“The bigger plan is to become president,” said Tumelo Mashigo, who was named as one of the top performers of the Class of 2017.
When I read this on Twitter last week, I was overjoyed, I wanted to shout from the office, “Yes we can”, Obama-style.
I know for a fact that Tumelo knows it will take a lot of work to become president; more importantly though, he can now dream to be president or whatever he’d like to be.
There was a time in South Africa when black people’s dreams were limited. The Nationalist government came into power in 1948 under DF Malan.
In 1949, they appointed the Eiselen Commission to look into Bantu Education, and in 1953 the Bantu Education Act was passed.
The minister of Native Affairs at the time, the “architect of apartheid”, Hendrik Verwoerd, stated that “There is no place for (the Bantu) in the European community above the level of certain forms of labour What is the use of teaching the Bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice?”
I always say to those who care to listen to me, a few of them, that part of the freedom attained in 1994 means that a black child can now actually reach for the stars. What we need to continue doing is to ensure there are enough pathways and ladders for them to climb.
Last week I read Vusi Thembekwayo’s speech at the Dr Richard Maponya Annual Entrepreneurship
lecture. I singled out a few snippets from it and posted them on social media.
The first of those snippets is: “We will never answer the entrepreneurship question for people of colour until and unless we deal first with the mental condition of the person of colour.
"Until we actually understand that the greatest barrier we face is not access to finance or access to markets, although these are important. The greatest barrier we face is unshackling the chains that imprison our minds. The power to look up, to raise our sights, to imagine”
I agree with Vusi, and am encouraged that people like him, born and bred in townships and not meant to succeed, are actually looking up, raising their sights and beginning to imagine.
Another example of this is Luvuyo Rani, founder and managing director of Silulo Ulutho Technologies.
This ordinary man from Komani in the Eastern Cape started his business in Khayelitsha, and this week jets off to the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. I’m certain Hendrik Verwoerd never saw this coming.
It doesn’t end with Luvuyo Rani; there are many more of these incredible Africans, who look like us wake up every day and change the world for the better. Thembekwayo's second snippet is: “Until and when we learn to celebrate each other’s successes, we will never exit this quagmire"
We have to celebrate each other’s successes; it takes nothing away from each of us. In fact, it elevates us.
So when I hear that Nombulelo Magqira of Gugulethu is now the head of events at Boschendal Wine Estate, I must be happy. I need to forward this to all WhatsApp groups, instead of all the other stuff we receive daily.
When I’m changing channels on the TV at home and happen to settle on a show called African Legacy Project, which I come to learn is the brainchild of Naledi Mosieane, also of Gugulethu, I need to post that on my timeline. Let’s celebrate each other’s success.
There are many more of these
stories.
The late Michael Jackson had many hit songs, one of them we had to learn in high school as the set song for the annual eisteddfod. The chorus went like this:
Heal the world
Make it a better place
For you and for me
And the entire human race
There are people dying
If you care enough for the living
Make it a better place
For you and for me
I hope and pray we start 2018 in a positive light and strive to play our part in making it a better place for you me, to ensure more Tumelo Mashigos can confidently proclaim that one day they will be president of the country.
Moshe Apleni
Gugulethu