Law students walk away with top awards
NELSON Mandela University Law students Thina Ntsaluba and Lawrence Lwanga scooped top honours at this year’s Achievers Awards, which recognise students’ leadership excellence.
The student Achiever awards recognise Mandela University’s exceptional student leaders who have excelled in the areas of Arts, Culture and Heritage; the Student Representative Council (SRC); Student Societies and Residence Life and Leadership, while maintaining a good academic performance.
Ntsaluba and Lwanga, who are in their third and fourth years of Law studies, respectively, received the Vice-Chancellor’s Excellence in Leadership awards last week.
The Vice-Chancellor’s Awards are given to two students who have distinguished themselves as outstanding leaders in co-curricular activities at the university. Their performance and contribution must have been sustained over a period of two years, and they must have proven themselves in a variety of leadership portfolios and maintained a consistent good academic record.
The top awards were not the only ones that this duo walked away with, as Ntsaluba also scooped the Society Administrator of the Year award for her work in the Black Lawyers’ Association student society, while Lwanga had bagged the Student Leader of the Year award.
Vice-Chancellor Professor Sibongile Muthwa stressed the importance of co-curricular activity in building active and conscious citizenship among young people.
“At Nelson Mandela University, we have re-calibrated our system. This has allowed us to reconfigure the kinds of challenges that face society today. Our co-curricular opportunities serve as a platform to generate innovative strategies to address these challenges through education. Skills acquired in spaces beyond the lecture hall have proved their worth in ongoing lifelong learning,” Muthwa said.
Ntsaluba, who is a Vice-Chancellor’s scholar and a participant in the Allan Gray programme, developed her leadership skills by being involved in activities which include completing the self-development leadership programme Beyond the Classroom (BtC) and being selected as a How2 Buddy, assisting first-year students with their transition to university life.
Ntsaluba holds an executive position in the Black Lawyers Association and focuses on raising awareness of and looking at the effects of gender-based violence, having also advocated for the prevention of secondary victimisation of survivors of gender-based violence.
Ntsaluba also volunteers at the Zonke Izinto Baby Home, among a host of other duties – all while maintaining an academic aggregate of above 70% aggregate. She is also a Golden Key student and made the Faculty of Laws Dean’s List for 2018.
Lwanga, who is also an Allan Gray scholar and whose involvement ranges from public speaking, volunteering and entrepreneurship, is currently the Chairperson of the Black Lawyers Association and serves on its provincial board.
He has been involved in making policy recommendations on the sexual harassment infrastructure and reporting mechanisms at the university, as well as establishing a student advocacy programme. He volunteered to assist with the Memeza and Teta Memela projects to raise awareness around the dynamics of power and gender-based violence.
Aware of the sad reality of student hunger on campus, Lwanga founded the Xan Drive Feeding Scheme and established a fundraising initiative, which feeds between 30 and 50 young men weekly.
He continued with his fundraising passion by joining the UNAKO Community-Based Movement, which changes lives through grassroots education, particularly in schools in
Nelson Mandela Bay townships.
With a passion for entrepreneurship and in his role as Living and Learning Entrepreneurial Development Head, Lwanga has networked with 30 student entrepreneurs and collaborated with key stakeholders to provide them with off campus exposure.
He was selected to the GradStar Leadership Top 100, which recognises top performing students across the country based on their leadership qualities.