The July 2022 graduations are a triple celebration for Wits, with students able to return to the Great Hall in person, the conferring of 152 PhDs, and a celebration of African excellence in Mandela Month.
Wits University will bestow honorary doctorates on two giants of African literature and African studies respectively during this year’s second cluster of graduation ceremonies.
The July graduation season commences with the capping of 152 PhD graduates who have completed extensive research and advanced scholarship by contributing novel ideas in their respective fields.
The PhD graduation breakdown per faculty is as follows: A total of 38 from the Faculty of Science; 34 from the Faculty of Health Sciences; 33 from the Faculty of Humanities; 29 from the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management; and, 18 from the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment.
Billed as the season of senior degrees, more than half of the 2 041 qualifications to be conferred are for postgraduate studies.
“Wits University looks forward to celebrating the occasion of graduation with our students and their families. We look forward to their contributions to society and we urge them to uphold the efforts of Witsies before them, such as the great Madiba, who is being celebrated globally this month,” said Professor Vilakazi, Wits Vice-Chancellor and Principal.
"The University is proud to confer honorary doctorates on scholars Mda and Asante, who are ambassadors of African excellence through their work."
Professor Molefi Kete Asante, born Arthur Lee Smith, will be conferred with an honorary Doctorate in Literature on Tuesday.
He will be honoured for his life-long commitment to Africa(n)-centred scholarship and philosophy, as well as his influence and intellectual thought from and on Africa and the African Diaspora. Asante is currently Professor and Chair in the Department of Africology and African American Studies at Temple University, Philadelphia, in the United States, where he founded the PhD programme in African-American Studies.
He is a co-founder of the Journal of Black Studies and is recognised as the father of the theory of Afrocentricity. He is the author of more than 77 books and the textbook African American History: Journey of Liberation, used in more than 400 schools in North America. The African Union cited him as one of the 12 top scholars of African descent. He is also a poet, dramatist, and painter.
Novelist, playwright, painter, musical composer and academic Dr Zanemvula Kizito Gatyeni (Zakes) Mda will be awarded an honorary Doctorate in Literature later on Tuesday, in recognition of his contribution to South Africa and the world’s cultural and literary sphere.
Mda has an established reputation as one South Africa’s pre-eminent novelists and was one of the first writers to face and address the complexities of the post-1990 transition.
Since 1995, Mda has published a succession of novels that have received favourable reviews and have won an array of prizes. A creative genius, his work toys with the intersection of social awareness and aesthetic exploration, and has expanded the sense of what it means to be South African.
Much to the delight of Wits students, staff and friends of the university, the graduation ceremonies return to the Great Hall, which recently underwent months of repair and renovation work.
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