Pretoria - The adage “It takes a village to raise a child” was described as the truth now more than ever, on the first day of autumn graduations at Rhodes University yesterday.
Principal and vice-chancellor Professor Sizwe Mabizela said the contribution to the promise to change the world lay not only with academic staff.
Speaking to graduates and guests, he said it was not only the academic staff who should take credit, but families and other staff.
“We acknowledge academic staff, the cooks, cleaners, gardeners…”
He invited everyone seated at the Guy Butler theatre venue at Settler’s Monument, to join him in celebrating the achievements of the 1 700 graduates who would graduate, proudly saying 65% were female and 11% international.
“This morning, you join an international community tasked with changing the course of the country, and we will follow your success as proud alma mater.”
Mabizela added that the day was also in recognition of the honour, courage and achievements in public life, of Chief Justice Raymond Zondo; Dr Debra Roberts, government worker and one of the six co-chairs of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; medical researcher and the founder and executive director of the Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Institute of the Wits; Professor Helen Rees, human rights activist, researcher; academic professor Janet Cherry, who also teaches at the Nelson Mandela University in Gqeberha; and, Judge Mbuyiseli Madlanga, judge of the Constitutional Court of South Africa.
“You have received excellent education from the finest in the world, Rhodes University.
“Always remember this is not for your sole and private benefit, but for the benefit of all humanity.”
He pointed out that the academic achievement came at a particularly challenging time in the country’s 29 years of democracy.
“… People have no sense of right and wrong, there is moral depravity, greed, and duplicity is rife.
“There is a growing divide; and all around us we see abject poverty live alongside obscene affluence.”
He said the very foundation of the Constitution was under attack, and that was something the new cohort of academics had to be cognisant of, as they set off on “a perilous path”.
Mabizela said young people had always been a catalyst of change.
“You have so much to offer. So, armed with quality education, you can make a difference, and can pull the country from a path of anarchy, failures; other challenges notwithstanding.”
Academic staff, decked out in their regalia, families and friends cheered and ululated as the former students, some with outstanding distinctions and others presenting their classes as lone achievers, made their way to and from the capping.
The graduation ceremony continues today and tomorrow, where students who have passed in various education faculties, among them law, philosophy, and master of education, will receive their certificates.
It will be followed by another graduation ceremony in October, for the university’s post-graduate students.
Pretoria News