“Growing up it was just me and my mom. She was away during the week with the family she worked for in the suburbs. Sometimes she wouldn’t come home for the weekend. And then it would just be me. On my own most of the time.”

Determined to change culture and environments around her, she carries authority, embodies calm, is a formidable presence for troublemakers, but a gentle presence for those in need of nurture and care.

Baba Ntshingila yearns for all to reach their roots down deep into the well that fuels him, to not settle for anything less. To understand and turn away from all the quick and cheap temptations that will serve to destroy and not create.

Sma Mlawu had a dream. Well maybe it was her moms dream. “Walk like a doctor” her mom would say. Maybe it doesn’t matter whose dream it was. What mattered was that this young girl, the sixth child, whose family at times had learnt to live off R200 a month, could walk with a sense of a different destiny to the one her situation wanted to dictate.