It might have been one of the hardest. Not only for us as a young university finding its feet and making its mark. But also for South Africa as a people, and for the world at large. 

Though there have been hardships, though some days were more difficult than others, I do feel we have prevailed and shown what we are made of. We have adjusted our sails and we have not let the stormy waters of 2020 sink this mighty mighty ship. 

I have to thank you for working with us, and for doing what it took to get through this year. Thank you to all staff and students for committing themselves to making it through this year. As we look back, it is clear that we have not only survived, we have actually prevailed and excelled. We got on with the business of learning and teaching and made sure we came out on top. We stood together and made the very best of a rather trying situation.
We've grown in student numbers, we've grown in staff numbers, we've added invaluable courses to our curriculum. All of this in a year where it felt like the rest of the world stood still. As we end this year and all go to spend time with friends, family and loved ones, please remain vigilant and do not fall victim to the second wave. Keep your social distance, wear your mask, wash hands regularly and sanitize. 

I look forward to welcoming you all back in the new year and I remain ever hopeful and excited about what 2021 will hold for us as a community. Wishing you and your loved ones Safe Holidays and a Prosperous New Year. 

Professor Thoko Mayekiso 
Vice-Chancellor

Speaking at the awards ceremony, Vice-Chancellor Professor Thoko Mayekiso said it was an honour for her to welcome all to the event and to be able to recognise everyone for their efforts. “As a community, we commit ourselves to uphold the highest standards of excellence in all our actions, functions and services. Everyone here is the embodiment of these values.”

“When we look at the year 2019, which is the year under review, and juxtapose it with 2020, you realise how we cannever, and shouldnever take anything for granted. Circumstances can change dramatically, and life’s curveballs can be thrown at us from nowhere. This gives us all the more reason to celebrate these achievements with a deep sense of appreciation and thankfulness,” she said.

Professor Mayekiso noted that achievements of this nature say a lot about human determinations and resilience, that great things happen for those who are committed to putting in the work and the hours necessary to achieve their goals. . 

“It is with a sense of hope and pride that we celebrate those among us who have excelled. It could not have been easy, and the temptation to give up might have been strong, but your persistence has paid off.”

Congratulating the winners on their achievements, Professor Mayekiso encouraged all to remain committed in making excellence a habit.

The Recipients of the Excellence Awards

The awards were presented by Director of Research Management: Professor Phindile Lukhele-Olorunji and Prof Ric Bernard. 

Congratulations to all the winners! 

@ Story by Cleopatra Makhaga. Pictures @ChrisplPhoto.

Dr Mavhungu says his research was aimed at investigating perceived gender-based barriers to business start-ups amongst prospective farmers in South Africa.

“The findings established that there was no statistically significant difference between gender and any of the internal and external factors to business start-ups.”

He continues that a dependent relationship between personal attitude (Entrepreneurial Intention) and three key variables – socio-cultural forces, motivation and creativity – was found.

“A dependent relationship was also established between taking responsibility (Entrepreneurial Orientation) and motivation, creativity and socio-cultural forces. Lastly, a dependent relationship was established between motivation and socio-cultural forces.” 

Dr Mavhungu further explains that his research contributes to the field of entrepreneurship by developing and validating a construct personal attitude to measure entrepreneurial intention.

“My teaching and learning and research area of interest include entrepreneurial orientation, entrepreneurial intention, barriers to business start-ups, gender and entrepreneurship, business leadership, project management, strategic management and general management.”

He adds that establishing good research and organisational habits and the development of a disciplined working routine regarding the organisation of his time management plan, played a significant role in successfully pursuing and obtaining his PhD.

Challenges of postgraduate research
Dr  Mavhungu's advice to aspiring postgraduate students is to be prepared to work hard and be passionate about their chosen field of study. Getting started is possibly the biggest pitfall facing postgraduate research students.

“At the beginning, it felt as though my supervisor and I were pushing uphill against all odds. In the end, it all materialised and I won the race. It was tough. Many sacrifices were made but it was ultimately a very rewarding experience,” he says.

“Aspiring postgraduates should be ready to overcome self-doubt and enjoy the experience of learning. Learners should note that it is not what a person has learned that makes them successful, but how they use what they have learnt. It is important to note that undertaking postgraduate research is neither a single event nor a single project. It is akin to a long journey fraught with twists and turns, with few defined signposts and the need to adapt constantly to unexpected events."

He adds that education will equip learners with specialised knowledge in their area of interest, which is why learners should not rush into making a decision. They should think thoroughly about which programme to pursue and how they will meet their goals, rather than throwing money into an area that they may later realise they have no interest in. 

“Postgraduate research in the social sciences typically involves two primary parties, the student and the supervisor. The supervisory relationship becomes an important aspect of the journey.”

