Tebogo Sebego: Up From Poverty

By Lekopanye Mooketsi
Correspondent | Monday January 28, 2008 00:00

 

Born and bred in Old Naledi, Sebego does not only drive top of the range models but he also owns properties in up-market leafy suburbs like Phakalane. His daughter goes to an English Medium School, a far cry from his bare foot days at Therisanyo Primary School in Old Naledi. During the interview, Sebego does not resemble a township boy. He is clad in casual designer labels, clean-shaven and even his nails have been manicured. But Sebego still remains a deep-rooted township boy and you cannot take it away from him. Sebego is proud of his Old Naledi roots and feels it is the township that made him what he is. Over the weekends, he can be seen cruising around 'Zola' in his convertible BMW Z4 or X5. For many youth in Old Naledi, he is their role model. He runs a social football team in the location and sponsors a soccer tournament annually. 

But Sebego recalls that growing in an impoverished neighbourhood was tough. 'There were many challenges. Old Naledi is like a village and the social network is the same like in a village. Growing up was not easy. My home was a shebeen and tuckshop. We were somehow able to have food on the table'.But he says studying under such a setup was a nightmare. He says the shebeen operated every day closing at night. The children manned it. Sebego says while growing up in Old Naledi, he lacked role models because the people who made it in life never wanted to come back or to be associated with the township. Their role models, he recalls, were hardcore criminals and people on the other side of the law. 'These were the people we idiolised. Most of the youngsters fell prey to peer pressure. Social amenities did not provide for intervention that could prevent the youth from falling into undesirables,' he says. 'By the time we were doing Standard Seven, half of our classmates were smoking and drinking. From the group that I started Standard One with, I am the only one who went to university,' he says.

Sebego's luck was due mainly to his strict upbringing. His parents did not tolerate nonsense so he could not start drinking or taking drugs. 

He was kept busy by football. In fact he has to thank the sport for keeping him out of trouble. Unlike many boys that he grew up with, Sebego has never crossed paths with the law.

Despite the fact that his parents were well off by township standards, they could not afford basic necessities for him. Sebego says he only started to wear shoes when he was doing Standard Four. 'During winter some children could not go to school because their parents could not afford to buy them jerseys,' he says.

Attending school in the ghetto was not a bed of roses. There were always bullies, who pounced on the small boys, demanding protection fees. Sebego always fell victim to the bullies. He says one of his friends left school for good because he had had enough of the bullying. 'There were guys who used to take our money and food at school. This is something that is inherent in 'Kasi''.Sebego says in Kasi in order to attain big brother status you do not have to pass with flying colours, but you have to be a bully.

'Our role models were bullies'.But the determined young Sebego continued with school until he completed Standard Seven. In 1987, Sebego proceeded to Seepapitso Secondary School where he was a boarder. In Kanye life was a bit different from where he came from. Here he was socialising with children from different backgrounds. Some of them were from affluent families. But the Kasi boy was never intimidated, even when the other children exhibited their parents' wealth. When he encountered a tricky situation, Sebego always devised some means to get out. He says when they were playing table tennis some other guys would be sporting Nike tekkies and other expensive footwear. Realising that he could never match their designer labels, he decided to play bare footed and it became fashionable. Rather than being concerned about fashion, Sebego became serious about his core business, studying and he was a leading member of the debating club. 'I am a very competitive individual who is always striving to be the most successful in a group. I told myself that I do not want to grow up to be in the same situation,' he says.Actually, Sebego always aspired to be a lawyer when he was young. At Seepapitso, he even had his own mock law firm.

He says some of his friends used to be furious when he introduced them at the debate discussions as employees of his law firm. 'One of the guys used to say I am not an employee of Sebego and Associates and I do not want to be a lawyer,' he reveals. Sebego wanted to be a lawyer because that was one of the professions that they were exposed to at Old Naledi, amicably named after the South African township, Zola. When he was growing up Sidney Pilane was one of the most prominent criminal lawyers in town. For some reason, Sebego's mother also wanted her son to be a lawyer. After he completed his secondary education, Sebego enrolled at the University of Botswana (UB) to attain his childhood dream of becoming a lawyer.

He has since been admitted as a lawyer and is running his own 'real' law firm and not the one that he abandoned at Seepapitso Secondary School. Sebego says being from an underprivileged background has taught him to work hard in life. 'I have always had to focus. When I am focused it is not easy to distract me because that is how I survive. I am a well-balanced individual. I can take rough life and pull out of it. I have developed a thick skin to the challenges of life'.He recalls how he used to tell his friends that he could have a sumptuous lunch with business executives and later in the evening share seesaw with the poorest guy in town at Zola. Sebego proves the old adage that you can take a township boy from the township but you can never take the township out of him.