The Joburg Engineer Who Sponsors Twelve Bulawayo Pupils a Year

He does not want to be named. The condition was non-negotiable. “If my name appears, I stop,” he said over a video call from Sandton. “This is not about me.”

For nine years, a Bulawayo-born engineer working at a Johannesburg consulting firm has fully sponsored twelve secondary school pupils a year at three Bulawayo schools — Eveline, Townsend Boys’ and Hamilton High.

He chooses bright pupils whose families cannot afford fees and pays everything: tuition, uniforms, books, examination fees. When the pupils graduate, he replaces them with twelve new ones. To date, 108 children have gone through the programme. Twenty-three are now at university.

“I had one teacher in 1991 who paid my exam entry fee from his own pocket. I have spent thirty years trying to honour that,” he said. “It is the only debt I have ever wanted to repay.”