Something out of nothing

Witsnews, 3 September 2002

by Nicole Johnston

She runs a company called Something Out of Nothing, and that is precisely what Sarah Mahlangu has created with her business.

Dressed from head to toe in traditional Ndebele attire, right down to the beaded cellphone, which she whips out from under her blanket as orders come through, Mahlangu is both entrepreneur and cultural activist. Her motto is simple: "Together you and I can keep this country clean and organised."

Mahlangu, who is from Middelburg in Mpumalanga, trained as a nurse and worked in a clinic for seven years. After her divorce she was confronted by an obstacle facing many single parents - she could no longer work the irregular hours and night shifts that nursing demands. She switched careers and became a health co-ordinator for the Rural Foundation.

During this time she discovered a deep well of creativity in her soul, as her job required that she create teaching aids, often from very little. As resources in the rural areas are scarce, she used waste materials to make toys and models for teaching. She realised that she had a creative gift, and started experimenting with different forms of waste materials.

Her creativity stood her in good stead when the Rural Foundation collapsed and she found herself unemployed. She was not prepared to sit around waiting for someone to give her a job, so she gathered a group of unemployed people and encouraged them to set up their own business. “They asked me: 'How can we do this, as we have no money?' I replied: 'We have fingers and we have brains, we are creative and we can do something for ourselves.’”

Today, Mahlangu's company employs 65 people in a unique enterprise. Using discarded materials such as plastic bottles and cans, they create a wide range of ingenious products. Beverage cans are cut into strips and flattened, holes are punched into them and they are sewn together to create caps, aprons and handbags. "We collect cans from parties and weddings, and people in our town bring them to me because they know we do something useful with them."

They've even pulled local businesses in on the recycling programme. "Debonair's Pizza in Middleburg saves all the big tins that the pineapple and olives come in, and give them to us. We paint them with traditional designs and sell them as ice buckets or containers for kitchen utensils."

Mahlangu is deeply proud of her culture and is anxious to preserve it. "A lot of our people don't know how important they are and they don't appreciate our African dress. They think it's stupid. Our children now go to school with white kids, which is fine, but we must make sure our culture survives. As women it is our duty to teach the children about our customs and dances. We must teach them about the importance of our culture and what they must do to create jobs for themselves."