Experience and passion
Dr Mavhungu joined the UMP in October 2016. Before this he was previously employed by the Centurion Academy, the University of Johannesburg, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, and Tshwane University of Technology as a lecturer.

“I have been in the private sector for almost eight years and in the academic space for 13 years. I was previously appointed by ENM Trading and Boniswa Technologies respectively as a project manager and gained experience in managing construction projects.”

His experience includes effective management of access to and communication of project information, management of construction programmes, effective building of relationships and on-going liaison with project stakeholders, people management and team leadership (leadership, accountability and teamwork).

“My passion for projects and entrepreneurship started when joining Fikile Construction as a project administrator in 2003 and was inspired by its co-founder, the late Mr Mandla Ndlovu. Entrepreneurship through projects plays a significant role in poverty reduction through job creation.

“As an academic, I am also free to choose how I spend my time. In academia, we have less pressure to hit certain short-term deadlines, which allows one to take a long-term approach to problem solving.”

Dr Mavhungu says mentoring students is what he enjoys the most. “I find teaching immensely rewarding. I take pride in helping students succeed in their careers and professional development.”

Some of his credits include a National Diploma (Management), A BTech in Management), BTech (Project Management) from Technikon Pretoria, as well as an MCom (Business Management) from the University of Johannesburg.

@ Story by Cleopatra Makhaga. Pictures supplied.

His essay Covid-19 Pandemic: A Barometer for Moral and Ethical Behaviour Among Students was about the change in students’ behaviour or the lack of it because of the Covid-19 pandemic. The focus was on the morals and ethical dilemmas that have been brought to the fore by the pandemic.

“My essay was to show if there was a moral decline on the students’ side. I wanted to paint a picture of what was permissible behaviour and what was not while we were in the middle of a crisis." 

Dladla says his biggest motivation was the observation of the situation was from when students were sent back home for an early recess, to studying online with limited resources. He also wanted to highlight the challenges of online learning, financial issues, and the returning of students to campuses.

“These were the three burning issues for me which could have led to students’ behaviour changing for better or for worse. I also wanted to highlight factors that could lead to those behavioural changes during the pandemic,” he adds.

“The lockdown exposed a lot of issues that affected most people’s behaviours towards others: our treatment of each other as people changed – in some cases for better in others for worse. A lot of corruption was exposed and on the other side most people were doing all they could to help others. All of these spoke directly to morals and ethics.”

“I saw that as a country and as a human race, our morals and ethics were challenged and tested. As students, we were not exempt from all of this, to a certain extent we were in the middle of it because the education sector was one of the most affected sectors in our country. I looked around me for motivation to write this essay.”

Dladla won a gift voucher from Exclusive Books to the value R1000, a pen and a diary. He’s already used his voucher and even gifted the other two finalists with a book each.

@ Story by Cleopatra Makhaga. Pictures @ChrisplPhoto.

Mokhine is a UMP alumnus who studied Agriculture and graduated in 2018. He currently works for the City of Johannesburg as a Pest Control Operator. He says being elected to lead the Gauteng Chapter is an honour and an experience that he will cherish for the rest of his life.

“I will forever be grateful for the years of learning I enjoyed at UMP. I am ready to serve the Chapter to the best of my abilities. Leading the Chapter has added new value and responsibility to my life. UMP has been in existence for less than a decade, yet it has produced numerous well-inclined and highly skilled upcoming academics. This is a firm indication that UMP is destined to compete globally.”

Born and bred in Alexandra, Mokhine says he is honoured to have been chosen to enhance relations between UMP graduates, the institution itself and various strategic stakeholders.

“Aligning all systematic gears will be a demanding task that will be eased by mobilising the alumni and also organizing them to be innovative and articulate, and to contribute meaningfully in ploughing back into UMP. As the Gauteng Chapter, we’d like to fast-track the university’s strategic plans to automatically benefit graduates and all stakeholders,” says Mokhine.

Chapter secretary, Floyd Monama, says the launch brought hope to the hopeless and lifted the morale of graduates. Currently studying towards his Bachelor of Information Science through UNISA, Monama is employed by SAPS, owns and operates a small-scale piggery in Limpopo, and is working towards establishing an Agro processing company for export purposes.

“The Chapter will bring graduates closer to the fountain of knowledge and wisdom that is UMP. Being bestowed with such responsibility, our task will be to become a key catalyst for achieving and advancing the institution's strategic plan by contributing meaningfully through coordinating and enhancing graduates interests and desires and aligning them with UMP and the university’s various investors.”

Monama further says that their plan is to configure graduates to be innovative, resilient, and self-reliant in the current economic trajectory.

@ Story by Cleopatra Makhaga. Pictures @ChrisplPhoto.

Before joining UMP, since March 2013 Gumede was a Professor at the University of South Africa, having previously headed the Thabo Mbeki African Leadership Institute.

