Jabu Makhoba: From eNkanini to Journalism, From the Streets to a Life of Purpose
An expanded personal account, building on the original story by Nokuthula Sonile
By Jabu Makhoba
There are some stories you tell because people ask you to.
Then there are stories you tell because, with age, you realise they deserve to be told properly.
My name is Jabu Makhoba, and this is my story.
In the original newspaper article, "An inspirational young man", journalist Nokuthula Sonile wrote about a young man from Midrand who had risen above difficult circumstances, graduated from the University of Johannesburg with a BA Degree in Journalism, and was preparing to pursue a career in the media. Nokuthula deserves credit for telling that part of my story and for giving me space in the newspaper to explain where I came from and where I hoped to go.
What follows is a much fuller account.
It adds the childhood memories, the people, the institutions, the streets, the education, the mistakes, the losses, the unexpected reunions and the people who helped me find my way. Some parts are based on what I personally remember, while others are stories I was told by people who knew my family and my mother.
This is not a story about a perfect child who overcame everything without making mistakes.
It is the story of a difficult child who became a difficult teenager, a young man who made poor decisions, and a person who somehow continued moving forward until life finally began to make sense.
Most importantly, it is the story of a child who was not expected to make it very far.
And yet, somehow, I did.
Where it all began
I grew up in Duduza, Nigel, in the East Rand, during the late 1990s.
Our home was in an informal settlement called eNkanini, in the Zamani area of Duduza, just behind N. N. Ndebele High School, one of the township's older schools.
This was a very different childhood from the one I later came to know.
We lived in a small, two-room corrugated iron shack.
My mother, Lettie Makhoba, was a single parent. She had her own struggles, and when I was young I did not have the maturity to understand them. I only knew what I could see.
When I was about seven years old, and my younger sister Nomsa was around five, my mother would sometimes lock us inside the shack and go drinking in Nigel.
There were weekends when she would leave on a Thursday evening.
We would cry.
Eventually we would become tired of crying.
Sometimes neighbours would hear us and break down the door to get us out.
The neighbours became an unofficial support system for two children whose lives lacked any real structure.
The father I thought was my father
I never knew my biological father.
For many years, I believed Bab' Masilela, Nomsa's father, was also my father. He was a passionate Orlando Pirates supporter, and as a child I simply accepted him as my father.
As I grew older, I learned I had a different biological father.
Bab' Masilela was from Mpumalanga and was of amaNdebele heritage.
His death became one of the stories surrounding my childhood.
I was told that he found my mother with another man in a house where they were drinking. An altercation followed and the young man involved allegedly stabbed him.
He apparently tried to walk to another section of Tsakane to reach his sisters, but he lost his strength along the way. At the time, the area was still undergoing development, with sanitation infrastructure being installed and large excavations being made for pipes.
He was eventually found in one of those holes.
I did not witness these events myself, so I can only repeat the story as it was told to me while growing up.
What stayed with me was the fact that another adult connected to my childhood had died violently.
May his soul rest in peace.
Another sister I did not know existed
There is another chapter of my family history which I did not understand when I was a child.
People growing up around my mother used to tell a story about another child.
According to what I was told, my mother had another child before Nomsa and me. Some people said she had "sold" the child or given her away while we were still very young, or possibly before Nomsa and I were even born.
I grew up believing I was the firstborn.
Yet people in Duduza and Alra Park would sometimes tell me there had been another child before us.
She was a girl.
According to the stories, my mother had given her to an Indian family in Alra Park. Nobody seemed to know her identification details, her full history or even exactly what name she had been given.
For years, this was simply another unanswered story from my childhood.
Then, in 2011, something extraordinary happened.
While I was trying to figure out what to do with my life after Matric, I met her.
Her name is Fikile.
I had lived in Alra Park myself for a period, yet somehow our paths had never crossed.
When I finally met my older sister, she looked remarkably like my mother.
The resemblance was striking.
She was also eager to reconnect and learn about the mother she had never really known.
But the irony was painful.
I knew very little.
She knew very little.
There was no complete family history waiting for either of us.
Fikile did not know who her father was. She knew almost nothing about Lettie, apart from what she had heard from other people and what I could tell her from my own childhood.
