Celeb knits for Madiba

Born and raised in Orlando, Soweto, Timothy Moloi grew up in a home filled with song. It is this love for music and his flair for infusing familiar and beloved standards with a new freshness, that has made him a favourite with audiences throughout South Africa. With his smooth as velvet voice and masterful range, Moloi is one of South Africa’s most extraordinary talents.

The singer is now an ambassador for 67 Blankets for Nelson Mandela Day, a project that began when the movement’s founder, Carolyn Steyn, was challenged by friend Zelda le Grange to knit 67 blankets in remembering Madiba.

She took to social media to ask for help from her friends and was overwhelmed by the number of people who wanted to contribute to honouring the late statesman.

Moloi has since knitted four beautiful blankets for the cause and continues to contribute to the ‘good-wool’ initiative. Teaching his family and celebrity friends alike, including Somizi Mhlongo and The Sharks rugby team, how to make warm, woolly squares to help keep the less fortunate warm.

“When Carolyn Steyn started the initiative more than a year ago, she made an appeal to friends to help her. I had never knitted or crocheted before, but I was so enthused by her idea to help keep those less fortunate warm in the cold winter months that I was determined to learn,” he said.

He added that he is honoured to be an ambassador for the campaign and said he used the internet to learn how to knit, “It seems you can learn to do almost anything on YouTube nowadays, so I went online and searched for a crochet lesson.”

Moloi is now enlisting other local celebrities to join him in the challenge of knitting for charity, “I have helped them learn to crochet and have included the Sharks rugby team, members of a gospel choir my sister belongs to, as well as prisoners in Zonderwater Maximum Security Prison.”

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