Make Every Day a Mandela Day is the slogan for International Mandela Day. The Horticulture Unit from the Soutpan Nursery got their hands dirty and celebrated Mandela Day by giving their effort, energy and more than 67 minutes of their time planting 150 plants at the Refitlhile Pele Primary School in Soshanguve.
“These plants will beautify the school; we will also explain to teachers and pupils how to take care of the plants and when to water them. This is our first outreach community programme and it is the first of many.” These were the words of Ms Nongamthini Mnisi who is a supervisor at the Soutpan Nursery.
The Horticulture Unit’s responsibility ranges from designing gardens for the Department of Public Works properties - to maintaining them, propagation, planting of seeds and looking after plants in their Soutpan Nursery. Properties whose gardens they maintain and supply with plants include, the Presidential estate, Ministerial houses, Sammy Marks Museum, Transvaal Museum, Willem Prinsloo, Magistrate Courts Gardens and Tswaing Museum.
Their daily duty is replenishing and replanting dying and dehydrated plants and bringing them back to life, as well as constantly keeping an eye on gardens that they supply with plants. Life is exactly what horticulture brought to Refitlhile Pele Primary School in the form of three types of plants, namely, the agapanthus, black diamonds and the muphus.
“We are very happy with the plants that the department is giving us. In 2001, Johannesburg Regional Office also helped us by paving the school. We are pleased that we can rely on Public Works,” said an excited Mr SS Mongwe, the Principal of Refitlhile Pele Primary School. He added that the school had been running a gardening programme whose seeds were funded by BMW in 1997.
Through this programme, they have been able to sustain their feeding scheme which feeds up to 1500 pupils daily. The vegetable garden has also given community members an opportunity to come and cultivate it in return for vegetables which they either sell to make profit or use at home to feed their families.
According to Mr Mongwe, the school uses gardening as a teaching tool where pupils have been allocated their own small gardens where they are taught mathematics and shapes. Gardening indeed plays an integral role in the education syllabus at Refitlhile Pele Primary School, so much so that in 2011, the school received the Premier Award for excellence by BMW for their Gardening Community Service Project.
As part of the school’s contribution and celebration of Mandela Day, the pupils painted their classroom walls to create a conducive learning environment for themselves!
The pupils were ecstatic as they learnt how to transplant the plants they were given by the Horticulture Unit into the soil and sang Happy Birthday Madiba as they got their uniforms and hands dirty. The experience of gardening was definitely not something they were new to. The Horticulture Unit added beautiful flowers to the already growing and blooming vegetable garden of Refitlhile Pele Primary School and promised to plant many more flowers at orphanages and schools from now on.
The Horticulture Unit flowers a school in Soshanguve as part of Mandela Day celebrations
