Township reporter Lucky

Your Story is here in South Africa to help locals tell you what matters most to them in these elections, so let’s cut straight to the chase, and introduce Thamsanqa ‘Lucky’ Gadi Siko. He’s a 29 year old student from White Location in New Brighton …

My passion is to make a difference in my neighbourhood. I’m part of setting up ‘Hybrid’, which is a development and training company, working with high school students and adults. There are seven of us, a mixture of ANC and COPE (Congress of the People ), some of us unemployed and some students.

We want to help learners at high school and adults, so we’re setting up a tutoring programme for school students. Kids at high school have potential, but they don’t know how to get on and make it because they have no guidance in practical skills.

What’s exciting about these elections is that compared to the past there’s a lot of competition, around the organisations that are running for the elections. But what’s not exciting is that I know that most of the things they are saying, they’re not going to implement.

I hope people listen to what these guys are saying, and make their decision based on the current issues that these guys are trying to deal with. Because most of the time now they are talking about what they have done in the past, what they did to save us from apartheid regime. They don’t think about the future, meaning the youth, they don’t think about our grandparents, when they retire, what kind of retirement they will have.

The basic thing that I think they should do is to give hope to the young people, give them a chance to get a quality education. If a person can finish high school, then that person can go in whatever direction they chose.

Listen out next week for Lucky’s reports on how Hybrid is trying to tackle the problems in his community, and whether politicians should be doing more. If you’ve got any questions for him, post them here, and he’ll respond. And you can see more photos here.