City uplifts high-performing learners
The five top matriculants at Soweto’s Fons Luminus High School are happily furthering their tertiary education after they were given a leg up by the Johannesburg Property Company (JPC), the City of Johannesburg’s property entity.
The five former learners – Ofentse Xashimba, 18, Sello Ncube, 19, Mbali Matsepe, 19, Refilwe Mokwena, 19, and Lesego Chanza, 19 – recently received R10 000 each to register at universities of their choice from the entity following the hard work done by Councillor Solly Mogase, the City of Joburg’s Chair of Chairs.
Fons Luminus in Diepkloof is a no-fee paying school and many parents struggle to put their children through university because of abject poverty.
It was against this background that the school asked for the City’s intervention.
“Our councillor, Solly Mogase, listened to our cries for help and promised to assist. Money was found and these promising learners have been set on a path to success. They have become an inspiration to others,” Fons Luminus High School Principal Livhuwani Sindani said at the bursary presentation.
“We aspire to be the best school in the township. We need to surpass our previous benchmark and help make Fons Luminus a flagship school, but we all need to step up to the plate,” he said.
For the past five years, the school has been consistently achieving well above the 80%-mark in its matric results and this has been attributed to hard work, healthy competition among the teachers and the learners’ desire to make a difference.
Presenting the bursaries, Councillor Mogase promised the school that there was more where that came from if the learners continued to work hard.
“The City has given the school R50 000. I challenge the school to exceed last year’s results and the City will up the amount to R70 000 this year. If there is vast improvement, the money will be increased to R100 000 and the five best learners will receive a R20 000 bursary each from the City.”
He also said that 40 learners from the school who had been consistently achieving top marks in mathematics and science would be selected to attend weekend classes on property management facilitated by the JPC to increase the pool of property managers among previously disadvantaged communities.
“My mother was a cleaner at a hospital. I’m expecting all these learners to have big dreams. The City wants to turn the learners into better leaders of tomorrow,” Councillor Mogase said.
Xashimba is studying towards a BA degree in Sports Science Management at the University of Johannesburg, Ncube is doing psychology at Wits University, Matsepe has enrolled for a Construction Management degree at Wits, Mokwena is studying towards a BSc degree in Chemistry at Wits and Chanza has registered for a BCom degree in Economics at the University of Johannesburg.