Growing up in abject poverty instilled humility, a giving heart, and never wanting to see anyone go through the difficulty he experienced with his two siblings while growing up in Nomcamba Village in Ngqeleni, some 30km from Mthatha.
Though Bulelani Mancotywa has been in business for around nine years, he has started projects that have had an indelible impact on the people he has crossed paths with.
He developed a passion for photography, and in 2016 founded Khiwa’s Media which he used as a vehicle to start handing out food parcels, school shoes, and helping others start their own businesses.
Just two years into business, Mancotywa went back to his village and started handing food parcels to impoverished families. In six years, he has covered 90 families, he said. He also has a project where he hands out school shoes to children from poor backgrounds.
“I have bought sweets, chips, and biscuits among other things for eight learners from my former high school to start their businesses to have money on the side,” he said.
What could have driven Mancotywa to be so free-handed? He grew up in abject poverty, raised by his grandmother along with his siblings, while their mother worked in Magwa where they would sometimes go for months without salaries, he said. Now a qualified teacher, he said he owned his first pair of shoes while doing Grade 4.
“I used the shoes to go everywhere, including school, church, and town, and I had to take good care of them. If they really lasted long, it would be about six months, and I would go back to being barefoot.”
He has also contributed in trying to minimise crime, by starting Khiwa Media’s Annual Tournament, where local teams compete in netball and soccer. The poverty in which he grew up did not harden his heart, but he contends it was one of the worst childhoods.
“At around age 10 we would walk 10 to 15km to ask for food from relatives. There would be 10 of us sleeping in one grass rondavel. When it rained, we had to find a dry place around the rondavel. In the nights we could see the moon through the roof, and winters were the worst,” he said.
Mancotywa said he was one of the top learners in his day and had no problems academically.
“But I could not cope socially. Other children at school treated me according to my poor background. I was highly undermined, and I felt abused by my peers. The school pants I wore had holes on my buttocks, and I would have a jersey around my waist to hide the holes. The pants I wore to school are the ones I also wore at home,” he said.
He said while in Mqikela Senior Secondary School in Lusikisiki, he had to rent, and this is where he experienced going to bed without food.
“I would go for up to three days without food, literally nothing at all. I would be lucky in summer because I would eat chain guavas during break and after school, knowing it was my supper. My friends thought I loved chain guavas, and I let them be.
“I was a person who did not want to share my plight with other people. I feared being laughed at because I had an experience of being laughed at. I was unable to ask for help; I would rather suffer and survive the way I could. The way I grew up really traumatised me, but life went on,” Mancotywa said.
It took his elder brother’s passing matric for Mancotywa’s life to take a turn for the better. Like all the eldest children in black impoverished families, his brother could not further his studies after Grade 12. He said his brother found a job at a construction company and started supporting him even when he enrolled at tertiary.
“When you have grown up in a difficult situation as I did, you start to think you might not be alone. I don’t have a lot of money but thought the little I could give to someone else would make a difference. Even if it wouldn’t have an immeasurable impact, at least it would make a difference,” he said.
