Gift Pule has attracted the attention of an organization that is taking Mandela’s belief in the importance of leadership and education into the future.

Gift Pule said,“As a young boy I always wanted to understand things at the smallest level possible. I’d always get frustrated in class when for instance a teacher would go through a concept half way through because I would not get the gist of it. I always wanted to get the whole picture, however, build it up with the smallest blocks possible and I always felt genetics allowed... I mean it is basically the blueprint of all life.”

Shaun Johnson, CEO, Mandela Rhodes Foundation, said,“One thing Mr Mandela was very, very clear on when he asked us to set up this foundation is that he said he wanted it to be based on talent only. He said he wanted one of his organizations – and we are only one of them – to celebrate African excellence. And that’s a wonderful brief – it makes my job, I can’t think of a better job than having the resources to go out there and find the best and the brightest and give them this amazing opportunity that allows them to go from being good at what they do to potentially great”

Shaun Johnson, a former journalist and newspaper editor, is the organisations’s CEO.

The time he spent with Mandela as a journalist gave him insight into the man.

Shaun Johnson said,“That is.. I was born in the Transkei and Madiba always made a joke about that but this time it was a bit more serious as he wanted to spend his last day in office in the Transkei and he asked me to accompany him on the presidential jet”

“Remember he opened negotiations with the Apartheid government from prison without the consent of his colleagues … that was not necessarily going to be accepted… so he took the risk – that is leadership, that is real leadership, he analysed the situation in this country and he decided that either reconciliation was going to be offered to those in power – he was going to charm them out of power – or we would simply continue where we were and in the end inevitably the majority would win but they would inherit a smouldering wreck of country. That’s what he decided.”

That sort of leadership is what the foundation hopes to encourage, and nurture in African scholars.

Theresa Laaka-Daniels, Scholarships Manager, Mandela Rhodes Foundation, said, “This was the first cohort and you can see when we started we had approximately 8 students in the first year”

Theresa Laaka-Daniels helps identify up to 30 recipients every year.

Theresa Laaka-Daniels said,“These are amazing scholars, I actually become emotional talking about them. Because all of them have such amazing capacities and capabilities and abilities and what I hope them to become productive icons if there is any such word on the continent where they can contribute in such a way that the future of this continent ends up being better than what it currently is.”

Gift Pule said,“From some of the stories that my grandmother would tell us about what had happened because she is very old, my dad has always been I would say a very silent individual about those sorts of things in order to protect his children…. Yes I was born AFTER Mandela came out of prison, however Apartheid did not end in 1994 after the election of our first democratic president. It’s still here a bit but you learn to get over and grow a thick skin if you may, at an early age and that allows you to take things in your stride and take as much as you can from a situation that you can’t really can’t change but you can learn from.”