Meet Abei Ngwenya ('Uncle Pythagoras'), a teacher giving free YouTube lessons to grades 10-12

Tasleem Gierdien

Tasleem Gierdien

25 September 2025 | 6:22

Abei Ngwenya is a teacher from Vosloorus who operates a free YouTube channel, ‘Uncle Pythagoras’, where he provides educational content.

Meet Abei Ngwenya ('Uncle Pythagoras'), a teacher giving free YouTube lessons to grades 10-12

CapeTalk's Lester Kiewit speaks to Abei Ngwenya, a teacher from Vosloorus known online as Uncle Pythagoras.

Listen below: 

Abei Ngwenya is a teacher from Vosloorus who is using his teaching qualifications to operate a free YouTube channel under the name Uncle Pythagoras, where he provides free educational content, particularly for Grade 10 to 12 learners in Mathematics, Physical Science, Life Sciences, and Biology.
Ngwenya encourages people to like and subscribe to his channel for lessons on topics such as simultaneous equations and surds, where he explains how he makes complex concepts easy to follow.
Ngwenya says online platforms allow him to reach a new generation of learners.
The teacher says his online channel is inspired by the late William Smith, the original television teacher who pioneered South African TV teaching on his 'Learning Channel' on SABC 2 in the 1990s.
Ngwenya says he noticed most learners in his neighbourhood don't know what mathematics is, so he took it upon himself to help learners understand the subject so that they can become engineers, lawyers, pilots, doctors or anything they dream of.
"I wanted them to be out of the streets so that when they hear about this channel, they will be called upon to fix their future endeavours."
- Abei Ngwenya, teacher
"I want to inspire everyone who is going to embark on a journey of becoming a future scientist. Our country needs expertise like that so we can be a better country."
- Abei Ngwenya, teacher

Ngwenya is not formally employed by the Department of Basic Education, but says his free YouTube channel highlights a deeper issue, which is a country with a shortage of jobs, yet an abundance of skilled and qualified people willing and ready to help.

"I want to help wherever I can, like using my cellphone to record in the classroom to make sure learners don't suffer the way we suffered without having any person to take us to extra classes outside the classroom."
- Abei Ngwenya, teacher
"Not having a job just shows that this country lacks jobs and knowledge, so that we can unpack the question of unemployment and being out of the outskirts of the working class, so I want every young child who grew up seeing their parents not working... There is a future; it is possible that we can all get something out of nothing."
- Abei Ngwenya, teacher

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