Reabetswe Ngwane has come a long way from Rustenburg, and she has covered the journey on recycled tyres – literally.
The bubbly and ambitious Ngwane, raised in Mogwase, a township in Rustenburg in the North West Province of South Africa, recycles tyre tubes for a living, and has been able to turn waste to wealth.
When we meet her in the affluent suburb of Sandton in Johannesburg, she is late, having driven in from Rustenburg after another meeting. Dressed formally in black, she settles to talk about where it all began.
Ngwane’s entrepreneurial journey unraveled when she relocated from the township to the city in Rustenburg where she started her first business with a friend. They recycled plastic bags, turning them into school bags with solar lanterns, provided to kids in underprivileged areas.
Unfortunately, that partnership did not last.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2016/02/01/roll-sleeves-walk-past-handbag/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: ‘Roll Up Your Sleeves, Walk Past That Handbag’</a>
“Then we parted ways respectively in business and generally. That’s when I started the tyre business with my sister [Katlego],” says Ngwane.
The business picked up. They were approached by REDISA (Recycling and Economic Development Initiative In South Africa) who offered to handle their Rustenburg tyre depot.
Ngwane wanted to learn and research more about all the elements that went into the tyre business.
So she did what most wouldn’t think of – she consulted with the people pushing trolleys on the side of road recycling scrap.
“They work extensively at the mine fields; in a nutshell, they are industry experts. We went to them, consulted with them. [About an] alternative to plastic, because that’s all I knew. I asked them ‘what else I could use as a resource to make up products’ and they advised on the tyre tubes and it became a business,” she says.
The business’ main focus is recycling tyre tubes to make fashionable bags.
The whole process begins by transporting the tyre tubes to one of their work sites where they wash, clean and refurbish them. They are then taken to a production factory where they are cut into respective patterns depending on orders.
Ngwane has her products in a store, Mememe, in Cape Town in the Western Cape, and another in South African capital Pretoria, called In Bloom. She also takes orders online. Her bags range from R500 ($43) to R1,400 ($120).
She not only recycles tyre tubes to create trendy bags, but also makes products for the mining and construction industries.
These orders differ from the retail industry.
<div id="attachment_35904" style="width: 693px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35904" class="wp-image-35904 size-large" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Reabetswe-101-683x1024.jpg" alt="" width="683" height="1024" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Reabetswe-101-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Reabetswe-101-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Reabetswe-101-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Reabetswe-101-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Reabetswe-101-768x1151.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Reabetswe-101.jpg 1366w" sizes="(max-width: 683px) 100vw, 683px" />Reabetswe Ngwane. Photo by Motlabana Monnakgotla.</div>
“The retail industry is not as mass-orientated as the mining and construction industry. With the retail industry, it depends on how many orders of these we get, how many orders of backpacks we make, and then the patterns are made and then the bags. With regards to mining and construction, there are three sets of products we provide to them,” she says.
For the mines, Ngwane makes first-aid kit bags used by the workers underground and over the ground. The material mostly used for this previously was canvas, which is not durable, she says.
Ngwane also makes respiratory bags or masks used by the workers. The biggest orders she gets from the mines are however for seat protectors.
“It’s like a shield that covers your bum, you strap it on your waist, strap it on your legs, as the guys drilling underground [are] scooting backwards and forwards; because they [are] scooting, they damage their Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and bump into hard surfaces like rocks, and corrosive liquids whatever the case may be; [the seat protector] is used to protect them,” she says.
Ngwane is the first to break into this kind of market, she says.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2014/06/01/woman-toughest-job/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: The Woman With the toughest job</a>
She recalls the days she had to knock on several doors to get her business going. Her research involved ongoing conversations with users in the mines asking them about the durability of canvas.
Ngwane is contracted to an entity that supplies a lot of the mines in the North West of South Africa with PPE. With her sister Katlego, their company, KreamFields, has been in operation for the last two years, and their fortune is growing.
Their work also has social significance as recycling waste means helping the environment rid itself of rubber scrap.
Ngwane seems to have literally reinvented the wheel turning tyre tubes to tote bags.

