The Gerbera Association South Africa was invited to take part in the Gardenex 2005 in Johannesburg. The Stand was donated by H&T Marketing to be used by the Gerbera Association whenever it took part in an exhibition.

Gardenex was beneficial for the group as many contacts were established during the show and new members recruited. According to Volkmar Seifert, chairman, the association will work with national government to protect the flowers in the wild. “We have to stop the professional breeders from overseas from steeling our heritage,” he said.

In future two garden magazines will be displayed on the Gerbera website, The Gardener and SA Landscape. Both Magazines will publish articles on the Gerbera and Barberton within the coming months.

More pictures can be viewed here: Gardenex 2005

The Department of social services is providing starving families with food parcels throughout the province. There were 23.000 families identified, which would benefit through this project, of which 1.126 were local. They have received parcels for the past three months with the last handout taking place last Thursday.

According to the department statute, families who benefited from the program were those earning no income or less than R200 a months. Pensioners who earned government grants and families who registered more than two children for support grants, did not qualified. To be a recipient of the food parcels, families were requested to enlist with social services. Surveying was conducted to identify the most needy. According to Dumisani Mlangeni, social services spokesperson, the department identified Mpumalanga to benefit from this project. He said they established committees in various areas around the province to identify the needy families. “We know many people are starving but we distributed the food to households and heads of families and not to individuals”.

Busi Jele, Barberton’s community liaison officer in poverty alleviation, said local residents welcomed the program. “When we first issued the parcels there were families who were obviously starving. But now they have recovered and are healthy,”

However, some people were not happy. Unemployed, Lucky Charles Msimango (45) of Spearville, said he registered with the local social services last year August but had not benefited. He said the government statutory had not been properly followed. “I know some families who are employed and have registered more than two children for grants, but still benefited. Families who are the poor of the poorest are being cheated by those families who can at least afford to put food on the table.” He challenged the social services to conduct the survey accurately to identify the truly needy families.