Cape Talk

The EWN app. The best of talk. Streaming countrywide on Prime Media Plus. On DSTV, channel 885 and across the city. Caroline Matsumela is the founder of Matsumela Ladies Clinics, talking to me on the line about helping women discover cycling. All right, how big is the community that you have built of women who are

Participating in cycling? Sure. So, Martinella Ladies started in 2020 during the midst of COVID. So, this is our sixth year. And every year, we run a program where they come in and then they graduate, and then they can then go and do what they need to do, join other clubs or whatever the case might be. So, through that program, we have had

222 graduates until 2025. We're going to have our graduation now in September. But this is now the community of over like 200 women that are in there who are participating and doing different races and teaching others as well on how to cycle. And who's inspired to come and join the ladies' clinic?

So what who is inspired is someone who has always maybe wanted to cycle, but they just don't know where to start. You know, I've got people who grew up having BMX, like myself, when we were young. And then we have women who completely have never, ever even been on a bike. So we start teaching them.

from literally the grass on how to balance on the bike. And then we've got those that just need the skills on how to actually even participate in a race, for example. But the big, big, big thing is really the safety aspect, the learning the fitness and that community. They want to join other women to say it looks like fun. We want to also feel safe when we are with other women.

Because we all assume that the skill of cycling, like swimming, quite frankly, is something we'll all learn when we are children, right? I mean, I remember getting on my first, it wasn't my bike, but it was a neighbor's bike, and it had those sort of two wheels on the side at the back to help me sort of stay up, basically. We assume that people will all have access to that.

But the reality is not true. Yeah. Especially for African women. So one of the myths, not even the myths, but practice that has been done is that as a woman or as a girl, you're not allowed to ride a bike because it will break your virginity. So there's also that myth that most women grew up with. So they never, the bicycle was for boys.