Broadcast excerpt·SAT, 24 OCT 2026 · 19:55:26–19:57:49 SAST
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Us to the 12-year-old Busitembekwayo coming to the end of primary school. Are we seeing any kind of indication of what you would go on to do as a young adult and then you know what you're doing now? Probably a glimmer actually, because I went to primary school in Egukanyeni in Wattville in Benoni, and then I moved to Benoni West. And while I was there, I came upon poetry and our Stetfords. So at grade 12, when I was 12 years old,
I got to compete at the Alstedford in Benoni against the other schools, and I won. So that might say a bit about the fact that I'd get on stage and end up speaking to people. Can you remember? Did you read a poem or whatever? Because I did Stedford's as well. And I can remember my first poem I competed saying, which was called The Little Piggywig. I hope you had something a little bit more interesting than The Little Piggywig. What did you do?
Mine was an Afrikaans poem. That was so I had to go up and I recited this Afrikaans poem. Yeah, okay. So you're in school. There's an opportunity to step up and I'll call it perform because that is part of what you're doing. Are there other things happening? I mean, for example, are you becoming interested in money and how money is made? Are there?
Entrepreneurs in your world who you kind of hanging on to their every word? Sure, John, you asked great questions. So, around that time, my dad had started a business some years before that. The business went barely up. Yeah. And this was around that time my dad was rebuilding himself. One of the things my dad would do because he was in sales is he would travel to Limpopo and on his way back, he would come back with these like massive vegetables and fruits and stuff. Because in the townships, the quality and grade of vegetables and fruits we would get is very different. For instance, if you get them in.
Place like Toy and Doe. So my dad started buying them and he opened a small little store and then he would sell them from there. And so I would be there helping dad with this around that time. But of course, my father was then murdered a year later at 13. So those events kind of shaped my life, as it were. Yeah. Okay. So you're having to grow up very fast. What's happening in your family circumstances? Are you stepping into roles that you've obviously observed your dad playing and you saying, okay, I'm
Barely into my teens, but you know, I can help here. Definitely. I mean, it matured me beyond my age, and it also matured me very, very quickly, very quickly. As I'm older, I'm sometimes sad about the fact that I didn't get to be a child as long as I should have been. But yeah, definitely had to step up. And, you know, you've got to step up, you've got to be the man. Almost always the oldest boy in the family, so that comes with its own fair share of responsibilities. And it also changed the financial picture in our family.
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