Soweto Mandlanzi is an author and a creator, he grew
up in a place called Coronation which is about 40 to 50 km north of KZN. This
is where he grew up and realised that he wanted to be a writer and people
always laugh at him when he tells them how he started writing. It was when he
was doing Grade 7, when he started writing according to his story.
There was this
guy who broke up with his girlfriend who came to him and said; “look bro I know
you can help me with this, I want you to write a love letter and it must sound
like it was written by me”, that is when he realised his (talent/ skill) power of
being able to get into someone’s emotions and express them in writing, while portraying
himself as them.
He wrote the letter, then unfortunately the mother of
the girl got the letter from the girl’s school bag and asked her where she got
the letter. “where did you get so much English, so much power in terms of
emotions”, so after the guy confessed that the letter was written by Soweto,
people started coming to him to write them home works and essays.
Soweto comes from a disadvantaged family background,
his mom was a kitchen lady, unfortunately his father passed on when he was 3
years old. Soweto shared that he survived by small lunch boxes and getting
payed for small jobs he did. He believed that his gift was there at a very
young age but he didn’t realise it. He went to a public school and also to the
Durban university of Technology to do his Btech Degree, but after that he
realised that he wanted to write and started his own publishing company.
Soweto wrote 7 books, he started by writing a book
called Just “Teething For a Thing” which deals on how people can conquer pain and
any type of pain, whether mental or psychological. Another one is “Life is a Trip”
which is based on the journey of life, “Running my race”, “Dear Jacob”, “Cash flow
naked”, “Senzo Meyiwa”, and he will be publishing Ria Ledwaba.
According to Soweto in these critical conditions of
covid-19 he thinks that one of the greatest things that he learnt growing up
was that the picture of being adaptive sometimes you just have to adapt to new
changes his mentor once told him that “the are many things that don’t change
but one thing is constantly changing and changing itself” so he advise people
to learn how to do things in a new way the way things are happening as life
presents, also he believe that Covid-19 is not only the problem it is also the
part of the solution for who really find it hard from working home.
Soweto admits the difficulties of covid-19 because a
lot of people don’t find it easy in such situations and also he thinks the
mental position or the psychological perspective truly matters and he’s been
preaching one sentence that says “your biggest reality is your perspective”
which is your narrative or what you think so the reality of the outside world
is the second one so how you think and how you see the world determine how you
handle them.
Present/Producer: Mkuseli "Khusi" Veto
Written by: Gcobani Ralo
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