- Programme Director, Dr. Takalani Dzaga;
- Chancellor, Adv. Mojanku Gumbi;
- Vice-Chancellor and Principal, Prof. Bernard Nthambeleni;
- Esteemed Members of the Academia;
- Business Leaders;
- Leaders of Civil Society formations;
- Students & Graduates.
On this day of great celebration, we offer the full acknowledgement and gratitude to all the faculties, lecturers, mentors, fellow students, families and communities, all who have been instrumental in their contribution to the academic achievements of so many graduates present here today. We take our mortarboard cap off to you!
The staff and students of an academic institution are tested on innumerable levels that perhaps ordinary society might not have to contend with. A dedication — an often tiresome one, if we were to count the many candles burnt into the night of study, against the torment of ongoing loadshedding — to a journey of edification that is carried with meaningful purpose for not only the individual student, but that of the student’s family, village, peer group, and dreams.
It is my singular honour and privilege to be part of this graduation ceremony and I express my deepest appreciation for the CONFERMENT OF HONORARY DEGREE IN THE FACULTY OF MANAGEMENT, COMMERCE AND LAW.
I draw inspiration from the immense energy emitted amongst these young graduates, an energy that serves to renew the spark of curiosity, and through which we may find guidance.
Research has shown that “[C]uriosity recruits the reward system (in the body), and interactions between the reward system and the hippocampus seem to put the brain in a state in which you are more likely to learn and retain information, even if that information is not of particular interest or importance,” [1]
So, when we fire-up our mind with curiosity, we ignite a motivating response that may encourage us to experience a sensation of joy when learning.
As we intensify our curiosity from this premise, one may even purport that it is the question and not the answer that engages us with the appetite and impulse to know more and know better.
However, we would be no wiser if we were not to also question the answer and give way to a dismantling of power that knowledge holds, in its many guises and disguises.
More capable than physical strength and the key to all advancement, knowledge then becomes the determining factor to achieving power: the more you know the more powerful you may become.
For wisdom means so much more than knowledge. It is wisdom which the teacher really has to impart.: he cannot give it if he does not possess it himself. The ideal teacher — and can we aim at less than perfections? — ought to be in his measure a lover of souls and a healer of bodies as well as an awakener and enlightener of minds. Man is indivisible, and our education especially our has suffered from isolating the intellect which ought to be so intimately and fruitfully united with all the rest of our life, from imparting knowledge in stead of inspiring wisdom.
Acceptance of this honorary degree also comes with a huge responsibility. The conferring of a degree is not the end but the beginning.
It places a responsibility on graduates to be worthy of the honour that the university bestows on them and be standard bearers of the ethos and values entrusted to them.
Some of you graduates would pursue your studies to postgrad qualifications and PhD level, and others will go into the corporate world to join private enterprises and so on. Given the weaknesses of management and administration in our state, if we, at a conceptual level make the distinction between the state and government on the understanding that efficient administration is an integral part of the state and ought to be permanent.
Whereas government serves as the face of the state for a term at a time because whenever elections happen the possibilities of a change of government do exist. Therefore, the graduates of the faculty of Management, Commerce and Law, ought to explore possibilities of beefing up public administration and bringing honesty, efficiency and innovation into that space.
Our country is experiencing a polycrises of weak administrations throughout the three tiers of the state, which then give rise to lawlessness, maladministration which serve as fertile ground for corruption. Whereas political stability, is a precondition for development and progress.
The subtext of my argument therefore is that institutions of higher learning bear the responsibility to produce graduates with the necessary will to change current social realities and further expand the faculty of the mind. This is the type of pedagogy that enables people to reimagine a new world, as many of the alumni of the University of Venda have and do.
With hindsight we know that tertiary education afforded many visionaries the means to understand the human condition as it manifested itself in the South African historical process.
I would argue that tertiary education serves as a launching pad for personal intellectual and political epiphany.
In other words, tertiary education sets students off on a journey for personal discovery, and what they discover about themselves creates a scaffold for how they wish to mould the world in which they exist.
In the words of Moses Kotane:
“Education can be and has been used to befuddle the minds of the common people. But education can also be used as an important instrument in the struggle for freedom and human progress.
“Our teachers must bring home to the students the fact that when the social system fails to provide peace and happiness to the majority of its citizens, that system is no more good and must therefore be changed.”[2]
University is not a world apart, but an essential member of the living organism of education. And, if we drop this semi-utilitarian argument and turn to examine what a university really is and what it should do, no man who has the interest of people at heart can oppose university education.
Similarly, the school must be a great community centre. Music, drama, cinema, libraries, agricultural and handicraft extension work, and many other things must radiate from it into every home and the school building ought to be a community hall in constant use. That art and its values should be appreciated, and artistic creation encouraged, is certainly urgently necessary in public schools.
In the concrete life of students across the board, education has the potential to be a liberating force that equips one with the intellectual apparatus to transform human consciousness qualitatively from the impulse to dominate, to the ideal of common humanity capacious enough to embrace the marginalised and vulnerable in society.
In post-apartheid South Africa, education should seek to enable ordinary people to appreciate the nature and context of our current challenges. It should produce critical beings measuring up to the key imperatives of the time.
Effectively, education should retain ‘its moral and political vision and practices necessary to sustain a vibrant democracy as well as an engaged notion of social agency.’ [3]
The realm of knowledge is the crucible that moulds the self-understanding of a nation. That is the reason why the domain of ideas must be encouraged within the experience of the dopamine-rich, curious, lifelong learner. For it is when we align ourselves with that which we most appreciate, the joy of life, that we set free the wings of education, for all.
We are becoming increasingly aware of the revolutionary technologies of Chat GPT and artificial intelligence (AI), and its implications on education. It is the young minds of the world that will have to grapple with the use or misuse of innovation and high tech.
The United National global perspective on this matter is that since the launch of Chat GPT in November 2022, AI has been dominating headlines, sparking excitement but also concern over the pace at which the technology is developing and driving misinformation.
The UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Technology, Amandeep Gill, is busy working on a Global Digital Compact to be adopted at the UN’s Summit of the Future in 2024 – a “once-in-a-generation” opportunity for leaders to agree on common principles for addressing tech challenges.
Young graduates, you are the leaders of today as it is your generation that must take the torch forward and apply what you have absorbed in your studies and learnt in the university of life, to reconcile the great potential with the great foe, of this future tech that has arrived today.
Remember that the future is history waiting to happen unless something else happens. Something else is what you do, or what is done to you.
For individuals write their own history through their conscious actions and the choices they make in their daily existence.
Once again, a word of commendation to the graduates and thanks are in order to the all the faculties, lecturers, mentors, fellow students, families and communities.
I thank you for your kind attention.
[1] https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/curiosity-helps-learning-and-memory#:~:text=The%20team%20also%20discovered%20that,and%20the%20dopamine%20reward%20circuit.
[2] Article published in 1942 entitled, “Defects in Party Education”, by Moses Kotane
[3] Giroux, Henry: The Crisis of Education as a Public Good The Disappearance of Public Intellectuals
