Name: Unathi
Nickname: Uno
Last name: Nkumbi
Age: 22
DOB: 18th June 1991
Studies at: University of Fort Hare Alice campus
Studying: B of Applied communications management
Likes: Fashion
Hates: Liars
Text and picture by Matthew Alexander
Unathi Nkumbi was born in East London in 1991. She
is a beautiful young woman who experienced both the life of privilege and of the
previously disadvantaged.
She lived a good life on either side of the economic
barrier. Her father a prosecutor and her mother a nurse both provided as best
as they could for Unathi. Although her parents never married they both cared
for her and the other children.
Her father’s wealth could provide for her and give
her all that she needed which is not to say that her mother did not do the same.
Her mother too provided for her as best as she could by traveling to Peter
Maritzburg and Durban to work so that she could provide for her family.
Unathi refers
to herself as a “brat by nature” because of the transition she faced from being
wealthy one week when staying with her father to being less well off when
staying with her mother.
Unathi’s father tragically committed suicide on 1
September 2003 when she was 13, the family to fend for themselves until she
turned 18.
“It feels as if he’s still here,” Unathi said. Even when
she finally received the money her father left her when he passed on meaning
that she was being provided for again, Unathi still continued to live a
grounded life due to the exposure of both worlds which moulded her humble
personality.
Her favourite childhood moment? “When he rushed me
to my new school in the back of a police van,” she said, “It was one of the times I really
felt like he came through for me.”
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