Against the odds

New heights for black women

Pandemic, politics, poverty, pyromania, Peskom … the obstacles South Africans face can seem insurmountable, so it’s good to hear from Saray Khumalo, who conquered Mount Everest

26 June 2022 - 00:00 By Saray Khumalo

In 2016, sports minister Fikile Mbalula tweeted that he had the funds that would allow the first black women to summit Everest. I received a call, asking if I would come to Pretoria to talk to them, and I, in turn, called [actress] Hlubi Mboya and Katlego [Letheo] and asked them to join me, as we would have funding for the climb. The way I saw it, the more of us there were, the better our chance of putting the first black African woman on the top of the world...

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