Racism was not the only challenge that Ndlovu had to deal with as he grew up.
Born in 1980 as the last born in a family of seven. His mother was a domestic worker and father worked as a taxi driver.
At the age of six he was sent to live with his maternal grandparents before moving in with his paternal grandparents.
“Money was tight, food was tight, there were nights we went to bed without food,” he remembered.
“Three to four days before the end of the month, you are waiting for your mother to get paid and our grandparents to get their pension.
“In a household where there is eight people (cousins as well), we didn’t have electricity, we used coal, we’d even use cow dung (to burn for cooking and warmth) that we’d have to go find and get in a field.”
It was a life that did not offer many opportunities at the time and Ndlovu recollects that growing up his ambition was to be a teacher, a policeman or a nurse, because to be a doctor one had to be white.
“It was tough and it built me, I think that was one of the things that encouraged me not to look back,” he insisted.
Things began to change for Ndlovu in 1995 when he moved back to live in Johannesburg with his parents and with apartheid over, he was able to attend a high school for whites, but his financial situation did not improve.
“My mother was earning 800 rand (a month) and half of which had to go back home to her parents and the school fees at my school was 1500 rand (per term) so that tells you I had to look for work at around 14 years, so I used to deliver newspapers in Johannesburg from around 2am in the morning before school,” he told BBC Sport Africa.
It was in high school that Ndlovu was introduced to rowing by his headmaster, the late Tom Price and with this he was able to get a scholarship to university where he continued to hone his skill while studying sports management.
After university rowing was not paying the bills and he took up different jobs including being a police reservist at some point and some of his friends chided him for hanging on to the sport.
“After varsity I had friends discouraging me, asking ‘why are you doing this stupid white sport, it doesn’t pay bills’ they’d tell me, but I loved it, it has changed my life,” he remembered.
He was to suffer even more setbacks in his bid to realise his Olympic dream as South Africa failed to qualify for the 2004 and 2008 Olympics in rowing
Ndlovu shoulders the blame for the 2008 failure. He lost his mother days before the qualifying regatta, he then buried her on a Sunday, flew out to the competition on the Wednesday and competed a day after that.
“I should’ve stayed at home,” he tells BBC Sport Africa.
“There was the pressure from my teammates because we had been six and the team of four had been selected.
“I wanted to stay but they spoke to me and said ‘bury your mother and fly later’, so there was a lot happening in my head.
“They blamed me for missing qualification and I did too, I was not in a state to race.”
