Published by By Sivuyile Delihlazo December 2022
Former Fort Cox student Malwande Tikana has turned an internship into a self-building job opportunity by continuing to work without compensation where he was placed.
Tikana hails from Boqo Village, Lady Frere in the Eastern Cape and graduated with a Diploma in Crop Production in 2020.
In February 2021, he was one of the candidates offered an opportunity by Fort Cox to participate in an AgriSeta internship programme which saw him being placed and work for a smallholding farm in Stutterheim called Sinemihlali Trading Primary Cooperative Ltd.
At the start of his internship, he worked in producing in an old tunnel and assisted with planting of various vegetable crops such as onion, beetroot, spinach and green papers.
During the programme, Tikana and a fellow intern suggested a construction of a greenhouse structure that can be used to produce seedlings. With the cooperatives’ approval, they constructed the structure by recycling old tunnel plastics that were within the farm.
Later in 2021 when Sinemihlali installed a new and proper tunnel which was used for tomato production using the hydroponics system, he was also involved in managing it until the end of the internship programme in February 2022.
At the end of the internship, Mr Tikana made the decision to stay with the Sinemihlali Cooperative even if he was not receiving any payment. “I felt like the cooperative had not improved yet. I wanted to make the change, and it is now that I can point a few things that have improved”, said Tikana.
In April 2022, the cooperative continued producing tomatoes in the new tunnel with about 350 tomato seedlings using the hydroponics system and this time, Tikana was working alone because his colleague had left the farm.
“Working alone is not easy, as I must work overtime seven days of the week and managing tomatoes is a challenge as they are sometimes susceptible to different viruses/diseases”, he said.
Currently, he is not only producing the tomatoes for the cooperative, but also part of the team that looks for the market. At the moment, their tomatoes can be found in a supermarket known as Triple-S in Stutterheim.
Tikana added that their plan is to increase the number of tunnels for producing tomatoes, because now they are still producing only 100 kg per week.
