Mandla Maseko
LMS Issue 2 | 2014
13
In just a few months, twenty-five year old Mandla Maseko has gone
from an unemployed Soshanguve youth to a future astronaut, and all it
took was a blind leap... off the back wall of his garden. Last year, Maseko
entered a radio competition run by the Axe Apollo Space Academy and
in 2015, he will be jetting off into the ‘final frontier’ to make history as the
first Black South African in space. Earlier this month, Maseko sat down
with LMS to discuss his upcoming space expedition.
Q
Could you
please tell the LMS
readers a little bit about
yourself? Where you come from and
what your background is?
I was born and raised in Soshanguve
in Pretoria and I am a ‘Pretorian’ to the
core. I am 25 and come from a family
of seven, including my parents, three
younger sisters, one younger brother
and myself. I completed all my schooling
in Soshan uve, where I also worked
g
for various retail stores. After being
unemployed for over a year, I entered
a competition that ended with me
coming out at the top