Reabetswe-074

On A Roll With Used Tyres

Aschool bag that doubles as a solar-powered light? You could expect the inventor to be a scientist.
Think again. Thato Kgatlhanye is a 22-year-old who studied art in high school and obtained a brand management degree at Vega School of Brand Leadership without studying a day of science. Kgatlhanye’s company, Repurpose Schoolbags, has won about $40,000 in competitions.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-3962" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Thato-053-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />
“The start-up capital came from a business grant of $23,433 that I won in the first competition. I entered the business into the South African Breweries Foundation Innovation Awards and we came second. I’ve recently been selected as a sub-Saharan Africa finalist for the Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards, so in September I’ll be in Paris to attend that,” she says.
Kgatlhanye grew up in Mogwase, one of the townships near the mining town of Rustenburg, in South Africa’s North West province. Her father is a taxi owner and her mother is a nurse.
The idea for her bag came in the second year of college when her class was tasked to find ways of doing more with nothing. She decided to make a bag out of recycled plastic bags. The solar-powered light idea only came after a conversation she had with her mother where she was told to channel her creativity towards helping others.
“My mother told me about how she grew up and used candles to study. If she had one candle for the week and it burned out on Wednesday, she wouldn’t be able to study on Thursday and Friday. That inspired the idea,” says Kgatlhanye.
Her company in Rustenburg, which employs 17 people, designs schoolbags out of recycled plastic and integrates a solar cell which can be charged during the day and used as a study lamplight in the evening.
They make these bags for banks and companies who give them to schools. She doesn’t make more than 500 bags at a time, with one bag costing $20.
“Some of our giving partners include Red Bull, Standard bank, PricewaterhouseCoopers, SAB, ABSA/Barclays, MTN Foundation and CPSI,” says Kgatlhanye.
At a time when power cuts, so-called load shedding, loom in South Africa, Kgatlhanye’s company is well timed.
“Thank heavens for what’s playing out,” chuckles Kgatlhanye.
“Load shedding has made the business an easier sell. The big guys that sign the cheques that didn’t understand before the kind of environment we were talking about, now understand because guess what, their child gets affected by load shedding. They’ll be like ‘oh because of load shedding’ and I’m like, almost, except they don’t have electricity at all,” says Kgatlhanye.
Kgatlhanye is looking to shed light in 24 African countries.
<h4>A Spark In The Nick Of Time</h4>
The flow of renewable energy from the REIPPP couldn’t’ve come at a better time, says energy expert Chris Yelland. Eskom’s aging fleet of power stations, many built more than 30 years ago, cannot meet the demand. They have also been burdened by delays in other power generating projects in South Africa, like the Medupi and Kusile coal-powered plants.
“When Medupi and Kusile are online they will add 25% capacity to the grid. This is great. The only trouble is it should have happened 10 years ago. Between 1999 and 2004, there was a delay as a result of policy decision. Construction started in 2007 and 2008,” says Yelland.
When Medupi’s first unit came online, it was four years late. The cost keeps growing; initially it was expected to cost $2.5 billion, but is now forecasted at more than $23 billion. Kusile (4,800MW) has also failed to escape. Its first unit was expected in 2013, but has been pushed to 2017, and will cost around $92 billion, excluding the interest on delays.
Yelland is a Johannesburg-based electrical engineer turned energy journalist and entrepreneur. He has had a lot to talk about over the last 10 years, but his favorite story is the work of renewable energy dreamers.
“That’s the only success story we have to tell. The success stories are not government success stories, they are private: private capital, private technology – built, owned and operated privately, and generated into the grid,” he says.
Yelland warns that renewables should not be South Africa’s only solution.
“It costs less to produce coal-fired electricity than renewable if you compare apples with apples. If you look at the existing fleet of power stations, the cost per kilowatt hour is certainly lower than the cost to produce renewable energy. But the cost of electricity from a new power station, like Medupi, is a lot higher than the average costs. Because that capital cost is higher.”
For Africa, energy at any price is welcome.

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