So, in some ways, we met as two people who were related by blood but were also strangers to each other.
Today, I still speak to Fikile from time to time.
We talk about Lettie.
We talk about Nomsa.
We talk about the fragments of our family history and try to make sense of what happened before either of us was old enough to ask questions.
The stories people told about Lettie
Another story people told me was that my mother had once abandoned Nomsa and me in the middle of nowhere, somewhere near a landfill site known as uMlodi, around Nigel.
We were apparently discovered by a stranger who happened to be driving past.
Again, I cannot personally verify every detail because I was very young.
That is an important distinction in telling my story.
Some memories are mine.
Other memories are stories passed down to me by neighbours, relatives and people who knew my mother.
My mother, Lettie, remains one of the most complicated figures in my life.
She was my mother.
She was also a woman with her own struggles.
As a child, I could not understand the difference between the person she was and the things she did.
Today, I can look at the story with more maturity.
I can still acknowledge the damage while understanding that adults sometimes carry their own wounds.
My sister Nomsa
Nomsa and I went through much of our early childhood together.
People generally watched over her more closely because she was a girl and was considered vulnerable.
I was different.
I roamed.
I disappeared.
I lived like a nomad.
There were times when I would disappear from home for days or even weeks. Sometimes my mother did not seem particularly concerned. Neighbours and strangers would ask where I had gone.
Nomsa and I eventually became separated as the social system moved us through different homes and institutions.
Our relationship remained complicated.
We could go for years without communicating, yet she remembered my birthday.
I often did not remember hers.
That tells you something about our relationship.
There was distance, but there was still a connection.
Nomsa lived her own life, and I lived mine.
Sadly, Nomsa is no longer alive.
She is my late sister.
When I look at old memories of her, I still see a younger version of my mother in her. The stubbornness was there. So was a certain carelessness.
There are people in your life whose absence becomes more obvious as you grow older.
Nomsa is one of those people for me.
I still speak about her.
I still think about her.
And when Fikile and I talk about our family, Nomsa is always part of the conversation.
The streets became my classroom
School was never my favourite place.
In fact, I hated school with a passion.
As a young child, I would leave home when I was supposed to be going to class, spend the day wandering around, wait until the schools closed and then stroll back home.
To me, it was an adventure.
Today, I understand it differently.
I was simply a child who had no attachment to a stable routine.
I had learned to survive without structure, so structure became something I resisted.
Working before I understood work
By the age of eight or nine, I was already working.
Around 1999 or 2000, I worked on Fridays and Saturdays selling sheep and goats near the Duduza Police Station.
I remember my employer's name as Henny or Hanny, which is how we pronounced it as young workers.
The stock was kept around the mining dumps and tailings areas near Tsakane Extension 11 and Brakpan.
I earned approximately R10 on a Saturday evening.
That money felt like a fortune.
I would spend some of it watching bioscope movies at the township cinema.
I would give the rest to older relatives, including my cousins Sifiso and Saul, the latter being my uncle.
They always knew payday.
I was working, earning money and wandering around the township before I was old enough to understand what any of it meant.
Taverns, long weekends and a childhood without routine
There were taverns such as eMagardenini, loosely translated as "Curtains", and **KaMafuthu".
I knew these places because my mother took me there more than once.
The adults would drink for long periods, sometimes from Friday through to Monday morning.
That environment became normal to me.
There were no neat boundaries between childhood, adulthood and survival.
Moving from eNkanini
When my mother became seriously ill, Nomsa and I moved to live with my aunt in Zamani.
It was a more formalised part of Duduza.
There was proper sanitation and toilets inside the houses.
In eNkanini, we had used holes in the ground as toilets, effectively makeshift pit latrines.
Moving into a more formal home should have brought stability.
It did not last.
I was still a mischievous child.
I still hated school.
I still disliked being told what to do.
Eventually, my mother died while I was around eight or nine years old.
Her death left us even more exposed.
The child nobody could keep
Living with my aunt was difficult.
I was disciplined heavily and was eventually removed from about five primary schools around Duduza.
I was not simply a child who struggled academically.
I was a child struggling to understand where I belonged.
Eventually, social workers became involved and my sister and I were removed from my aunt's care.
