- Stanley Bongwe’s three children, Bongiwe, Sazi and Menzi, have each studied at top global universities, including Georgetown, Harvard and now Oxford.
- Stanley says he made sure his children knew the opportunity he had was now theirs too. “You’ve got a better opportunity than I did, and I’m going to make sure you take it,” he said.
Stanley Bongwe grew up in rural Mpumalanga, far from the world he would one day study in. A full academic scholarship in the late 1980s took him to the United States, immersing him in a completely new country and culture that changed the course of his life.
Decades later, all three of his children have followed a similar path. Bongiwe, 29, Sazi, 23, and Menzi, 19, have each been admitted to some of the world’s most competitive universities, Georgetown, Harvard, and now Oxford, an unusually consistent run of achievement for siblings from the same family.
Stanley says he made sure his children understood early on what that opportunity meant.
“I told my children from an early age: you’ve got a better opportunity than I did, and I’m going to make sure you take it,” he said.
“When I applied for my own scholarship, I had to figure the entire process out on my own. My younger two had support to guide them through it, and between that and years of hard work at school, the results speak for themselves. What makes me proudest isn’t just where my children ended up, but everything it took to get there, nobody hands you an international qualification, you earn it.”
For Stanley, the value of his own education abroad was never just the degree itself, it was the outlook it gave him. He sees that same confidence and perspective in each of his children, without any of them losing sight of where they come from.
“What I wanted to give them wasn’t just belief in themselves, it was proof you don’t lose yourself chasing something bigger,” he said.
“That’s shown up in all three of them, in different ways, on different continents, but it always comes back to knowing exactly where home is. I proved it was possible once. Now they’re proving it again.”
Bongiwe, Sazi and Menzi received admissions guidance from Crimson Education, a mentorship organisation that supports students applying to top global universities.
