On weekends, she and her brother and sisters helped their teacher mom and bus driver dad to pay the bills. They made sandwiches to sell at local soccer matches. They tried to sell everything as fast as they could so they had time to play with the other children when the game was over.

By the time Bassie turned 16, she was a beautiful young woman. She was so beautiful that she won two beauty competitions in one year: Miss Soweto and Miss Black South Africa. But Bassie was not only beautiful on the outside. She was also beautiful on the inside. Even though she was a beauty queen, she still cared about the community where she grew up.