SHREDS of fabric lay strewn across his workshop in Mzingazi Village.
A sewing machine whirrs over the blaring radio.
Thulani Zungu moved here in June last year after the rent at his Richards Bay store became too expensive to sustain and left him in debt.
Born in 1972, he was raised in KwaVuma, herding cattle part-time while dropping in and out of school until 1994.
‘I don’t blame my parents,’ said Zungu, whose father worked on a sugarcane plantation.
‘They wanted me to go to school, but they just couldn’t afford it. I dropped out because I didn’t see what I was doing there.
‘I needed to earn. I was the eldest son and my parents had stopped working.’
He became a handyman for a while, earning R350 a fortnight.
It all changed during a lunch break when, by chance, he approached an upholstery business and was hired on the spot.
The business was sold years later and he lost the job, only to be recalled nine months later when it was realised he was invaluable.
His dedication to the craft gave him a reputation for quality work, and as time went by he began working weekends to keep up with the demand.
Overwhelmed, he approached the company for an increase, but was denied.
Going solo
In 2003 he resigned, taking a leap of faith by starting his own business from home.
‘It was just me and my wife at first. I’d do the work and my wife handed out pamphlets around town. I thought it would fail.’
But his reputation followed him and within three months he rented a small store in Richards Bay.
My friends always remind me of those days,’ he said, laughing in hindsight.
‘Remember that Magogo’s (old lady’s) sewing machine?’ they ask.
‘I had to operate those manually for years, it’s unbelievable.’
Zungu might have returned to his humble beginnings by working out of a small space he rents at the Nazidi Centre for the Disabled in Mzingazi Village, but his business remains stable.
He employs three others, and has added aluminium and glass work to his list of services.
‘People are sitting around with no work here. I feel sorry for them. Some come to me just wanting a skill and willing to work for free, others drink their money away.
‘I teach everything I know to the few I can hire, I want them to be able to start their own businesses,’ he says over the click-clack of his staple gun, deftly refurbishing a second-hand couch for a community member at no cost.
‘I was lucky, I had the opportunity and made something of it. But I see now, looking at my life, that my biggest shortfall was not going to study.
‘I would have become an engineer given the chance,’ he says.
‘I want my son to study, I don’t want him to suffer like his dad. It’s not a good feeling to know that no one in your family has an education, it’s disappointing.’
