30 Years!
You may ask: what kept me going?
My answer is: what kept them going.
What kept my father going, when he was away from his beloved family, underground, blasting rocks for gold in horrific apartheid South Africa?
Probably he was tagged: lazy, boy, stupid, suspicious, kaffir – and still managed to learn how to read and write; learn and speak pidgin Fanakalo language fluently. Probably he called every white man “baas”. The very white man who, cowardly, denied him acess: he was prohibited, strictly, to go into the so called white areas. What kept him going to work for almost 3 decades under such detestable conditions? What a Man!
What kept my dearest mother, heavily pregnant with me, going, when she had to walk about 5km up the hilly road to go for her night shift at the Kanye Seventh Day Adventist Hospital?
What kept their mothers, such as my beloved grandmother, going, when she had to pound sorghum grains, with a pestle in order to eat motogo, or porridge?
What kept them going?
I did. Yes.
They were thinking of better days ahead. They were thinking and hoping for the next generation. They knew that their hard work would finally pay off, someday.
It is days such as today that they were going for: here they are, here I am, thanks to their, quite often, overlooked toil.
Following Angela Davis, I am the manifestation of their imagination.
Indeed, I have gained very great inspiration from them. I dedicate this special moment to them. For their unrecognised, unappreciated, undocumented, forgotten perseverance.
Ke a leboga!
The king has arrived, Kgosi e tsile.
1987: Mosadithari Day Care Centre
1994: Mafhikana Primary School
1996: Tlhomo Community Junior Secondary School
1999: Seepapitso Senior Secondary School
2008: BCom, University of South Africa
2013: Grad Cert, Robert Gordon University
2015: MSc, Robert Gordon University
2017: MRes, University of Bath
Blessing Kgosi e tsile Kgasa 