Prior to that Professor Gumede was an Associate Professor in Development Studies at the University of Johannesburg from June 2010 to February 2013. He has occupied various positions in the South African government, including being Special Advisor to the Minister of Public Enterprises, Economic Advisor to the Deputy Minister of Trade & Industry and Chief Policy Analyst in the Presidency’s erstwhile Policy Coordination and Advisory Services.

Before joining government, Professor Gumede worked as lecturer and researcher for various institutions and has held numerous fellowships abroad and here at home, including as a Distinguished Africanist Scholar at Cornell University and Yale World Fellow at Yale University and research fellowships with the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection, Centre for the Advanced Studies of African Society, Centre for the Study of African Economies and the International Policy Centre as well as an Honorary Professor at the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business. 

Since joining the academic sector in 2010, Professor Gumede has authored and edited 14 books and published over 40 journal papers, book chapters and essays as well as numerous research reports. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Africa Insight, Africanus and has also guest edited various special issues. 

He is a member of 6 Editorial Committees and serves in various oversight and advisory committees including the Presidential Economic Advisory Council. His postgraduate training is in policy studies and economics – he holds a PhD in Economics (completed in 2003) from the erstwhile University of Natal (now the University of KwaZulu-Natal). 

Professor Gumede has led many significant research projects (funded by the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa, Open Society Foundation, TrustAfrica, United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, International Labour Organization, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, the South African National School of Government, the National Research Foundation in South Africa, the National Planning Commission in South Africa, the Financial and Fiscal Commission etc).

Professor Gumede has lectured Economics, African Political Economy, Development & Policy Studies for various universities and he has supervised to completion over 20 Masters and Doctoral students. He is the Vice-President of the National Council of the South African Association of Political Studies and has been involved in various capacities with Afrocentricity International, Pan-African Federalist Movement, Southern Africa Trust, Action Aid South Africa, African Union High Level Panel on Democracy and Governance, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, the African Peer Review Mechanism, the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa, the Economic Development and Wellbeing Research Group, the Southern African Institute for Policy Research etc.

@ Additional information and Pictures from vusigumede.com

 

Opening the event, Vice-Chancellor Professor Thoko Mayekiso said the Archbishop Thabo Makgoba Trust Annual Lecture had become an occasion that forces the UMP community to introspect and reflect in profound ways about leadership, especially its ethical and moral nature.

“We aspire to be an African University leading in creating opportunities for sustainable development through innovation. This vision would never be achieved if we do not place ethics and morality at the centre of our being as the University of Mpumalanga,” she said.

“Moral and ethical leadership is sought among our staff, students, management and the South African community as a whole; to demonstrate courageous leadership at this challenging time in our history. The endowment will help to inspire our students and staff to think in a visionary way, and confront obstacles along the journey in ways that demonstrate adherence to a moral and ethical compass.”

Professor Mayekiso further said that the university is working towards the establishment of an ethical culture so that interactions with stakeholders are undertaken in a honourable manner.

“Ethical and moral leaders are the ones who will inspire us to self-actualize, and be the best we can be. May the habits of our own hearts change, because we have heard, and attentively listened to the pearls of wisdom, and insights, shared with us – in this seminal lecture today. May the lessons to be imparted to us, continue to inform what we do, and how we do it, going forward,” she said.

Speaking on the topic: Providing Ethical Leadership in a Disrupted Society: Quo Vadis South Africa, Professor Zide said a disrupted society is one where there is no regard for law and order.

“A disrupted society is one in which the value of UBUNTU has escaped our self-consciousness and our wellbeing. A disrupted society is one that has turned its back on the blueprint of the Bible – the 10 commandments. Above all, a disrupted society is where life is about Me, I, Mine and Myself and not we, us, ours and ourselves. A disrupted society promotes and embraces the lifestyle of opulence, pomposity and self-aggrandisement at the expense of the majority of the people of the country.”

He further said that a lifestyle of opulence and riches is the antithesis to the lifestyle explained by Prophet LaNdwandwe in her book: Akusiko kwami Kwebantfu: Unearthing King Sobhuza II’s Philosophy 1st edition 2009. In getting to know archbishop Makgoba’s philosophy, one comes to understand why he is the personification ethics and morality.

“Furthermore, a disrupted society is engulfed in a series of midnights. An ethical leader has to manage to find his or her way through a maze of such midnights.”

Professor Zide explained the midnight within the social life, moral and psychological order: Family lives are broken and there is no support base. It is midnight because people are dying of natural and unnatural diseases and the number of orphans, widows and widowers is increasing.

