The History of MakatonSA
During the 80’s and 90’s Maggi Golding and Christine Koudstaal worked together to try and develop Makaton in South Africa. Christine had visited Linden Bridge School in the UK where Maggi was Principal and was impressed with the language and literacy levels of the learners with autism who were using Makaton.
Christine Koudstaal and Maggi Golding met with Margaret Walker (the founder of Makaton) to discuss how she could support the South African Makaton project. Whilst being sympathetic Margaret Walker felt that the
The Makaton Charity UK requires other countries to work with the
It was very difficult to meet all the requests for training that followed as Maggi was the only licensed Makaton Tutor in South Africa for many years. By 2011 two steering committees had been set up, in Gauteng and the Western Cape. The Steering Committees involve both young and experienced professionals representing different cultures and languages. This is important as English is the first language for only 9.6% of the South African population (the three most widely used languages being Zulu,
Reinette
An important aim of the steering committees was to plan training of South African Makaton Regional Tutors by Makaton Charity. In July 2015
This training would not have been made possible without a generous donation from a private benefactor in the UK, sponsorship for
The passion and
The tutors were privileged to have John Gouws facilitating during the tutor training week. John was
the Sign Advisor whose contribution to the development of MakatonSA signs was hugely significant. He also did all the signing for the MakatonSA DVDs.
His daughter Jacolyn also helped a great deal to fine tune our signs and offered much valuable advice.
In addition to Maggi, there were now another 11 licensed Regional Tutors to take Makaton to all corners of South Africa. Although Maggi had
Maggi’s contribution to MakatonSA is beyond measure. Maggi was awarded an M.B.E. in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list and attended the investiture at Buckingham Palace in June 2016.
Huge thanks are due to Autism South Africa who supported MakatonSA