From the National Director’s Desk: January 2025

How privileged I am to start 2025 with the best team anybody can wish for! NCPD’s vibrant staff and partner teams are all back healthy and motivated after the December break!

Our Executive board and Patron have supported and guided us through a bumpy, challenging, but positive, and impactful 2024! We have leaped energetically into the New Year with our leadership: Sikelelwa Alex Msitshana, Joseph Komape, JP Muller, Martin Mvulane, Dr. Ben Greyling, and Therina Wentzel.

Furthermore, we are proud to be a part of Disability Empowerment Concerns (DEC), a 29-year-old disability empowerment trust. We salute our trustee, Dion Rademeyer, who plays a very active role in the trust.

This year has already placed excitement and beautiful opportunities on our steps! Some immediate excitement to share is our two team members who are now doctors: Dr. Zukiswa Nzo, who just recently completed her doctorate studies at Waseda University’s Graduate School of Social Science in Japan, and Dr. Hanri Kriel, who studied at the University of Pretoria and received Merit colours for her PhD in Drama and Film studies. Check out Dr. Kriel’s profile in this newsletter.

I’m also excited to celebrate our new team members, Aliyah, Tanyaradzwa, and Simon (of THISABILITY Newspaper), Andrew, Pieter, Adri, Scelo, Lallie, Lucas, Bhekani, Bongani, and Eric. We welcome you to our dynamic team!

We will be profiling them in the forthcoming issues of the newsletter. We also welcome our beautiful NCPD pet, a black bunny who lives in Eugene’s vegetable garden at our office and often sleeps through our meetings in the boardroom.

As NCPD, we want to acknowledge our provincial and branch Associations of and for Persons with Disabilities (APDs) and other member organisations countrywide. Thank you for your contributions and great work towards inclusion and advocation for disability rights. One of our key focus areas for 2025 and beyond, is to work much closer with and support APDs! An exciting journey that we are looking forward to.

Another exciting announcement is that NCPD will play a leading role in the D20, focused on mobilising persons with disabilities to influence global decisions in economic, political, and social spheres. This includes the inclusion of persons with disabilities in the C20 (civil society focus), the T20 (think tanks and research centres focus), the Y20 (youth focus), and the W20 (women focus) forums, and of course, with the strong goal of developing position papers and influencing the G20 for full inclusion and our priorities in the G20 and ultimately playing our proud but humble role in realising the G20 Action Plan on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Till then!