Grant to Grain: Evaton Turns R350 into a Township Empire
Walk through Evaton on any weekday morning and the smell of fresh bread hits you before anything else. That smell belongs to Isinkwa Sethu, which means Our Bread, and the name is not just poetic. It is literally true.
Relief grant for purpose
More than 1,200 people in this Vaal township south of Johannesburg pooled their monthly R350 Social Relief of Distress grants and used the money to buy a bakery. Not just any bakery either. Within six months, that same group had also opened a supermarket and a butchery. Three businesses, built from one of the smallest government grants in the country.
The person who made it happen is Sibusiso Ntsele, a former financial advisor who grew up watching his community struggle. High unemployment, people spending their grants on alcohol and gambling away the money, and very little to show for it afterwards. He wanted to try something different.
Investment stokvel
Ntsele started the Isicholo Investment Stokvel, a savings group that grew to over 8,000 members. People invested their money, left it alone, and got it back with returns at year end. This was just a straightforward community investment. From there, he started recruiting SRD grant recipients in 2024 and the Isinkwa Sethu Campaign was born.
“The only money that we can use when we start something for the people is the R350 grant because that is the only money they have.”
Sibusiso Ntsele, founder of Isinkwa Sethu Campaign
When a local bakery owner agreed to sell, the group moved fast. They bought the property for over R480k and spent another R100k fixing it up, replacing bread rollers, repairing fans, rewiring electricity, and putting in solar panels. Bread made sense as the starting point. It is something everyone buys every day, and all that money was going to big chain stores outside the township.
Isinkwa
Now the bread stays local. Stalls were set up across Evaton so people could buy fresh bread close to home, and some of the investors were brought on as paid workers. On top of wages, everyone who invested also earns dividends.
Fannie Mpembe, 43, had been unemployed for more than two years before landing a job at the bakery as a packer and security guard. He has four kids to feed. Another worker had gone five years without steady income before getting a role through the same initiative. These are the kinds of numbers that matter more than the rand figures.
“So this job really helps me a lot.”
Mpembe, packer and security guard.
The long-term vision
The supermarket and butchery launched just last weekend, with Lesedi FM presenter Thuso Motaung among those who showed up to celebrate. Ntsele says the vision goes even further. He wants the community to eventually own farms, not just the shops that sell what farms produce.
South Africa has millions of people receiving the SRD grant. Most of that money is spent and gone within days. What Evaton has shown is that it does not have to be. With the right idea and enough people willing to believe in it, even R350 a month can become something real.
The bread is still warm. And for once, it belongs to the people baking it.