We were sent to a children's home called Chance, in Dunnottar, Nigel.
Later, we were moved to Jabulani Place of Safety in Soshanguve, Pretoria.
I hated being there.
I hated being away from Johannesburg.
I hated the constant movement.
Eventually, the social system moved us into foster care or an adoption arrangement.
We returned to Nigel, this time to Alra Park.
Alra Park and the beginning of separation
Alra Park was a mixed community of coloured and Indian families.
I used to joke that it was almost like a border post between Ekurhuleni and Mpumalanga.
I would tell people Balfour was about three minutes away.
I exaggerated the geography, but the joke made sense to a young boy who knew his area through the places he travelled rather than through maps.
We lived in Alra Park for almost three years.
I attended Happiness Primary School, completed Grade 6 and later went to Alra Park Secondary School.
I was eventually kicked out of the high school while I was in Grade 8.
This was also the period when Nomsa and I became increasingly separated.
I had become a profoundly difficult child.
The woman who had taken responsibility for us eventually decided I needed to be placed in another juvenile or child-care institution.
Norman House and another escape
Around 2004 or 2005, I was sent to Norman House Place of Safety, which I understand is now associated with Don Mattera.
At this point, I felt like I was on my own.
I had no parents.
I did not have a stable family home.
Even distant relatives were largely absent from my daily life.
Part of me wanted to change.
Another part still resisted everything.
Norman House was largely white in its staffing and culture at the time, and Afrikaans was still widely used.
I struggled with Afrikaans.
I already had little interest in education, and this became another barrier.
I fell in with the wrong crowd.
Eventually, we planned an escape.
We succeeded.
A year on the streets of Johannesburg
I ended up living on the streets of Johannesburg, around Doornfontein, close to the university campus.
At the time, I had no idea that I would one day become a university student.
I knew only that I was surviving.
There was an under-bridge area where street children gathered, slept and spent their days.
I still remember that place.
I spent almost a year living on the streets.
I became a hobo.
I begged.
I made money.
I smoked glue, the adhesive used in shoemaking.
And in a strange way, I enjoyed the freedom.
Nobody told me to wash the dishes.
Nobody told me to go to school.
Nobody told me what time to come home.
Nobody told me what I was supposed to become.
But freedom without direction can become another form of imprisonment.
When I did not want to live anymore
As a teenager, I attempted to take my own life twice.
The first attempt happened while I was in Alra Park.
I overdosed on medication belonging to the woman who had adopted or cared for us. I survived and woke up in Heidelberg Hospital, where nurses angrily confronted me about what I had done.
The second attempt happened while I was living on the streets of Johannesburg.
At the time, there was no single event I could point to and say, "This is why I want to die."
My thinking had simply become distorted.
I looked at the life I was living and believed I was heading towards one of two futures.
I would either die a poor person on the streets or become a criminal and spend my life in prison.
I thought death might be the only way to escape what I believed was inevitable.
I survived.
That survival eventually became more meaningful than I could have understood at the time.
Ikhaya Lothando and the meaning of love
In approximately mid-2006, social workers from the City of Johannesburg found me and sent me to Ikhaya Lothando in Tembisa.
The name itself eventually became significant to me.
Ikhaya Lothando means "home of love".
That was the place where I began finding something I had missed throughout much of my childhood.
Love.
Stability.
People who expected something from me.
People who believed I could still become somebody.
I completed Matric while living in Tembisa, Kopanong.
For a boy who had spent years running away from school, completing Matric was a major achievement.
But the most important thing about Ikhaya Lothando was not only education.
It was the people I met.
The characters who changed me
Ikhaya Lothando was full of people with different personalities, histories and ambitions.
Some of those people remain part of my life today.
One of the first was Douglas "Darcky" Phiri.
I call him Jack these days.
Douglas was, in many ways, my mentor.
Before me, he was the first person I knew from Ikhaya Lothando who had completed high school and gone on to university.
I looked up to him.
He inspired me.
He introduced me to Hip Hop music.
He helped me with the basics of Mathematics.
Many of the younger children at Ikhaya Lothando looked up to him.
Douglas was funny, intelligent and naturally charismatic.