“Yes, it is midnight and ethical leadership is more needed now than ever before as the Zondo Commission continues to unearth and fathom looting of the state resources but politicians continue to live a lifestyle of opulence and personal aggrandisement. President Cyril Ramaphosa has a big task on his hands and that is to provide ethical leadership if our political landscape has any hope of changing."

“It is midnight within the psychological order. Everywhere paralyzing fears harrow people by day and haunt them by night, deep clouds of anxiety and depression are suspended in our mental skies. More people are emotionally and mentally disturbed today than at any other time in history."

“The COVID19 pandemic has left the entire world reeling in pain, anger and anxiety, and the second wave of the pandemic is expected to be deadlier than the first. The threat this poses requires a more agile, responsive and ethical leadership, rather than a leadership that would wash its hands like Pontius Pilate said."

“Saying that the spread of the virus and the containment of the pandemic is in our hands, is leadership shirking its responsibility. There are millions of South Africans out there who still need to be trained and retrained about the need for social distancing, sanitization, washing hands and the wearing of masks. Just ask the many who do not even have water and a bar of soap, no food, no money, no form of income and wearing of masks is just a dream."

“Some people have had to improvise as they do not even have money to buy masks because of unemployment. All of these threats are indicative of the fact that it is midnight within the inner lives of human beings as ethical leadership is non-existent but the bling culture of personal aggrandisement and self-enrichment is on the increase."

“At midnight, colours lose their distinctiveness and become a sullen shade of grey. Moral principles have lost their distinctiveness. Right and wrong are relative to likes and dislikes and the customs of a particular community. We have unconsciously applied Einstein’s theory of relativity, which properly equates the physical universe to the moral-ethical realism. In this context midnight is the hour when men desperately seek to obey the “eleventh Commandment; thou shall steal but not get caught. According to the ethic of midnight, the cardinal sin is to be caught and the cardinal virtue is to lie, but no one must lie with real finesse.”

Professor Zide further went on to share ethical leadership qualities embraced by the Archbishop Thabo Makgoba.

“This paper cannot do justice to the Archbishop if we fail to articulate as best we can the ethical attributes and qualities which distinguish and separate him from the rest of the men and women of the cloth. The ethical and principle leadership values which the Archbishop stands for are honesty, trustworthiness, integrity, credibility, respect, transparency, rejecting self-fulfillment and personal aggrandizement, effective control, legitimacy and praying for self and others.”

“These and many more are a myriad and tapestry of Archbishop Makgoba’s attributes which helped to sustain him during and after the apartheid regime and even now during the democratic dispensation. Only a man of his faith, courage, calibre and integrity would be able to stand the test of time.”

The event ended with the announcement of the Archbishop Makgoba Essay Competition winner, Bachelor of Education Foundation Phase student Mongezi Dladla.

“When I first received and email about the competition, I ignored it because I thought the topic would ask too much of me. I was busy at home with my school research and did not think I would have the time. I ended up writing the essay and I got to read some great articles. In the process is a crisis and every crisis provides an opportunity and as human beings, it is in us to overcome the crisis,” said Dladla.

@ Story by Cleopatra Makhaga. Pictures @ChrisplPhoto.

Dr Govender, who is an expert in her field, brings with her a wealth of knowledge and experience to UMP. Some of her responsibilities will be to oversee the institution’s recruitment processes, skills development and employee relations.

Her experience includes heading several positions in institutions of higher learning, including being a research associate at the Nelson Mandela University and a Master’s Examiner and facilitator at the Nelson Mandela Business School.

In 2015 she became the Director of Human Resources at Rhodes University where she provided strategic, operational, monitoring and advisory leadership for the university. Before that she occupied the position of HR Director: Organisational Development at Nelson Mandela University.

Another achievement was developing the Human Risk and Governance Module and Assessment for the Universities South Africa HR Development Programme.

Dr Govender has a good balance of academic and corporate experience since she has held several directorship projects, including Acting Chair and Non-Executive Director for the Nerissa Nevane Govender Foundation and chairing the Employment Equity Committee at the Walter Sisulu University.

In 2016 she became Chair of the Employment Equity Committee at Walter Sisulu University and was a non-executive director at Global HR Management Solutions.

She holds a PhD in Public Management and Development (HR Management) from Stellenbosch University, and has a Master’s in Education from the University of Cape Town. She also pursued a Programme in Labour Law Practice (CCMA Commissioner Course, NQF 8) from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University.

Dr Govender is a member of the Institute of Personnel Management (IPM), South African Reward Association (SARA) and South African Council of Educators (SACE) to mention just a few.

Some of her achievements include founding SendelBafazi and the Women in Leadership: Voluntary Organisations. A creative of note who has also produced a documentary: Grassroots Entrepreneurship: Perspectives from the Bangladesh Market and the KZN Midlands Travelogue

We look forward to having her on board and welcome her to the UMP community.

@ UMP Communications Division. Pictures Supplied