Pitso Mosala: NUL freshman’s Samaritan
‘Believe in you. You are capable and you can achieve anything as long you do not quit’
’MATHAPELO TAKISI
“There is a season for everything, a time for every occupation under heaven:” reads Ecclesiastes 3:1, which Pitso Mosala says this is his favourite part of the Holy Bible that helps him to get through each day. The 25-year-old Pitso was born and raised in Sixondo, in Lesotho’s Southern district of Quthing. He is popularly known in social media circles for his role in helping National University of Lesotho (NUL) freshmen with their application and admission processes.
Since the dawn of the Covid-19 pandemic, applying for admission at the NUL has become a hassle with applications forced to be done online, which became a struggle for a lot of people. Most learners encountered complications using the system – a lot of them were helped by Pitso through WhatsApp and Facebook. When the admission list is finally out he checks them and notifies those who have been admitted. He even goes further by updating them on his social media platforms, all of which he does free of charge. He has a huge following on social media which has made him very popular but he says his joy lies in helping people.
‘Dah P’, as he is popularly known, says he was given this name by his best friend Thuso Lieta as a sign of respect to him. He explains that Thuso is younger than him so as a norm in Lesotho, he was bound to address him as “brother Pitso” but instead he went for a shorter and way of calling him. ‘Dah’ stands for brother and ‘P’ for Pitso. Pitso completed his primary education at St Mary’s Primary School (2003-2009), he then went to Tlohang Secondary School (2010-2012) and Mount Tabor High School (2013-2014) where he completed his high school studies. He then proceeded to the NUL (2015-2021).
He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics as his current highest qualification. However, he says his dream was to study Bcom Accounting but he failed management as the core course to studying accounting so he settled for economics. Pitso says he was born in a family of three children, with him being the eldest followed by two younger sisters. He is the son of ’Mapitso and Lefa Mosala.
Growing up Pitso says he had everything as he was raised in a rich family since his father was a businessman. “I got the best upbringing and got the best education,” he says. Life, especially school life comes with many challenges and everyone makes some mistakes along the way, and Pitso is not an exception. He says the worst challenge he has faced at school was him failing at the NUL in 2017.
He says that very year he had written a test on behalf of his friend who was struggling in mathematics. He adds that he was purely helping from the goodness of his heart but only for things to backfire, when this was discovered and he was suspended from the institution which caused him a lot of depression. As a way of dealing with the subsequent stress and to keep his mind off things, he volunteered at the campus radio station Dope FM. Because of the situation he was in at that time, he believed radio might be therapeutic and this is the sole reason he went for it. Luckily, he found it to be exactly what he thought it would be. “Indeed it was therapeutic,” he continues.
Pitso ran a radio programme called ‘Midnight Shower’ at Dope FM which attracted great listenership. He made it fun and, yes, people liked him. Dah P is currently promoting business online, buying and selling furniture while also house-hunting for people who need places to stay. Speaking about online business, he says it the best business yet competition is very high because everybody wants to venture into it. He adds by saying the business needs hard work and focus. However, he enjoys what he does.
Pitso started helping learners in 2018 when he helped the NUL freshmen with their admissions to the institution; he was there to assist with everything they needed to know and to be aware of before beginning their studies at the school. He had personally struggled with a lot of things before going to the NUL, including traveling all the way from Quthing to Roma where the university is located just to check if he had been admitted or not.
He went through all that and knew that he wouldn’t want anyone else to experience the same things he did, at least not while he is still alive. That is his reason for generously helping the NUL freshmen. “I swore that nobody would have to struggle like I did while I am here to help them”, he said that is a promise he made to himself. Pitso reveals that his mother is his heroine and that the hardest decision that he had to take about his life was leaving her back at home in Sixondo and going to NUL.
He has always wanted to be a popular person, so he explains his great influence on Facebook as his best accomplishment. Moreover, he says his way of dealing with failure is accepting that he has failed not because of a curse or witchcraft but because he has to learn about life and its hardships. He even goes further by saying that he prefers to look at failure not as an inability to achieve but a lesson to achieve even more because when he fails there are always some lessons to be learnt.
The four people in his life that he is closest to are his mother, his aunt, who is his mother’s younger sister, and his two younger sisters. Pitso is most proud of himself, even the way he carries himself on the media shows how much he is proud to be who he is. His advice that he always gives to others is “Believe in you. You are capable and you can achieve anything as long you do not quit.”
He as well never gave up. He failed while at the NUL, and in the same year he was suspended from school for an entire academic year but he fought the depression and went back to school a year later. It took him six years to complete a four-year programme and now he holds a degree. He says the people around him would describe him as a kind, generous, sweet, humble, soft and hardworking human being.