There was hardly ever a dull day around him.
He was one of the smartest young men I knew.
Douglas was from Vosloorus, and his brother was Aaron.
He was something of a geek at Ikhaya Lothando.
He loved computers and eventually studied Computer Science, went on to complete his honours and built a career as a Data Manager.
I remain very proud of him.
Then there was William "Wija" Nkosi, from neighbouring Tsakane.
My first impression of Wija was completely different.
When I arrived at Ikhaya Lothando, he looked to me like a hard-core township thug.
He smoked.
He associated with the rougher crowd.
He had the image of somebody who spent time with bad boys in the township and at school.
Yet underneath that image was a very neat, sharp and hopeful young man.
Wija once punched me so hard in one eye that I genuinely thought I was going blind.
I despised him.
Years later, he became one of the genuine friends I consider a brother.
Our conversations are heartfelt, raw and honest.
That is one of the strange things about life.
Some people you dislike in the beginning become some of the people you value most.
Becoming a student
Wija and I eventually attended Ingqayizivele High School in Tembisa.
By this stage, I had changed significantly.
In my middle high school years, I had become something of a geek.
I loved learning.
I loved technology.
I became known as the quiet boy who could help people solve problems with their devices and software.
In Grade 11, I became close friends with Owen Phelelani Dube, known as DJ OW3N P.
Owen later became a DJ.
He introduced me to DJ Thakzin in Ivory Park Extension 3, long before Thakzin became widely known.
At school, I was one of the quietest people around.
But people knew me as the person they could approach when a computer, phone or software problem needed to be solved.
I also developed a genuine love for school.
Life Sciences was one of my favourite subjects.
The irony was not lost on me.
There had once been a time when I hated school so much that I would disappear during school hours.
Now I was enjoying it.
The children from Ikhaya Lothando had already become known as a particular group within the school environment, and I had embraced being part of that community.
Adoption, family and Bab' Mochaki
While I was at Ikhaya Lothando, I was placed up for adoption again.
Nobody ultimately took me in.
One of the men responsible for caring for us there, Bab' Mochaki, became particularly important in my life.
He tried to adopt me.
He sent me to his family home in Moletjie, Limpopo.
For me, it was a major culture shock.
The environment was different.
The language was different.
The water tasted different.
The heat was intense.
People were surprised to meet a young man who spoke isiZulu in an environment where Sepedi dominated.
I enjoyed the experience, but I missed Johannesburg.
Eventually, I returned.
2011: the year everything began to change
In 2011, after completing Matric, I was at a point where I genuinely wondered what would happen next.
It was during this period that I reconnected with Acts of Love, associated with Acts Christian Church.
My relationship with Acts of Love had actually begun earlier, while I was still living at Ikhaya Lothando.
At the time, I was effectively a charity case.
But Acts of Love became far more than charity.
They became a support structure.
They became family.
A member of the Acts family contacted me and asked what I was doing after Matric.
That conversation changed the direction of my life.
Meeting Fikile
2011 was also the year I met Fikile, the older sister I had heard about throughout my childhood.
It was an extraordinary coincidence.
I had lived in Alra Park, yet I had never seen her.
When we finally met, we immediately noticed the resemblance to our mother.
Fikile was eager to learn about Lettie and reconnect with the children from her mother's life.
But neither of us had a full history to give the other.
She did not know who her father was.
She knew almost nothing about Lettie.
I could only share what I knew.
We were both trying to reconstruct a family from fragments.
Today, we still reconnect from time to time.
We speak about our mother.
We speak about Nomsa.
We speak about what happened to our family.
There is something powerful about discovering a sibling after spending most of your life believing your family had already been defined.
The University of Johannesburg
With the support of Acts of Love, I went to the University of Johannesburg to study Journalism and Communication.
The transformation was significant.
The boy who once avoided school was now at university.
I eventually became a Student Assistant and tutor during my final year.
I spent nearly a decade living in various parts of Johannesburg, including Brixton, Auckland Park and Melville.
Johannesburg had once been the city where I slept under a bridge.
Now it was the city where I studied, worked and built a future.
Entering journalism
My first major internship was with The New Age, a newspaper associated with the Gupta-owned media group.
