Delivered on Saturday 19th July 2025
By Club President, Owen Govender
A little over a year ago, I had the honour and privilege of being inducted as the President of the Rotary Club Cape of Good Hope.
During my acceptance speech, I had indicated several items which we as a club would focus on for the year ahead. With my team of board members, we started the year with vigour in pursuit of making a difference by attaining the Rotary motto of ‘Service above Self’.
We started off the year with 18 members and were determined to grow our numbers through numerous initiatives.
With respect and great sadness, we had to bid farewell to Hans Zwets and Manu Choudree who were called to higher service. May you both RIP gentlemen.
Due to personal circumstances two members had resigned and one has taken Honorary Status dropping our membership to 13.
We have however been fortunate to have two new members join us and one other having transferred from another club bring our membership back up to 16 and growing.
The Youth Services committee was started off with a breath of fresh air with the induction of Simons Town High Interact, The Patriots president, Rachel Chigumbu. With a few projects and activities having been organised by Rachel and her team.
We have also been fortunate to have had Rachel and Kgutso Nkoane be accepted to Rotary Youth Leadership Academy (RYLA) as campers and with Kgutso returning to become a senior leader at RYLA. Sokhana Bhe (pictured below) also from Simons Town high showed exceptional talent in taking the first prize with the Anti-bullying campaign.
Through collaboration with Rotarian Marcel van den Berg from RC Wateringen, we have raised funds to support Open Door in Ocean View and Carmen Stevens Feeding Scheme through wine sales in The Netherlands and our very successful ‘Billy Joel Concert’.
Sue Berger from Open Door was excited to show us the vehicle bought with proceeds from combined fundraisers.
We have also raised funds in support of Sinethemba, Kids are Kids, Emergency Volunteer Services by facilitating donor funding and hosting quiz events, Carols by Glowsticks and our well known and much-loved Duck Race event.
We were also grateful for cash donations and duvets and pillows from a Tour Company. As a club we have supported numerous other organisations and events in and around the Deep South.
Our club has managed to get a new website established and invigorated the club Facebook page with regular posts and links to events. At the recent District Conference, we also walked away with an award for Best Presentation. [Link to presentation]
The club was recognised in the Rotary Africa magazine for the role we played in organising a surprise marriage proposal. All this due to the efforts of our Public Image team.
As part of an international organisation, we have had the privilege to host visiting Rotarians from India, USA and Germany. We also had the opportunity to host several speakers at our club meetings and also visited other clubs in support of events and speakers.
At the beginning of the year, we started off with a healthy bank account and managed to sustain all the events and fund raisers over the to ensure a steady increase and support of community organizations in need.
During this year, our treasurer was instrumental in getting us as a club SARS compliant and starting the process of the club being reissued with a Sec18a certificate. After the many financial expenditures and contributions to all the previously mentioned organisations, I am happy to report that we have closed off the year with a better off balance that what we had started with.
Thank you to each and every club member, board member and community member who played a role in the club having achieved what it has of the past year.