Nuku set platform to help school principals achieve great results
I have known the late education head of department Dr Soyisile Nuku for about 14 years.
During his years of stewardship he had an unyielding sense of optimism and hope.
In his dealings with heads of schools he would remind us about the centrality of a principal in leadership and management.
Few people match and surpass their obligations and Nuku can be bracketed with those.
There was a time when he was recalled by his principals at head office to go back and give Libode mega district a new lease of life.
I was there when basic education minister Angie Motshekga commended Nuku, saying: “You have achieved within a year what should have taken you four years”.
Not even for an infinitesimal moment can those who worked with him forget his guidance, foresight, intelligence and humility.
Such people shall from now and henceforth want and get used to waiting for forlorn hope to ameliorate their personal circumstances and those of the communities they serve.
When matric results were unfashionably plummeting, it was not uncommon for education officials to ridicule, mock and hurl insults at teachers during school visits and post thereof.
Nuku never disowned us. He knew he had to work hard until schools improved their results.
His focus seemed to be ignited daily by what our near poet laureate Yali Manisi once said: “Mfundamandini yohlang’ oluxakekileyo; Nazo k’ezombendlenge zakowenu; Imilomo izel’ iinkokho; Kub’ aziyityanga ingqaka nebhotolo; Sesibeka wena entendelezweni.” (Guard of the ridiculed nation; there are your country`s tramp; their lips all broken and cracked; starved of cream and butter; We rely on you to embrace them)
Nuku was indeed the guard of the ridiculed nation whose people had for centuries been made secondclass citizens in the country of their birth.
He not only commiserated about the starving and the poor, instead he also embraced them.
For the uninitiated, camping by pupils or ilima was one of his initiatives from 2005.
Today many schools have embraced and normalised extra classes and camping.
To paraphrase the poet Aime Cesaire, Nuku never assumed the sterile attitude of a spectator.
In Corinthians 3:10, the apostle Paul states that God’s grace enabled him to be a wise and master builder.
This is true of Nuku because some schools which were regarded as ordinary became the toast of the nation through his tireless efforts. Having laid the foundation, principals were able to build on it.
His meetings were never dull. I shall always remember his undying love for education and his enduring quest to leave a good legacy.
It is his big-stage temperament and kingly presence that mark him as one of a rare sort.
I believe he was born 30 years ahead of his time because he never made failure an option.
Nuku was a man of mediation, beginning and ending. He provided light instead of cursing the darkness. Hamba kakuhle Ntusi. — Gerald Monwabisi Dinwayo, educationist, writing in his personal capacity