I later worked as a junior technology writer and became involved in editing videos, content and television pieces for ANN7.
This was before Newzroom Afrika appeared on Channel 405.
At that time, the Gupta media empire included ANN7 and The New Age, among other interests.
I was learning how newsrooms worked.
I was writing.
I was editing.
I was producing.
I was learning the discipline of telling stories.
I was also living in Midrand, including around Ebony Park.
The child from eNkanini was now working in the media.
That alone was extraordinary.
14 April 2016
On 14 April 2016, I graduated with my first degree from the University of Johannesburg.
It was one of the most emotional days of my life.
Ironically, I did not even want to attend the graduation ceremony.
Two people from Acts of Love, Vincent Mabaso and Collin Naidoo, encouraged me to go.
They came to witness me graduate.
I eventually put on the gown and attended.
Standing there, I could not help thinking about where I had come from.
The shack.
Duduza.
The streets.
The institutions.
Norman House.
Doornfontein.
Ikhaya Lothando.
Tembisa.
The people who had helped me.
The people who had doubted me.
The people I had lost.
All of it had somehow led to that moment.
My story appearing in the newspapers
Having worked alongside journalists and within the media industry, I eventually found myself on the other side of the story.
At one point, I was notified that an article about me had appeared as a full tabloid page in the Daily Sun, which has since ceased publication.
At the time, Daily Sun was one of the country's most widely read daily newspapers and was sometimes criticised for sensationalist reporting.
Yet, whatever the debates around the publication, seeing myself featured in the paper was a memorable moment.
There I was in my graduation gown, formally being awarded my degree at the University of Johannesburg.
The image represented something far greater than academic achievement.
It represented a life that had changed direction.
The next challenge: an honours degree
In 2017, I completed my Honours in Communication at Wits University.
Very few people know how difficult that achievement was for me.
By then, life had become more complicated.
I was freelancing.
I needed enough work and enough gigs to cover university fees, rent and basic living expenses.
Johannesburg had become the concrete jungle I was trying desperately to survive in.
Financially, I was reaching rock bottom.
I was carrying student debt.
I struggled to cover everyday expenses.
I withdrew from public life.
At the time, I described what I was experiencing as depression and mental illness, although I had not received a formal clinical diagnosis.
I was exhausted.
I was financially overwhelmed.
I was trying to maintain a professional life while also trying to stay afloat.
Completing that honours degree was therefore not simply another academic qualification.
It was another battle I had managed to survive.
Leaving media and entering government
In 2018, I shifted away from the media environment and entered government communication.
I joined communication structures within the Gauteng Department of Social Development and the Gauteng Department of Roads and Transport, where I spent approximately three years working as a Communication Liaison Officer.
This chapter became deeply personal.
Social Development was not simply another government department to me.
It was connected to the system that had once raised me when I had nowhere else to go.
I had once been a child moving between children's homes and places of safety.
Now I was working within a government environment connected to the very support structures that had shaped my childhood.
That was not lost on me.
From a child in the system to a voice within the system
While working in Social Development, I developed a particularly meaningful relationship with the department.
I was embraced by the MEC at the time and invited to participate in youth-related events.
I was invited to motivate young people.
I spoke about my experience.
I shared my story.
I encouraged young people not to allow their circumstances to define them.
At one point, I was even featured in one of the government's official Gauteng government gazettes.
The same system that had once encountered me as a troubled child was now presenting me as someone who had grown through its support structures.
That was one of the most powerful contradictions of my life.
I had once been a child the system was trying to place somewhere safe.
Now I was standing inside that system, speaking to young people about hope.
The road from Duduza
When I think about my childhood today, I do not try to make it prettier than it was.
I was not a perfect child.
I was rebellious.
I was disruptive.
I was kicked out of schools.
I ran away.
I made dangerous choices.
I lived on the streets.
I used substances.
I hurt people.
I hurt myself.
There were times when I did not want to live.
Yet there were also people who refused to believe I was a lost cause.
Social workers kept looking for somewhere to place me.
Caregivers gave me another opportunity.
Friends taught me.
Mentors inspired me.
Acts of Love supported me.
People such as Douglas, Wija, Owen, Bab' Mochaki, Vincent, Collin and many others became part of a much larger journey.
