#NotInMyNameInternational’s Siyabulela Jentile knew he was destined to do something for others

South African human rights activist and #NotInMyNameInternational president Siyabulela Jentile has described his family as the wings beneath his wings and the ones who play a crucial role in the work that he does.

#NotInMyNameInternational is a movement whose scope of work is centered on gender equality advocacy, social relief of the distressed as well as education and development. Jentile is married and has two daughters. He says his wife and two daughters shape the kind of work he is doing.

“Being home most of the time saves me from a lot of danger. The family life grounds me and it reminds me that I am living for something that is bigger than me and that it is what drives me,” he says.

He says there was nothing special about him growing up, but a part of him always knew he was destined to be someone who does something for others. He was born in a small township in Klerksdorp called Matlosana, but his family is originally from the Eastern Cape.

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“My family moved there because my father used to work in the mines,” says Jentile. “It was seven of us. My mother was a tailor. My father kept losing his job because of alcohol abuse and we lost a house we were staying in when I was in Grade 5.

“My mother had to make a plan for us to move to an informal settlement until the government allocated us a stand. I do not like saying I grew up very poor. The truth of the matter is we were poor, but it was not something unique to our family.”

Jentile is a certified Obama Foundation leader and has been part of the Mandela Washington Fellowship Young African Leaders. He left his civil engineering career to pursue what he believes is his life calling – civic leadership and human rights activism.

Jentile says activism will always call you into spaces you cannot refuse, and described activism as a call to die because one dies in service of others.

“I do not believe that God wanted us to enter and exit this life doing what society tells us to do,” Jentile says.

He adds the birth of the organisation was the brutal killing of Karabo Mokoena who was murdered by her boyfriend Sandile Mantsoe in 2018.

“People on social media said we needed to march against this. I called a friend and asked him if he could do a poster, and before I knew it, that thing was all over the place. People started calling so the march had to happen,” he says.

“After the march, a journalist asked me that now that we have marched, what’s next? That is what led me to start an organisation of this nature. We needed to sustain this organisation and the question was what do we do next.”

Jentile says when they started the organisation; it aimed to only focus on men and to deal with gender-based violence (GBV). However, they received a lot of backlash.

“We then decided for women to also participate and even then, there was another backlash. The foundation of then #NotInMyName was to deal with GBV and for men to take collective responsibility against the scourge of GBV,” he says.

“As we were doing that work, we realised that there are other socio-economic issues which are linked to this GBV thing and that is where we started to develop various programmes.”

Jentile says despite the work the organisation does, they still face common challenges which are faced by other organisations.

“Chief among them is resources. We do not do it for money but we need money to do it,” he says. “We have to pay rent. We have support staff that must be paid, and they cannot volunteer forever. The one thing that binds us is the love and commitment which is the most important thing that makes us forget the kind of challenges we face.”

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He says he would like his children to inherit a country where they will not be marginalised based on their gender or race.

“I asked myself what type of a country they are going to grow up in, a country that does not respect its women and children. We are the most unequal country in the world,” he says.

“I want them to live in a country where democracy and rule of law are upheld by all. A country that provides them with equal opportunities and a gender-based violence-free country.”

– lungam@citizen.co.za