Cape Town – A paramedic from Northdale in Pietermaritzburg is being shown massive love by Mzansi on TikTok, as videos of him speaking fluent isiZulu have gone viral.
For some time, people didn’t believe he was the one speaking in his videos, often asking him to say different Zulu phases.
To date, Cliffy Govender, 31, has over 19 300 TikTok followers and over 68K likes.
Govender often has to explain how he speaks the language so well and he attributes it to a lady who took care of him when he was a child and his mother was at work.
@cliffyg22 Reply to @bxkngwane how I learnt isizulu #tiktok #zulutiktok #tiktoksouthafrica #pietermairtzburg #033 ♬ original sound – Cliffy Govender
“To be honest, I was lucky to learn isiZulu because at school I learned Afrikaans. But when I was a child, my mother used to work a lot and hired someone to take care of me, MamNdlovu from Ixopo. She didn’t know how to speak English and she would speak to us in isiZulu,” he explains in the video.
He adds that he started speaking isiZulu regularly in 2013, when he was deployed at Creighton, a rural area where he worked with only Zulu-speaking people.
“The people I worked with spoke isiZulu and I had to engage patients in IsiZulu as well. I’m also married to a Zulu woman. I can converse with her family. Life is good,” he says with a smile.
Govender has now become a popular figure. His comments sections are filled with followers who have met him, telling him how humble he is.
His TikTok content is mostly engaging, as he answers questions from his followers. He also shows a little bit of his paramedic work, his wife and family.
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Picture: Twitter/ @mbali_ndlela
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Compiled by Olwethu Mpeshe
