I've had this question directed at me many times before, and I'm almost certain I'm gonna continue hearing it going forward. I've never had a direct answer, mostly because I hate answering such vague questions (my close friends will confirm this) but also because there's so much that inspires me. In this article, I will try and list a few (just a few) of those things and hopefully drive the reader to discover their own drivers in life.
I was raised in Umlazi by my mother, her sisters and my many grandmothers, and my earliest years were spent going back and forth between my one grandmother's house at J-section and my other grandmother's house at B-section. Staying there, I was exposed to the best and the worst that the township life has to offer. I can honestly say right now that besides my mother's two brothers, before I got to high school I never really had any positive male role models (my father passed away when I was five months old and until recently, I was never close to my father's side of the family). So I had to look around the neighbourhood to find male role models, men I could possibly aspire to be one day. And when I looked, what I saw shocked me.
Even at the tender age of 8, I was looking at the men around me, all these men who wanted me to call them Uncle and I was thinking "I don't wanna be like this". I was looking at these men who smelled permanently of Smirnoff Vodka and Castle Milk Stout and were eyeing my sister and I was thinking "I don't want to be this kind of man". I would hear them telling stories of how they beat their girlfriends up just for the heck of it, and they would advise me ukuthi "Umfazi uyashaywa mshana" and I would look at my mother, sister and aunts and think "I don't wanna do that". I would look at this man who was living off his mother's pension at the age of 27 and still making babies all over the place (and his mother would raise those babies from her pension) and I would think "Hello no!!"..... and so I decided, at that young age, that I would strive to be the opposite of everything I was observing in these "men" who surrounded me. I don't really remember how the thought process went in my head. I doubt I had even developed a solid thought process at the time. But even back then, I made that decision, which has shaped the way I view life for as long as I can remember. I was also motivated by tales that I used to hear about my father (apparently he was an exceptional man and teacher) and I somehow knew that he would have raised me to be different from all of this.
However, a few years later I had another milestone which has also shaped how I view life. In 1995 my mother bought a house at W-section in Umlazi and the three of us (me, my mother and my sister) moved there. It was a new development and we were one of the first families to move there, so there were very few houses and even fewer potential friends. However, there was a public library just down the road. And with a drought of things to do when I came back from school, I started visiting the library, on an almost daily basis. And what an effect this had on me!! In-between reading Obelix & Asterix, The Famous Five, The Hardy Boys and Sweet Valley High (don't judge me), I also read a lot of the more serious books on history, culture, mathematics, astronomy etc etc. And I was always fascinated by all these people I was reading about who had achieved extraordinary things. Then one day I had an epiphany. "If these men and these women could do it, what's stopping you? If these men and these women could master it, what's stopping you?" And that's when my obsession with exceeding the average was solidified in me. I went through all high school with the mindset that there was absolutely no reason whatsoever why I couldn't achieve top marks in all my subjects all the time, no exception. And it worked!! I won't go into the detail (bragging is sooo 2010) but it worked.
What's the point of all this? One of the things which is keeping black, township raised people from rising above the status quo is the view that this is the way it is and there's no way to change. We are raised to conform to the way things are done. If you try to raise the bar, you are accused of being a model-C (till today, there are many people who struggle to believe that I never went to a model-C school, that I was educated in the township from A to Z). Everyone wants to be like everyone else. This is your lot, black man, conform, do as the rest do. I thank God that He blessed me with a different mindset, a desire to succeed through it all. As I've always said, God didn't give me this oversized head for nothing.
I've just listed two of my inspirations here, those that were developed somewhere inside my head. There's a lot, lot more and I will go into these in a future piece. But I challenge you to find your inspiration as well. Find a reason to push boundaries, to challenge the norm, to be the benchmark. Be inspired to be an inspiration. Make people envy you. You have it inside of you. No, it's not an option, it's your responsibility.
Give me your thoughts in the comments section below.
I rest........
