When Tendani Magalela, 48, was dumped by her husband in August last year, and on the same day she lost her job in Gauteng where she worked as a kitchen servant, she thought it was the beginning of her endless troubles.

Hardly a year later, Magalela finds it difficult to believe that she is the same person who was feeling hopeless and without a place to stay. Then Edwin Construction Company from Gauteng turned her life around.

Magalela was staying at her son’s house in Tswera Village, towards Ha-Makuya, last year, but today she owns an 11-room house with electricity, running water, a satellite dish and a sewerage system. This makes Magalela a respected person in the community, as she is the only person in the whole village to own such things.

“When I came back home last year, I only had R3 000 that I had saved in my account. As I did not have a place to stay, I decided to use this little money to build a house of my dreams. I was lucky to get an empty stand from a sympathetic guy, called Nkhumbudzeni Netswera. Then, my younger sister, Joyce Nyadzani, loaned me R6 000 to help in buying the building materials. Fortunately, another businessman, Simon Mafanya, gave me 18 000 bricks and cement on account, so that I could build all eleven rooms of my house as I was only starting with one room at the time,” says Magalela.

Unfortunately, the house was only built up to roof level because Magalela did not have money to continue with the building process. “While I was still having a headache about my unemployment and my incomplete house, two representatives from Edwin Construction approached me, saying that they were looking for a place to stay. They told me they were admiring my incomplete house and they wanted to know how much I would charge them if they used it as an office while they were busy with the construction of a 29 km tarred road from Shadani to Ha-Makuya. I told them I could not charge them, as the house was incomplete.

They then offered to complete the house by putting up roofing, window panes, plumbing, tiles, plastering and tiling on the floor for free. “They also provided borehole water and electricity, together with a satellite dish, which will all be mine when they leave before the end of next year when their project comes to an end. This sounded like a dream to me as I did not know how I was going to complete the house because I did not have money.”

“The fact that I am the only person who is having running water makes me feel important,” says Magalela, who is now doing catering for Edwin Construction’s more than 100 employees from Monday to Friday.

Magalela, a mother of four, three girls and one boy, says she is more than happy about what the construction company did for her and hopes the whole world will know about their generosity. The construction company representatives says Magalela is the one who deserves praises as she offered them free accommodation in her big house, which they now use as an office for the whole project.

The officers from the construction company, from Gauteng, confirmed that Magalela will take over her house when they leave next year. A big farewell party will be staged when the company leaves next year as they did when they occupied the house late last year.

They say they spent over R150 000 to complete the house last year before they started to use it as an office.