Never mind the
wheelchair: Eddie
Ndopu has a degree
from Oxford, works
for the U.N.—and
plans to go to space
BY JEFFREY KLUGER
T
here can be irony in even
the happiest of sentiments—a
fact that is surely not lost on
Eddie Ndopu. The son of a
South African mother and a
Namibian father, Ndopu was born in
1990, the year Namibia attained its in-
dependence from South Africa, and just
four years before Nelson Mandela be-
came South Africa’s first black President.
Ndopu and his demographic cohort
in the southern part of Africa became
known as the “born free” generation—a
sentiment suited to a time and a place
when apartheid and other old oppres-
sions were being cast aside. But for
Ndopu, freedom lasted only until he
turned 2. It was then that he was diag-
nosed with spinal muscular atrophy
(SMA), a degenerative condition that
would weaken him, require the use of a
I
THE
ODDS
THAT
FACED
ME AT
BIRTH,
AND
NOW
IT’S
TIME
TO DEFY
GRAVITY.
CHALLENGES
DEFIED
AND
PROFILE
PHOTOGRAPH BY JONATHAN TORGOVNIK FOR TIME
