STORY BY kenneth guillaume
ILLUSTRATION BY LAUREN VICENZI
Walking onto an airplane for the first time, bound for Slovakia, then 20 year old Nkanyiso Khumalo ‘20 was taking one more step out of his comfort zone. The now 25-year-old South African native had experienced many different things at such a young age that allowed him to develop and grow as a person.
“It’s only now when I look back at it I’m like, ‘Yeah’. We come from poverty, for real,” Nkanyiso said, reflecting on his childhood. That didn’t stop him from reaching higher; he never realized the situation he was in wasn’t defining who he was going to be.
Going to school, people would try to put him down and make him complacent in the situation he was born into. “All people now go to school and I’m coming back, walking home, and then people will be at the corner just telling you that, ‘Oh, yeah, you know you’re gonna end up here’,” Nkanyiso said.
If it wasn’t for values instilled by his mom, he could have been in that situation. Instilling a sense of drive into his personality—to never settle and always strive to excel—was a foundation that Nkanyiso built off of. Without his mom, that might not have become a defining trait. “A sense of drive for myself, and my mom helped me with that. It’s just a tough minute in this company [of people he grew up around]. There’s so much violence, so much like people taking drugs and all that. It’s just very tough to look up to a bright future.”
The bright future that seemed distant to his peers was already in progress for Nkanyiso. Always having a gift for mathematics, Nkanyiso began teaching.... to his classmates. “I was very ahead, you know, I was one of the best students. And so I started helping. I was always helping, but then I just became, not a teacher, but I taught,” Nkanyiso said, letting out a slight laugh.
Nkanyiso began classes at a relatively new high school in Johannesburg, where a mathematics teacher’s presence only lasted for a short time; Nkanyiso stepped up and taught the mathematics class. “So I started teaching actually, when I was at that school, while I was still studying. I didn’t have a teacher for like, four to five months,” he said.
Creating an impact on his community was understated by Nkanyiso in his interview for For the Record, but a teacher in Nkanyiso’s public school noted differently. “It is worth noting here that his darned passion for mathematics crept up again when he initiated his own project, aside our youth program, and that was the Maths Maniacs,” Makhosonke Xaba, Nkanyiso’s former English teacher in Johannesburg recalled fondly. “Nkanyiso and other advanced mathematics learners gave extra lessons to learners in lower grades. He enjoyed transferring his knowledge and skills to his peers in a fun and engaging way.”
“As an educator, he remains one of my cherished badges of honour,” Xaba concluded.
His drive to educate never ceased. Following graduation from his high school, Nkanyiso moved on to a prestigious school: the African Leadership Academy, an alma mater to a growing number of Marist graduates including For the Record co-founder Goodman Lepota. “As a two-year program their main focus is to develop the next generation of African leaders,” Nkanyiso said about the African Leadership Academy, also known as ALA.
Fast forward to graduation from ALA in 2015, Nkanyiso suspended his education in the United States to take a gap year. The opportunities he has experienced since 2015 have expanded from what he had learned at ALA, as well as his desire to reach his community.
Transitioning out of the African Leadership Academy, Nkanyiso worked within his community in a multitude of different areas. “[The institution] I worked for specifically was focused on HIV and AIDS and STDs and bringing awareness to the youth,” Nkanyiso said about his time at a research institution at the University of Witwatersrand called Wits RHI.
At this first experience during his gap year, he was tasked with ensuring that clinics could become more accessible to the youth, and if they weren’t then how could he change that.”During the internship I ran a mobile website. It didn’t require any internet or anything, but people could still read it,” he said. For this website Nkanyiso would compose articles about the stigma surrounding HIV and STDs to the local Joburg community, as Nkanyiso affectionately called his home town.
While he might have been an alumnus of ALA, his experience with the school that shaped his future career goals and path was not over. He was tasked, along with one other student, to travel to Slovakia and facilitate the launch of the LEAF Academy in Bratislava. “I basically spent three months there, travelling around Slovakia. We would go and meet students, work and help them with their curriculum,” Nkanyiso said about his first experience outside of South Africa. “[It was] just a lot of research really, trying to see what are some of the things that worked in Johannesburg that could be implemented and what didn’t work.”
Following his three months in Slovakia, away from Johannesburg, he concluded his gap year and was enrolled in Marist, and plans to return to South Africa and continue to make a lasting impact in his community.
Growing up in a situation where the ability to excel academically wasn’t always the path taken, Nkanyiso built off his teachings from his Joburg public school, ALA and most importantly his mom. “I know there are some values that she put in me that I still, you know, appreciate her for. Like letting me know respect, humility and helping other people and all that,” Nkanyiso concluded with a smile.
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