South African award-winning musician Zonke Dikana has asked girls in the country to be patient and push beyond social barriers to achieve their life dreams.<\/p>\n
Addressing girls from schools in Dedza during a breakfast organised by Standard Bank on Saturday, Zonke, said being born to a poor family in Kwazakhele slum of South Africa\u2019s Eastern Cape Province did not deter her from becoming a top musician.<\/p>\n
She used her personal family story to illustrate how resilience, patience, hard work and education blended with music talent have helped her become a top-selling musician.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn life, everything is possible,\u201d she said, narrating the hardships she endured while growing up when she had to walk long distances to find school.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was born in a family of five children and it was not easy to get all the support and attention. Initially I disliked going to school because I had only a pair of shoes, while my friends had nice things-from shoes, school bags to watching television at home, while we did not have,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Zonke also used her Blue Mingoli performance on Saturday night at Bingu International Conference Centre in Lilongwe to remind the audience that she knew poverty as she was born in a poor family.<\/p>\n
She then saluted her father Vuyisile \u201cViva\u201d, a drummer and former South African President, Nelson Mandela.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy father defied all odds and went on to work as a drummer with Simply Red,\u201d she said, of her father\u2019s determination.<\/p>\n
One of the girls, Elise Khobwe from Nthulu Primary School said her interaction with Zonke and other Standard Bank ladies had helped her gain confidence in her resolve to become a journalist.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am now more determined than I ever thought I would be. I did not expect to eat breakfast in a hotel and to be surrounded by Zonke and all these bright women from the bank,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Standard Bank invited Zonke to give a career talk to the girls as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility project Keeping the Girl Child in School <\/em>which is being run in partnership with Unicef in Dedza, Mangochi and Salima.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" South African award-winning musician Zonke Dikana has asked girls in the country to be patient and push beyond social barriers to achieve their life dreams. Addressing girls from schools in Dedza during a breakfast organised by Standard Bank on Saturday, Zonke, said being born to a poor family in Kwazakhele slum of South Africa\u2019s Eastern […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":35161,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35157"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35162,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35157\/revisions\/35162"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}