Perhaps with good savings and financial diligence, I might also have also been afforded some tertiary education opportunity. Though I wouldn’t say that I suffered as a child because I never had to worry or be depressed about anything. That was granny’s job. My dear grandmother did everything for me through her hard earned money.

She used to buy me clothes from the jumble sale. She always brought me my favourite treats and some toys every time she came home from one of her jobs.

“Qo qo qo, qagela ngiphetheni. Knock, knock, guess what do I have,” she would say. She would use one of her knees to push the door open since her hands would be occupied with plastic bags full of groceries and goodies. I would sometimes spend the time, just before she would arrive, trying to guess what she might be bringing home for me.

Whenever grandmother went to look for piece jobs, I would go visit my cousin Toto’s house in Diepkloof, Soweto. Never was there a place I enjoyed going to more than I did Toto’s house. Actually it was the only place I visited every school holiday. I enjoyed spending time with my cousin and everybody else favoured him because of his bright and colourful character. He was adored for his exquisite mental capacity.

Toto was no ordinary child. He once got chased down the street by a mad old man who was crazy about protecting his peach and plum trees from the ghetto little rascals of the township. He would also come home with ashy black ankles after a football game in the dusty streets. And he always got a hiding for coming home after school in a dirty uniform, just like every normal child.

He was a healthy and happy child, but most importantly, he loved his school books. He did his school work cheerfully and meticulously which all yielded good fruits in the end. People would call him ‘intelligent’, some said he was a genius. A friend of mine once told me: “Yazi umzala wakho uhlakaniphile – Your cousin is a smart head. He is an upcoming version of a black Einstein, a solid gift to the African soil I tell you.”

He said this all the time and I understood where it came from. Toto was an A student in Math’s and Physics, the cream of the crop at his school and the nation as a whole hence the scarcity of such skills in the country. He had a lot of certificates, medals and trophies for his academic excellence. Toto was the kind of a child that every single parent would be very proud to have given birth to.

Indeed Malume Menzi was proud of his son. He was proud of his little boy who revealed, deliberately over time, shocking signs of growing up, becoming a man.

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Tell us what you think: Do you think students like Toto who come from poor homes end up making it in life?