IN keeping with a culture of rewarding excellence, Aganang Local Municipality recently held its 8th Annual Achievers Awards at the municipal hall. The annual awards are aimed at rewarding individuals, groups and schools within the municipal boundaries.

Awards were in categories like Community Builder of the year, best entrepreneur, best community project, best arts and culture, sports person of the year among others. The education fraternity continued to dominate the awards this year.

Harry Oppenheimer Agricultural School was named best school for the year 2009, while Mogoshi circuit was named best circuit, Motsiri primary school, best primary school. Winners in the teaching field were among others Ms. Paulina Mamabolo from Dr M.J Madiba secondary school in Ga-Mashashane, who was named best teacher in Agricultural Science, Ms. Jeena Koshy from Harry Oppenheimer was named best teacher in Mathematics. There were also other teachers who won awards in Sepedi, English, Afrikaans, Economics, Business Economics, Accounting, Life Orientation, Physical Science, Geography, History and Life Science.

Mr. Director Mokoatedi walked away with the Community Builder of year award, 800m athletics champion Caster Semenya walked away with two awards, namely sports person of the year and Mayor's special awards. The arts and culture category was ruled by Mr. Calvin Lekgoara, while Ditlou General dealer and hardware was named best entrepreneur and Mahumo A Juno named best community project.

Award winning musician Selaelo Selota was named Kwankwetla. This is a person born and bred in one of Aganang municipality's villages, who has performed exceptionally in a particular field, thus representing the municipality internationally. Selota grew up in Molejie, Sekuruwe, starting his schooling at Sekuruwe primary school and continued his high school education at Modumo high school, matriculating at Karabi high school. This is before proceeding to FUBA School of music and University of Cape Town where he obtained a degree in music.

Aganang Mayor, Cllr Mmanoko Masehela thanked all awards recipients for continuing to put the municipality on the global map through their participation in various fields. "It is our tradition and we will always celebrate achievements of our people, because their achievements are our achievements", Masehela said.