Some stayed for a chapter.
Some stayed much longer.
Some remain my friends today.
Nokuthula told the first chapter
Nokuthula Sonile's original article gave the public a glimpse of my journey.
She told readers about a young man who had overcome adversity, graduated in journalism and was preparing to build a career.
She deserves credit for putting that story on paper.
But stories evolve.
As I grew older, I gained a better understanding of my childhood.
I remembered more.
I learned more.
I met people I never knew existed.
I lost people.
I achieved more.
I struggled again.
I changed careers.
I entered government.
I continued searching for answers about my family.
The inspirational headline makes sense when you look at the ending.
It makes even more sense when you understand the beginning.
My story is not about luck
People sometimes describe my journey as inspirational.
I understand why.
But I do not believe I simply got lucky.
There were systems that helped me.
There were people who believed in me.
There were people who gave me opportunities.
There were also moments when I had to choose whether to accept those opportunities.
That distinction matters.
I could have remained on the streets.
I could have remained angry.
I could have continued running.
I could have rejected education permanently.
There were periods when I nearly did exactly that.
Instead, one day became another.
One person became another.
One opportunity followed another.
Eventually, the direction of my life changed.
From eNkanini to the university
My education did not begin at university.
It began in the streets.
It began in the children's homes.
It began in conversations with social workers.
It began while selling sheep and goats.
It began under bridges.
It began when Douglas explained Mathematics.
It began when someone showed me computers.
It began when I discovered Hip Hop.
It began when I learned to fix somebody's phone or computer.
It began when I realised I actually enjoyed Life Sciences.
Every experience became part of the education I eventually received in a classroom.
Perhaps that is why journalism suited me.
Before I became a journalist, I spent years watching people.
I understood what it felt like to be ignored.
I understood what it felt like for adults to make decisions about your life without giving you an explanation.
I understood what it meant to have a story but no platform to tell it.
Journalism gave me that platform.
It allowed me to ask questions.
It allowed me to listen.
It allowed me to tell stories.
Most importantly, it allowed me to understand people.
From a child without direction to a man with a voice
My story is ultimately not about escaping poverty.
It is not simply about getting a degree.
It is not about appearing in newspapers.
It is not about government employment.
It is not even about journalism.
Those are milestones.
The deeper story is about identity.
For years, I was defined by what had happened to me.
I was the abandoned child.
The troublesome child.
The child who hated school.
The boy from the children's home.
The street kid.
The delinquent.
The orphan.
The difficult teenager.
Eventually, I had to decide who Jabu would be after all those descriptions.
I chose to become a student.
Then a journalist.
Then a communicator.
Then a mentor to others.
And, eventually, simply a man trying to make sense of everything he had survived.
The story continues
I started in eNkanini, Duduza.
I travelled through Zamani, Alra Park, Dunnottar, Soshanguve, Tembisa, Doornfontein, Johannesburg, Moletjie, Midrand and many other places.
I moved through homes, institutions, schools, universities, newsrooms and government departments.
Some places gave me pain.
Others gave me education.
Some gave me friends.
Some gave me family.
Some gave me memories I would rather forget.
Others gave me memories I will carry forever.
The little boy who once wandered the streets of Duduza could never have imagined the life ahead of him.
He could not have imagined university.
He could not have imagined journalism.
He could not have imagined graduating.
He could not have imagined appearing in newspapers.
He could not have imagined completing an honours degree at Wits.
He could not have imagined standing in front of young people and telling them not to give up.
Yet all of that happened.
And perhaps that is the lesson I have carried through every chapter.
Your beginning is important, but it does not have to become your ending.
Sometimes you are born into circumstances you did not choose.
Sometimes adults fail you.
Sometimes institutions fail you.
Sometimes you fail yourself.
But there can still be another chapter.
There can still be another person who reaches out.
There can still be another opportunity.
There can still be another morning.
And sometimes, after everything you have been through, you discover that the life you were convinced would never exist was waiting for you further down the road.
That is my story.
Not a perfect story.
Not a simple story.
But mine.
I am Jabu Makhoba.
This is where I came from.
This is what I survived.
And this is only part of where I am going.
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