Desmond Cock, who is wheelchair-bound, says working for the DA is "splendid".

He is one of five other students who are part of the Boston City Campus and Business College's disability learnership programme.

At present there are 160 candidates on the one-year Business Administration course.

The first six months focuses on theory and the balance is on practical experience in a working environment.

Thereafter the companies reserve the right to employ the trainees on a permanent basis.

"We encourage companies from the public and private sectors to support our programme,"says Byron Watts, who consults to Boston on sourcing practical exposure for the students.

"They are under no obligation to pay the students while completing their course, although a top-up on the R1 000 stipend they get from the Services Seta is always welcome."

Leanne de Jager-Naidoo, regional manager of the DA in Gauteng South, has taken on six disabled students.

"They are treated as staff members from the word go and required to report to me every day," she says.

"Some of them are on switchboard duty, some assist with membership, others work in the IT section and everything else in between.

"We've made the office as wheelchair-friendly as possible by repositioning all the desks so that the wheelchairs can get through, and made it easy for them to access the photocopier.

Working for a political party is dynamic, says De Jager-Naidoo.

"We never know what's going to crop up. If some incident flares up we have to react and mobilise our staff to deal with the situation.

"However, we work according to a rather flexible framework that includes administrative functions such as reception duty and answering the phones, membership, administration and secretarial services, which are on-going.

"But we have to factor in campaigns, planned and unplanned. So there's never a dull day at the DA."

Recently the students were taken to the DA-run town of Midvaal in Meyerton, where they handed out leaflets on gender violence.

On another day they were busy with delegates attending the provincial congress and the regional AGM. Their job was to hand out delegate packs, put up the balloons and get the music ready.

"So apart from general office work, they're involved in all our other activities," De Jager-Naidoo says.

Clicks stores have also thrown their weight behind the disability learnership programme by employing Boston disabled candidates who will be working in the Florida store for the next six months.

"This will give them the opportunity to apply what they studied in their Business Administration course," says Watts.