Solly's Woodwork

“Giving up is not an option”.

Solly Sekgobela from Ga-sekororo in Limpopo refuses to be a victim of circumstances.  He grew up without a father and his mother was a farm worker.  Because of poverty he left school in Std 2 and was destined to work on farms for the rest of his life.  After doing so for eight years. “I was not happy because I didn’t believe that I was born to be poor”. So in 1989 I left the farm and went to Lydenburg to look for a job, he recalls. He had no skills so he was employed in a furniture-making factory as a handyman.

Solly spent the next ten years watching carpenters at work and learning the craft. Every month he used his salary to buy carpentry tools. When he felt that he had learned enough, he quit the job and started his own carpentry business. “I desperately wanted to be independent, to be the master of my own fate, I didn’t want to work for somebody else for the rest of my life”, he says.

Today Solly runs a thriving furniture-making business in Ga-Sekororo in Limpopo.  The village is more than 50km from the nearest town and this self-taught carpenter’s business has become the only furniture shop around.  In 2002 he was involved in a car accident that almost left him paralysed.  Some people thought he would never walk again but he refused to give up. “I have gone through so much pain in my life that “giving up is not an option”.

“I was so determined to get out of that hospital and continue to do my work that I was prepared to be the first wheelchair bound carpenter around”, he says.  Solly’s business also provides jobs to four young people.  (Daily Sun, 14 October 2003,p.21) by Neville Makaana.