Hillcrest High retired teacher is a legend

HILLCREST High School teacher, Mathenjwase Mbanjwa who is retiring, went beyond her duty to educate and inspire youth to live up to their full potential.

Apart from teaching, she was also in charge of the school’s gospel choir, a task she dearly loved.

“The most rewarding part of my job as a teacher has been to see a child who you have taught, mentored and nurtured in so many ways, growing up and maturing,” she said.

Another exercise she also found rewarding was when she asked her Grade 12 learners to write essays about their names.

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“In our Zulu culture, when you name a child, it is because you are conveying a message through that name and you are also conveying your wishes through the name you give them. Towards the end of the year before their final Grade 12 exams, we spent some time talking about each child’s name and I gave them a task of writing an essay about their name, asking questions like, ‘Who gave you that name and why?’, ‘What does your name say to you every day?'” she said.

She said they were the most touching essays she has ever read. She started at Hillcrest High in 1997, at a time she says the country was facing many challenges.

“One of the challenges I would say was the understanding the meaning of democracy by the parents. Other challenges included black culture being exposed to this new lifestyle that they had previously not been exposed to. And now, there are even more changes with this ‘modern technological world’ we are moving towards.

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Mbanjwa studied teaching when she was already married with kids. “I would cook food for the whole week on the weekend. Probably the fact I was married to a man who was not hands-on helped me to be independent. Even when he died, I had to stand independent and had to build my own house,” she said.

“I loved teaching Grades 8 to 12, especially hearing their stories. I always tell my children that after school, they will get to a comparatively “cold” institution if they go to university, or another place of tertiary study,” added Mrs Mbanjwa.

Hillcrest High’s principal, Craig Girvin said, “In her 20 years at Hillcrest High, Mrs Mbanjwa made an enormously positive contribution. Passionate about her language (isiZulu) and her subject (isiZulu First Additional Language FAL) she campaigned tirelessly to have isiZulu FAL recognised as a subject in its own right, different to isiZulu home language.”

According to Girvin, for a number of years, there was no subject adviser for FAL and the subject was treated in much the same way as a home language.

Mbanjwa also pioneered a course for non-mother tongue speakers of isiZulu and, prior to the language policy being changed by the DBE, a number of these learners selected isiZulu as their FAL (rather than Afrikaans). Although learners had to learn the language only at high school, all went on to pass it at Matric level. Mbanjwa was a positive role model for all in the school.

“It is so hard to say goodbye to such an amazing woman and one phrase kept standing out from those who knew and loved her at Hillcrest High ‘She is a legend’,” said Girwin.

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