‘I could hear gunshots while studying’: these determined matrics beat the odds
Twenty-year-old matric learner Ephraim Simango had to study between midnight and 6am to escape the noise in Siyahlala informal settlement, which lies next to the N7 in Langa, Cape Town. But he still managed to achieve seven distinctions in his final exams.
Simango, who achieved the highest marks in Sinenjongo High School in Joe Slovo Park, has been accepted to the University of Cape Town to study science and engineering.
When he was 10 years old, his family moved to South Africa from Mozambique, fleeing the conflict between Frelimo and Renamo. “To adapt to a new environment, I had to work twice as hard. I was doing Portuguese in Mozambique. I had to adapt to English and isiXhosa. It was very difficult.”
Travelling to school in Joe Slovo Park was a challenge in itself, and there was no space for him to study at home, as he sleeps in the area used as a kitchen and lounge in the tworoom shack he shares with his parents and two sisters.
He also had to contend with loud music pumping late into the night from nearby shebeens, and high levels of crime.
“I could hear gunshots while studying at night,” Simango says.
To find quiet time to study, he would wake up at midnight and work until 6am. Simango would sometimes stay after school to study with other learners, only getting home at 9pm. His mother would worry about him walking home from the taxi rank in the dark.
At one point, he had to travel back to Mozambique – without any form of identification – to apply for a passport. This lost him a week of school.
Although he didn’t have the funds for the journey, his class teacher gave him R6,000 to make the trip and get his passport.
He says his teacher bought him his matric jacket, paid for his valedictory and extra lessons, and assisted with minibus taxi fare. She apparently also helps other vulnerable pupils at the school.
Now Simango needs to raise money again to get a study permit for university.
His mother, Veronica Simango, 37, makes a living braaing chicken feet. She says she was “speechless” when her son’s results were announced. “I didn’t expect someone from a rural village in Mozambique to come to another country and beat all the challenges to become a top learner at his school,” she says.
She heaped praise on the school staff: “I don’t know what to say anymore.”
Loud music at night was also a problem for Siposethu Twetwela, 18, from Dunoon’s New Rest informal settlement.
“People drink till late. I’d wait until the music had quietened to start studying. That almost cost me a lot but I knew what I wanted, so I kept on studying,” he says.
Twetwela achieved five distinctions and plans to study electrical engineering at UCT.
Top maths learner Sandile Siziba, 18, who scored 90% for this subject in matric, also battled with noise.
Siziba lives in Dunoon’s Section 23. He obtained two distinctions and has been accepted to study chemical engineering at UCT. “I had a hard time studying. I live near a shebeen where music is loud all the time. I had to adapt to that kind of environment,” he says.
Siziba is from Zimbabwe, and has an asylum-seeker permit. He says most of his fellow learners do not know this.
“Most people didn’t know I was born in Zimbabwe. I grew up with them and I learned isiXhosa very quickly.”
Pulling through
Simnikiwe Manengele, 18, also from Sinenjongo High, had to spend a month in hospital last year with her son, who was born prematurely in 2020.
She says when she was discharged, she was behind in all her subjects. Then her mother fell ill, and could not help her take care of the baby. Manengele had to look after her son herself and could only study when he
was sleeping.
“I just had to keep on going, navigating between my school work and taking care of the baby. I pulled through,” she says.
She also achieved five distinctions and has applied to the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of the Western Cape (UWC) to study pharmacy.
Breaking the poverty cycle
Asanela Tamsanqa, 18, who lives in Dunoon near KwaVodacom, says her desire to break the cycle of poverty drove her to achieve her excellent results – four distinctions.
“In my family, there is no one who reached Grade 12. The highest grade was Grade 4. I want to break this thing,” says Tamsanqa.
She says she used to borrow money for transport to get to her classes at Sinenjongo High School. She sold boiled eggs to make ends meet when she was not studying.
“I saw my mom had given up. She is without hope. I’ll help her.” She heaped praise on her teacher, who helped with transport costs and even offered Tamsanqa accommodation in her home to help her study.
“A lot of things for me were done by good Samaritans,” she says.
Tamsanqa has been accepted to study pharmacy at UWC.
Anenenceba Liwani, 19, achieved three distinctions at Sinenjongo High.
Sharing a home with his parents and six brothers and sisters in Dunoon Section 28 made it difficult to study, so his father, a domestic worker, rented a shack for him.
He is also the first in his family to pass matric and is waiting to hear if Stellenbosch University will accept him as a chemical engineering student.
Sinenjongo High principal Khuselwa Nopote says her school achieved a pass rate of nearly 91%, up from about 89% in 2020.
“This year was the toughest year for our learners. They were writing the matric exams at two venues: at the Joe Slovo municipal hall and in two classrooms,” said Nopote.
She said this was because the school hall was burnt down by protesting residents in July 2020. It has not yet been repaired.