Former Madibaz star Madibaz star takes top water polo job.
Former Madibaz star, Delaine Mentoor, will place a strong emphasis on mental preparation after landing the job as head coach of the South African women’s water polo team.
The former national player was appointed to the position in October and has already targeted some international tournaments next year as their immediate goals.
To attain success in such a challenging environment, she says it is essential to retain calmness in the chaos.
“My main coaching philosophy is that I do not panic and prefer to work silently in the background to provide the calmness required,” said Mentoor.
“I coach the mind just as hard as I coach the physical aspect of the game, because I believe that you must cultivate the mind to achieve the maximum performance from players. Coaching with integrity is another big part of my thinking and I believe my players should, too, play with integrity.”
Mentoor said that teaching responsibility and accountability are important as this provides the players with life lessons through sport, adding that next year, their primary objective to buil a squad of fit and conditioned players with a good work ethic.
“This will assist in us standing our ground against the many tough teams we will be up against and, most importantly, will allow us to be competitive on the world stage.”
“We want to be able to build and work towards the 2024 Olympic Games.”
She said much of the work had already been done by her predecessor.
“Right now it is all about executing it and ensuring players are meeting the targets set out for them and adapting as we go along. We need to find what works for all national squad players and for that reason the targets have been individualised.”
Mentoor, started coaching at a young age, during her first year at Nelson Mandela University (2012), and she played provincially and nationally for several years.
She competed in the junior world championships in Greece, senior world championships in Barcelona and Russia as well as at the European Union nations tournaments in Ireland and Prague.
“But we are always looking to improve, so there are a number of professionals involved to ensure that we stay on the right track and work towards player development and growth.”
She was recognised for her playing skills at Nelson Mandela University, twice receiving the Madibaz sportswoman of the year award.
In her final year, she was named the varsity’s coach of the year at the annual Achiever Awards dinner.
Having coached at various national levels, she now looks forward to sharing her knowledge gleaned over the years with the country’s best players.
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Herald Reporters scoop politics writing awards.
The Herald reporters Michael Kimberley and Nomazima Nkosi have scooped the tough politics category award in the Eastern Cape section of the Vodacom Journalist of the Year Awards.
The big win was announced at a ceremony attended by Vodacom SA chief officer for corporate affairs Takalani Netshitenzhe on Monday afternoon.
Netshitenzhe said that, despite Covid-19, the latest edition of the Vodacom Journalist of the Year Awards had received a record number of entries — more than 1,300 from around the country.
Despite the mounting difficulties which the media have faced during the pandemic, journalists have gone the extra mile to bring news and information to South Africans during the national state of disaster.
“I was thrilled to see reporting that not only exposed corruption and criminal activity but also stories on how Covid-19 has illuminated social inequalities and gender-based violence in the country.”
The Herald and Weekend Post editor Rochelle de Kock said she was hugely proud of Nkosi and Kimberley.
“Our coverage of the Nelson Mandela Bay council and local politics is second to none; it is truly one of the things that sets us apart from other media outlets.
“We are ecstatic that the hard work of our team has been recognised.
“We would like to congratulate Nomazima and Michael, as well as the winners in the various other categories. A win for any journalist and media house is a win for the industry.
“This year has been an exceptionally difficult one for the media, but we can be proud of the fact that we have gone on to produce some of the best journalism under trying circumstances.”
Judging panel convener Ryland Fisher said the judges were impressed by the quality of the entries.
“Despite the impact of a shrinking economy and the havoc wreaked by Covid-19 on our industry, journalists continued to do what they do best: breaking stories; writing beautiful, descriptive features; investigating corruption and other crimes; capturing the best news moments on film, video and audio; and keeping viewers, listeners and readers informed.”
This year’s Vodacom journalism awards event was themed “Re-Imagine, Re-Invent, and Re-Build” in a nod to how the country and the world have been forced to adapt to fast-changing times.
Regional category winners will receive R5,000 each, national category winners will take home R10,000 each and the Vodacom Journalist of the Year Award winner will receive R100,000.
The Herald’s sister newspaper, Daily Dispatch, won in the photography, sustainability, live reporting and breaking news, and investigative categories.
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'Mr Fixit'making life easier for pupils
Giving each of his pupils an equal opportunity to excel in computer application technology is very important to Linkside High School teacher Afikile Sikwebu and when he recognised the need for laptops for his young charges, he did something about it.
