MIDDELBURG NEWS - Earlier this month, a 59-year-old woman from Middelburg saw an advertisement that the South African National Roads Agency SOC Limited (Sanral) would be conducting a Women in Construction engagement session in her home town.
She immediately enrolled and at the conclusion of the Sanral event, she said she would be applying for every training opportunity the road agency offers.
Things are looking up, but up till a few years ago, life has been anything but easy for Regina Nonkwenkwezi Ngcokongca.
When her father died when she was 10, it was clear that she would drop out of school at some time to help support her large family.
That time came when she was in Grade 10 in Dimbaza, the Eastern Cape township to which Ngcokongca, her mother, five brothers and three sisters had moved to from Hanover in the Northern Cape in the wake of her father's death.
In 1989, having endured years of having to make the best of a terrible situation, Ngcokongca found employment as a factory worker in Dimbaza. Some businesses she worked at focused on televisions and electronics, while others manufactured chlorine tablets for swimming pools.
It was during this period that Ngcokongca married her husband, who moved the family to the agricultural town of Middelburg in the Inxuba Yethemba Local Municipality.
From that point, she became a housewife and stay-at-home mother to the couple's two children, now aged 24 and 19.
For decades, she tended to the family's needs. She also made sure the family home was always spotless – both inside and out – and, as the years rolled on, she even taught herself to pave a section of their yard.
While Ngcokongca took pride in this skill, she did not give any thought to its value beyond what it did for the aesthetics of the house.
That was until 2022, when she learnt through her local ward councillor that the municipality was offering opportunities through local contractors to help pave parts of Middelburg.
With her husband ill and unable to work, she put her name forward and was taken on by Tau Pele Construction to clear sites and pave them. The contract began in July 2022 and concluded in October 2023.
What she learnt during these 18 months was enough to convince her to register her own company, Ngcokie Business Enterprises, only a month after the job ended.
Now Ngcokonga is looking forward to a bright, constructive future. "After this, I feel like women are living in a new world. I am bringing my two children into the business." She said the road agency had opened her eyes to the possibilities for women in construction. "For me, a new life is starting."
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