From Blouberg to Cape Town
As head of the public heritage education department at the Robben Island Museum, this former teacher literally walks in the footsteps of Nelson Mandela and other struggle heroes every day.
LIMPOPO born Tlou Setumu has come a long way since his childhood days in Makhabeng village near Blouberg.
As head of the public heritage education department at the Robben Island Museum, this former teacher literally walks in the footsteps of Nelson Mandela and other struggle heroes every day.
Setumu has published 16 books, most research works on the history, heritage and culture of South Africa. He says his main literary influence is revered and accomplished South African writer, Oliver Kgadime Matsepe.
He explains that every book that he writes is important to him and he only writes about topics close to his heart.
“My first book was called Noko. It was a Northern Sotho drama and was published in 1996. Noko is the Northern Sotho name for porcupine and my family’s totem. The main character of the play, Noko, is an ambitious, brilliant young man who is hungry for success, despite his poor background. He struggles against all the odds to become a successful, educated man.”
Setumu says history has always been his first love and his first degree was a BA in history that he obtained at the University of Limpopo in 1993 that he followed up with a higher education teaching diploma.
He explains that, while he worked as a teacher, he continued to study until he finished his master’s degree in history at the University of Pretoria in 1999.
“While I worked on my master’s degree, I also worked part time at the Van Tilburg Collection in Pretoria and served as assistant tutor at the university while I was a teacher too,” he says.
Setumu says he started working at the South African Heritage Resources Agency (Sahra) in Limpopo in 2001 as a project manager and researcher.
“I enrolled at the University of Johannesburg in 2002 to complete my PhD. I finished my PhD in 2010 after a long struggle, because this project was especially dear to my heart.”
He says he is most proud of his book, His Story is History, that won the Hiddingh-Currie Award for Academic Excellence. The Hiddingh-Currie Award is gi-ven out annually to authors of published works within Unisa Press. The aim of the prize is to encourage and nourish specialised skills in academic research and scholarly publishing.
“This book is my autobiography. It is about my own struggle to achieve success despite my needy background. I wrote this story to show that young people can have better lives if they put their education first,” he says.
