Plea to students to revitalise Walter Sisulu university

TWO sharp young legal eagles have made an impassioned plea to former students of Walter Sisulu University to join efforts to revitalise the university as a place of academic excellence.

Celebrated lawyer Advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi was speaking to Walter Sisulu graduates at a convocation event in Mthatha called to raise support and funds for their alma mater.

He said a university which had produced many leaders in the judiciary, medicine and economics should not be allowed to wither and collapse.

Zincedile Tiya, the president of the convocation, echoed his call. Both Tiya and Ngcukaitobi are LLB graduates and former student leaders at the university.

Ngcukaitobi said the university was responsible for many poor black rural youths getting an empowering education. “It is not really where you started that is important, but where you end.”

He said it was there that for the first time he learnt about the writing of Robert Sobukwe, Steve Biko and Karl Marx.

“We are responsible for what the university becomes. Unless we start doing things ourselves nothing will move.

“Be the change of what you want to see. No one will change the world unless you actually change the world yourself. [The university] is playing a unique role in this particular region,” Ngcukaitobi said.

Tiya expressed concern that the university’s LLB qualification faced axing by the Council of Higher Education.

“I am disappointed because none of about 100 law firms in Mthatha whose directors and owners studied [here] defended our LLB accreditation. We had to be rescued only by some NGO in Pretoria called higher education transformation.”

The convocation is calling for financial assistance and donations.

“We are requesting you to make a donation, even if it’s R20 per month. The monies we are fundraising are going to help develop our university and help the poorest of the poor,” Tiya said.