JOBURG – Several Sacred Heart College pupils shone at the isiZulu national olympiad.
Masego Mafata, a Grade 9 pupil, placed first with 93 percent. While school mate Cassidy Wood was also numbered among the top achievers with a result of 70 percent.
College head Colin Northmore said the institution offered Afrikaans and isiZulu as compulsory subjects from Grade 1 to Grade 9.
“To be successful in a country like South Africa, one must be multilingual. It is not just about learning a language, but through learning another’s language, one learns more about another’s culture,” he said.
Olympiad administrator Zodwa Mentoor said the olympiad was launched this year to motivate pupils to challenge themselves as far as isiZulu vocabulary was concerned.
“[There were] 407 Grades 9 and 10 pupils who wrote the olympiad. We had a tie for first position in both grades. In Grade 9, Masego Mafata from Sacred Heart College and Nombulelo Mkhize from St Anne’s, Pietermaritzburg, both achieved 93 percent,” she said.
Mentoor added that the level of competition was appropriate to each grade, and that the questions were ranked according to difficulty.
Round one was moderate, round two was more challenging with questions that required “more complicated thinking”, and round three was even more challenging, as competitors needed to use evaluation, synthesis and analysis.
“Overall, I was very impressed with the result. The turn-out was also pleasing, and we hope to grow each year,” said Mentoor.
