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Outlook: Inspirations: Me and My Wheelchair in Space

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Eddie Ndopu

23/05/2018 GMT

Inspirations: Me and My Wheelchair in Space

BBC World Service - Outlook, Inspirations: Me and My Wheelchair in Space

South African activist Eddie Ndopu wants to be the first wheelchair user in space

South African disability activist Eddie Ndopu wants to be the first wheelchair user in space.

In his own words Outlook Inspirations nominee Eddie is "unapologetically brilliant, black, queer and disabled". He recently graduated from Oxford, the first African with a disability to do so. He has spinal muscular atrophy, and his prognosis at birth was that he wouldn't survive beyond five years old. But now Eddie is in his 20s, and is setting up a disability rights NGO that promotes safer and more accessible spaces in South Africa for people with disabilities. His next project is to be the first disabled person to go into space. You can find the other nominees for Outlook Inspirations 2018 by searching this website: www.bbcworldservice.com/outlookinspirations

Ron Stallworth was one of the first black men to become a police cadet in Colorado Springs. Then he was given the task of going undercover to gather intelligence on the white supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan. He spoke to high-level members on the phone and a white colleague went to the KKK meetings in his place. The information Ron accumulated was used to help prevent the group's attacks. His story has been turned into a movie directed by Spike Lee, BlacKkKlansman, which this year won the Cannes Film festival's Grand Prix award. 

Steve Burnett-Martin a.k.a. Blacker Dread is a music producer from Brixton, an area in south London that in the 1980s and 1990s was known for gangs, drugs, and violent race riots. Blacker opened a music shop on the high street in 1993, which quickly became a community hub. For years, Blacker helped out local troubled youth, becoming an intermediary between the police and the local black community, and slowly turned into a local legend. When Nelson Mandela arrived in the UK for his first state visit in 1996, Blacker was on Mr Mandela's list of people to see. 

(Picture: Eddie Ndopu. Photo courtesy: Edward Ndopu.)

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