Crime has touched his life intimately on more than one occasion but CPUT student Zamile Maqwathini is determined to rise above it all and succeed.
Last month his best friend and renowned puppet maker, Ncedile Daki, was cruelly gunned down in a hijacking. Ncedile achieved world-wide acclaim for making the puppets used in the stage production War Horse and Zamile is still grieving the loss of his talented friend.
In 2015 while sleeping alone in his Masipumelele home, Zamile nearly lost his life when a burglary took place.
“They obviously came thinking that no one was home because there was often no one home. At the time I was a boxer so I was very fit,” says the 32-year old Travel and Tourism graduate.
Zamile says four of the attackers ran away when he fought them off but one had a chilling message for him as they tussled outside on the street.
The attacker plunged a dagger into his left eye and fled the scene as Zamile collapsed in a pool of blood. He became blind in that eye and had to navigate life with a new disability.
“One of my lecturers referred me to Student Counselling, and initially I didn’t want to go because these types of things are not part of my culture,” he says.
“Today I can say that those sessions saved my life because it helped me come to terms with what happened to me and to move on.”
Another productive change was connecting with CPUT’s Disability Unit where they assisted with most of his study needs.
“Through all of that my wound was still painful and I had to have many frustrating hospital visits but I will always be grateful for the help of those two units,” he says.
Despite this major setback, Zamile has recently graduated with two distinctions, and says he hopes his story will inspire others to overcome life’s challenges.
“Today I can say I am definitely a different person. This could have killed me but it actually made me a better person,” he says.
