Bhut Malumz Publications

Born and bred in Cala, Sithenkosi Dondolo didn’t let lack of information in his town’s facilities affect his dreams from coming true.

Dondolo have proved to be unstoppable and goes beyond his limits as a Cala product. Cala is a small town in the Eastern Cape and being someone who wishes to be a pilot, the dream is far fetched. Dondolo said that he have always been a dreamer and loved planes even though he hardly saw them. He would have wild fantasies and visions of doing and achieving great things in life. He always told himself that he will achieve what he wants to achieve regardless. As a kid he would drive those miniature simulation planes. He loved planes so much and he’d scream out loud when he’d see one from the sky top passing by, asking them to bring sweets and all that stuff. The sweets mentality was childhood stuff from the hood. He chose avaition because he wants to travel the world and was inspired by seeing most black children achieving big things. The planes make Dondolo’s life worth living, he said.

“Since I started loving planes when I was a kid, I then started doing research about it back in 2016 while I was doing grade 10. That’s when I knew the requirements and where the schools are located.”

Unfortunately so, there is limited number of bursaries up to fund aviation students as most of them are self-funded. Fortunately for Dondolo, after all the potential bursaries including TETA bursary he applied for declined his offer, Standard Bank student loan came to his rescue.

“Most people think avaition schools are for A-class students who were doing Physics and Mathematics but that’s not a must. If you did Mathematics and Sciences, that’s okay but you can do avaition even if you were doing History in your own school. Physics and Mathematics are required by may bursaries, which is a disadvantage to those who never studied them. But if you will be going for a student loan or pay for yourself, Phsyics and Mathematics are not required. History is needed since you will be dealing with maps and things like that but it’s not a must also. I’m saying all this because pilot-student subjects differ from the ones we were doing back in high school but they don’t differ that much. So even if someone was doing Life Sciences, they can still do aviation because Life Sciences correlates with one of the pilot-subjects, Human Perfomance.”

Dondolo is currently enrolled in Pretoria’s aviation school, Blue Chip Flight School

If you have any questions to direct straight to Dondolo, follow him on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sithenkosi.dondolo