Katlego Zabala: A South African superstar

Over the weekend I noticed with some amusement that ANCYL president Julius Malema cracked the Mampara of the Year Award from the Sunday Times. No doubting that the youth leader has the credentials for this dubious honour just as there is no doubting his vastly improved approach to the job at hand. Malema has shown courage in his stance on Mugabe and continued to speak out but has changed his focus to areas of concern to all South Africans and moderated his tone on opposition parties right to their place in the sun.

Let’s hope that those who were so quick to judge and criticise Malema, myself included, are as ready to concede that much effort has gone into improving the conduct of not only Malema but other youth leaders.

Anyhow, I’m detracting from the point of this article, namely that the government and other political leaders must place the spotlight on another youth who has achieved five distinctions in the face of extreme adversity.

Katlego Zabala is a 17-year-old orphan who attended an “almost run down school in Senoane, Soweto”. Despite his circumstances Katlego managed to bring home five A’s and two B’s as well as being the national winner of the Mark Shuttleworth’s The Future of Space in Support of Mankind essay competition last year.

While we are quick to hold up politicians, sportsmen and women and pop stars as role models to our youth — despite many of them falling woefully short when it comes to little things like common decency — far too infrequently do we point them in the direction of a true South African superstar like Katlego Zabala. Someone who overcame the odds by sheer guts and determination.

And, if truth be told I’m sure that most of my readers would far rather have their kids behave like this fellow from Soweto than some of the geniuses we witness on television passing themselves off as some sort of great talent while singing obscure song like “I’m so lonesome in the saddle since my horse died”.

Singing it very badly mind.

The problem is that our kids live their lives through computers and television and if we want to get them motivated to achieve academic results then we are going to have to make studying and school sexy (I know, I know).

Somehow we have to hold up Katlego as the truly exceptional role model that he is but without leaving our fingerprints all over this. We have to understand that there is one thing that will kill any teenager’s passion for an idea or even a person — the fact that their parents like it or him.

If they believe that he is acceptable to us, he/she/it will have the appeal of the North Borneon Hunting Gnat.

Yet this is one of the most important challenges of our generation: “The problem, O’Connell said, was the political failure to build a post-apartheid culture of learning to make up for lost decades when education was a tug of war. We should stop throwing around the resources thing and ask why we don’t have a strong national culture of learning, instilled from the presidency downwards.”We have no leadership in schools and we have no quality control.” (Mail & Guardian Online) — (Brian O’Connell is the rector of the University of the Western Cape)

That culture of learning needs role models like Katlego Zabala to create a desire and a determination within our children that no matter the circumstances they want to achieve the best for themselves. This will assist the system in trying to meet their needs because the goal of education is then shared rather than something endured and resisted.

Children must see themselves as professionals, civil servants and blue collar workers rather than as gang members, prisoners and vagrants. The key to that is education. By making Katlego Zabala “sexy” you change their mindset from aspiring to be gang leader to wanting to be a doctor or an architect.

The government’s wastage on corruption, mismanagement and African adventures must be seen in the light of the resources that are currently desperately needed in areas like education, for it is here that we are mining our most valuable resource — our children.

Let the call go out to all corners of the land that education is a national priority. That Katlego Zabala is a South African superstar.

Let that be your goal.