‘Milestones upon milestones’: Yumna Alexander gives many a second chance at matric

Community Champion of the Year: The local hero uplifting and defending ordinary South Africans against the odds.

As a teen mother, Yumna Alexander, who was raised in Manenberg on Cape Town’s Cape Flats, was forced to drop out of school. With limited qualifications, she struggled for years to find stable employment, and took retail and call centre jobs to support her child.

But in her mid-twenties she decided to return to school and pursue her matric, holding on to a long-standing dream of becoming a teacher. Today, she runs 10 Hopeful Leaders Night Schools in Cape Town, helping school dropouts to obtain their matric certificates at an older age – and even employing a few of them.

It is for these reasons that Daily Maverick readers voted Alexander the Community Champion of the Year. She uplifts those faced with a lack of matric to come and learn so they can stand a chance in life.

After completing her matric, she began volunteering at the age of 32 at a leadership college in Manenberg. Without internet access at home, she used the Manenberg library as her study space. While there, she began helping others with basic computer use, but soon realised there were deeper issues. She discovered that many people did not have matric, but wanted to obtain it.

So she decided to register a night school, opening Hopeful Leaders Night School in 2020. Today, she runs 10 night schools in Manenberg, Mitchells Plain, Delft, Bishop Lavis, Hanover Park, Lavender Hill, Bonteheuwel, Elsies River and Ravensmead.

More than 600 students are enrolled, and Alexander has employed more than 20 teachers, many of whom earned their matric through her programme.

Students pay R15 a class and a one-off registration fee of R50. Every cent earned goes directly back into the programme – paying staff and covering the cost of essentials such as copy paper and ink. Alexander’s schools operate from 6pm every Monday to Thursday.

She told Daily Maverick that the journey has contributed to making people’s lives better. “I am simply just doing what I’m doing for the love of our people, for the love of our communities. It’s something that’s near and dear in my heart... but it really takes a lot of work. It really takes faith. It takes determination. We have over 50 university students. We have four that will be graduating this year. So, for me, it’s really milestones upon milestones upon milestones,” she said.

“For our exams, it’s been mind-blowing for many of the adults, a lot of anxiety in the beginning. We do a lot of preparation, mock exams at the night school so that we can prepare them mentally and physically for what is going to come and how it operates inside the exam centres.

“But we’ve been extremely, extremely successful with our results… In one community, Lavendale, that’s known for gang violence and crime, we had 18 bachelor passes among adults,” said Alexander.

About 40% of South African pupils who begin Grade 1 do not reach matric. This staggering dropout rate is fuelled by a mix of factors such as financial hardship, lack of resources, limited support at home and social pressures such as early pregnancy.

In her downtime, Alexander said, she loves nature. “There’s something that happens to me when I’m surrounded by nature. It’s like God speaks to me that anything is possible and that I see you, I’m with you, I see your struggles,” she said, adding that her philosophy in life is “if not you, who? If not now, when? It all starts with you.” DM

This story first appeared in our weekly DM168 newspaper, available countrywide for R35.