She served as the deputy president of the Student Representatives Council, and volunteered at a student-run health clinic in a nearby underprivileged community. I was very political about washing dishes, so they called me Nkosazana Zuma.' (A joke, referring to a South African politician).įired up by the earlier discussions she’d had with her uncle, Fanele thrived on student politics. I mean, I used to have those little bursts of wanting to speak out against things I thought were unfair. I was very meek and quiet, I think partly because I came from a household where we were taught to wait your turn, speak when spoken to. “I was head girl in high school, but I really didn't feel like my leadership potential was realized earlier. “I think university allowed me to know myself, and what I'm capable of as a person,” she says. Other aspects of her personality found expression and flourished. While she continued to maintain focus on her academic achievements, she also came into her own. “It was the happiest time of my life.”įor Fanele, university became a time of finding her feet and growing as a person. “My school principal was like, 'Go for it, you are definitely going to be great at it.' My biology teacher was like, 'This is our future doctor.' Everyone was on the program,” she recalls. She, her family, and her community were overjoyed. Pre-selected for the scholarship, and subsequently admitted into medical school at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Fanele had been handed the keys to a new life. She became a model student, and in her penultimate year of high school her principal told her about the scholarship program funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York. Her uncle introduced her to Chinua Achebe, Chris Hani and other eminent African thinkers and writers. In that household, Fanele matured on a steady diet of serious study and rich political discussion. She would give me a little stipend so I would have money to spend at school.”Īt age 12, Fanele went to live with her maternal aunt, a teacher, just outside of Durban, so that she could attend better schools and serve as a role model to her younger cousin. She had this huge plot where she would farm different things to sell each year. “She didn't go to school, she was a subsistence farmer.

“She was a hard-working woman,” Fanele recalls, speaking of her grandmother. She grew up swimming in the rivers, attending the same primary school her mother had attended, studying by candlelight, and helping her grandmother plough the family plots of maize and vegetables. Her early childhood was spent in a deeply rural community nestled in the rolling green hills of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Fanele Mdletshe has always dreamed of becoming a doctor.

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