The Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT), Prof Tinyiko Maluleke penned down a personal message to the newly minted graduates as the spring graduation season commences today, 8 October 2024.
Doctoral graduates of the Tshwane University of Technology.
He said:
Of all the ceremonies that take place during any university's academic year, none are as significant and none as prestigious as a graduation ceremony. Such is the importance of graduation ceremonies that they alone are presided over by the titular head of the University, namely, the Chancellor. It is the Chancellor who confers all degrees, and awards all diplomas and certificates in the name of the University.
The Tshwane University of Technology is fully appreciative of the stony road that many of our 60 000 students have trod on the journey towards graduation day. We are aware of the many rivers our students have had to cross. We recognise the mountains they have had to scale along the way. They have negotiated many types of hurdles. We know parents, guardians and siblings who made great sacrifices to support our students. TUT students are some of the feistiest and the most resilient in the higher education sector.
The late rapper, Tupac Shakur, might as well have been speaking of TUT students when he penned his rhetorical and metaphorical poem titled: The Rose that Grew from Concrete:
Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete?
Proving nature’s laws wrong,
it learned 2 walk without having feet
Funny it seems but by keeping its dreams
it learned 2 breathe fresh air
Long live the rose that grew from concrete
When no one even cared
In this graduation, we too wish to say, long live to the students who refused to give up. Long live to the students who have taken advantage of tiny cracks of chance and opportunity to emerge from the hard concrete of life.
We acknowledge the tremendous effort that our students put into their studies. When the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT), also known as, the people’s university, opened its doors for the first time in January 2004, it also opened new windows of possibility for thousands of students. Since then, TUT has fundamentally changed the game of higher education in this country. Today, we can confidently say that the Tshwane University of Technology has become that university, which only TUT can be in this country and the world. Look around you, in this country and elsewhere in the world, there is nothing quite like TUT.
We at TUT are convinced that our undergraduate and postgraduate students deserve the highest quality of teaching and research training. From the first year to the final year, we immerse our students in curricula that is driven by the Fourth Industrial Revolution. From the first year to the final year, we invite our students to the bridge that links academia to industry, there to immerse them in the intricacies of Work-Integrated Learning and entrepreneurship. In that space where academia meets industry, our students are introduced to the emerging world of automation and Artificial Intelligence. To this end, some of the key attributes of TUT graduates are:
- future readiness and an aptitude for entrepreneurship;
- ability to engage in problem-solving innovation and impactful research;
- the will to harness and leverage technology to solve the wicked problems of our time;
- commitment to the prevention, combating and elimination of gender-based violence;
- commitment to environmental sustainability; and
- a thoroughgoing commitment to ethical conduct at all times.
Only graduates who exhibit and practice the above attributes will contribute to the Africa we want, as spelt out in the Agenda 2063 of the African Union. In fact, this is the vision of Africa, which the late Kwame Nkrumah imagined when he said the following words in 1963:
We shall accumulate machinery and establish steel works, iron foundries and factories; we shall link the various nation-states of our continent with communications; we shall astound the world with our hydroelectric power; we shall drain marshes and swamps, clear infested areas, feed the under-nourished, and rid our people of parasites and disease. It is within the possibility of science and technology to make even the Sahara bloom into a vast field with verdant vegetation for agricultural and industrial developments. We shall harness the radio, television, giant printing presses to lift our people from the dark recesses of illiteracy.
At TUT, we have designed our curricula and pedagogy to produce graduates who will have what it takes, to contribute to the emergence of an industrialised, energy-secure, food-secure, technology-driven, and disease-free Africa.
To ensure that our tremendous investment into future readiness is impactful, TUT students are trained and coached, from the very beginning, to get the basics right, namely, not to waste a single day of learning, not to lose a single week of studying, not to forfeit a single month of research, and never not squander the golden opportunity presented by each semester.
From the first year to the final year, TUT students are taught to work purposefully, constantly, and consistently.
To embed, within our institutional DNA, the ambition of producing graduates who are ready for the future of work, TUT established the Institute for the Future of Work (IFoW) in 2021 – a flagship institute that champions future readiness and builds bridges between industry and academia.
We were not the least surprised when the Department of Communication and Digital Technologies selected the Tshwane University of Technology together with the University of Johannesburg to join it as lead institutions in the founding of the Artificial Intelligence Institute of South Africa. Our participation in the Artificial Intelligence Institute of South Africa is especially focussed on: motor industry AI, farming and food production AI, 4iR manufacturing, AI in tourism, AI in Transport, AI in health and telecommunications – areas in which we already have considerable strength.
TUT is more than a conventional university. It doubles up as an AI Hub, a Start-Up Hub and a centre for Entrepreneurial Education. TUT is moving from good to great, in every way and at every level.
We are proud and delighted to announce that during the 2024 Spring Graduation season, 1 902 graduates will be added to our graduation numbers. Of these, 65 are Doctoral graduates and 201 are Master’s graduates. Combined with the number of graduates from the Autumn Graduations earlier this year, TUT has contributed twelve thousand six hundred and six graduates to the workforce of the country during 2024.
Additionally, four Honorary Doctorates will be conferred to exceptional individuals who have made tremendous contributions to human development. These are Ms Bongi Dhlomo and Mr Wouter Kellerman (Doctor of Art & Design), Prof Pitika Ntuli (Doctor of Language Practice) and the late President Samora Machel (Doctor of Public Affairs – posthumously).
Before I wrap up my remarks, I would like to make a special appeal to all our guests today; please make donation pledges to TUT. I am particularly appealing for donations into the TUT Bursary and Scholarship Fund, which is dedicated to assisting academically gifted but economically disadvantaged TUT students.
It is with a sense of absolute confidence and pride that we release today, the brand-new list of our excellent and future-ready graduates. The late former President Nelson Mandela had the likes of our graduands in mind when he said, and I quote:
Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mine worker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farm workers can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.
As aptly captured by Nelson Mandela, our graduands have no option but to go on and fulfil, not just their individual dreams, but the dreams of their parents and the dreams of the nation.
To our graduands I say, go and help us rid our country of gender-based violence. Play your part in ridding the world of hunger, poverty, inequality and climate change. Help us build caring villages, sustainable cities and compassionate communities.
Future-ready graduates, go on and make your knowledge work for your country and the world.
We congratulate you and we say, Halaaala!
I thank you.
