There are very few black people I know who are in the business of growing food and selling it on the open market. I have had the privilege of being close to one of them as a brother.
This rising star in the area of supplying South Africans with fresh vegetables, which he grows in his family fields and sells through formal markets, is none other than my former government communications colleague Thami Mkhulisa.
Mkhulisa is one of the many young people whose lives I have been privileged to touch as a government communications employee in a supervisory position responsible for new recruits in the government media and branding services. When he walked through my office door for the first time as a somewhat timid young man looking for a job as a photojournalist at the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Transport head office almost 20 years ago, little did I know that in front of me stood someone who would soon become a role model.
