“Disability disqualifies you from being admitted into our school.” These were the painful words said to Gugu Mjilo’s mother as she tried to get her daughter into local primary schools at Hlokozi, a rural area in the southern part of KwaZulu-Natal.

As a result Mjilo, who is now 30 and is wheelchair-bound as she was born with quadriplegia, only started schooling when she was 12 years old at grade 3. And she has never looked back. Recently she enrolled as a PhD student in political science at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN)...