MALAIKA MAHLATSI |Virus at Fort Hare dims future of poverty-stricken kids

A few weeks ago, while on vacation in Europe, I wrote a post on social media reflecting on the value of education in my personal life. The post went viral for the simple reason that many people could relate to the story of how education changed their material circumstances. In the post, I spoke about how education rewrote the narrative of my life.

Like millions of black people in SA, I was born into poverty. The journey of my life began in the sprawling township of Soweto where I grew up in a small shack that was shared by a family of seven that relied on the income of my domestic worker grandmother. In that brutal existence, it was difficult to imagine a different life or to believe that one’s dreams were valid...