert-making business, which she said was “very small”: “It is a three-year-old business, and is targeting people who love fancy dessert and people who don’t mind paying extra to indulge themselves”.
She said helping the youth out of poverty was the only way the country could win the battle against violent crime and drug abuse – unlike in the early years of democracy, crime had rocketed.
“There is a lot of desperation and crime right now because people are hungry, and they are desperate.”
She said as a way of mitigating the situation, a GOOD Party government would improve education by investing in training teachers for early childhood development.
“Make sure our children are groomed at an early age to make sure they finish school. Make sure the education system has a proper transition from early childhood development to mainstream education, and we maintain the same quality throughout.”
Nare said some children become failed adults despite having gone through quality education and having passed with flying colours, because they are denied financial support to study further.
The 50-year-old leader, born in Dundee, is an only child. Her father was a pastor and her mother, a school principal. Because of her father’s work at the Lutheran Church, she spent most of her childhood travelling to wherever her father was sent.
One of the places was Modjadji, a rural village in Limpopo where she experienced a life of fetching water from the river and doing the washing in it.
“We would go to school and be taught under a tree with no desks. We used to collect cow dung to clean the floor. If you had a grass mat at home, you would bring it to sit on.
“Luckily, my father went to a Bible college in Mapumulo (northern KZN) where we were taught to weave grass mats, so I had a lot, which I would bring to school to share.
“That was humbling. Growing older, I learned to adapt to any situation,” she said.
Before joining the GOOD Party in 2019, Nare was not interested in politics, although she paid attention to political issues. Instead, she was an activist in various non-governmental organisations. Her interest in politics started after listening to De Lille launching her party in December 2018 after her departure from the DA.
“Something struck an interest in me and I started following what she did. After watching the launch, I went through the party’s constitution and there was something about the values of the party that attracted me.
“The values are very simple. Honesty, solidarity, dependability, trust and truth, which all resonated with me.
“She (De Lille) caught my heart when she said ‘when good people do nothing, evil prospers’, which was true because at that time we were used to sitting back and allowing the government to take us for granted.”
Nare said before she was nominated as the premier candidate, she and her comrades went through a rigorous open application, short-listing, screening, vetting and interviews.
The married mother of four children, between the ages of 30 and 10, has a BA degree in psychology from the University of Limpopo.
Sunday Tribune