And in April, early in the lockdown period, the 38-year-old Sikwebu, originally from Mthatha, started asking for laptop donations, using his wife, Lucretia’s Facebook page.
“A few months after the lockdown started, grade 11 pupils had a practical assessment task, but how do you do it if you don’t have the means to do it?” he said.
“I knew there were pupils who did not have laptops."
“I put a post on my wife’s Facebook page asking for people who had laptops they were thinking of throwing away to donate them to needy pupils.”
He said a teacher at his daughter Abigail’s school had seen the post and donated his unused iMac laptop.
“Because it was lockdown, I kept asking the pupils in the grade 11 WhatsApp group how they were doing."
“A pupil from Booysen Park sent me a private message telling me she was writing everything out because she did not have a laptop.
“She said that the first chance she had when she returned to school, she would type out her practical assessment task.
“When I got the iMac, she was the first recipient because she was doing something to complete her practical assessment task without having a laptop."
“When the lockdown eased and pupils could return to school, I gave it to her.”
Sikwebu said it had taken him a few days to fix the iMac because he needed it to run on Windows.
Thereafter he received four older laptops with little random access memory (RAM) and he used what he had to improve the RAM on them.
“Because I also teach the grade 10 pupils, I decided to start sorting them out because I would teach them for two more years.
“The other laptops were donated to those pupils who needed them.”
He said that when he was 13 years old he had picked up a floppy disk with the word “Windows” on it but did not know what it was because his family could not afford computers.
“It was only when I got to high school that I finally saw this is where you put this thing [floppy disk] because at my high school, in 1997, we did the equivalent of what is called computer application technology now.
“We had no choice. Every pupil had to do computer studies.”
Little did he know that his interest in a floppy disk would be the start of his information technology journey.
Sikwebu joined Nelson Mandela University’s Centre for Community Technologies (CCT) in 2017 after completing his degree in information technology.
“The CCT gave me a platform to work with different schools in the northern areas teaching coding to primary school pupils.
“In 2019, I decided to seek a place where I could see children every day.
“I also wanted to see the kids I had started working with at the GJ Louw and St Teresa primary schools in Schauderville through the programme.”
After he left the CCT and joined Linkside, part of the agreement was that he would work alongside the CCT to finish what he had started with it.
Sikwebu said he was grateful to Linkside for bringing the children from the northern areas to the school and to the CCT for allowing him to use its resources.
“I have this inner child, and I see these children who have no hope,” he said.
“We’ll never know what the mould we are given will become.
“As a teacher, it is important to show interest in what interests them.
“So, I love to make things and involve children in the things that I am making.”
His future projects include drone kite-flying and taking robotics to the community.
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Rochelle de Kock takes over as The Herald, Weekend Post editor.
The Herald and Weekend Post’s former politics editor, Rochelle de Kock, has been appointed editor of both titles.
She had been acting editor since March.
Arena Holdings Eastern Cape general manager Ryan Megaw announced De Kock’s appointment on Wednesday.
Speaking on De Kock’s tenure as acting editor, Megaw said she had steered the newspapers through a rough period with aplomb and confidence.
“Rochelle has been with The Herald for 12 years and has played a strategic leadership role in the political coverage of the platforms over the last 10 years, focusing extensively on the evolving political story of Nelson Mandela Bay and the Eastern Cape,” he said.
“We believe she has the expertise and innovative approach that will grow not only our print audience, but also the profitability of our online audience, which is essential for our business at this time.”
De Kock, 34, joined The Herald as an intern in 2008 and worked herself up, being a senior politics reporter before being appointed politics editor in 2016, a position she held until March.
“The past nine months have been a huge learning curve for me, having to jump in and edit the paper at a very difficult time,” she said.
“But I think I wouldn’t have had it any other way because it really just forced me to step out of my comfort zone, which for the most part was politics, and to just look at news as a whole — how do we package our news, how do we entertain readers during a time when newspapers are not so popular.”
She said her tenure as acting editor had been exciting and had prepared her to take over the reins, and she was able to see the growth of both titles’ online audience.
“I am quite excited about where The Herald and Weekend Post are headed.
“We have this growing digital audience on our websites and we have a whole new reimagined strategy of how we plan to grow the business and I think we will be getting so many more new audiences and initiatives, and we will continue to deliver the best local content we can every day.”
De Kock said The Herald and Weekend Post had become synonymous with good-quality news, independent opinion and truth.
She said she would work to ensure that the titles continued to be the trusted voice that readers could depend on.