Jonathan Manyaka shares his journey of winning Mr Mpumalanga 2021

Jonathan Manyaka shares his journey as the newly crowned Mr Mpumalanga 202. And he encourages people to be self reliant

June 21, 2021

Emmanuel N Mthimunye 2 minutes read

A 23-year-old young man from KwaGuqa, Jonathan Manyaka shares his journey as the newly crowned Mr Mpumalanga 2021. Manyaka said he has failed many competitions before and to mention a few: Mr Elukhanyisweni High School, Mr and TUT, and Mr Face of Emalahleni, but he did not give up, instead he kept pushing until God’s timing was right and he finally made it to Mr Mpumalanga. Manyaka said he grew up with a passion for modeling and a love for the spotlight.

“I grew up loving the spotlight of modeling and with positive hopes of becoming a big thing in my hometown; therefore I took modeling as my way to the summit,” said Jonathan.

Manyaka said he started modeling in 2014 and continued with it in 2019 and what motivated him to do modeling is that he wanted to be a good leader to the people of his community and he wanted to show South Africa that eMalahleni is not what people describe it; hence it is described as the dirty drug polluted place.

Apart from modeling, Manyaka is currently a student at TUT eMalahleni Campus enrolling in human resources management and he is also a founder of ‘Things can turn’ (NPO). During the interview with WITBANK NEWS Jonathan said he wants to reveal that there are good people and good things in eMalahleni even though people use to bad mouth it.

Many things had stopped because of Covid-19; some people lost their jobs and some were forced to take early retirements. Even Jonathan suffered from this deadly unforeseen disease, and said that Covid-19 has affected him badly because he had to cancel some of his gigs which were going to pay him good money to push his modeling career.

“Things went sour for me when Covid-19 first attacked South Africa. I was unable to enter competitions and that has affected me badly, because I almost lost courage in what I do.” Despite the Covid-19 outbreak challenges, Manyaka says he sees himself as a public influencer and important figure of his community that will help the youth to grow as good leaders.

Jonathan said Saturday, June 5 was marked as the best day of his life because he was crowned the new Mr Mpumalanga 2021.

“I still cannot believe that I won this time and it feels wonderful to receive recognition as a public influencer.”

Jonathan further said he encourages people, especially his peers to believe in their dreams and in what they think can work for them, and if they fail, they must try again because failing is the best teacher of success.