WHAT’S YOUR STORY
Making room at the table
NWABISA MAYEMA
Honestly, I have no business being here, and that pretty much sums up the golden thread that has woven itself through my experiences – being in places I have no business being in and doing things I have no business doing.
I was born in Mdantsane to a single mum, a nurse. (Can we take a moment for all of the nurses? Total badasses!) I’m an only child who was so shy that I didn’t start talking for so long that my mother worried I might be deaf. Fast forward to age five when my mother snuck me into what we called a multiracial preschool. She told them that I was fluent in English but all she’d really done was to give me a crash course in between shifts while I stared lovingly into her eyes and told her she was the cleverest person I’d ever met.
Needless to say, I had no business being at Pooh’s Corner but kept quiet and tried to learn. I was lucky in that my teacher, Zan, was busy doing her Master’s research on Montessori education and chose me as a case study. I still have the weekly journal she wrote at that time. Three months after arriving at Pooh’s Corner, I saw Jackie, one of the children, being mean to the smallest boy in the class and, boy, did I find my English! Zan said it was a showdown whereafter I basically took over leadership of the class and ended up being invited to Jackie’s birthday party later that year. I had no business being there!
In my standard 5 year, an exchange student from Canada came to our school and I decided that I would become an exchange student after matric. When I told my mum, all she said was, “Okay.” We had no idea how we’d afford it, but that was a small problem. By then I was attending a fiercely traditional all-girls high school, so imagine when I was elected the first black headgirl in the school’s history. Oh, that badge on my blazer! I had no business being headgirl since my mum wasn’t on the PTA, my raffle sheets were never complete and I most certainly didn’t bring home-baked cake on my birthday. But I was good at it!
Come the middle of matric, my mum and I were in a car accident. It was sort of serious but we were okay. I was also selected to be an exchange student in Belgium for a year and guess what? We had money thanks to the Road Accident Fund. So off I went to Europe.
As I walked through palaces in France, forests in Germany and markets in the Czech Republic, I knew that I had no business being there. To justify my being there, I decided I’d become the student who had learned to speak French better than any of the other students by the time I went home. Twenty years later I still swear in French like a Belgian.
After returning to South Africa, I went straight to university. I really enjoyed the social scene and definitely felt that I had no business being in the lecture halls. So much of the information was always qualified with an “all things being equal”. (Huh? In what world?) As a result, I messed around a bit, passed with the bare minimum of marks and graduated.
Working for an employer wasn’t for me and I started a business. My first client was one of the world’s largest mining houses and I had absolutely no business writing out my plans on Word Art and arranging status meetings during lunchtime so my client could buy me lunch. The business grew into a machine and I felt good – and that I had no business being successful. Because of this I allowed my business partner to treat me how I thought I deserved to be treated: badly. The harder I worked, the more he broke me down. From the moment I understood what was happening until I left took me three years. For ten and a half years my identity was wrapped up in the business and then I had none.
Five years ago, I decided that I had every business being in any and every room. Yes, life was always going to have twists and surprises, but my relationships would always be the constant in my life. I undertook to become the most networked woman in South Africa. I undertook to go global, to be liberated and to live in abundance.
Between starting my first business and today, I had another business and some big adventures in many countries. Today, I work for possibly the most iconic living entrepreneur in the world. I wobble continually at the thought that I have no business being where I am but then I remind myself that I now am the person I wish I’d met 15 years ago.
From journo to actor
GAVIN WILDSCHUTT-PRINS
Born to Petro Prins (my mum was a proper drama queen, wanted to become an actress) and Japie Prins (he writes the most beautiful poems, never published), I was always taking chances and trying new things. I was born in Riversdale while my mum visited her parents and my dad worked at a snoek factory in Philippi, Cape Town.
During apartheid, fathers were never given paternal leave (or at least my dad wasn’t) and
